Special knives

Proper website, the magic of it

2009-03-14T11:23:58Z

Filament magazine website now live.

Currently lacking useful stuff like a way to order, as well as many digital marketing ideas contributed by Interactive Mix, but it should really move things along that there is one. In short, I'm pleased as punch.

New shoes!

2009-03-04T13:47:58Z

Only £39.99 from Clarkes. Who woulda thunk it.

They seem to be going for the whole 'upselling' thing and tried to get me to buy a matching handbag.

I really don't do handbags, about which the sales assistant was incredulous.

My mother has a handbag. I do not.

Filament on Ellis

2009-03-02T13:32:16Z

Warren Ellis, creator of the dystopic future graphic novel series Transmetropolitan, linked to Filament from his blog. Colour me stoked.

Left-wing comedy and tiny books

2009-02-28T10:24:37Z

Suprised Squirrels last night by making him turn up at Clapham Junction. We went out for dinner then to see Jeremy Hardy at Battersea Arts Centre. Jeremy Hardy is a left-wing comic that we both like. So you know, lots of moaning. Which is what I came for England for innit.

Never been to the Battersea Arts Centre before. It's very nice in a slightly crusty but obviously much loved sort of way.

Currently reading: In the aeroplane over the sea, a 33⅓ book by Kim Cooper, which tells the story of how the awesome Neutral Milk Hotel album came to be.

It's also very small. I like very small books, that I can fit in my pocket. Very small book recommendations gratefully received.

LJ is boring on Fridays

2009-02-13T12:51:19Z

Ask me a question.

Asymmetrical head

2009-02-13T00:19:47Z

One of the other fun things that happens when you register a company is you start getting a lot of junk mail from people offering a bit of congratulations and, can we register your domain for you for as little as £75? Er, no thank you.

Oh and, new haircut.

It's supposed to be an asymmetrical fringe, but it's certainly more symmetrical today than it was yesterday. My hair does not suffer asymmetry to live.

New Zealand-based folks...

2009-01-23T12:49:30Z

Can anyone tell me what one tends to pay for 'import' magazines these days, either in stores, or if you happen to subscribe to something that comes to you internationally, what it is and what you're paying for it, including P&P?

Thanks!

How to open bubbly on a Parisian houseboat (sock required)

2009-01-22T18:02:07Z

Witches are good

2009-01-21T13:15:21Z

It's been ages since I've been to see a band, but I went to see one last night, Witches, at The Dublin Castle in Camden.

Colour me all sorts of impressed. They are exactly the sort of music I like, reminding me much of quintessential NZ guitar bands like of The Bats, The Verlaines and Snapper, with occassional moments of The D4. All with added glockenspeil, trumpet and maraccas :D

Highly recommend you listen to some, especially if your name is matariki, mahurangi, maxinemogadon, von_da_bra...

Also they let you buy their CDs in Euros if you're too lazy to get your money changed after a Paris holiday, and have been carrying it around in your wallet for weeks.

Protein and serotonin

2009-01-08T11:40:09Z

This article about the science behind noisy eyeballs really fascinates me.

Although my eyeballs don't make noises, I suffer from problems blocking out exterior noise such that I find it difficult to work in even an averagely noisy office. I always attributed this to some form of autism, but the idea that it might be attached to my tendency to depression via lack of serotonin, and possibly remedied by sufficient protein (in particular, the amino acid tryptophan) is an exciting prospect.

I have long been a believer that protein is key to good nutrition - for example, getting enough seems to prevent me craving sweet or starchy food. But I doubt most people - vegetarians, vegans and those watching their weight especially - are getting anywhere near enough. You need 50g a day (more if you're exercising) - that's a litre of yoghurt, 200g of cheese, 3.5 eggs or 1kg of hummus.

This is not the same as saying that vegies should just get some meat - you can certainly get enough protein on a vege or vegan diet, but very likely not without paying attention to it and knowing where it is and isn't coming from.

Searching what you eat on the Nutrition Data website might be a good start.

Current obsession: Spots on my face. Irritating. Squirrels gave them to me.
Point of fashion: Floaty purple skirt for Scottish Country Dancing tonight

Sparkling vampires and pink mermaids

2009-01-06T23:08:15Z

Nothing quite compares with the sheer beauty that is the movie Twilight.

Afterwards, we ate raw food and I drank a smoothie called Pink Mermaid, which would supposedly spice up my sex life. Then my chair started to vibrate.

Then we went to an underground mafioso bar, of which she is a member, which had a dog, plenty of wood veneer and laminated posters of James Dean pinned to the ceiling. It doesn't get any more romantic than that. And besides, she had garlic breath and I have coldsores.

Happy new year

2009-01-05T12:53:03Z

I'm just back from Paris, which was freezing and expensive. But who can complain with all the crepes to be eaten and other cool French stuff.

At the bird markets with Squirrels:

Me: Oh honey - look at those lovebirds! Aren't they just like us?!
Squirrels: Yeah, if one of them was a knob-end.

I couldn't agree more ;)

Feminists have better love & sex lives

2008-08-07T12:08:49Z

Research found that men in relationships with feminist women and feminist women themselves report more sexually satisfying and stable relationships than other couples.

It also found that women who considered themselves feminists were no more likely to conform to popular stereotypes of feminists (being single, unattractive or lesbian) than other women.

Not exactly rocket science to most of us, but somehow I can't see it being reported in The Sun or The Daily Mail!

Link from Penny Red.

Go Ginger Lover!

2008-06-20T12:18:12Z

Ginger Lover, alternative swimwear made in New Zealand, have updated their website and added new styles. Fabulous!

Support independent business and design. They are awesome.

Men's fashion

2008-04-22T11:00:10Z

There doesn't seem to be much menswear that's interesting and unusual without being either firmly placed within a subculture or so ludicrous as to mock the very idea of itself.

Do you agree?

Do men get frustrated with the lack of fashion for them, or is the lack of variety primarily market-driven?

Edit: Album of styles from the latest Nom*D collection. They used to be one of the better designers for menswear, I thought, so it's a shame there's probably 2-3 examples in here that don't take the piss out of the whole concept.

Aspies and HFA: coping strategies for might-bes

2008-01-16T01:02:38Z

A friend who suspects they have Asperger's Syndrome recently asked me about my coping strategies, and realising I have other possible Aspie readers I thought I'd make it open to all.

Let your friends and colleagues know what your problems are
...preferably in advance of incidents. You don't have to say it's Asperger's or HFA - "I panic if there's a loud crash, just ignore me if you find me in the corner of the kitchen wimpering" might be enough. If people respond badly to episodes it's often because they are embarrassed that they don't know what's going on or what to do.

Background noise
- Wear earmuffs or headphones with no music playing
- Take control: eliminate the source. For example, closing doors and windows or just asking people to keep it down.

Visual overload
Sunglasses can help, but hunting down and killing graphic design criminals is better.

Tactile sensitivity
- Wear natural fabrics or well-worn clothes. Wash everything that's new before wearing it.
- The best sex strategy is to explain to the other person beforehand what you do and don't do. I haven't always done this, which is not good because things like avoiding hand-holding can easily be misinterpreted.

Difficulty understanding other people's feelings
- When I struggle to feel that someone's emotions are not my fault, I picture a god-like figure literally causing it.
- I often find thoughts calming that other people probably find distressing, eg, imagining that my friends are only pretending to like me. I'm not sure if it's a good thing, but it can be useful in just feeling more calm.

Books
If you really can't stand fiction, try autobiographies. They can be really good for learning to empathise.

Overreacting to perceived threat
In some cases a lot of practise will help. For example, I was told I was never going to be able to wear contact lenses because I couldn't stick anything in my eye or let anything be stuck in my eye. After a lot of practice I can now do it. Sometimes. With some amount of difficulty.

Stimming and ticks
They don't look as spaz as you think, and if they do people might avoid you, which is not so bad if they're that shallow.

Panic
When I feel the panic rise I take a big breath and let it out noisily, counting to ten. It's a form of stimming I guess. People do think it's funny sometimes.

Socialising
- Take a prop with you to parties or pubs. Knitting or a camera is good but something other people can interact with is better: a colouring book, games, Kinder Surprises for everyone... use your imagination. I used to take felt tips with me to parties and draw pictures on my friends.
- Try not to beat yourself up for having had dreary conversations. The other person may actually have enjoyed it (they're not HFA/AS after all) and besides, whether other people enjoy themselves is not your responsibility.

Obsessions
Some obsessions, such as people that you know personally, cannot be cultivated, especially if you find yourself doing anything that might look like stalking. Treating it like an addiction - total avoidance and zero tolerance for any obsession-related thoughts - generally works.

And last but by no means least...

Sarcasm
I haven't found a way to tell when someone's being sarcastic, or joking. These days I generally assume it's sarcasm when someone says something stupid, ignorant or obvious. It makes me feel much better about the world.

Ginger Lover

2007-12-23T10:41:51Z

My friend Maree recently started designing and manufacturing a range of alternative swimwear called Ginger Lover. They ship worldwide and knowing Maree, the workmanship and materials are top quality.

And the models have visible body fat! Woo!

Common heretical uses of apostrophes and how to avoid them

2007-07-19T15:21:26Z

Today I am Plain English-reviewing a glossary of curriculum terminology written by a major UK education body. It is full of poor grammar.

For example, the writer uses which where they should use that, but they are so oblivious to their error that they've inserted commas to fool the MS Word grammarcheck. This produces sentences like The part of the curriculum, which is compulsory for all students.

I would love to say this shocks me, but it doesn't. I rarely see a teacher-developed resource that doesn't contain at least one grammatical error. Their apostrophes in particular are all over the place, commonly the likes of:

1. DVD's
usual justification
If you take something out you have to put something back in.
why this is wrong
This is a weird confusion of several English usage rules. It confuses the possessive apostrophe rule (which is irrelevant here, because this is pluralisation) with abbreviation and contraction. You have to 'put something in if you take something out' when you contract (eg, making could not into couldn't) but Digital Versatile Disc to DVD is not contraction, it's abbreviation. Rarely full stops are placed between the letters to indicate abbreviation (D.V.D.) but never apostrophes (D'V'D'). To make DVD plural, you simply add an s, making DVDs.

2. hijab's
usual justification
Add an apostrophe to pluralise any foreign word.
why this is wrong
You do not add an apostrophe when pluralising; the plural of hijab is hijabs. Although using the singular of a foreign word to mean the plural is usually fine and sometimes more correct. This is the case for maori words, eg, I went to the rock pools and collected 30 kina.

3. tattoo's
usual justification
Add an apostrophe to pluralise any word that ends with a vowel.
why this is wrong
You do not add an apostrophe when pluralising; the plural of tattoo is tattoos.

All of the above apostrophe insertions are right if meaning the singular object's possession of the next word, eg, her tattoo's colouring is incomplete, her hijab's decoration is lovely or my DVD's case is broken.

I thought that Ms Eats Shoots and Leaves sorted this out, but it seems that few teachers were paying attention. This is nothing new. At my school we usually got vague or inconsistent answers when we asked about apostrophes, leading us to think that there weren't rules at all. My mother, Inglewood High School dux 1968, also gets it wrong quite often.

Teachers though. I find it hard to knock them wholeheartedly. Have you seen them? They get up in front of kids and say stuff. It's amazing.

Electric Storm at Corsica Arts Club

2007-07-03T10:51:31Z

The Corsica Arts Club is a great little venue in whited-out interconnected rooms under the railway arches at Elephant & Castle. Friday night's event was called Electric Storm. It featured free absinthe, cupcakes and cucumber sandwiches, a french performance artist interacting with animated projections and Trost, fronted by a woman in a dainty dress (left) who sang sensitive songs about heartbreak in a macabre cabaret style, holding a bottle of red wine in one hand and a hammer in the other. I love her.

I didn't really know what to wear, so I wore absinthe-coloured stockings and big crimson butterflies in my hair. Several people stopped me to complement my outfit, which didn't seem like much of an outfit to me as it wasn't made out of materials intended for furnishings and hadn't taken me several days. I guess the folk who tend to frequent the place don't dress up so much. How terribly sad for them.

Only in London

2006-01-05T23:57:44Z

I went to gay Scottish country dancing tonight. And not just 'gay' in the way that all folk dancing is.

Anything that presupposes male-female pairs leaves a bad taste in my mouth. At The Gay Gordons, where the dances require two clear sets, apparently they do it with arm bands, but we did six or so tonight and none of them seemed to require people to be one or the other. It would've felt subversive, but there was almost nothing to subvert. Heterosexuality may be embedded in the culture of folk dancing but it doesn't seem to be embedded in the dances themselves. Credit to the teacher no doubt.

It was mostly men over 40, but they didn't mind holding hands with girls, and mostly people were pretty rubbish at folk dancing but friendly and the teacher was definitely good. Five stars.

The Gay Gordons
Thursdays, 7pm, Unity Hall
between Highbury and Islington and Angel tubes
£4

Black sheep and black shirts

2005-12-18T22:02:07Z

Losing Unity
by Hannah M Murphy
Etcetera Theatre Camden, London

I went to see this play because I'm a big fan of the novelist Nancy Mitford, eldest of the famously scandalous Mitford siblings. It focuses on the relationship between Jessica, a confirmed communist who married her black sheep cousin, and Unity, a badge-wearing fascist who became Hitler's girlfriend and shot herself in the head when WWII broke out.

Anything to do with the Mitfords is candy for those nostalgic for the in-and-around-London of an era they've never experienced - the 30s and 40s - and a class they've never identified with - high society, sweetie. That includes me - I love a good pair of Louis heels and some big band swing - but this play, despite being well acted, did leave me thinking, why bother? It didn't seem to me to say anything particularly meaningful, insightful or new about fascism, communism, women of the time, these particular women or anything much. The thrust of it could easily be summed up by its final line: "You joined one side and I joined the other."

Nancy Mitford wrote about her sisters and why they did what they did, particularly Jessica, through the characters in The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. So perhaps I have already contemplated what made the Mitfords so extraordinary, so different and so like each other, how outwardly they appeared confident and driven but really they formed their politics and their lives around men who gave nothing in return. Is this old hat? I'm sure it's not. Murphy’s play is not bad, but I'd recommend a 50p Nancy Mitford paperback over going out to Losing Unity on a December night that's capering round zero.

Scandalous misrepresentation

2005-12-07T22:55:27Z

When you cure me
by Jack Thorne
at Bush Theatre, Shepherd's Bush until 17 December
Tickets £9.5-14

I fucking love theatre. I love the way it talks about stuff that needs to be fucking talked about when nobody else has the guts. You could say it merely preaches to the converted: self-selecting concerned liberals who like to think they're better than everyone else because their Thursday night entertainment really makes a difference. Or maybe it quietly sows seeds of change. It's a bit hard to prove either way so I'll just shut up and review.

Played entirely in a 16-year-old girl's bedroom, when you cure me opens with Rachel, covered in cuts and bruises and paralysed from the waist down, being helped by her boyfriend to take a pee in a bedpan. We quickly find out that Rachel's been raped. It's one of those boring stranger-danger dark-alley stories, but used to good effect to talk seriously about consent, healing and negotiating relationships where one or both parties has suffered brutality. It's vital and uncomfortable but uplifting and real. The two leads (Morven Christie and Samuel Barnett) are stellar.

And I like that the promo misrepresents the play entirely, because I'd never have gone if I'd known what it was really about. I suppose that means you're not going to. Well, be an unpredictable market and do it anyway.

Hush by Samantha Wright, Arcola Theatre

2005-10-18T22:46:00Z

Review

Lyd's nine months' pregnant and Griff's a bit of a drinker. They seem nice enough people, apart from the immediately obvious power imbalance in their relationship. In the course of the making of dinner Griff's neuroses escalate through paranoia to the point where he is holding a knife to Lyd's throat. It becomes clear that Griff is conjuring Jack from within Lyd, the demonic spirit of their child-to-be, who is, according to Griff, driving Lyd away. Lyd and Jack swap back and forth a couple of times, Lyd packs a suitcase and tries to leave Griff, but then she goes into labour. The end.

Tuesdays at Arcola ('pay what you can') usually sell out, but the Tuesday I attended, about halfway through the season, there were only about a dozen people in the place. It's clear that no one who's seen this play has recommended it to friends. Why? Hush does not suffer from bad writing. The dialogue is believable and the writing uses subtext well. The acting is also quite adequate; neither actor seems to believe their role, but given the play, it would have been unfair to expect otherwise.

It is the story that's lacking. It isn't given enough development. Griff's relationship with the demonic Jack seems to be his relationship with his paranoia, doubt and self-loathing, but this is not sufficiently brought out. What does this mean for Griff and Lyd's relationship? What does this say about people? None of these things are developed. It is a clever idea that deserves to be taken somewhere. A shrewd and efficient writer would pinch it and make something magnificent.

Not me though, I've got a blog.