Life (don't talk to me about life), the Universe, and Everything else.

On Thursday, just a minute too soon:

I have of late been finding myself stuck again. I set myself a little project, something to fill the emptiness of my days. Something detailed to help explain to myself what's going on in my mind. Only I get stuck I'm left feeling rather bleak. For I am bound into events in a way I do not understand, because nobody has cared to explain them to me. So I take my mind down different roads and in my way continue to exist. Only I don't really know how much longer I can put-up with thing being the way they are.

Many feelings come and go throught my days, the causes are various. I'm currently wondering if my problems are within. If I was pushed and kicked so much during my formative years that I've developed a sub-persona which pushes and kicks me simply beause it was entrained that way. Once I would ignore such inner problems and carry on becasue there was a point I was educated into striving for. Now I have no point, no reason, so I wander through this life like a ghost trying to sense what it is that's so wrong. Learning, looking, finding ways to change.

But in this strange would I find myself I can see more than reason would suggest is normal, or sometimes even possible. Yet I eliminate the impossible and find myself presented with an improbale truth. The foundations of reality are shifting. The words are here in my mind, I can show you what I mean, but I find myself without the platform upon which to place them. Because reason also tells me that nobody cares about a lot of what I see.

We claim to be caring, build great organisations to worship our humanity. But at the end of the day I live in a world where I've seen psychiatric nurses assault patients and get away with it, psychiatrists who care nothing for the welfare of their patients minds, and social workers suffering from institutional depression. And Let's not forget that it's getting to the time of year we ritually humiliate our children for their exam results after years of fooling them into thinking it matters; there's even some degree bashing started already, something to get us all in the mood. Let's face it, when you get right down to it we despise ourselves, as a nation or as a species I'm not entirely sure.

I'm stuck in a box with a mad world. If I didn't believe 80% of everything was crap I'd find a lorry to jump in front of. I try to explain what happens, why it scares me and hurts so much. But I've a habit of expressing things that make me uncomfortable with an exaggerated and often oblique manner. Which is great for getting the paperwork to read like fiction, but leaves me in a very uncertain, and lonely, place.

Trace this

There's something sublime about Google's AdSense. It's a sort of information leak. It lets someting slip about the content you're viewing. I run mail past it from time to time. Got one that gave me a laugh, souvenir spam gave me "Leading Scottish Defence Lawyers - Recommended by Top Legal Guides". Something I sent to my Social Worker gives me "The most experienced exhumation company in the UK", and "Asda".

Unbelievably with the next mail I discovered what I was actually up to today.

It's not looking good for the NHS. Or Tesco. Or Google if I choose to whack AdSense on this. Although Starbucks coffee will start to taste a lot nicer I'm sure.

(Salad Days of the Strange)

It's strange how I sit here behind drawn curtains on a day when sitting in the park reading a good book should be the order of the day. Strange how I habitually carry a mobile phone in my back pocket when I'm lucky to get one personal call a week; mostly it's social-workers directing me at their convenience. Strange how I keep writing this blog when I'm of the opinion it's not actually read by anything but a bot; but never bother to check the logs to find out the truth of the matter.

Strange how perceptions of Personality Disorders & Schizophrenia taint my dealings with others; when to my eyes it them who exhibit mental illness. Stranger still is the opinion of others; rarely expressed, but usually pertaining to the degree they think I'm failing to cope; most of which totally and utterly fail to hit the mark. Strange how my motivations so often run counter to the norm; yet still present the same affect.

Strange how I've heard voices all of my life and never really realized what it meant. Strange how so much of my past never really seemed to include me; all just stuff which happened whilst inner voices directed my actions. Strange how I'm so trusting when I've been slapped in the face so many times. Strange how I'm not who you think I am.

Strange how I systematically destroyed my entire existence and still find I have a life. Strange how I'm still pushing to become more than what I was; and how successful I've been. Strange how I crave the company of others yet so often find myself sitting in company with absolutely nothing to offer. Strange how opportunities come and all I can do is let them go. Strange how the awkward stuff fills my heart.

Strange how I find myself writing this when I'm usually so guarded about what I'm willing to let people see. Strange how I got beyond caring only to discover I care more than anyone can possibly imagine. Strange how so much of myself remains occluded when I'd like nothing better than to let it out. Strange how nobody ever, ever bothers to push me.

A brief moment of sanity

I've been having a hard time of late. The voices in my mind keep talking. I've worked out a way to get them to make ordered sense, so it's not quite as bad as it was. Only, when I try to write it down I get a jumbled cacophony of editing advice when even something seemingly as trivial a comma counts a as show-stopper. There's high points; spotting a friend doing a turn as a drunken stranger of Italian origin was funny; obviously it was a complete stranger, but it was the same guy. It's even harder when I wander into a shop and get so close to the truth I find myself being pushed right to the back of my mind.

The kids are funny though. Especially when they go to the extremes of making the point in ways so sublimely odd. I had to get them to work out a way to "not tell mom" before I'd go round. Watching a child of almost one start battling a child of eight with the Force was funny; turning the DVD player Off and On; selecting play from the menu whilst keeping his brother from the DVD player had me in fits of giggles.

I don't think I've mentioned having a daughter here before. Normal for me, not mentioning stuff. Although I think I have mentioned kiddie oddness arising from Dr Who. Even odder to go from oblique references to her in two of my last three blog posts; to a child of four claiming "The TARDIS is MINE!" two or three days ago; to "oooh look, the Doctor's got a daughter" on prime-time BBC yesterday.

Although it's hard to go see my family and sometimes an to feel presence of a Police Officer in the room where I should be seeing my Wife.

Something is happening to me. The voices in my mind are coalescing. Pulling me to a point where I can and will let it all out. And I just don't know if I've got the strength. Although the cats have started talking to me again (be discrete I told them I'd keep it secret), so things are looking up in the strength department.

Shouting Out: Special Circumstances

The other day I walked into a meeting with a Quantum Interferometer (QI). Well it was more a Sonic Screwdriver entangled with a radio telescope, a Jupiter sized piece of concrete, and a printout of Wikipedia’s entry on Schizophrenia which I’d eventually thrown to Mother; and yes, I used a cat as an initiator. I then sat quietly in my meeting and listened to the stream of consciousness which filled my mind. Whenever the QI triggered I took notes on whatever I was thinking.

As the meeting progressed, thanks in part to my concentration being directed by the QI, I became aware that there were multiple channels of reality operating at the meeting. There were at least three distinct consensus realities that I could detect. This gave rise to three separate channels of verbal communication within a place I’d once thought only one should be operating. It’s as if all the speech was multiplexed and it was the actions of my subconscious which decoded the verbal matrix of thought operating within the meeting; the best way I can put it is there was a conversation across the table, one above the table, and another under the table.

The interesting factoids don’t end there however.

Firstly the discussions which occurred during the meeting were considerably more substantive than the previous meetings. Then there was degree of congruence with discussions I’d had the night before. These discussion had been on the nature of the realities of my existence, and were sparked off by a piece of urban art sprayed onto the side of a telco distribution point. The image depicted was essentially that of the The Eye of Providence, and the discussion took place solely within the confines of what I regard as my Mind. To put it another way I was talking to the voices in my head.

I’m a prisoner. I know why it is I’ve been imprisoned. I know where the walls are and the mechanisms by which I am confined. I can move the walls about within my mind and I can escape whenever I want to. The nature of reality should preclude me from knowing any of this yet I apparently do. Consequently something is very, very wrong. There’s also evidence which suggests others know and have, contrary to the laws of temporal justice, been taking advantage of the situation. There’s a battle about to take place, and, believe it or not, I’ve already won.

Various thing are beginning to become apparent to me. I’m not what I appear to be. I’m not even who I appear to be. What I am and who I am is inevitably clouded in uncertainty. What is clear is that I’m up to something. Using a benchmark of reality which has ceased to be valid, yet which underpinned my existence up to a point a little under two years ago, what I’m doing will have a fundamental impact. Something which will upset certain checks and balances, which my old model would have regarded as innate. I will effect you and your world and there is nothing, nothing, you can do to stop me.

Strawberries before bedtime

The oddest things keep happening to me. The sort of things which in the past have had psychiatrists offering me more meds. Had psychologists and psychotherapists nodding and saying things like "do go on", whenever I've mentioned them.

The other day I wander into Manchester to met a friend. My mind wanders and by the time we meet I'm convinced I'm actually with Princess Irulan Corrino. A load of little things, nothing major. Nothing I'd consider relevant in polite conversation. Nothing I'd mention for fear of censure. Just normal "schizophrenic" voices in my mind sort of stuff. The kind of stuff I keep hidden as it flies in the face of what I once described as reality.

Then today I'm playing a MMOG called Eve. Spent an hour spent jumping through Stargates in my pod to get to my corporation's base in low-sec space. Against the odds I arrived intact. Spent a while spending ISK, whilst discussing strategies and the benefits of various loadouts for my new Cruiser. When I was done I headed off back to high-sec space where I make most of my money. Three jumps in and my phone rang. Just as I got warp-scrambled. It was Princess Irulan asking me out on a date. Before I could consolidate all the sensory data my pod was vaporized. By a player called Sardaukar.

I don't believe in coincidence.

I've got my son talking to me in the voice of Leto Atredies. "Father", he says to me, "I go forward - I go back". He speaks of a Golden Path, a new age of mankind which is just around the corner. I don't dare disagree. I just worry about what it means for you.

The Myths of Perception

Here's an odd thing. Last Friday I had two meetings planned. One was scheduled for a specific time. The other involved me waiting at the convenience of another. Needless to say I missed the first because I was waiting for the second. This is not the odd thing. The odd thing is that I could have spoken to somebody about bumping my way up the list to get the second meeting out of the way. Thereby managing to achieve the first meeting. But I didn't. The reasons why probably go some way to explaining why I'm currently having a mental breakdown whilst residing on a psychiatric ward.

I'm in a similarly odd place right now. I'm about to sign for a flat. It's an empty shell. Rationally I know what's required. Emotionally however I have no idea what to do. I know I need a bed, fridge, cooker, carpets, and all the other paraphernalia of modern existence. I know where these things can be bought. I can probably even afford one or two things. Yet I'm stuck. Unassisted I'm completely unable to achieve any of what's required. I'm due to be thrown out of Hospital on Wednesday As things stand it's looking like I'll be living in a place only marginally better than the gutter.

I knew it I would be like this. I tried to highlight my problems to the professionals responsible for my care. I told them I was completely unable to accept or reject the offer of the flat. I told them I needed assistance. But they bullied me and pushed me and didn't listen. Their perceptions had been warped by the character I sent to view the flat - an oddly disassociated form of myself. In the end I rolled a dice, and the dice told me to accept the flat. The dice is now telling me to do nothing with regards to my flat. So I'm currently actively doing nothing. It's the only way I can cope.

I'm on a psychiatric ward. I'm one step away from being a gibbering wreck. So far I've coped by running away daily to a place my laptops can get online. The support and assistance one would expect I should be getting has never materialized. The only thing I have been offered is more medication. I've been promised lots of things. Only to me these promises are nothing but platitudes professionals utter to make themselves, collectively speaking, feel better.

I bet my psychiatrist drives a flash car; my money is on a BMW. Drives himself to and from work each day. Truly believes he's helping people. Never once questioning the underlying assumptions of shared existence. Believes his patients live in the same Universe as he does. I know he thinks my leaving the ward daily is a good thing. I doubt he's considered it's actually a form of dissociative fugue. But then I doubt he's ever considered the degree to which owning and driving a car dissociates him from my world either.

Titter ye not!

27-11-07: First Post

Eclectic Nostalgia Protocol

It's all too often I find that conversations which meander throughout my day never coalesce into coherent thought until the opportunity to share my point has passed. It's only much later when the feeling which was spawned in my Mind is able to find a way to express itself. At such times I find I need to take a picture. It is said a picture is worth a thousand words, not in my World. In my World a thousand well chosen words paint a picture which is worth far more.

It was probably for humorous reasons a friend passed me a photograph which she assured me bore a striking resemblance to my appearance. Something about a throwaway comment I'd made a week before had connected when she'd seen it lying in the street. Several weeks later after the conversation had drifted into the area of photography this same friend fired a throwaway comment in my direction,

Have you still got that photo I gave you?

When I replied that I'd filed it in my Library another friend chipped in with the opinion that photos should be filed in an album where they can be taken out and looked at. My Truthsense instantly rejected this opinion leaving my Mind floating in no-man's-land as I tried to workout why. Twenty-four hour later as I'm staring out of the window enjoying the effects of my favourite medication the problem sprang back to life. Quite simply I do not like photo albums; open a photograph album and you'll see dead memories, memories of a time before you were who you are now, arranged into an inescapable thread of introspection. There's a haunting sadness about such albums as if they are designed to suck the life out of the very moment they seek to capture. My Library is different. Indeed the entire point of my Library is somewhat different to that of other libraries you may experience.

To the mythical outside observer there is no apparent order and would appear somewhat chaotic. There is no media demarkation for a start, everything is treated as a Book; CDs, DVDs, and standard dead-tree tomes intermingle freely. No Book can be said to placed logically, there's no alphabetical ordering by author, no attempt to group according to contents. Books are simply placed where they feel right. As time passes trends develop; the top and bottom shelves appear to have become a designated neutral-zone, with the other shelves each representing separate continua within this complex multi-faceted Mind of mine. To some this sounds like crazy-talk from a crazy person, yet as I look now I can see Aliens, a Battlestar, and perhaps a Starfighter asking for permission to move out of the neutral zone; the fact that this evokes three intense and conflicting emotions proves to my satisfaction that my Library has the ability to warp my Mind. One day I'll be able to explain what's going on, but for now I'll find a Zen state and let the Books suggest their new locations and this emotional turmoil will subside.

The Library is also a place I store memories; fragments of paper with a few well chosen words scribbled on them, the odd ticket stub from a memorable visit to the cinema, pictures drawn by my children, and a substantial amount of photographs. All slipped between random pages of whatever Book seemed most apt at the time; unlike a photo album or scrapbook which reside largely unseen on a bookshelf these are living memories. I make little effort to remember where I place any of these memory fragments very long, and I've yet to purposely go looking for a specific item. But from time to time I'll pick a Book to keep me company for a while, I'll take it out, and perhaps I'll find one of my random bookmarks and I'll stop and think. I like it when serendipity pushes something my way which instantly reminds me of an individual. With an image of the relevant person in mind I'll read a few fragments from the marked pages. All completely random, yet for a moment I'll feel the living finger of a friend touch my Mind and for that moment we'll both share that place where we are one.

A Joint Before I Go.

Here's a little spell I wrote. I wrote it down note for note. Don't worry, be happy.

Butterflies, bees and honey.

.

I've been playing with magic for a while now. Consciously that is. Before I came from a world where there was no magic and I lived in a chaotic place. Now the magic makes my teeth hurt because I don't think I really should. I can let go of the magic, and leave myself drifting in the loneliest of places. So the question is really, why shouldn't I.

Butterflies, bees and honey.

A bee that stings twice landed on a butterfly. And the spell begins to decompress. Infinite spirals riding on a sensation. Memory flickers and the chaos butterfly makes it's presence known in the past. A sacrifice is made and a word places a ring on the butterfly's wing. The cruelty is abhorrent but by now I'm trapped in the slipstream of causality; the outcome is inevitable, the only question is who I'll be when I arrive.

Butterflies, bees and honey.

A short spell, and I can, perhaps, explain it. In terms of quantum physics. In terms of psychology. In terms of who and what I spent the night with. I sit here now with my mind reeling. Stars coalesce and my form begins to shift. Subjective reality alters and I begin to see what I've done. You don't exist until you read this and it's your memories of me that makes me what I am. Yet I'm not who you think I am. I don't exist any more.

I spent the night with two others. Later in the dark, as the singularity formed, I felt a third beside me. The honey transported me to another place and for a moment I was not there. When I look back I realise how I've destroyed your world. Yet when I wonder who told me this spell I begin to see a fourth and behind them a fifth.

Soon I'll begin to describe what I'm seeing. When I see who's listening perhaps then I'll have an answer.

So who uttered the words?

A tale of two Wilson's

It's an odd reality within which I currently find myself:

There's an old saying which goes see a penny,pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck. It's an odd meme which I took to exploring one day when I was strolling through the woods at a nearby National Trust property and found two pennies in my coat pocket. Thinking that perhaps somebody else wandering through the woods would appreciate some impromptu luck I threw one away. So after contemplating my own luck for a short while I threw the other away.

As with all memory, this incident had lain dormant in my mind for some time. Last night I heard a voice asking about the motives behind it. I was not at all dismayed when the voice took on the characteristics of Tony Wilson, and for a while we conversed on the nature of luck. But it's less than an hour ago that I discovered the news that Tony died on Friday. I can't help wondering about the connection to my current level of sanity.

Precisely on the day I seeded my lucky pennies, I visited a nearby mill. I was somewhat startled when I found myself sharing the experience with Mr Anthony Wilson himself. Now that's what I call synchronicity.

Slide Traps

The unenlightened should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things

A wise man once told me that one could not psychoanalyse one's self, in this instance he was wrong. This false assertion however did illustrate the perception that areas of knowledge are defined by the barriers to entry which surround them. Whereas in my mental wanderings I've managed to disprove the wise man I've now hit the barrier which caused the original statement. Although I've successfully managed to navigate thorough my mind - and managed to discover a few interesting generalities - I'm finding it impossible to communicate my findings to the professionals in any language which we would both appear to understand. The problem is one of language, or to be more precise semantics. It's not helped by the fact that so much of my inner lexicon exist simply as unspoken concepts built-up following years of devotion to SF.

But now I'm beginning to notice some really odd things that go beyond the accepted consensus reality to which I've subscribed for most of my life. Take the recent flooding on the east coast. It was about three or four days ago when I was listening to my iPod on random shuffle that the music and my thoughts started to interact and I was left with the overwhelming feeling that a rain storm was due at any moment. When the very next track was one entitled Thunder and Rain I got a really creepy feeling. Then there's the idea I had that if I willed it hard enough I could trip the circuit breaker for the lights in my house thereby saving me the tediousness of getting up and wandering over to the light switch - after meditating on this for a good hour the lights did indeed go out suddenly; only I soon discovered that a third of the street was in darkness because the substation had fused. Then there's the time I tried to to use chaos magic to make one of the bright red lights on the top of the Beetham Tower go out; I failed, but as I look out of my bedroom window one of them has indeed gone out.

The spookiest example of this phenomena took place in May last year. In the weeks following my car crash my standard coping strategies began to fail me. It became obvious that the boss taking the opportunity to capitalise on my misfortune to push me to a point where I'd quit rather than have him sack me. Wearing my standard workplace persona I became increasingly unable to cope with the environment and my anxiety levels shot through the roof. To get him to back off I visited my GP and after hearing my symptoms I was awarded a sick-note; an hour after I presented this sick note I was called into a meeting where I summarily dismissed; followed by threats of violence if I dared used my knowledge to mess with the network. In my high anxiety state this was unpleasant, but if you imagine a child dancing around when it knows it needs to take a pee you've got the right picture of how comical he looked waving his fists in the air. The point is that the very morning all this happened I woke from a lucid dream into a dream like state in what I can only describe as a different dimension of thought. As I looked down I could see patterns of force which connected circles which represented people in my life; with my mind I took a step back so that I could see myself, then reached out and broke the lines of force which bound me and my boss together. I imagine I was trying to engineer a situation where I could break one of my fundamental rules; never to give-up of something once I'd set my mind to it. Now I'm beginning to wonder if I didn't, in some totally bizarre and inexplicable way, engineer myself into getting the sack.

Long time readers of this blog will be aware of my seemingly puerile attempts to explain the reality of perception. Amongst the unpublished oddness I was dabbling with I developed a theoretical model of consciousness based upon the premiss that we have nine senses rather than the more usually accepted seven, blending ideas from the Computational Theory of Mind, Object Relation Theory, Quantum and Particle Physics, Memetics, a whole load of less conventional theories picked-up from fiction and the mass media, along with a smattering of the theories of Carl Jung to tie it together. Round about the time of my car crash I'd developed an extension to this theory that Society is a sapient entity which resides within the mass unconcious and that belief systems taint the world sense of this entity leading to the mess of a world we see around us when one faith feels it has a god given right to kick the crap out of anyone who thinks different. What I'm now starting to consider is that the world we see around us can best be summed up by a phrase from popular culture:

There is no spoon.

Max Out

...reminding me of a film I once saw.

Where do you start a story?

I sat there and spied a bottle of Isopropyl Alcohol. My son had pointed out a bottle of Gin earlier. For a moment I caught myself wondering if it was drinkable. I read the label, from top to bottom. The only serious warnings were about eyes and electrical equipment. Nowhere did it actually say not to drink it. Has a bit of I Gin taste to it, funnily enough.

But this is not the place for the punch-line.

In the moment I'd want to describe I was Marwood.

How do I begin that story when I seem unable to tell the story that explains why this matters.

Listening is.

It's not often I find I'm able to engage with the mass media these days, it's not easy when you can't tell what's real and what's not. Even the News seems to exist to feed itself. But occasionally some nuggets will float-up from within my inner circle. Nuggets which actually make me stop and think, to re-evaluate my assumptions. Some show me just why I have to change. Some show me why I am the way I am. If I'm lucky I may even spot a validation of a supposition. Whatever the conveyed meme, however, such nuggets are, thankfully, never dull.

I was recently referred me to an article in a paper which falls into the validation category. It's an odd piece written by an ex-schizophrenic who is convinced it was all just hypochondria and panic-attacks; and that for him the classic multiple voices in your head symptom is part of accepted life when things get stressful. It's a symptom I can appreciate; although I'm pleased to say my voices are less inclined to shout these days.

It's a validation piece, not because of the author's opinion, but because it got me to re-evaluate my hypothesis that I'm suffering from nothing but advanced cyberchondria. It's true, at some point I probably was; though oddly it only started when a variety of stress related symptoms caused my Doctor to suggest I was leaning towards hypochondria. With hypochondria being a psychological condition I leaped straight in and started exploring the inner-workings of my mind.

The first thing you'd discover should you ever do anything similar is that trying to find a diagnosis for mental-health issues is like trying to find a black cat in an unlit room populated with grey cats. Unbelievably, this is a good thing, it's stops one from weekend bouts of some nasty imagined illness; which happened once when I unfortunately got inside the head of an unpleasant individual with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

After a brief revaluation I'm happy to claim it's not cyberchondria. There's some difference between finding a list of symptoms and convincing yourself it fits, and matching observed phenomena to such lists. Yet of all the research I've done I've still only found one reference to one of my odder abilities, in a subjective piece written by an individual trying to explain living life with Autism. The piece refers to the symptom as "Delayed Hearing" and mentions how stress can exacerbate the effects.

A classic example of this from my own experience relates to the events following my witnessing of a rather nasty, racially motivated, altercation outside the office one morning. The emotional impact of this incident left me reeling, almost in shock you could say. For the remainder of that day in the office, until I was called home unexpectedly, it's as if I was thinking through a thick fog, nothing said in my vicinity registered in my mind. I suppose everybody has experienced something similar, what is unique in my case - and that of the aforementioned author - is that a considerable time later such missing moments repeat themselves. In my case I was suddenly presented with the ramifications of exactly what was said that day. Rather an odd thing hearing a penny drop months after the event that dropped it.

Counting words.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Not quite sure if it's true. Ever since the boss had my house burgaled I've found myself without a camera. I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually needed to take a photograph. For all the other times I've cried out for a camera I've discovered words are even better at freezing the moment in time.

Just the other day I was sitting in the park, discussing the reality of existance with a pack of Tarot cards, and I had a "wish I had a camera" moment. A Magpie was dancing up and down in front of the bench I was sitting on getting closer and closer. A red breasted Robin took it upon itself to teach me to fly; jumping from one tree, swooping to mere inches from the ground, then gliding back up into another tree - over and over, right to left, left to right. A Raven flew by on a gust of wind, and May blossom fell from the trees. For a moment I saw an armada of pink butterflies doing their best to leave chaos intact. It left me speechless, for several moments. And as the last piece of May blossom fell to the floor the word "camera" uselessley crossed my mind.

In fact now I come to think of it the only time I really need a camera is to allow me to update my desktop wallpaper. I'll find myself out and about and see a wonderful piece of scenery and think how wonderful it would be to see that image every time I open the lid of my PowerBook. The thing is whenever I find myself at such a place I invariably find myself standing next to some guy who falls into the prosumer category. You've seen the sort, expensive camera, specifications on the tip of his mind, is more bothered about what people think of his camera than what he's taking a photo of. It always seems such a shame.

But I think with a bit of effort we could both be happy. I mean all cameras which are non-disposable are digital these days. So what's stopping prosumer man from mailing me the odd photo. I mean just stand there, exchange the odd 'Oooh, ah' over his digital bride, and drop him a business card with an email address on it. I get the photo I wanted, taken with a camera more expensive than any I'd buy, and he gets an ego massage.

Burning Bush

Today I happened to spy a burning bush. Well, it wasn't a bush it was a fir tree. And at first it wasn't burning, it had little orange bells dancing on it's arms. The wind caught it and the whole centre seemed to burst to life and I saw fire. I can't say it spoke as such because Pandora was speaking and the window was shut. Yet for a good three minutes I felt a wonderful calm descend on me. Now I'm perfectly aware that it's a trick of light and shadow, the sun setting in the West on an youthful spring day, and Tangerine Dream has been known to calm me at times; but I think my burning bush - sorry, fir tree - is worth a mention in the annals of burning bushes.

6182024208

Geek I may be, but I have to admit that I find plain old pencil and paper far more suited to my casual information storage needs than anything electrically powered. I've been keeping a diary for a while now to record all those general musings that I've been exploring but haven't quite felt are ready for releasing to a wider audience. It was whilst reading my first book that I came across my initial notes on a never completed meme: The Problem of Self-Censorship.

I think it's safe to say that for me my blog can be defined more in terms of what I've left out than what I've put in. For reasons I've never really junderstood I've always felt uncomfortable divulging any personal information or feelings to the world at large. All I can imagine is that it's a symptom of the mistrust of authority I inherited from my parents.

Things, however, have changed for me. It started with my car accident. Since then I've lost my job, tried to commit suicide, and been sectioned under the mental health act. I also wrote-off another car and have lost my driving licence as a result. My life now consists having my pottering around the house disrupted by of brief bursts of childcare and trips to see my team of personal brain care specialists.

Ouch.

Yes, I hurt. The remarkable thing is that I walked away from this and don't hurt more. But I'm fine. I'll post full details later.

Warping my perceptions

This is a virtual world. In here I know the time. Back in the real world I'm never quite sure what time it is. Every clock I possess requires an error correction. Quite frankly it's a right royal pain - I've even resorted to making a joke out of it by leaving clocks permanently set to BST or GMT. Time is the simplest thing on a PC - so here now I know what time it is. But when I wander away it's permanently "What the WHU o'clock????".

Technology visibly warps our perception. But when you think about it so much of what we think is real isn't. So much so that there are days when personally I really can't tell any more. Everything is a fractal, look closer and you simply see depth. Sometimes I have to fall back on, and saying it makes me laugh, faith. The world wears us down and grinds us into a reality we have absolutely no reason to complain about. Because if we really were complaining we'd do something about it wouldn't we. Eh? Well wouldn't we?

You know I'm right.

So I've decided. I'm bored. It it's all just perception then I want to try being one of Them. Of course I won't really. I'll really be one of Us. I'll just pretend. But whilst I'm pretending I can do.... stuff - I like inane. But I've really not got the slightest clue because I've not thought this through properly. But I'll learn on the job wing it whenever I hit a problem. All I've figured out is that I'll need money - which is where you come in. I need your money

Psychologically a Million Dollars seems like a decent amount to start with and it gives me a good angle - I mean who hasn't thought about what they'd do with a million. So I plan to find out. I'll be setting-up a website for people to pay to submit suggestions on what I can do with $1,000,000. I'll charge $5 per word, $100 per link, and I'll allow reasonably sized images at $5000 a pop (1 picture is worth 1000 words after all). I'll also need suggestions on how one goes about being one of Them - coz again I've not thought it through.

Of course I have worked out that being one of Them I'll obviously have to pay somebody do the work for me. I'd like to share my good fortune so I'll be a good employer. Anyone with the requires skills to design my website should drop me a line - I'll be paying market rate +10%. You'll have to wait until I've got sufficient funds of course... but hey, I don't have a problem if you get reasonably creative with your timekeeping by way of compensation.

Of course once you've made a suggestion and given me your money please do be deluded that I'll actually owe you anything. You'll be getting nothing for your money - to my mind that's a better deal than you'll really get from Them, so at least it's something. However, this is actually a good thing because I'm notoriously bad with money so you'll never have to worry about be wandering off with your cash - it's already guarenteed. I've got some spectacularly large projects in mind and there's a fair chance I can become self sustaining in a few years - but remember what ever happens I'll owe it all to you.

I'll make the rest up as I go along, I'll post news etc. right here, and I'll do my best to get in the papers so you can derive some amusement from my antics. But again ley me emphasise I've not thought this through in the slightest. Just think meglomaniachal about what you'd do if you had that much cash and you'll get the plan.

And finally, I've just remembered which clock in my house tells the correct time. It's one in the kitchen that was given to me by a dear sweet - now deceased - old lady called Winnie. So in memory of her gift of annoyance free technology I'm going to dedicate this project to her.