So yeah I've been pretty out of it recently. First I got sick, then I worked too much, then I traveled too much and then I drank too much. I guess I'm sort of burnt out and haven't had the inclination to write much. Gotta change that, starting tomorrow. Heh.

Goddamn. Yeah, I just finished Portal. It's late but I had to see it through. And it was a lot of fun. I guess I should say something about cake here? I want some cake. Yeah. Cake.

I'm playing Portal right now. And I'm thinking to myself, 'Yeah this is really clever, fun and charming. The puzzles are well thought out, allowing the player to solve them with a variety of cues. And the story is what Valve does best: leading the player by the nose while giving a good reason for it.' I'm thinking that to myself trying to write up a review in my head, because that's something I wanna do. Then I find something fucked up. This is the best game ever.

Two sips from the cup of human kindness

Well I am returned from my yearly pilgrimage to that place of my birth. I recently returned home and washed off the trail dust. Then I shall scrounge up some foodings. Then, then I shall sort the loot.

Saying 'butter' over and over is fun.
Been lazy the past few days, tinkered with some houseworks and now I'm tinkering with some computerworks, setting up some cool things and messing around with Project Barbra. She's nearly at the 0.1% stage. I don't really expect this to go anywhere but it's fun to fiddle with, doing a little every day. Kind of like blogging.

Writing, writing, scritch scratch on a pad. I'm sort of writing something that's been bugging me for over a year now, getting in a paragraph or so every day in my notebook, scribbling in notes on what's supposed to happen next, drawing in lines indicating where paragraphs are supposed to go. Add onto that I do most of my work on public transport so the writing looks like hieroglyphs or primate paintings. Maybe I'll have this finished in another year or so.

Sitting here on the train platform drumming out the song I'm listening to on a notebook with a pen. I look up hoping no one's around, watching birds snatch insects from around the lights, getting this out of my head before I can write something else.
Seriously, there's no one else around. It's good because it means I can do things like pretend my notebook's a drum but where is everyone? There's usually at least five other people here even at this time of the morning. There better not be any zombies in the store today, damnit!

I should have put the sheet on the bed when I wasn't tired and wanting to go to bed. It took me way to long to realise the damned thing was around the wrong way, and I still haven't got the duvet into the cover. But still: clean sheets! Horray!
Meanwhile I can't stop thinking about what eating walnut shells would feel like. I wish I hadn't written that.

It's allright, it's allright, it's allright

I need to get off my dumb arse and get some work done. First I need to bag up a bunch of laundry and get gone out and get it done. Humping it past the worksite with the quarry trucks coming in and out is gonna be fun.
Then while I'm there I gotta get a haircut off the russian lady who did such a nice job last time. Maybe drink a coffee if my washing takes forever.
I could do all that, or I could sit here making sure the internets are still proceeding as they should. Yeah.

So I scampers up the insides of the pipe, all noisies-like, tellin him I'm comin. The exit's a squeeze but I get through, first me bony arm and me nose shoved in me armpit, shoulders turned flat then I get me spindly ribcage out. The hipsies the hardest part so I just dislocate me legs, POP, outta the sockets and into the room. It doesn't half bloody hurtsies. I come out like a puppet with strings done cut.
But I get everything back where it's supposed to be with quieter crickly-cracks and perch up a table and helps meself to some walnuts. The meat's tasty but the shells help ya shit if ya got the teethies for them.
"Gumblestrop, stop eating, I've tasks for you."
I eats a walnut whole, cracking the shell like a boiled sweet and noisily crunch-crunches because I knows it makes the mortals shaky. It does the normal-mormal-mortals, anyways.
"Gumblestrop, by the power of your name I compel you to heed me."
Then he has to go and do that, which was completely bloody uncalled for. I'm having a teensy bit of fun and the toe-sucker has to go and do that. I upend the bowl of walnuts, scatterin them like crazy-bugsies or big fat spiders and then I flops onto the floor, hissin at the the bastard.
"Stop that," he goes and so I does. No bloody choice. He starts rattlin off instructions about this and that, trousers and socks, errands and pilferins. I been around forever and this what I gets? I catches him with me dead, dead eyes, blacker than volcaner-glass, me eyes what send the woodsie girls gigglin and what gets me less sleep than I'm needin. Makes me all cranky-like.
So before I goes back down the pipe I grabs another wally-nut, cracks it in me steely-teeth and cast a curse on the bastard's balls, wishin him warts and curdled milks.
Because it's the little things what get me through the day, yeah.

We live down here, keep the city going. We wrangle the steam elementals, know the charms for reclaiming oil from detritus and shit. We speak the language of the metals, of the girders and the boilers. We coax them into behaving and they pass on gossip of where stress and weakness lay in their fellows. It's us that applies the grease, the tar, it's us that keep the bellows blowing, the electricity flowing. We keep the city going.

Yuck. I need some form of deodorising thingies to put in my clothes hamper. I just sniffed one of my work shirts and it smells like stale burnt arse. I vaguely remember little linen baggies of dried lavender being used for something like that by old people when I was a kid. I don't mind my crap smelling like lavender. Stale burnt arse is something I'm beginning to mind.

Goddamn

Okay, so I'm not quite in bed yet. Just trawling the nerd news before sleeps and this came up: Christian Bale is John Connor. I really didn't give a toss about Terminator 3, but damn if I'm missing this one.

I'm really tired, but actually relaxed for once in my life. I'd forgotten what this feels like. I got home really goddamn late because the Universe is dumb and I was tired but I scrubbed out the bathtub anyway then ran some hot water, dumped in some lavender stuff that was my selection as 'Least dumb sounding bubblebath 2007', got in the damned thing and had a bath, probably the first one I've had since leaving Ballarat in 1999. I'm not used to being buoyant. It's a weird sensation.
While I was in the bath I drank a beer, the first one I've had in a month. When I got out I felt heavy, really bloody heavy, which was weirder than feeling buoyant. I've gotta do crap like this more often. It makes the pains of the previous week seem much more insignificant.

Probably all lies

One day I inhaled so hard I become two dimensional. Ever since I'd slid through the cracks in the world, unnoticed. This probably isn't true.
The real truth is the real me left long ago. I was originally his shadow but we did a deal to change places. It was difficult learning to walk, learning to give the impression of depth, of an extra dimension. But I managed enough to fool most, but for some reason it's easy for me to slip by unnoticed, to become a shadow again if I need to. The real me ran away with a shadow girl and left me alone. It's another story of how I found a shadow of my own, or maybe this is all a lie.
No, I'm really a powerful sorcerer, presently in this form to avoid my enemies. While not as strong as me individually they are numerous thanks to numerous indiscreet acts and a lifetime as doing as I fucking well wont. I avoid using magic unless I really must, maintaining one protection of arcane anonymity. As vampires supposedly do not show up in mirrors, which would be a damned nice trick if true, I'm statistically invisible. I don't show up on file. I am not a demographic. I figure after one or two generations, nothing to one possessing my abilities, I'll be able to regain my former place in the world. So long as I remember who I am. Unless I'm lying.
Which I am. The true truth is I'm no one in particular, and lazy. No really cares whether or not I'm on record for this or that and I'm not one to press the issue if it means I have to do less. I dislike filling out forms not because I don't want to reveal things about myself, but it's time that could be better spent contemplating my belly-button lint. Which is all true. Unless it's not.

It's morning again. Why does this have to happen every day? Every single damned day it's bleary eyes, being smelly and being late for work because I really don't care enough to move quickly. At least on days where I don't work there's coffee and conversation, but on these days I'm providing that for someone else and it just doesn't work when I can't even see properly yet. Blarg.
And why can't my belly make up its mind on how big it is? Yesterday I was pleased with how well my 'diet' is working, this morning it looks like I swallowed a sporting ball of some description. Damnit.
On top of that I'm hungry. Really hungry. Hungry enough to plop down the twenty bucks for the 'big breakfast' at the cafe up the street. I probably wouldn't finish it, and halfway through I'd be wishing I'd just ordered toast, but damn am I hungry.

Just went out to watch cat play with his camera for a while. And to get icecream. Now I am most buggered. Frt.