<sciatica>? You better be kidding...

Ta.

<You better be kidding...>

Are you going to the Pub to celebrate?

Don't forget:

With no knowledge of birthdays but some familiarity with something you wrote, I was composing an email which said, roughly ...

1. You can write well and you can think well. Mind you, these are somewhat taken for granted round here. All the Frogspawn regulars write and think well.

2. You also research well, and this is a trick I never really mastered (see? I'm trying to demean it by calling it a trick. I worked around research -- did short interviews and transcribed them badly -- wrote articles that were all speculation and little meat or original quotes -- made stuff up -- wrote an MA thesis on Gravity's Rainbow, quantum physics, expressionist cinema, information theory, Rilke, King Kong, Max Weber's routinized charisma, dope smoking in soviet central Asia, the introduction of New Turkic Alphabets in Islamic states, Sudwest Afrika, genocide and concentration camps, Ed Mendelson's 'encyclopedic narrative' theory with special 'McCarthy Twist' to remove residual nationalism -- and so on. There being two relevant points to this: I never really had to research anything, as most of it -- believe it or not -- related to stuff I was innarested in anyways. I may not have a perfect memory -- heh -- but in those days I had Jess-scale retention skills. For data. And wide interests.

These days I have very narrow interests, it seems. 99.99% of my pet arcana gets filed under 'weirdness' by scum like editors, who then say stuff like "you don't really know much about music or politics do you?" -- the best answer would be "what you call music is trite garbage and your idea of politics is just gossip" -- but I don't say it.

I'll flip and strangle one eventually, even over the phone.

So, 25 years later, I *still* can't do orderly research. I can write and think, but so can we all. I skitter from idea to idea, I leave things unfinished. People have wanted me to write actual books (on cinema, sci-fi, and the semiotics of Ireland, to name but three) and I've always wriggled out of it...

As for that birthday thing. Don't get me wrong: I *like* my life. A lot. I should: I arranged it -- quiet, minimal fame, not much money, lotsa books to read, <CG for, like, minds>, keep that flowing, I'm happy. I don't do regret or 'Oh god I've wasted my youth and now I'll never develop my bishop properly or bond with the cubs'... or whatever it is that guys do.

I wouldn't know. The downside of this otherwise idyllic existence is that there are certain, ah, gaps. I don't know zilch about cars, sports or money. As a result I'm forced to avoid those social circles -- bankers and bank robbers predominate, oddly enough -- where precisely those topics are seen as the essential badge of masculinity. And my ignorance is bad: something sick and twisted, something so much worse than queer that you give it filthy looks, refuse it an overdraft and you may want to have it killed.

<- Did you give me a filthy look? - No, you had it when you arrived.>

Where was I? Still alive? Fine. That email is redundant now so I'll send a different one. But research is a very impressive skill -- not the dull ferreting kind, but the type that digs away and <then> marries its findings to the writing/thinking apparatus.

This in fact may be the legendary 'perspiration' part of genius, the part I manifestly lack.

*For Hire: one non-sweaty near-genius, quite clever, no nasty smells...*

Hmm. Maybe I'm marketable after all...

As for birthdays. It seems clear I'm the decrepit old geezer and you other frogspawns and zapkinder are sprightly young folk with decades of wotsit in front of you. I fully intend to be there too, even if I need a hearing aid for the tricky bits.

A medium amputates the organ it extends -- as McLuhan observed long before they developed viagra.

This list is of lines from 'pop' songs that are either good or bad or both. God, I sound even more autistic than usual.

1. "They're quasi-effeminate characters in love with oral gratification" -- Lou Reed

2. "No-one knew exactly who she was or how she died/ But when they opened up her purse they found a snail inside" -- The Residents

3. "Nothing frightens me more than religion at my door" -- John Cale

4. "He's drilling thru the spiritus sanctus tonight/ Thru the dark hip falls/ If I jerk the handle you'll die in your dreams" -- Scott Walker

5. "Remember what happened to Hansel snd Gretel" -- Red Crayola

6. "John Webster was one of the best there was/ He was the author of two major tragedies" -- Echo & The Bunnymen

7. "I'm in love with Jacques Derrida/Read a page and I know I need to/ Take apart my baby's heart" -- Scritti Politti

8. "We'd walk out, tentacle in hand/ You could sense that the Earthlings did not understand/ They went 'nudge nudge' when we got on the bus/ Saying 'Extraterrestrial, not like us' / And 'It's bad enough with another race, but fook me, a monster from outer space!" -- John Cooper Clarke

9. "Hubert, now in his mid-forties and still unusual" -- Viv Stanshall

10. "You're so sweet, horseflies keep hanging round your face" -- Neil Diamnod

<"J'ai une maladie: je vois le langage." >

'Some langer lost my baggage, this will end badly'

or

'I ate white shark and died, but I did not use bad language'

[technically, Jess's versions are 'correct' -- but that is the Tyranny of Correctitude, an ideological force which repels wrongness and damages All That is Indecent.]

Indecent = 'falling for you'

Alternate <Barthlathions>:

"I want to fondle your bum"

"Watch out for that Milk Truck"

"Just try to read <SZ> and keep a straight face- I double dog dare ya"

"The state of Language: That's ME"

"I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miiiiiillllleees"

"If I couldn't see I wouldn't have any eyes"

"A dog can only run half way into the forest"

<Correctitude? Moi?>

<Irish Delegate, a big small farmer> Ba mhaith liom caint as Gaeilge ar an "topic" seo "Canadian pun subsidies" ...

<Northern Irish Delegate, a Free Radical Presbyterian Minister of Cloth> I demand instant translation into Ulster Scots. What's Ulster Scots for Canada?

<Maltese Delegate, a Malteser> Ulster has invaded Canada? Again?

<English Tory, a 'resting' history don from St Karl's College, Redbricktown University> No, last time they went the other way, north to south. Almost recaptured the USA in fact.

<Magyar> Vizby Fult Vilag!

<Estonian> Is Global Warmink! Russian plot, cut off ice cream supply

<Romanian> They have *ice cream* in Estonia? Is economic success? Is Baltic Tiger, like Celtic Tiger! We demand parity.

<French scientist> La parite, c'est conserve, non?

<Romanian> Conserves? They also have jam? Is bloody luxury.

<British Labour Delegate, Yorks> Aye, when I were a lad we lived under slagheap eating cold gravel.

<Norn Irl (UUUUUUUP, Lough Neagh), Ulster Unionist Unfurled Umbrellas Upset Us Party> We used to have to live in a lake. Of course, aye, it was the largest free standing body of royal water in her majesty's dominions.

<Irish Delegate> What about Canada?

<Luxemburg> Canada is a body of water?

<German, Green Party> We must plant more lakes.

<Austrian, Wienerschnitzel Partei> Nein, ist nicht "Britischer Dominion" Canada, ist lagen.

<Italia, Capo di Tutti Descendente del Mussolini Party> Molto Lago! Garda!

<Ireland, quasi-paramilitary party> Garda? Ah lads, no need to bring the cops in on this.

<San Marino> Si, fascisti.

<All> Who let you in?

<San Marino> Navigare necesse est. I swim.

<Denmark> Global warming again. Please order recycling of chewing gum, ducks, and drakes.

<Finnish Chairperson> OK, make it so.

[to translator]: have complete transcript in all 243 official languages on my desk by 1800 hours, please.

Not that either of these wicked acts could ever occur in a civil modern society like ours. Or even Canada.

Source: 'Down the Digestive Tract and Into the Cosmos With Mantra, Tantra, and Specklebang'

This <Sheckley> chap. Does he have writing I can access online?

I just came back from the local Liberry, but, predictably, I came back with <two chess books> despite the best of intentions.

One looks like a corker, <Belyavsky's> annotations of his best games. He is a good annotater, he provides the "logic" of the variations to go along with the lines he posts.

I went through the first game already.

I'm just going to go through the second <Fast Eddy> game you found for me.

<Gun Felt>.

Who knew?

Adams was also brilliant, and 99% original, and great minds are like nuns' periods. And Robert Sheckley pretty much invented comic/satiric sci-fi.

Also read: Mindswap, which reads like a saner Philip K Dick, and The Game of X, a spy/Bond spoof.

Remember, there has been a Woman <Drag Racing Champion> in the US but no Woman <world Chess Champion> or <American Champion> yet.

Therefore, <post hoc ergo propter hoc>, chess is more "butch" than Drag Racing.

<Finnegan woke up. Had he been dreaming. Probably. As far as his vague understanding of the brain went, everyone had to dream. But you only sometimes remembered bits, usually if woken during the REM phase.

So, anything worth remembering? Not really. Something about a river? Just meant he needed to urinate.

Nothing mysterious about dreams, he thought.

"What fresh Hell is this"?

and

"You can lead a Horticulture, but you can't make her think".

One is reminded by <Dom's seams> here of <Parker's> quite brilliant short story <Big Blonde>.

Or "one" would be if "one" were in the habit of using pronouns that imply that "one's" opinion is universal by simple virtue of belonging to "one."

That last bit is pointed DIRECTLY AT <William F. Buckley>, the insufferably condescending American pseudo-aristocrat.

Incidentally, could he mount an effective argument as to why he's not dead yet?