i have 'improved' the about me and photos pages. a little.

well, in fact, i had the oxford dictionary of quotations on the desk, so that's what happened to the about me page. then i realised that the style was a tad bolloxed, so now i think it is better and i did it on the other page too. not that you care.

i feel a ciggie coming on. that would be my third or fourth this year. hmm. maybe i'll have chips instead.

famous last words:

on the contrary

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1926), after a nurse had said that he "seemed a little better".

i just had to change my answering machine greeting. i got in this evening to find five messages, each from a different person but i suspect all from the same company, who clearly use an automated dialling system to save them time. their system is, of course, crap. each message consisted of somebody saying:

"hello?...
hello!...
[long pause]
[click]"

the re-recording was quite cathartic, actually. the first few versions i did went along the lines of:

"hello, this is an answering machine. no-one is able to take your call right now, so please leave a message after the beep. please don't try to hold a conversation with the machine; it won't be able to answer you. it records messages. that's all. leave a fucking message."

eventually i recorded a polite version, but i sense that you can still hear the tension in my voice...

it's not all funny though.

i got myself a new album, elton john's songs from the west coast, and i'm just listening to it for the first time. the fourth track has backing vocals by rufus wainwright, a favourite artist of mine, and the track is called american triangle. it's about matthew shepard. remember?

tied to a wooden fence, brutally tortured, and left to die, 21-year-old matthew shepard was a young gay man who was murdered because of his sexuality. he died on 12th october 1998. his home town, and home town of his killers, laramie, wyoming, is a "traditional, christian place" where people wish they hadn't been forced to confront their own homophobia.

matthew's family maintain a web site in his memory at www.matthewsplace.com.

been there drinking on that front porch
angry kids mean and dumb
looks like a painting that blue skyline
god hates fags where we come from

and even more so...

so i was in my car, and i was driving along, and my boss rang up, and he said "you've been promoted", and i swerved. and then he rang up a second time and said "you've been promoted again", and i swerved again. he rang up a third time and said "you're managing director", and i went into a tree. and a policeman came up and said "what happened to you?" and i said "i careered off the road."

(tommy again)

he said "i'm going to chop off the bottom of one of your trouser legs and put it in a library." i thought "that's a turn-up for the books."

tommy cooper

some say the world will end in fire,
some say in ice.
from what i've tasted of desire
i hold with those who favour fire.
but if it had to perish twice,
i think i know enough of hate
to say that for destruction ice
is also great
and would suffice.

robert frost

(this is also used as the opening of James Morrow's this is the way the world ends, literally one of the greatest books i have ever read.)

leftover sausages, leftover chicken, and chips. it's a classic winter evening recipe, and it's now but a distant memory. the important thing is that, as i go to bed, i have just emailed off the finished document, proving that i am so dedicated i will stay up till past eleven on a sunday night to get what needs done done. or does it prove something else? and who exactly am i proving that to anyway?

it doesn't matter. it's done. thank fuck.

wow, i actually managed to sit down and do some work today! having prevaricated most of yesterday away with washing up and cleaning (not that you'd think so if you came round now) and then going out, today i actually did a few hours slog. and i feel quite virtuous about it. i might even finish this spec off this evening, which will take a weight off for the coming week (though i know several more weights will come on, but hey, let me have my moment).

i even did exercises both yesterday and today... though the crunch will come tomorrow. recently not a good day monday; i used to cope quite well with them but thus far in 2002 they've not been fun. we shall see.

now then, with what form of takeaway food will i render the exercise pointless?

the monkeys know what he's going to have.
the lions know what he's going to have.
"hmm", said Alberto. "I think I'll have..."

went to see monsoon wedding this evening. it is smashing, despite the fact that the hype and all the reviews said it was a very good film. just about the most sympathetic portrayal of a patriarchal society that i've seen. usually that sort of shit really annoys me, but the reality of the way it was laid out seemed to stop that happening for this film.

plus there was a cute guy in it...

fuckshitwank (as they say); what is the point of paying 60 quid a year for maintenance cover for your crappy dishwasher when the guy (1) takes a week to arrange an appointment, (2) goes through exactly the same rigmarole as last time, including three separate visits each a week apart, and (3) says exactly the same thing about never having seen anything like that before as he did last time!

i bet the bastard gets paid per visit by the insurance company. meanwhile here i am actually having to do washing up. i mean, really!

why am i spending one of the last few friday nights of my twenties at home? apart from the fact that i don't feel like going out, that is. and why am i listening to leonard again?

i saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
he said to me, "you must not ask for so much"
and a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
cried out to me "hey, why not ask for more?"

dear dear, i think i'll have to start listening to britney or something; this is really not get-up-and-go music.

(he said "what happened to your get up and go?" i said "it got up and went." i thank you.)

by the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves had begun to suspect Hungry...

Gary Larson, The Far Side

i've now seen the cider house rules three and a half times. it really suits me at the moment i think. great great film, big central theme, well acted, well photographed, well written. plus tobey maguire is a studmuffin.

There's a thin line between success and failure; but that's typesetting for you, and I'm sure it will go away the next time I print it out.

Now then, about these new year resolutions (yes, I did). First of all, suddenly I'm not smoking any more even though that wasn't one of my resolutions this year! How fickle is that? Second, it's all very well deciding to start taking the old bone tablets again (resolution #1) but not when they give you chronic gut rot half the week. And you can't do your exercises (resolution #2) if you've got chronic gut rot. And as for having more sex (#3), I don't see any movement on that score and I'd like to know why. And what about the weekly massage I promised myself (#4) - nada, although that's almost certainly because I was on the horns of a dilemma on that front - you can't very well ask someone out if you're already paying them to massage you once a week. And anyway he's disappeared now...

And one new year's resolution which I have so far completely failed to fulfill was to keep in better touch with people. I'm a bad friend. Ah well.

Will Gareth win Pop Idol? Will SM:tv ever be the same without Ant and Dec? Will somebody please shoot the person responsible for keeping Last of the Summer Wine going?

Christ, it's 2002 already.