well, life is about love, lost minutes and lost evenings

I want them to say, "she usually said it seemed like a good idea at the time..."

"Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry..."

♥ Bring on 2012, it's going to be awesome.

Whilst I'd like to congratulate the drivers on the Manchester Airport Eastern Link Road for their valiant efforts to knock me off my bike this morning, I'm afraid I won't be inviting them to try harder next time.

I don't like it when hard drives make noises they're not supposed to. Especially hard drives that have only been used three times in just under six months.

I do like warranties.

Tonight I introduced maznu to my mum as "the man who keeps me in hard drives". (This is the third time in 2 years.)

If you mean a pint, say a pint, not a "large half".

I am aware the glasses are marked with third lines. But we don't sell thirds at this festival. I have told you this multiple times. Stop asking.

"They let girls do the cellar work now?" is not an appropriate comment for the 21st century. Please go to hell.

A top up on that half, sir? No, I'm afraid not - it's only not reaching the half line because you're tilting the glass. Set it straight, and you'll find it's sitting exactly on the line. Because I am just that awesome¹ ;)

You may be "volunteer drinkers" but I'm volunteer staff, and if you don't shift your butt from in front of the cellar door, you ain't getting any more beer. Oh, good, you decided to move :)

---

1: okay, I confess: we have quarter pint lines on the pumps, so as long as it's pulled properly, you will get a perfect pint every time. Happily, I know what I'm doing ;)

People I know have today been coming out with sentiments like "fuck Steve Jobs in the ass" and "he was monster who preferred fashion before function", and it's pissing me off.

All this bitterness is awful. Yes: he may have used the Foxconn factory despite what he'd learnt about it (along with Dell, Sony and HP, I might add).

He may have quite rudely snubbed his fans to their face.

You may not like the design of his products, the cliché of a Starbucks filled with MacBooks. You may simply think that Macs are sub-par and overpriced.

No matter what you think of the man and his company, allow those who want to to mourn his death.

Yes, he could be an ass. Maybe he doesn't deserve the title of "St Steve of the Ooh Shiny" which so many people seem to want to give him.

But he was a great innovator and salesman, he proved that there is such a thing as "the right kind of mad" in technology, he revolutionised the way we use mobile phones.

More importantly, he was a friend, a co-worker, a husband and a father. A human.

My dad left this world when he was 56, the same age as Steve Jobs. It's too early for anyone to die, whoever they are, whatever they've done, or not done. In the words of so many before me, if you have nothing nice to say...

(By the way, in case you missed it amongst all the sadness about Jobs: the world lost a second wonderful person yesterday - Fred Shuttlesworth, one of the last big US civil rights activists.)

Another poem, discovered through Kitty's blog yesterday.

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

Written by Marge Piercy

Buried under boxes of STUFF, brb.

Why do I have so many books? And DVDs? And mugs. Why the hell does one person need twenty novelty mugs?

BiCon 2011 was awesome. I think I cracked the perfect mix of socialising, sleeping, serious workshops and having fun: did stuff like talky Advanced BDSM workshop and Public Speaking for the Terrified and also Strap-On Shakespeare, which had me performing the part of Patroclus in Troilus and Cressida. I had a fight with Troilus, who accused me of being a masculine whore and threatened me with a flogger. (It's possible that our interpretation was not quite what Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote the play...)

Also, I'm on the team for BiCon 2013, because I am mad.

One of the great things about the Kindle is the way you can download book samples. It's like going into a library, sitting and reading the first chapter or two of the books you like the look of, then going next door to a bookshop and buying the ones you actually enjoyed. Only you can do it from your sofa or the train, with just a few clicks.

The only problem with this is that over the last couple of months, I've collected about £50 worth of samples to read and decide whether I like them enough to buy them or not, and now I'm sort of dreading reading them, just in case I like most/all of them, because I don't have enough income to justify buying them :(


Another great thing: I've gone from reading maybe 12 books a year to about a book a week since getting my Kindle. I feel as if I truly deserve to call myself a bookworm again. Perhaps not as much as shanaqui, who is a whole army of bookworms hidden in one person, but nonetheless.