I tried.

BossOf(BossOf(Virge)).status=UrgentlyBusyAllDayMaybeCallBackLaterSomeConvenientDayOrYear.

So I very carefully composed an (ultra-polite, politically correct, sensitive, supportive, positive, pro-active, open-door policy, win-win situation, opportunity-not-a-problem) email offering suggestions for ways to communicate the state of the business without inducing a mass brain-exodus or a paralysing depression. I can only hope that he reads it.

I am going to have to have words with the managing director. After his monthly motivational speech half my team need suicide counselling. He gets worse with every speech he delivers despite the fact that our company is running with growth and profit figures that are as good or better than any of our competitors. His speech this afternoon could best be summarised:

Our growth is below target. Our profit is below target. Here are the major factors that influenced it (almost all outside the control of this audience). Other companies in the same market position have moved to South-East Asia. If we don't improve we'll sack more people.

Now some background context: We have a number of new products almost ready for release that should significantly boost both growth and profitability. These are products that the people here have been working on for the past couple of years. Releasing these products to the marketplace is within our control. Do you think we could have a message of encouragement or acknowledgement of the work done and the impact it will have on our future? How can people get motivated about their work when what they actually do doesn't get a mention, but the things they can't control get held up as sticks to club them to death with?

I added some extra's to my web pages last night - Pantomime and the set of limericks about writing limericks. The process served to remind me of my limited multitasking ability as I tried to simultaneously download some files, upload others, listen to music, edit my web pages and chat. I think my brain bandwidth for chatting must have been pretty feeble.

I've started to get my thoughts back to my Ricky project (arising from a concept I alluded to in the May 16th journal). The diversion to sub-2000-word short stories was not so much a set-back as a useful exercise. It gave me some more writing practice and resulted in some interesting story ideas to be followed up later.

I'm starting to identify areas where I have difficulties in putting stories together (apart from the difficulty of actually writing the detailed text). I have one story with a good concept, characters and motives, but lacking in a coherent plot. It would make a decent short story. I have two others with reasonable concepts, characters, environments and plots, but need decent length novels in which to render them - and I'm daunted by the challenge. I have another even bigger concept (of which Pig is only the introduction) that I'm not even prepared to think about starting. My Ricky project has a strong concept, some of the characters, an environment and a plot, but is challenging me as I try to work through the details of the plot and characters.

One of my engineers forwarded an email to me saying "I'm not sure if they understood what I wanted. What now?". He included his request for information and the reply that he had received from Logitech. Here is the reply:


Thank you for using Logitech's Electronic Technical Support. My name is Robert P. The following information addresses your original question. You may wish to print this out and/or save this on your computer.

If you want to harness the power of Logitech products-to bring the additional functionality of Logitech devices to environments where it doesn't currently exist-then the Logitech Solution Developer Kits (SDK) are for you. These SDKs are designed for software developers that have more specific needs than are addressed by the software that ships with each Logitech product.

For more information on the Logitech Developer Relations program, please visit the following URL:

etc.
What can I say? There is more than just a suspicion that "Robert" didn't understand the request. In fact Robert's full name is "Robert Pet", and he is probably considerably less intelligent than Eliza (Eliza passes Turing test) and would have real difficulty competing with Aibo (Aibo passes Turing test).

When strong AI proponents assert that AI will eventually surpass human intelligence I have to believe them - but not necessarily just from advances in artificial intelligence. ;)

I bought the Two Towers soundtrack CD on Saturday. I had been enjoying mp3 tracks from it lately. It's just perfect for moody instrumental background while I read or ponder.

I saw pure, unbridled excitement yesterday. It was a niece's 8th birthday. On her mother's recommendation we bought her a Harry Potter movie. She was kneeling down at a coffee table to open presents. On unwrapping the movie she knee-bounced all the way across the room and back, beaming and shrieking about how she had been wanting this for soooo long. Good choice of present.

I'd been looking for a new phone handset over the last week. I figured a Nokia 3315 was a reasonable choice considering how little we use it. Everywhere I looked the price was exactly the same - A$229 - the recommended retail price. On Saturday morning I decided to ring a few places. I figured there had to be more competition in a consumer market like mobile handsets. Sure enough, a shop in the next suburb had them for $50 cheaper. (Approximately 2 CD's cheaper. WifeOfVirge bought a CD too.)

Last night I updated the appearance of my web-site and decided it was time to increase its exposure a little. (Hmmm that reminds me - I must add Pants Ex Machina to my fun page.) I added a links page to link to other writers and added some EK members' sites, then posted on the link-exchange threads. I guess I really should buy a domain name and some decent server space sometime. Yahoo/geocities has been pathetic lately - I get about a 50% reject rate when I try to log on to read mail or upload pages. "Try again later" is something I can put up with if I get it once or twice a week, but lately I've been getting it once or twice a day, and "later" seems to mean wait at least 15 minutes. The good old days when free services worked seem to be fading. That was back in the 20th century, when companies were staking their claims in the information gold-rush.

Since I was planning to submit Pig to that short story competition, I'd better print it tonight and send it off. The competition closes 31st July. I have no feedback from EK so far. I guess if I was prepared to wait another week I'd get some. I didn't allow enough time.

Sunday is a great day for relaxing. I did a little spot of recording this morning (see silliness below). Multi-track recording on a computer is so easy - especially if you're not trying to get professional results.

I went down the street to where an old block of shops is being demolished. The twisted metal, broken bricks, plaster and concrete looked interesting when I drove past yesterday. Unfortunately (but as expected) the demolition site was fenced off and I didn't feel like trying to climb over the fencing. It's the pointy bits at the top that are inconvenient. I had to be satisfied with taking pictures at a distance. Then, since I was near the railway, I looked for some inspiration under the tracks.

I finally got around to putting a little colour into my web-site background.

In the time-honoured tradition of extreme silliness I present an mp3 clip of the first verse and chorus of the 1000 post filk 820kb. (See yesterday's journal entry for the lyric.)

As promised, the 1000 post filk - dedicated to some of the very memorable characters at EK. They're a weird and wonderful bunch.
Put on your best Scottish accent and sing along.


When I wake up, yeah I know I'm gonna see
I'm gonna see what EK's got that's fresh and new.
When I log in, from my overworked PC
I'm gonna see the words of EK's motley crew.
In my office, when I've got a moment free
I'm gonna read an extra post, or maybe two.
Then at lunchtime, you can guess I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be on EK till my lunch is through.

Yeah I would post 500 times
and I would post 500 more
Just to be the man who posts a thousand times
'cause I'm an EK whore.

I'll see Linda with her demon cat Azzy
and her girly-boys - she's painted quite a few.
I'll see Socar telling tales of Li-Gui
while her break from Mr. Squeaky's overdue.
Then there's Levi, on a portrait posting spree.
He's the teddy-bear you never quite outgrew.
And there's Lina - with a sketch of peegy-whee
watching bumble bees or finding ears to chew.

Yeah I would post 500 times
and I would post 500 more
Just to be the Virge who posts a thousand times
'cause I'm an EK whore.

da da da
da da da
da da da dum da da dum da da dum da da da da da

da da da
da da da
da da da dum da da dum da da dum da da da da da

I'll see Daniel (though I call him Mr. P)
with his cheeky smirk and angel-wing tattoo.
Pope banana. Newbies call him LSE,
but he's Joe to those who finally get a clue.
And there's Sica - with her witty repartee -
she's the EK pimp who dragged me to this zoo.
There's too many, in this human potpourri
So I'm sorry if I didn't mention you.

Yeah I would post 500 times
and I would post 500 more
Just to be the man who posts a thousand times
'cause I'm an EK whore.

da da da etc.

In the stillness of the night, at the end of the working week when the crowd has gone to sleep, when the clicking of a keyboard and the whirring of a PC fan mask the city's night sounds, when the clocks strike one in all the homes unlucky enough to have noisy chiming clocks, when the sun shines on the other side of our not quite flat earth, when the international data conduits slosh terabytes from node to node, when relaxed conversations ebb and flow between the antipodes...
My connection dies.
Where are you, LNK indicator?
Why the blank expression, RXD?
Conversation sundered.
"Bother!" said Virge.

Work is really depressing at the moment. Layoffs, budget tightness, missed deadlines and the general feeling that the CEO thinks employees are not humans - they are just workers. My eyes have recovered, but my throat is still sore and hurts every time I swallow.

This should be the time that brings out the best in the writer. There is conflict, adversity, suffering. The artist is starting to be tortured - and we all know the necessity of pain for inspiring a writer. Hmmmmmmm. That gives me an idea. Maybe I should create a school for producing world-class poets. I'd have to make sure that students couldn't escape. If there was an easy escape from the suffering they couldn't produce their best work. This school would be a life-changing experience for the students - a grueling, tempering and refining of the mollycoddled 20th century child into either a deep-thinking, self-reliant sage or a jibbering wreck (depending on the outcome of the cathartic final exam). Either path could be said to produce great poets.

What is the cumulative effect on a child of having parents and grandparents refer to him in the third person as "the poor kid"? Mostly it is done outside his range of hearing, but no attempt is made to change the diminutive title when he is playing nearby. There is no doubt that the child has special dietary needs that prevent him from eating the wide range of foods that most of us enjoy. I suspect that the continual "poor kid" attitude is teaching him that he is permanently disadvantaged. Instead of focusing on his bright wit, energy and intelligence, he is being taught that he has a crutch, an excuse, a lever for prying out sympathy. He has already learnt that if he eats certain forbidden food that he can be excused for irresponsible behaviour. How will he grow in relationships? Will he subconsciously view himself as a cripple, deserving of understanding and pity? Will he "inherit" hypochondria?

I have my thousand post filk done now. Still about 15 posts to go before it is needed - a little surprising for me, to have something done well ahead of time. I'll post it in the journal when I get to my thousandth post.

I'm looking ahead to my 1000th post on EK. I have a plan. (Of course it is a cunning and devious plan - that goes without saying.) I will write a song/poem/filk that mentions the most prominent EK characters and their quirks, but in a friendly way. Not a piss-take. I gathered a list of members last night, expecting to get about 20-30 regular posters. I was shocked. I gathered a list of 80 names without even trying. I knew EK was a busy board, but I hadn't realised just how many names I had come to know.

If I sit quietly here at home I can just make out the whispered conversation of the Gods of Oz:
Bruces (god of culture-free entertainment): "Oi Steves! We've started."
Steves (god of mindless outdoor activities): "Started what, Bruces?"
Bruces: "You know - the plan to give that sod a quiet life and then dump all the bad crap on him at once."
Steves: "Oh yeah. Sounded neat. How's he coping?"
Bruces: "First we gave 'im the eye infection. That's always a laugh - make 'em itch so much that they have to rub. Then when they rub it makes the eyes worse and spreads the infection. The red eyes come up a flamin' treat mate."
Steves: "But he has sick leave from work, Bruces. He'll just stay home and rest them."
Bruces: "We know Steves. We know. That's when we started plan B. While he's at home, we get his boss to sack two of his engineers. Crikey Steves, ya should've seen his face when his boss rings up and says who got the axe."
Steves: "Cor Bruces. You are a right bastard. We thought we were being cruel when we started crippling his favorite football team."
Bruces: "Nah, that'd never work. You have to hit 'em where it hurts. Now the sod has to try to get his projects going with a team of angry disillusioned engineers. They've just seen a decade and a half of quiet reliable service to a company dismissed with a payout and a handshake. The sucker's on a hiding to nothing now. He's completely powerless."

I've reworked the story of Pig. This time with a return to the original ironic ending.
Pig
I also posted it on EK, specifically asking for criticism. I've no idea what that will educe - probably close to nothing. I've been less than loquacious in the EK library for a while now, so it would be a fair cop.

I went to the doctor this morning. It seems that I have viral conjunctivitis not bacterial conjunctivitis (or was that the other way round?). I'm on a different bottle of antibiotic eye-drops. Let's hope I can see properly by this afternoon so I can meet with some business process consultants scheduled to visit.

Last night we went out to see Terry Gilliam's Lost in La Mancha (sans kids who had been abducted by a school music camp). This is a "making of" documentary for a film that disintegrated before it could be completed. It provided some insight into the difficulties of making a huge-concept film on a very tight budget. I wasn't expecting knuckle-whitening action, but I did feel the documentary whimpered out towards the end. There was no critical decision point hinging the destiny of the participants. It just got worse and worse till all could see that the film was not going to be made.

While watching the discussion of project schedules I couldn't help being reminded of a particular project at work. The La Mancha crew were forced to work with an extremely tight schedule with absolutely no room for error or mishap. With a film production as with a technical project there are too many things that can and will go wrong. If you have no contingency, you will fail. It's not a case of hoping to be lucky. It's not just a case of allowing a little extra time for the unknown creative parts. Problems occur in the parts of the project that should be routine. There are humans involved.

This morning did not start well. I went to bed very early last night because my eyes were blurry and sore. Having slept for too long, I woke with a headache. By 11am I was feeling almost normal.

Last night I felt inspired to write but my eyes wouldn't cooperate. This morning writing was something that seemed foreign. I went out and took some photos instead.

My topic was Urban Suspense - inspired by all the suspended cables around town.
Chain
Ladder to heaven?
Power
Locomotion
Suspended animation

What if a soul did have a supernatural backup of my memories? It seems silly to think that a non-physical "magical" entity should keep an exact duplication of an extremely complex and somewhat error-prone system. The human brain is robust but far from error-free. If my soul corrects my memories as it stores duplicates of them, or doesn't mimic the way my memories fade and change slightly with time, then it cannot be me. Any life that uses those pristine memories would fail to understand most of the things that its previous host had ever done. It wouldn't understand the person it had become, so most of the memories would be useless - events without a personal context in which to frame them. Any soul that outlives my physical body and keeps my memories has to take with it a copy of my flawed memories and blindspots.

Maybe my soul will continue only as a stream of consciousness with no memories at all or with jumbles of incomprehensible memories. This soul would have to start again on another plane of existence or with a new earthly incarnation. Without the benefit of preserved learning and understanding from its previous life it has no concept of self, no communication, no frame of reference. It can't think in terms of "Wonderful! A whole new life to enjoy!" if the being it has become can't remember its previous incarnation. The only solace provided by this idea of soul is that it stops you having to think about what it must be like to not exist at all. But it really is just as hard to think of what it would be like to know nothing and understand nothing.

Life beyond death with only jumbled incomprehensible memories has at least some correlation with reincarnationist ideas. (It's when you hear about a person having memories of a past life as a mollusc that you have to question the source of the jumbled memories.) Religions that promise punishment for the souls of those who have disobeyed really require a soul to have a fair memory of a past life. Imagine enduring punishment as a soul with no clue of what you'd done to deserve it. Once a being has no knowledge or understanding of past sins what is the point of punishment? It can't be a corrective tool. How can a being change its ways when it can't remember them? Such punishment can only be for the vindictive pleasure of the punisher.

I lost my soul when I realised it didn't make sense.

I'm back at work. My left eye is well on the road to recovery (don't think too much about having an eye on the road). My right eye is infected but improving. Hopefully it will be feeling normal by the end of today.

Discussions on the subject of reincarnation made me start thinking about memory. A hundred years ago memory used to be mysterious stuff that could be described as being part of a non-physical soul - because scientists couldn't explain it in physical terms. Now that human memory can be described as biological structures and interconnections of neurons (even though the mechanisms for learning are still not well understood), why should we think that the soul would keep a supernatural backup of the biological memories? How can you remember things that happened in a past life when the memories of that life were stored in biological wet-ware? How and when does a spiritual backup memory get implanted in a new human brain?

I look at the history of human understanding of nature and can see a parallel in our understanding of mind. When nature was all a mystery we believed that gods made everything happen. They made the sun rise and the grass grow. They were actively involved in the on-going maintenance of the universe. When the mechanistic nature of some natural processes were discovered, we reassigned the roles of gods. They were responsible for creation of a fully working universe and a lot of seemingly-random events. As we learnt more about nature and discovered more about how things had come to be over the past millions of years we decided gods were responsible for the architecture that made all the natural processes possible, and occasional inexplicable events. This trend has got to the stage where most scientists expect there is a natural explanation for any observable event. The need for any god in an explanation has disappeared.

What about soul or spirit? (I'm prepared to mix these terms because both are poorly defined and virtually impossible to distinguish.) Some ancients believed there was a body-spirit segregation. The spirit contained knowledge and intelligence. It was the supernatural part that would live on after the body had decayed. A more prevalent belief today is that there is a body-mind-spirit segregation. We can assign knowledge and intelligence to mind, and assign our spirit the role of consciousness, self-awareness, supernatural-awareness and life beyond the grave. Hidden underneath this belief is the idea that when our spirit lives on, it will take with us our values, beliefs, intelligence and memories - the things that we think of as being "us". But now science has shown us how our brains' biochemistry explains our memories and our intelligence. The need for spirit as a supernatural explanation is disappearing. The list of functions that will live on after death is getting smaller and smaller.

My behaviour is part hard-wired and part learnt. I have reactions and perceptions that have been shown to be inherent to a human without training. I have behaviours that have been learnt or conditioned by my upbringing. The way I perceive things in the world around me is based on the neural connections made in my brain over many years of life. My skills as a pianist are based on neural connections formed by long hours of practice. My imagination and creativity are attributable to my ability to mix and match ideas from a huge associative memory repository - all residing in my biological brain. If I have a soul and it doesn't have a complete spiritual copy of these memories, then how can my soul retain my values? How can my soul be me? If someone could reprogram your brain so that you lost all your memories and all the acquired skills that made you unique, but made you a completely happy person, would you want it done? I know I wouldn't.

To be continued.

After seeing Reloaded a second time (Reloaded reloaded?) WifeOfVirge suggested I filk the song One from A Chorus Line. This turned out to be harder than I expected. Why? Because the original lyrics from A Chorus Line fit the matrix theme a little too well already. e.g.
(Lyrics: Edward Kleban)
One singular sensation
Every little step he takes.
One thrilling combination
Every move that he makes.
One smile and suddenly nobody else will do;
You know you'll never be lonely with you know who.
One moment in his presence
And you can forget the rest.
For the guy is second best to none, son.
Ooooh! Sigh! Give him your attention.
Do...I...really have to mention
He's the One?

Here is where I got to with the filk:
One matrix simulation
till a tiny pill he takes.
One causal aberration
Every choice that he makes.
He hates that oracle telling him what he'll do
It's just another excuse to try more kung fu.
One, burdened with a purpose
but he never can tell why
'cause he thinks he's just a guy who's fun, hun.
Oooh! He's... frocked up like a priest now,
Do... we... understand this geek tao?
He's the one!

I even entertained the idea of singing it but there are always some questions best left unanswered.

I'm trying my hand at another short story. It's based on the introduction to a much larger work that I scoped out, but hadn't got around to developing further. I took the opening scene and tried to make it into a satisfying story in itself.
Pig

Today I can view my screen with both eyes. My vision doesn't have a bloodshot tinge despite external appearances. I still don't know what caused my eye irritation. It started yesterday morning and got worse through the day. Last night I played the infamous pirate Bloodeye Virge and put an eye patch over my eye because it hurt too much to try using it.
Today it's still swollen and sore, but I can use it. We'll see what the doctor has to say about it.

A picture of Captain Bloodeye the Gross (if you can stomach it).

Ay ay Cap'n Bloodeye, your eye
has made your whole face look awry.
It's not that we're scared.
We were just unprepared
for such grossness, ya know, 'cause we're shy.

The doctor says it's conjunctivitis. He's prescribed some eye drops to cure me of my piracy. It's feeling better already.

It's just as well I spoke to my senior engineers before my 10am R&D managers' meeting. I could present a positive encouraging Monday morning face to each of them before getting the enthusiasm beaten out of me with a large corporate stick. The corporation wants its profits. The corporation can't get its profits from the market place (where, not surprisingly, our competitors are similarly struggling). We must cut costs.
The unionised employees have taken their slice of the pie with a guaranteed set of pay increases to keep them comfortably ahead of inflation. The non-management professional staff had their taste of the pie, although not as generous a serve as for the unions. The managers got 0% unless certain R&D milestones are met by certain dates. The first of those targets was definitely a stretch goal, in the same way that giving birth to a fully grown adult would be a stretch goal -- something has to break. We are now within 1 month of the deadline and all the king's horses and all the king's men have been working overtime for too long. The second milestone (on the same project) might have been achievable had we been able to make the first. The third milestone is on a different project. Meeting this would seem almost achievable if we hadn't chewed up all our resources on the first project. It still looked vaguely possible until we started on the cost cutting e.g. reducing head-count by not replacing personnel losses.
Now at this morning's meeting I hear that all professional staff will be required to take 1 week of annual leave on either the last week of August or the first week of September. Does this save money? Yes (but since we still get paid while on annual leave, it is only shifting figures from one column to another). Do these dates correspond with school holidays? No. Does the plan include people who have already used up their four weeks leave? Yes. Does it lower the chances of meeting milestones? Guess.
Do I feel a bit jaded about my work? Do I feel like a valued employee?
It's a secure job. I work with great people (until they get pissed off and leave). Even with the zero percent pay increase I still get paid enough to live comfortably. It's a job I can do without really having to care.

Did anyone miss seeing the weekend journal entries? Erm... would you believe... they are there but your browser version is not up to date so you can't see them? Would you believe that Gandalf walked over the keyboard and held down the delete key while I wasn't watching? Would you believe my weekend blogs contained anti-Australian sentiments and were censored by government intelligence agents? Actually I spent most of the weekend enjoying a book by Stephen Erikson and just didn't get around to updating my journal.

It works for software problems. Why not for writing?
I just had another of those brain-processing-in-background moments. I was working through a problem with an engineer to make sure he completely understood it before letting him continue debugging. The numerical results were correct up to one point in the analysis, then wrong on the report window. I left him to crawl through the details and find exactly where the problem arose. I grabbed a coffee and started thinking about something else. Ten minutes later... Bing! I found myself distracted by a possible solution to part of the problem. It fitted too well. I checked the erroneous results against my idea. No surprises -- my explanation pointed directly to the coding defect.
After so many years in software development it's not surprising that my subconscious brain has learned how to explore problem spaces and identify useful solutions. If you do anything for long enough (as long as it isn't completely random) your brain remembers and re-uses successful patterns, even though you may not recognise your own improvement.
Now I want to do different tasks with my brain. I want creative ideas from it. I want stories, plots, themes, allusions, humour, pathos, grandeur, warmth and complexity. I want it constantly processing in the background and feeding me with a stream of logically-interconnected entertaining ideas. I want it to tell me how to describe scenes in ways that will soak through into a reader's mind and crystallise into perfectly formed replicas of my imaginings.
Am I asking too much?

Some may have noticed that I am afflicted with a mathematical leaning. I've met a lot of people who can stand straight and tall, knowing what is obviously true based on what they have seen with their own eyes and heard from very reliable friends and mass media. I am crippled with cynicism and an obviously irrational fear of rash generalisation.
Last night I suffered the indignity of not knowing what causes the bulk of the world's infant behaviour problems. A current affairs program was showing the metamorphosis from Brattus Rugrattus to Angelus Rugrattus due only to the application of positive parenting principles. My maternal biological ancestor was sneering at that example and reading a printed-out email about fail-safe diets (from some "mom" who frequents a diet control group that my biological sibling joined) and their remarkably efficacious transformations of child health and behaviour (subjectively evaluated success rate: 100%, sample size: 2).
My depth of ignorance was all too clear. I was only just recently coming to grips with the fact that nearly all of the drugs prescribed to modify behaviour were completely unnecessary and usually made the behaviour problems much worse. I still hadn't even managed to believe that the bananas we had been eating had been enhanced with food dyes to enrich their colour. Here I was, my body almost overflowing with toxins, my children mentally deficient from a lack of Mozart during gestation, my philosophy distorted by a misguided but sinister Darwinistic scientific conspiracy, and I still couldn't accept the truth about child behaviour that was staring me in the face. I remained attentive but silent. My affliction is so debilitating.
Don't let your children be infected by this mathematical leaning. Teach them the truth early in life and save them the trauma.

Ranting? Who's ranting?
Oh yeah... I suppose I was. The sarcasm gives it away.
Terribly sorry. We can't have silly things like imbecilic giants and temporal blowflies every day.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:4

These sons of the Nephilim were still giants by Genesis standards, but hardly remarkable when compared with today's athletes. In the eyes of the nomadic farmers of the time, these men would have seemed 12 foot tall. Extraordinary specimens though they were, their life expectancy was short. They were born with "hero" indelibly stamped on their foreheads, and let's be honest, nobody ever claimed they were mental giants.
It is a little-known fact that the offspring of these giants did not age like their contemporaries. They had no supernatural powers nor superhuman strength -- they were still mortal. Most of them perished in the flood. Some survived for hundreds of years. There are even a few still alive today, but more by sheer luck than any uncanny survival instincts.
The activities of these few remaining ageless ones have been wisely ignored by mainstream human history. After living for five thousand years without making a significant difference to anything or anyone, any reasonably intelligent being should have succumbed to suicidal ennui. Draw your own conclusions.

I can feel a short story coming together. It's about two brothers, Neville and Ralph (or Neffi and Raffi) and their long term feud.

I thought I was getting a cold last night. I started sneezing at about 6:30 for no readily apparent reason. Later last night my nose was starting to get a bit dribbly. As I climbed into bed, blowing my nose as quietly as possible, I resigned myself to waking in the morning with a congested head.
It didn't happen. I'm feeling normal. Maybe I had a touch of hay fever last night.

(from various unknown sources)

I've heard it said that your worst day when you're alive is better than your best day when you're dead. Personally, I think that's just a bunch of crap that dead people say.

I've been a teacher for many years, and some of my non-teacher friends used to say I see the world through rose-colored glasses. I correct them and tell them that I see it through a rose-colored rifle scope. Now they don't seem to bug me about it anymore.

Maybe someone can explain to me why anyone would ever hold a poetry festival somewhere other than Nantucket.

You know your girlfriend's upset with you when you wake up in the morning and watch traffic whiz by on either side of the bed.

What shape is time? (an enigmatic and ultimately unanswerable question from EK's dining room)

Time is the contortion traversed by a dying blowfly
whose wings buzz the rhythm of my days,
whose eyes chase a kaleidoscope of floor-tiles --
endless tessellations spiraling tighter until
impact.
Time is never enough.

I noted last month that there was a short story competition being conducted by my local library. I dusted off The Power and printed it ready to submit. I printed the entry form to include as a cover sheet. As I was filling in the form a thought struck me. Do I sign the declaration of authorship with my real name or my pseudonym? I haven't practised signing my pseudonym - I've only ever typed it. When the form asks for name and address, do I put my real name or my pseudonym? If I should happen to win, they will want to publish the story on the library website complete with the author's name.
I rang the number quoted for competition enquiries to ask for clarification. The thought of any writer not wanting to publish under his/her own name seemed completely foreign to the competition organiser. She took at least a minute to grasp that I was serious about wanting to enter a story under a pseudonym. Maybe it's just me. Maybe pseudonyms are pretentious masks reserved for famous authors. I still don't think it was an unreasonable question to ask. I'll just have to make a special note on the form and hope I'm not bucking their system too much.

There are two computers. Each has a monitor. One of them is about two years old and still had a bright sharp picture. The other - old and cheap and fuzzy. Guess which one died this morning.


Have you seen: The Furry Pillow ?

I gained a new talisman today. It is small enough to fit within the palm of my hand and it glows with a blue light. As I move my fingers over the small protuberances on its surface I see tiny black runes change on its face. It is truly a thing of marvel.
It is a Tune Stone - forged in a mighty silicon foundry. Some call it "The Player of MP3", but it is more than that. It can remember the runes written in other stones. When I insert it into a slot in my standing stone, it transforms itself into a removable disc. With simple incantations I command the Tune Stone to learn the runes from my standing stone, or teach my standing stone the runes stored on the Tune Stone.
This wondrous artefact shall be my new means of transferring arcane lore between home and work. Begone foul floppies! Out, damned CD burner! Avaunt ye vulture-watched company web-connection! I am the master of the Tune Stone and it sings to me as I walk the ever receding Paths of Treadmill.

Today is just little bits of lots of things. Discussing, managing, fixing, reading, planning, eating, writing, farewelling, solving, resolving, more eating, exercising, browsing, chatting... After having a busy day, I can look back and ask "where did the day go?"
What have I got to say for what I have achieved? What is there to talk about? An interesting person would find something small yet quirky in one of the day's obscure moments, then reflect on the microcosm of human experience revealed in it. The boring analyst simply writes about that approach in an abstract sense, realising that his readers will recognise the meta-journaling process that is happening as they read. Some will see this mind game as very Virge. Some will say it's a cheap blog filler. Some may even see hints of self-doubt creeping out of the sub-text and into the subject matter as the process itself becomes its own subject matter. They are all correct (except for those who already got bored or confused and gave up before reaching this point - those people are losers - aren't you glad you're not one of them).

Whenever I am tempted to say "nobody could be that stupid", I force myself to think again.

Nothing much happened at work today.
Move along please. Move along.

A work colleague drew my attention to the animaniacs "I am the very model of a cartoon individual". One of the most filked songs ever in the history of filking is Gilbert & Sullivan's "I am the very model of a modern major-general" from The Pirates of Penzance.
See here for one list. Don't read them all at once. They are better sampled at intervals otherwise the rhythm gets too hypnotic.

There is a lot to be said for silliness - most of it pretty silly. Today's journal entry doesn't pretend to be anything other than completely silly. The subject is "pants". You have been warned.

Pantomime (Pants Ex Machina)

Folks, spare a thought for vain, young Lance,
(with teenage dreams of wild romance)
as he invests in underpants
to buoy his frail ego.

He eye's shop mannequins askance,
and wonders if penile implants
could boost his trousers' occupants
and stud-status bestow.

Those y-fronts smack of tight finance --
of childhood spent with grim, cheap aunts.
They'd surely stymie his advance
on love's presidio.

The tight butt-hugging jockette pants
in titillating circumstance
could bode a stressful comeuppance,
constraining his blood flow.

The silken boxers draw his glance.
He wonders if he'll take the chance
that cute, pink panthers may enhance
his luckless libido.

Observing the superior stance
and mirthful smirks of assistants
who guard the changing-room entrance,
a fitting he'll forego.

Once home he dons his new-bought pants
and, for the mirror, twirls a dance.
But, *gasp* what's that? A huge expanse
of butt-crack left on show!

He rips them off. He yells. He rants.
He huffs and puffs and snorts and pants,
grabs bag and docket...
then recants --
no one need ever know.

He locks the door, then Lance decants
the mystic blood. He murmurs chants
to his fell lord -- the one who grants
him favours here below.

Now we his viewers, rapt in trance,
look on his rite as from a pantheon
of gods whose supplicants
like ants run to and fro.

We hear his prayer. The change is slow.
The silk pink panthers start to glow.
Lance, trembling, tugs them on...
but whoa!
They won't come off again. Oh no!
His voice is strange; he's grown a mo --
we've turned him into Jacques Clouseau!

Virge: "This is where I put thoughts, snippets of verse, memories of what has happened during the day etc. It is not a public outpouring of my deepest secrets. It is the stuff that I would discuss with anyone interested enough to ask. Since you are reading this journal, you fit this description."
Reader: "Aren't you worried that people you write about might read this?"
Virge: "I would be very pleased if they did. It would mean they were taking an interest in what I write."
Reader: "What? No sordid secrets? No juicy exposés?"
Virge: "Afraid not. Well, not unless you ask nicely."