What a long time between blogs…how crap is that ?
And after all that time, this entry is really tedious. Sorry.
Last saturday I, together with a surprisingly large number of people went on the anti-war demo. It was a beautiful day and great to see Tony and Emmanuelle who’d come over from France. After a quick couple of pints they came back to our house and we ordered a curry.
Tim obviously felt left out with all of us sitting on the carpet eating, and so performed a beautiful dive from the top of his cage, right into Tony’s vegetable curry. He was covered – Neelam, if you read this then I’m so sorry…Our biggest worry was that he might have a heart attack when he tried to preen due to the firey nature of the sauce. So we “asked a cockatiel expert” (the Internet really is the dog’s bollocks) and apparently they love chilli and even eat them down to the seeds.
The other problem was the huge yellow stain on his belly. We couldn’t get near enough to wipe it and so just hoped he would sort it out himself. It’s taken a few days but he’s managed it. Being a vein bird, he wasn’t happy with it as it did taint his colour scheme, and became a little more reserved. But his back to his usual extovert self now and all is well.
We had my mum and dad over for dinner on sunday, partly so my mum could meet the bird – Michele did her yummy middle-eastern chicken and date thing…mmmm..
Apart from that I’ve been working. Managed to get FreeBSD 5.0 support into NoCat – which sounds very dull…well I suppose it is if you’re not into such things, but it cheered me up.
Thanks to the slackness of the public sector, we have a nice 6 day holiday after today to celebrate either

• The murder of an outspoken jewish bloke by the Romans
• The ancient spring festival of regeneration and fertility
• A nice time of year to sit around doing nothing

depending on your particular beliefs.
Oh yes, I discovered this rather groovy site that is a great way for old farts like me to beef up their mp3 collections and at the same time embarrass themselves by listing to what the younger generation are listening to. It’s got a good beat…

The struggle to produce an original reality-TV show was becoming increasingly difficult for the BBC. They took Big Brother, crossed it with Popstars and got Fame Academy…which didn’t really cut it. They added celebrities….but still. After that where do you go ?
Thank Bush then for the Iraq Conflict! What could be better than 24/7 footage of real shooting, and real dead bodies. Not even Endemol (the creators of big brother and just about every other realityfest) could swing a snuff series – but thanks to the free market, we now have one! Not only that, but one where the main characters can get seriously wounded, or even killed. They must have been dancing fucking jigs in television centre when war was declared. Like that episode from “The Day Today”, the graphics, sets, and speeches were all ready for action as soon as the shells started exploding.
They even have the big brother style “day number” on screen. All that’s missing is a geordie voiceover:
“Day 18, and John simpson is in the diary room after the daily challenge, when Kamaran was blown to pieces by friendly fire.”

I’ve fallen in love with a male parrot.
This is very scary as it means I’m a gay bestiophilic adulterer…

Michele is feeling much better BTW.

Tim the parrot is currently sitting at the top of one of his ladders, watching me type. Neelam dropped him off yesterday and he’s just started to relax a bit and trust me enough to take food from my hands. Considering what a stressful couple of days he’s had (vet, car ride, stange new house, no mum) it’s good progress. Tim is a cockatiel and we’re parrot sitting him for a couple of weeks while Neelam is India visiting her family.
I went off to an anti-war protest outside the American Embassy yesterday and met up with Dave (harvey) and family. There were probably more police than protesters sadly, but it wasn’t publicised very well – and next week is the big one. We’re going to try and bust the record of the last one – biggest wartime anti-war demo in history. The government have to know they haven’t won, and they won’t be forgiven. People are more angry now than ever – good.
If you have any doubts about the true nature of this war, then please try and find a copy of “The Money Programme” from last week. The college library has a copy (video 13823). It’s called “The War for Oil” and it consists of the major players in the dispute, together with reps from the oil companies openly talking about how Iraq had to be put under American control if the oil-based American economy was to have a future. There is no question it is a war for oil and all of that bollocks about liberation and human rights is simply evidence that Blair, Wanker and the rest are cynical liars and murderers.
Our troops are being insulted…and they’re starting to realise it. Several of them refused to shoot innocent civilians, and have been imprisioned.

Support our troops – bring them home!

before the trigger happy U.S. cowboys kill any more of them.
…anyway…
After the demo, Dave and I sat in the Spice of Life and passed a pleasant couple of hours with a pleasant couple of pints. A nice day all in all. In the evening Michele and I played with Tim and watched a video…it was all going so well..
…then Michele came down with food poisoning…badly. She hasn’t slept all night and I can’t begin to describe what she’s been through. She’s lying asleep now, looking whiter than a Tunde Arungundade snowman and NHS direct have disallowed her any water until 9:30…ooh its that now – I’ll get her some…
She’s looking a lot better – the woman from NHS direct is going to call back in a while to see how she’s doing.
As Michele was “up and down like a dog at a fair” all night, my own sleep was turbulent. Horrible dreams. One part that stands out was hearing gunshots. They were obviously coming from nearby because you could even hear the cartridge hitting the ground. Looking through the window of the room I was in, I could see a young guy, probably around 15, standing on a balcony adjoining our house, firing a semi-automatic pistol at a crowd of peace protesters. There was blood everywhere. He looked insane and appeared to be shooting indescriminately, so everyone in the room lay down on the floor and hoped he wouldn’t see us. We were sure he’d run out of ammo, but he didn’t, shot after shot and no sign of letting up. Eventually he ran into the room and started shooting us one by one. We were playing dead and so there was no noise but the gunshots. As every person was killed, rather than seeing it, I saw their lifes work – an author was killed and I saw her books – it was like watching a film – everyone was quiet, hoping to be overlooked. It was my dream, so I should have been killed last, but I wasn’t – I felt the gun to the back of my neck, heard the shot and felt the pain – but then I became detached, like a ghost.
That wasn’t the most surreal part of the dream, but probably the most disturbing…I can’t remember a lot more – and it probably wouldn’t make any sense if I described it….just thought I’d share that….please don’t call a doctor.

Hey I missed the anniversary of this load of bologs! It’s been a year since I started this thing, doesn’t time fly….and the coppers are getting younger….I keep thinking it’s thursday…

Now and again it’s nice to get out of the everyday routine – even if it’s just to do the same shit in a different place. Ok, it was a 13 hour day but we went on the train, I had a nice egg/bacon bagel at Paddington, the sun was out, we saw loads of nice countryside, had a few beers on the way back and best of all someone was paying me!
The actual job was in Cheltenham (Note to Americans – it’s pronounced “Cheltnam” ok ?) and I’d never been there before. It’s very pretty in the prettiest sense of the word, and that’s why I hope never to return. One of the most soulless places I’ve ever been to. I also didn’t see one pub the whole time. I’m not saying there wasn’t one…just that I didn’t see one. No matter where you go in most normal parts of the country you can’t avoid seeing a bloody pub so there is something wrong there.
For those that don’t know (that includes me until this week) Cheltenham is near Gloucester. We only passed through Gloucester on the train briefly so it’s not really fair to judge it, but I can totally see what drove Fred West to it…fuck that place. In fact I retract my statement about not judging a town purely on what it looks like from the train – ever been to Croydon ?
The job was at a “patriotic” magazine’s headquarters, that for reasons of discretion I can’t talk about here…all I’ll say is that being one of three scruffy london longhairs, wearing a “stop the war” badge and turning up to fuck about with their computers was quite a lot of fun. One sad old codger even asked us if we were MI5…apart from sharing David Shayler’s gut measurment I really don’t think I qualify as looking like a spook.
The uber-fuhrer of the company, a hopelessly sad characature of a Raj retired officer, was not at all happy with us wandering around. It’s just not BRITISH! They’ve probably got Euros in their pockets!
I wish we’d had the guts to tell him that:

• Two of us are anarchists
• The software we’d sold them was written in-house by a German
• The person that sold us to them in the first place is black
• The UKIP is dead, as is the magazine’s entire outlook on the world.

But we didn’t. As I said – I can’t really talk about it here – pity.

Again, I don’t want to mention the war because I might pop a blood vessel….and it’s friday tomorrow…

http://www.geocities.com/jon_donnis/SportsInjuryPics
As Michele says, “serves them right for doing that stupid shit rather than sitting on the sofa, drinking wine.”

…and the cycle continues…another week, and then another week, and then another….
The smell of shit in our flat reached improbable levels of penetration this week. The smell appears to originate from under the floor at the base of our stairs. Favourites for the cause are extreme damp or decaying rodents. The downstairs neighbours are also suffering so it’s not all bad 🙂
Paul the pick was kind enough to give me some carpet offcuts to cover the floorboards down there, but for various reasons I had to leave it at work over the weekend. So I got some jossticks off the bloke in the newsagent and they shield the smell even if they don’t eradicate it. Sadly Michele finds the odour of jossticks more repellent than the smell of jobbie…nil nil. Hmmm I wonder if you can get shit-scented jossticks ?
Saturday morning I did more mac work at Daydream and spent the rest of the afternoon in the Spice of Life with a couple of pints of cider and a good book. Luxury.
I’m not going to talk about the war because it’s too irritating, as is Julie Burchill. I wrote her letter over the weekend, but I don’t think she can read so it was probably a waste of time.

A great weekend. I’d arranged to work at Daydream on saturday and so was a tad sad at the prospect of missing out on the anti-war march. The last week, with the very expensive firework display in Iraq, had a profound effect on the anti-war protesters. Not only had it utterly depressed us, but it also increased the anger levels significantly. So when I got out of Daydream at mid-day (setting up a macintosh network really doesn’t take very long) I decided to see if anyone was marching. Were they ? At least 400,000 people marched! The weather was superb and the mood was fantastic. Even being on my own was fun. As it turned out I bumped into April from the Library and we marched together and even got to hear some of the Hyde Park speeches. As usual the speeches were so inspiring that we fucked off to the pub and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. Nice little pub, the Three Tuns off Oxford Street. We also met another group of protesters and wallowed in self-rightous glory about the massive turn-out, and how inspiring it all was. Nice when that happens.

Leaving there, I ended up with a massive group of protestors who had blocked oxford street….at least I think that’s what happenned; the police were also blocking the street….and the side streets….and the roads off the side streets…
I realised that they could very easily box us in, and so fucked off quickly, and the sight of mounted police trotting towards the mele confirmed my cowardly decision as being the correct one. All along Park Lane, and intervals of about 50 feet were unmarked, white rental vans – stuffed tight with coppers. They were ready alright…
After finding a tube station that hadn;t been closed, Green Park, I went off to Greenwich and met up with Ian, Mod and Roland for a pleasnt evening in the pub which rounded off with a superb Vietnamese meal which i realised was my first meal of the day – oops!

Sunday morning my mum phoned asking if I wanted to join her and my dad on a walk around Sidcup meadows. What a beautiful place that is. On the way back I got a call from Brodie telling me he was in the Talbot and so I joined him for a pint…or two…
As I said – a great weekend.
BTW – Happy Birthday Alex!

Well I did write a blog about being a sad twat while Michele is away:going to the pub every night and eating pizza. But mozilla decided to hang on me and I lost the blog! That can’t be right, this isn’t windows! Oh bollocks. Well it’s the first time I’ve ever lost anything under Linux…brings back horrible memories of…the dark days, and I didn’t have to reboot. This machine (teapot) has been up for 32 days and the last reboot was due to a house guest pulling the plug on it so I shouldn’t complain. Browsers will be browsers. There’s a good teapot, good boy!

Obviously we don’t really know the civilian death toll in Iraq, but according to Wanker and President Blair it’s zero. Our side isn’t doing too well though, we’ve lost 12 people in a helicopter “accident”. So despite our incredible military technology and the fact that (according to Wanker) the Iraqi troops our on our side, we’ve managed to kill more of our own people than the enemy. Well done. It would be very rude and inappropriate to compare 8 of our marines dying in a US helicopter with the last Gulf war when we lost a bunch of troops to American “friendly fire”, so I won’t. They may not be able to kill Saddam, but they’re pretty damned good at offing the allies. Not very sporting though.
One convoy of troops, going deep into Iraq were surprised by the bloody foreigners returning fire. “But where here to help – we’re on your side,” they probably shouted “now put your guns down and let us kill you.” But these bloody arabs just understand the basics of modern warfare (the Americans always have to win) and kept firing. What choice did our brave boys have but to run away ?