shadows of echoes of memories of songs

Magnetism

jaffa@the.earth.li — Wed, 14 May 2008 22:05:40 GMT

There is a small gap,
tangible, between like poles,
a pocket of air

held like a held breath.
The pressure of a hand can
force that gap to yield

a little, to gasp
a little, to resist just
a little, to flex

like a muscle. Brace,
brace. (Adopt the position.)
The blood flows in and

out, a little. What
happens if those poles are forced
together is left

as an exercise
for the reader who has a
heartbeat, muscles,

and a fistful of iron.

Joyce goes to the Chalet School

jaffa@the.earth.li — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:43:23 GMT

I still haven't finished Ulysses (FAIL!) partly because it's too hard to read in the bath, and I just keep re-reading Chalet School books instead. Writing this, however, I now find myself wondering about The Chalet School in Bloom (or vice - as it were - versa), which is probably going to make it hard to concentrate on reading either for quite some time.

Running on

jaffa@the.earth.li — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:40:14 GMT

3 miles in 29 minutes, not far or fast but fairly respectable given a) not being used to running at night, b) new insoles which still feel a bit weird, and c) persistent stomach cramps which I was kinda hoping the running would cure, but eh, never mind. At the end I was still thinking "hmmm, actually, I could happily run a bit further" and decided against, which was probably the right decision. I'm doing the Town & Gown 10K on Sunday, and various lovely people have between them already pledged £210 in sponsorship money which doesn't depend on how fast I run, though gives me an incentive to keep going. Would be nice to do it in under an hour, but the only thing I have promised myself I will do is finish.

I never thought I'd prefer to go running than go to a gig with addedentry, but given how muggy it is outside at the moment I can think of quite a few places I'd rather be than in the Cellar Bar... In the bath, maybe, with a mug of peppermint tea and a good book. Yes. I grow old, I grow old.

How queynte!

jaffa@the.earth.li — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:50:19 GMT

Someone who really is my kind of feminist more or less warned me off a recent F-Word article about Oxbridge sex workers, so I can't blame her. Still, La Penny's rant shocked me: I'm frankly disgusted to see a fellow Oxford English graduate prostituting her literary learning like that.

Though if she must get her lit. out for the lad(ie)s then she could at least try to look like she's enjoying it.

Hand me the wine and the badgers

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:37:51 GMT

Yesterday morning I left the house to go to the Co-op for party munchies & was immediately greeted by the sight of a GIANT BADGER. Good party omen!

Thank you to (in rough order of arrival) nja, lnr & Mike, Pablo, Vince, fanf & rmc28 & Charles, fivemack, james_r, truecatachresis & squigglyruth, juggzy, djw, hairyears, Paul, tigerfort & Kathryn, brrm, crouchinglynx, vinaigrettegirl, barnacle, monkeyhands, sesquipedality & markbanang, emperor, atreic, imc, rejs and anybody I have missed off that list for coming to our birthday party! You are all fab. (The people who couldn't make it are all fab too; we missed you, let's hope even more of you can make it next time...) Thank you for all the lovely presents as well!

We seem to have escaped without any breakages, spillages, arguments, molested badgers, or tears before bedtime. Hurrah! (I can't vouch for there being no spitting, but I couldn't be everywhere at once.)

Highlights which I can remember include: fanf taking the Bickerton for a test-drive round the block, fivemack manfully fixing the leg which fell off the dining-room table (!), juggzy managing by some incredible alchemy to turn some ancient rum and half a bottle of Hock into a very tasty fruit punch, vinaigrettegirl a) being just as lovely in real life as on the internet and b) bringing a delicious lasagne, atreic showing up with some very impressive melons (actually, fanf produced a fairly impressive cucumber, too), and everybody apparently appreciating the cake (I should have cut bigger slices or given people some to take home with them).

I had completely forgotten about the flashing breast lights, which I guess were a highlight of sorts, until addedentry reminded me just now. Uh, sorry about that, chaps.

I woke up this ~~morning~~ afternoon with an epic hangover which remained completely impervious to my usual cures (sugar water and ibuprofen), so apologies to lnr, Mike and fivemack for being an invisible hostess this morning. I was finally enticed out from under the Duvet Of Fail by the lovely hairyears inviting us to afternoon tea at the Randolph. Having breakfast at 5pm - including champagne! - is the sort of life to which I'd like a chance to become accustomed. :-) In fact if I'd started making a list of "things to do before I'm 40" that would have probably been on it. Tick!

On the subject of age... I get the impression that the big three-zero is the sort of thing one's popularly supposed to say "oh noes!" about. One of the good side-effects of so many of my friends being older than me is that I'm surrounded by living proof that you can still be fun and cool and interesting once you've said goodbye to the supposedly-halcyon[*] days of your twenties... and just as much so when you've started making inroads into your forties or fifties or beyond. Hurrah for lovely people of all ages!

[*] no kingfishers were harmed in the making of my twenties.

Get happy

jaffa@the.earth.li — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:31:39 GMT

Get happy, says Judy! And I am happy. My lovely colleagues got me cake and a card and a present, all unplanned and surprise-like, and I went to the pub with some of them and they were lovely again and I managed not to disgrace myself too much despite being awfully crushy-crushy-crushy and I came home and my lovely boyfriend^Wfiancé was watching Judy Garland videos on YouTube and then Rufus Wainwright videos and I got to show him that I (sort of) knew the chords for "Hallelujah". And now it's Liza (with a 'Z') Minnelli videos and he's honestly not gay, really, and even so, I do love him more than the people I am crushy-crushy about, and yes, anyway.

Beer thirty

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:28:38 GMT

addedentry and I are having a birthday party at our place on Saturday May 10th. (That's not next Saturday but the one after.) I will be 30, he won't be (any more).

When: Tea/cake/faff from 3pm, proper party from party o'clock.
Where: HERE. If you don't have our address and/or you want directions, email/comment.
RSVP: would be helpful so we know vaguely how many people we're expecting.
Partners/children/friends: welcome, unless they are likely to start arguments or try to molest my badgers.
Pets: just not practical, sorry. Unless you have some very very tiny kittens.
Drinks: there will be some (including weird shit from the depths of the booze-cabinet), but more is always welcome! :-)
Eats: there will be nibbles and (if I have time to bake it) cake, and there are various vendors of munchies within spitting distance.
Spitting: not allowed, especially at our local munchies-vendors.
Smoking: also not allowed! Not even on the balcony (my birthday, my rules).
Badgers: positively encouraged (they don't count as pets).

Any other questions that I've failed to pre-empt, please ask!

And sorry for rather short notice -- lots of indecision and disorganisation round here at the moment...

ETA: and if you have suggestions for things I should do before I'm 30, feel free to post 'em here, bearing in mind I only have a week and I'll be at work for most of it...

You know the rules and so do I

jaffa@the.earth.li — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:36:46 GMT

There are some things it's very hard to talk about, but:

invisiblechoir has lamented the fact that every time she thinks of a certain song she loses a certain contest (sorry!). As a result of her mentioning this, I now have the opposite problem: every time I lose said contest, which is quite frequently thanks to the welcome message on this timewasting device, the part of my brain that deals with persistent earworms takes a bullet from the other meme gun.

PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.

Input device

jaffa@the.earth.li — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:25:12 GMT

Jo Brand, in response to a lack of slang terms for what you might call jilling off, once came up with the term "gusset typing". As a sniggering teenager I was quite amused by this, and as a sniggering adult geek I am even more amused and delighted to see that someone has apparently made the metaphor real.

Notworking

jaffa@the.earth.li — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:09:49 GMT

A rather sweet spammer writes: "Your site has very much liked me. I shall necessarily tell about him to the friends."

Nothing on the internet has very much liked me, unfortunately: I hard-rebooted the Airport Express (in order to reset the password (in order to reconfigure it to limit connections to specific MAC addresses (in the hope that it might then be faster because nobody e.g. from next door could sneakily steal our bandwidth))) and it stopped working. Does anybody have a spare Airport to save me from the sharks?

When I say "stopped working", I mean: computer can talk to Airport (and reconfigure it, reboot it, etc.); router is definitely talking to the internet (wired connection direct from router to computer works fine); Airport shows green light and claims it is talking to the internet, but connection from computers to Airport to internet does not happen. I have switched it off and switched it back on again for every possible value of "it" and every possible permutation of the order of switching-on-and-off. I have spent two hours exhaustively comparing my configuration with that of someone who has exactly the same kit/setup, and there is no difference. I have therefore come to the conclusion that something is Actually Broken, though I'm not sure how I have managed to break it by doing exactly what they tell you to do if you want to reset the password.

Earlier this year I also broke the Playstation 2, by switching it on, thereby not only stopping us having that particular shade of fun but also preventing Owen from learning to sing. Bad girlfriend. I then tried to buy a replacement on eBay, but it never turned up (though I did finally get a refund).

If I had the same effect on cattle that I seem to have on consumer electronics, I'd have been burned as a witch by now.

Like a singing bird

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:54:08 GMT

Post script

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:25:35 GMT

Also, I found this scrawled on the corner of a page of a notebook, and had completely forgotten I'd written it, let alone what it was heading towards:

To say that the beloved is beyond the reach of poetry is the oldest trick in the book (or out of it); and to say that it is old and yet it is true in this case, that is the second oldest trick. And yet (at one more remove) this is his beauty and his strength, that he stands calmly to one side of the smooth superlatives of eulogy, he stands aloof from the dance, observing; he will not be verified, he smiles wryly and turns the page, and at that fingertip's touch the page catches fire.

Still true, I reckon.

What are days for?

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:23:25 GMT

Today I have: managed to book Glasto tickets for me and my mum and EIGHT other people despite EPIC FAIL on the part of seetickets (amazingly there are STILL TICKETS LEFT after several HOURS); tidied the house (a bit); sorted out some stuff to go to charity shops; filed all the boring admin BORING BORING BORING; helped Owen pair A MILLION AND ONE socks (he is very good at pairing my infinite supply of black socks, but we still ended up with about 7 really-definitely-odd ones); played piano (probably pissing off the new neighbours with incompetently-played Rachmaninov preludes); listened to Owen's piano practice (recognisable tunes with BOTH HANDS AT ONCE! did I learn that fast? I wish I could remember); identified all the tasks that we need to do for planning our w*dd*ng (and even made some Decisions, amazingly); made tasty roast chicken (I say 'made', but really, all you do is shove half a lemon up its arse and put it in the oven for an hour and a half, and the 'tasty' owed more to evolution than to the lemon) and tastier plum tart (which I actually did make); and replied to a couple of emails (though the backlog is still doomful).

Today I have not: done the work I was going to do this weekend; got any further with any of the on-the-go knitting projects; written up the EIGHT PAGES OF RANT triggered by the mini-conference I went to on Thursday; read any more of Ulysses.

You only laugh twice

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 10:20:11 GMT

Films I would like to see:

Indiana Bond and the Octopussy of Doom, in which Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig get kitted out by Q with invisible clothes and have to mud-wrestle giant squids for the lost plot of the Incas. The lost plot is never found, but who cares?

See tickets? That's crap, that is.

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 09:26:37 GMT

Look, really, though, I reckon if enough of us joined forces we could write them a better booking system. I seem to remember thinking this last year, too (and this year's is worse).

We could make our millions, honestly (or at least have free gig tickets for the rest of our natural lives).

Who's in?

I see tickets...

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 08:06:30 GMT

Or not.

I did actually see the "book now" link! But when I followed it, it went back to the "EPIC FAIL" page. The one where the seetickets homepage doesn't explain to anybody who might not be interested in Glastonbury tickets

Good luck to anybody else who's trying to get through...

http://www.seetickets.com/g2008/regform.asp?orig=uk

ETA: I have bought tickets for me and my mum. Now trying to use the spare booking windows I had open for other people!

ETA: Okay, look, I can fairly reliably get a booking window up, but when you hit submit (with reg no, or even with cc details etc) it can still bounce you back to the 'busy' screen, leaving you with no idea whether you've submitted anything. FAIL FAIL FAIL. I am very reluctant to take responsibility for other people's bookings when it is this flaky, after possibly screwing up mpinna's. But if you want me to try, let me know....

ETA I am not trying again for anybody because it is ALL THE FAIL. It should not be able to reset the connection while submitting your credit card details, and if it does, then it should be bloody clear on whether or not this means your booking has gone through. As it is, the registration numbers all come up as "already used" but there's no indication that the payment has been accepted. ARGH.

The words that you heard when you were young

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:18:16 GMT

That dialect meme (that's the LJ definition of both 'dialect' and 'meme', there), stolen from taimatsu).

FWIW, I grew up in or near: Uxbridge (2 years), Crawley Down (4 years), Bramhall (2 years), Loughborough (10 years), and during that time went to 4 different primary schools and one secondary school.

1. The space between two buildings containing a footpath: 'jitty', 'cut-through', 'alleyway'
2. A knitted item of clothing worn over a shirt, without buttons: 'jumper'.
3. The act of not going to something that you're supposed to go to: 'skiving'.
4. Playground game in which someone is "it" and has to touch someone else who then becomes "it.": 'tig' (and variants became 'tiggy-' e.g. 'tiggy-off-ground')
5. Playground truce term when you want a break from the above games: 'barley', I think, but not sure if that's genuine memory or interpolation from having read Opie & Opie. Nobody took any notice of that sort of wussy nonsense anyway.
6. Playground term you say when you want to claim something: 'bagsy', but with claiming a desk in the classroom it was always 'SAVED!' (shouted while loudly slamming books, pencil-cases, etc down on the desk in question)
7. Slip-on shoes worn for school sports in the days before trainers: 'pumps', later 'plimsolls'
8. Small round bread: 'roll' or 'bap'.
9. Sweet course that follows the main course: 'pud'. NB we were always outraged if my parents said that there was pud & then it was only fruit. "That's not pud!" Not that fruit is a bad thing, but it's not pud, is it. (Depends on the fruit, though. Apples == not pud. Strawberries == pud, obviously. Clementines are sort of nearly pud, but still more fruit than pud, really.)
10. Scone: pronounced to rhyme with "gone" or with "moan": to rhyme with 'gone'.
11. Generic term for a bird: Er. 'Bird'?
12. Round food stuff made with batter on a griddle, which is brown on the outside: 'pancake'? The griddle is confusing me here, it sounds more like drop-scones, but that seems a bit obscure.
13. A delicacy that you feel is particularly local to you: can't think of anything...
14. Term of endearment: 'honey', 'sweetie'... all sorts of things, nothing particularly localised.
15. Someone who's soft and easily feels the cold: 'wimp', probably.
16. Tourists: we didn't have those in the Midlands. :-}
17. A field boundary: 'hedge'.
18. You see a group of animals standing in a farm building. They have udders and go moo. Complete the following sentence: "Look at those ____ standing in that ____!" : 'cows', 'barn'.
19. You haven't had anything to eat in a long time, and your stomach is letting you know about it. You would also like to be warmer. You say: 'I'm cold and hungry!' (or 'freezing and starving' depending on how whiney I'm feeling)
20. Your friends invite you to enter a haunted house: you demur. What do they call you, by way of a derisive taunt?: 'scaredy-cat'.
21. A man who dresses flashily with lots of expensive jewellery is a ____: er, dunno what they're getting at here, sorry.
22. What do you say in a shop when you are handed your change?: 'thanks'
23. Generic friendly greeting: 'hiya', 'hi'
24. Slang term for a pair of trousers: can't think of one...
25. Slang term for left-handed: can't think of anything specific, but left-handed kids would've got called 'spaz' more than others, probably.
26. Pronunciation of Shrewsbury? Newcastle? Glasgow?: sh-ROSE-bree, new-CASS-ul, gl-AZ-go.
27. Two pieces of bread with a filling: 'sandwich'.
28. A playground way of saying someone is out of order: not sure... though like taimatsu I thought of the way of saying "UmmmmmMMMmm!" or "AmmmmMMMmmm!" (usually followed by "I'm telling on you").
29. Dialect terms for hands, ears, face – and, indeed, for any other body parts you care to name: can't think of any.
30. Terms for someone who looks miserable: can't think of any. (These days my brain says CHEER UP EMO KID. New dialect!)
31. Potatoes: 'spuds'. I would just like to add that my dad calls parsnips 'snibs', or 'snibboes', which always makes me smile.
32. Pale round food stuff with a brown base, lots of holes in it, which you serve hot with butter: OM NOM NOM. Oh, no, hang on, er, 'crumpet'.

Bad in tent

jaffa@the.earth.li — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:15:04 GMT

So who's planning to try for Glastonbury tickets this weekend?

I am dithering. addedentry has indicated quite clearly that he'd rather poke his eyes out with rusty forks than go with me this time, so if I do get tickets, I will be On My Own (by which I mean "with 175,000 other people", but, y'know).

gURL power

jaffa@the.earth.li — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:42:55 GMT

I saved this as a draft, and forgot about it. For those of you who are watching today's episode of j4 before going back and catching up with the last few weeks', the quick summary is, I had to talk to some student about 'geek culture' and how women are from Visual Basic and men are from Modula-2. (For those who are watching next season via bittorrent -- does it rain at Glasto 2008? And incidentally, Does She Ever Actually Shag Him?) Anyway, here's the (slightly tidied up) version of what I wrote:

Well that was pointless. I talked to this chap, he didn't seem to have very much clue what he was doing, he looked about 14 and frankly terrified of me, but I tried to answer his questions without too much handwaving/ranting, and filled in his survey, and let him take a picture of The Geek In Her Working Environment, har har. My god, though, my desk is a mess. Coffee and books and a DVD and some half-wilted roses in a vase and biscuits and a contact juggling ball and a stuffed badger and a waving maneki neko and biscuits and speakers and torn-off pages of my poem-a-day calendar (Robert Frost's 'Fire and Ice' yesterday, ace stuff) and cherry 7Up cans and heaps of paper and a hairbrush and a load of books on Ubuntu, XSLT, Perl, SOAP, and Web Design. He asked if he could "observe me working" for an hour, and I panicked and said no. For one thing, I'd have to get my office-mate to agree to it, and for another thing, well, just NO. Also, no.

I asked $boss beforehand about the women-in-IT thing, why there are fewer women. "It's because IT is so dull," he said. "No it isn't!" I protested. "It's fascinating!" "Well, then it's probably because women aren't mathematically minded, isn't it. They can't do the logic." I did my best impression of a girly flounce (imagine an elephant doing its best impression of a ballerina) and said "That's a hateful thing to say!" (Well, obviously I couldn't reply logically, could I.) "But it's occam's razor, isn't it," he said, leaning back in his chair. He blinks the double-blink that's nearly a flutter of the eyelids, the one that means he's struggling to stay deadpan. "What's the simplest reason why women don't do computing? They haven't got the brain power." That's nearly a smirk, but it's suppressed. "Occam's razor?" I open my eyes wide. "Haven't tried that. I use Gillette." Collapse (as they say) of stout party.

(I feel like I'm misrepresenting him horribly: you'd need to hear him, to see how he says these things. It's all just trolling. Usenet banter. It's the Oxford way, as we say. Playing. You're never more than 5 metres from a pun. On usenet, nobody knows you're a swan.)

After talking to the student fella, I said to $boss "He asked me whether my colleagues have different expectations of me because I'm female. I said, dunno mate, you'd have to ask them." $boss opened his eyes wide. "That'd be illegal!" he said, in mock shock. He thought about it, then looked actually baffled. "But if I ... I mean, you're saying... if I asked $colleague to do something rather than asking you... because you're... I dunno, because you're a girl, then.... well... but that'd just be ridiculous!" "I'm assured by my feminist friends that it happens all the time," I said. "But it's just absurd!" he said. I had to agree.

It's not that they don't notice that I'm female: but in the grand scheme of things it's just another small seam of new opportunities for witticisms. Even at our most serious, it's just a data point. It's the user-agent string. (Does this work on yours? Ooh, dunno... let's try. What happens if you change that value there? Hahahahaha it all breaks! Wow, cool error message.)

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the user-agent string as a metaphor for gender.

Hidden gender

jaffa@the.earth.li — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:26:36 GMT

My post about intelligent writing for women seems to have started a bit of an argument; apologies to those whose comments I haven't answered as a result.

This afternoon some student wants to interview me about "geek culture" and "the IT profession", for his research. He says "I am especially willing to interview you to find out why IT is still a male dominated territory". Hmmm. I'm keen to find out:

- what he defines as "the IT profession"
- the extent to which it is still "a male dominated territory"
- whether he's asking men about the gender balance in IT, too

I fear it will be too much of a digression to start going on at him about the idea of geek as a gender.

FWIW I don't feel that I'm not a woman, or not female, just that gender really isn't the most important filter for my personal or professional interactions with other people -- geekiness (for want of a better word), literateness, and (now I come to think about it) age all feel like much stronger factors. (Of course, that's when you pull the false-consciousness card out of your hat, and say "ah, there seems no gender because it is all gender! And AS A WOMAN you can't be expected to see clearly that your femaleness informs everything you do at a subconscious level". The only winning move [and I'm not talking about fluttering my eyelashes here] is not to play.)

Lots of other half-formed thoughts, the clearest of which is "why on earth did I say I'd talk to this chap in the first place", which isn't very helpful. :-/

Who moved my rock?

jaffa@the.earth.li — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:37:05 GMT

We had plans to go away at Easter but a combination of disorganisation and weather meant that in the end we mostly just hid under a rock. On the plus side it's now much tidier under the rock: making this metaphor work for its money, the woodlice have been evicted, the lichen have been watered, and you can see the glinty streaks of quartz shining through. In real terms this means that we've got another pile of things to give away (a scanner! two balldresses! some books! a stack of LPs!), we've reduced the unshelved heaps of books from about ten piles to only four (and catalogued a few more on LibraryThing), and we've even earmarked a place into which to squeeze another full-height bookcase! ... which will be installed just as soon as Argos can be bothered to stock it, hrmph.

I also managed to get my exciting new folding bicycle home from work, narrowly missing the fun of cycling home in a snowstorm. It's a Bickerton -- excellent condition, many careful owners (one famous) -- it's gloriously eccentric, with more loopy connections and points of potential collapsibility than an international poly goth convention, and riding it home (stopping at Warlands on the way to be reassured that it was all in as much working order as could be expected, it was just, ah, a classic) was as hair-raisingly entertaining as the first time I drove pto452. (I owe huge thanks to brrm for helping me with the car over the last gosh-quite-a-lot-of years, and with the bike over the last few days; I'm hoping that the bike will be slightly lower-maintenance!)

Sadly part of the problem with not going on holiday was not leaving the laptop behind, and I feel like I spent a lot of the weekend in front of the computer without actually achieving anything. Personal emails still unanswered: too many (bad); uncategorised emails in work inbox: ~400 (v. bad). On the other hand, home Ubuntu desktop successfully upgraded despite some shenanigans with Python & broken dependencies (good). I also spent a bit of time fiddling with jQuery; I'd been planning to rewrite the slightly messy bit of javascript that does the slideshow for reception's rolling display screen, and discovered that with jQuery and the cycle plugin the whole shebang could be done better than before in just three lines of code. Awesome.

addedentry and I didn't buy each other loads of chocolate for Easter, partly because we still have so much chocolate from Christmas (!); but he surprised & delighted me by having baked me some Easter biscuits, which were so tasty I decided not to take them into work today so I didn't have to even consider sharing them with anybody except Owen, OMNOMNOM. :-) And I did roast pork with all the whatnots on Sunday, which was very tasty if I do say so myself, and then made the leftovers of it into some kind of casserole-kind-of-thing yesterday (fry sadly-not-crackling-but-very-garlicky pork fat and a red onion, add rest of leftover pork, add carrots and parsnips and mushrooms and a pint of stock and a couple of glasses of red wine, leave simmering for ages while fettling Ubuntu, stick the leftover yorkies on top for a few minutes at the end) which was also pretty tasty. ALSO also, Warburton's hot cross bun loaf for the win! Exactly like hot cross buns but easier to stick in the toaster, and very tasty with home-made marmalade.

And despite all the vegging out and eating and drinking over the weekend I still managed to run 5 miles today. My new sports socks are the business (and the shorts from the same place are also so comfy I bought a second pair). I am also grateful for the ongoing support of Shock Absorber [warning! site features JIGGLY BREASTS, eventually!].

YOYOY

jaffa@the.earth.li — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:49:19 GMT

In the US earlier this month, a group of women announced that they were launching a website for women over 40, called wowowow.com (a play on "women on the web" — an address that, tellingly, they had to buy from a porn site). [...]

The wowowow launch is yet another sign that women are offering up intelligent online content that stands in stark comparison to the narrow focus of many of the women's magazines to be found on the news stands. Wowowow's content moves from high culture (an interview with avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson), to economics (an interview with eBay's out going CEO, Meg Whitman) to politics (one of the recent "questions of the day" was "Which four women would you like to see on Mount Rushmore?" The results were: Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B Anthony, Rosa Parks and, to the evident surprise of some, Hillary Clinton).

The Wow Factor, Guardian G2, 21.03.08

I don't normally seek out women's magazines, web content for women, books for women, and so on; but I noticed this as I was flicking through G2, and decided to have a look at wowowow.com, just out of idle curiosity. (No, I'm not going to link to it; not because I don't want to worry my pretty little head about hyperlinks, but because I don't really want to give it any more googlejuice.)

So let's have a look at this intelligent content. Starting at the top left:

* Star signs
* "Hair day weather" (it's a really good hair day in Rome, apparently)
* Navbar: Home | Conversations | Posts | The Women | Question of the Day | Change the world
* Latest posts (top of the list: "A how-to video made for the technically challenged")
* Today's feature: "Question of the day: what are you doing for Easter?"
* Poll: If you could choose only one, the beauty aid you can't live without
* "She Said He'd Be Sorry" (Fiction: He said she was plumpish. And it was true. She was fattish)
* Question of the Day: "If Senators Clinton, Obama and McCain were cars -- what would they be?"

I actually can't bear to read any further down the home page, let alone click through. And even letting the content (if you can call it that) speak for itself, the design of the site is scrappy and amateurish (though the five powerful women who threw $200,000 each at the site "hired five full-time, web-savvy members of staff", the Guardian tells us). No, that's not me-as-a-woman saying that I don't like the colour because it doesn't go with my shoes; that's me-with-web-hat-on saying "for god's sake, somebody hire them a web designer -- or maybe, since half of the site seems to be glorified blogging, just get them a LiveJournal and switch them to one of the nice default skins." Hell, everybody expects magazines to have advertising, so they could have had a LiveJournal for free and spent the hundreds of thousands of dollars on hair and beauty treatments.

I honestly don't know what intelligent writing for women would look like, or rather how it would differ from intelligent writing (which seems to be pretty scarce in the magazine world anyway) for any other variety of adult; but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't be limited to horoscopes and hairstyles. There is practically nothing that I can think of that I'd want to read about that has any inherent femaleness to it, anything that would make it belong specifically in a "woman's magazine" rather than, say, the Guardian magazine. The only "women's magazine" I do buy is Scarlet, which to be honest is getting more and more packed with generic rubbish about makeup and massage, but still features a couple of decent articles about sex and alternative lifestyle choices, and -- most importantly -- a decent quantity of reasonably-well-written smut in the sealed central section (you can tell it's porn for women because it has more story than shagging, but despite that, a lot of it's quite hot). I don't think that really counts as what the Guardian means by intelligent content.

I'm currently reading Ulysses. Is that a woman's book? Yes I said yes.

If you hate it so much...

jaffa@the.earth.li — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:06:17 GMT

Really, this has to be one of the most depressing threads I've read since internet discussion forums were invented.

In other news, this morning as I was on my bike, waiting to turn right on to the Botley Road, a bloke leaned out of the window of a passing car and bellowed at me, just a huge animal roar, a shaggy head hanging right out of the window to shout better. It was loud and close and sudden enough that it made me jump (though hopefully not visibly, and certainly not enough to make me fall off a stationary bicycle). Why do people do this? I just don't understand. I grok the getting-a-reaction thing, but they were gone too fast to see a reaction (though I suppose I could have shaken my fist at them as the car sped off). And no, "because they're idiots" is not an answer; the world is full of idiots and not all of them bellow at people out of car windows.

It feels as though the world has got a lot more hostile, more aggressive and bristly and jostly. More people shouting and swearing over the tiniest thing. From an accidental jolt in a crowd to "fucking fuck you" in the space of a second; rights and rants and heaps of hate. I don't want to overdramatise it, I don't want to speculate about causes, I'm not taking a holiday to Daily Mail Island, but sometimes it feels like the world's awash in misery and stupidity and violence, and any way to retreat from it feels like escapism, and there is absolutely no way to change it or fight it or lessen it. Has it always been like this? Have I only just noticed?

And 'having my say' here is probably part of the problem, or at least it's certainly not part of the solution.

How did I get here?

jaffa@the.earth.li — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:28:02 GMT

Where is your cell phone?
In my other coat pocket, and unless I remember tomorrow that I changed coats this evening (so I didn't have to go to the Co-op with my hi-vis on and blah blah blah) I'll forget to take it to work.

Your boyfriend/girlfriend?
On the other side of the room, putting the Broken Family Band on the stereo. Sorry, was that a 'where' or a 'who' question?

Your hair?
On my head. Has not been cut since the last millennium.

Your favourite drink?
The one my boyfriend (see above re boyfriend) is about to make me, hopefully gin since I just bought a lemon (see above re Co-op).

Your dream car?
Powered by stupidity.

Your fears?
That the biscuits in the oven will burn. That the planet is doomed. And various minor fears inbetween. None of which compare to the three-in-the-morning fear that I will die and never find out how the story ends, which is scariest of all because it's completely inevitable.

Your computer?
Home: shiny Mac powerbook. Work: shiny Ubuntu desktop PC. Both: full of virtual clutter.

Your life?
Unlikely to be long enough to read all the books I want to read.

Your mood?
Fluctuating.

Your car?
In Cambridge.

Your work?
I have this much fun and they pay me as well?

Your summer?
I am hoping to have one this year.

Your relationship status?
Happily engaged to addedentry.

Your favourite colour(s)?
I am learning to wear brown, and to wear colours-which-are-not-black with other colours-which-are-not-black, which is probably the closest I've come so far to dressing like a grown-up. Sadly I have managed this just at the point when fashion has regressed to the worst excesses of 80s big-print angry-fruit-salad hell.

Your best friends?
Make me very happy.

Your favourite thing to do?
Depends. Soaking in a hot bath with a cup of coffee and a book; having sex on Sunday morning & not getting out of bed till 2pm and then slouching around eating anchovy toast and reading LiveJournal; eating a whole avocado in two halves with a spoonful of muscovado sugar in the holes where the stone was; reading an entire novel in one sitting; singing in close harmony with cute people; jointly hacking a bit of code with somebody cool (stealing it out from under their feet and shouting KAPOW! when you beat them to the solution) and making it actually work; dancing to nindie disco till the middle of the night and being the first person on to the dancefloor for 'Debaser'. At the moment though curling up on the sofa with addedentry and gin and laptops is pretty damn fine.

Where is your father?
Leicestershire. Probably at home working on his next radio show.

Cheesecake?
Depends which kind. Actually, no, either way, yes please.

Your dream last night?
Something confusing about Perl hashrefs. I was trying to carry them from one room to the other without dropping them, only the room was very shiny. YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP.

The room you're in?
Our ace living room with BOOKS and CDs and a PIANO and a fireplace (okay fake gas fire but still) and huge French window currently covered with the most outrageously 1970s curtains I've ever owned (big thick soft curtains with enormous glowy burnt-orange fleur-de-lys on olive-green satiny stuff). It's a big warm messy room full of stuff and things and cushions and nonsense. And badgers.

George W. Bush?
Not if you paid me.

Nipple rings?
On men: kind of sexy, sometimes. On me: no thanks, nipples work just fine without.

Who did you hang out with last night?
addedentry. We went to the pub and talked about stuff other than work for a change.

What you're not good at?
Golf. Going to sleep before midnight. Refraining from wishing for the impossible. Sewing. Filling in forms. Making rice that doesn't stick to the pan. Replying to email.

One of your wish list items?
Material thing: a really big casserole pan. Otherwise: more sleep without wasting more time.

Where did you grow up?
That's begging the question, innit.

The last thing you did?
Wondered how to answer this question. (Yawn.)

What are you wearing?
Black trousers, purple woolly tunic-dress-top-thing, black knee-socks, black knickers (all from M&S); Shock Absorber sports bra; black ankle-boots (Clarks); purple foil/glass heart-shaped dangly earrings, purple stud earrings; engagement ring. Did I miss anything? Oh, purple hairtie, black hairtie, black scrunchie. And my glasses. I also have 7 different memos written on my hand, and some fairly vicious bramble-scratches on the back of my legs.

Tattoo on the lower back?
Apparently the kids call them "tramp stamps".

Ketchup?
What, on the lower back? No thanks. I note for information that the Co-op's own-brand ketchup actually tastes of tomato (and cinnamon).

What are you thinking about right now?
AGGGHHHH THE GAME.

Last time you laughed?
When I realised the answer to the previous question HAR HAR HAR.

Last time you cried?
Well my eyes were streaming and I felt like crying at the end of yesterday's 4-mile run. If that doesn't count, um... dunno.

High school?
Was full of gurls, cost my parents thousands of pounds, taught me lots of things, and for some reason persists in sending me PDFs about who climbed Everest in a skirt-suit this year while giving birth to identical-twin Olympic gymnasts, perhaps under the mistaken impression that I give a damn.

This quiz?
Barely deserves to be dignified with the name.

Run badger run

jaffa@the.earth.li — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:31:51 GMT

You may remember that last November I started running, partly because colleagues were doing it (or talking about it) and partly just because it seemed like a good idea for fitness and whatnot.

There's quite a group of us at work now who go running at lunchtimes, it's settled into a pretty good routine and we've been upping the mileage every week, so over the last few months I've ended up doing quite a bit of running -- certainly loads more than I'd've ever done on my own.

Anyway, this morning I did roughly the same route that I couldn't quite manage when I started back in November, with an extra bit tacked on the end, in 29 minutes (no, I'm still not a fast runner, but I do only have tiny little badger legs). Definitely not as much fun running on my own (and slightly odd that I seem to run slower when I don't spend the whole time talking to people!) but good to know I can do it.

I think I need a 'running' icon.