My Middle Class Orgasms

(Anyone who is related to me, or who works with me, may care to look away for the duration of this post, as I fearlessly throw my editorial policy to the wind...)

It's been a long time since I stopped reading Cosmopolitan, and you don't get too many articles about the female orgasm in Wired or the Economist, so I don't know if this is common or not. But essentially, all you need to know (although you may feel that you didn't need to know this at all) is that at times of - ahem - intense sexual pleasure, I hallucinate.

These aren't your run-of-the-mill swirly psychedelic visuals, of the sort produced by illicit hallucinogens. Oh no. They're much more refined than that. More refined, and more materialistic. And quite design-led. So refined, materialistic and design-led, in fact, that sometimes it's a bit like watching a film of A Rebours directed by the art editor of Elle Decoration.

Here, by way of example, are some of my frequently-recurring coital visions:

• A lovely Elizabethan knot garden



• A lovely Elizabethan knot garden under the snow



• An entire collection of retro Marimekko-style furnishing fabric



• A flotilla of steampunk airships in the style of Fornasetti



• A set of cushions with bold art naif flower prints



• Some nice candy-coloured notebooks with a treeline silhouette motif

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this, other than that my brain has somehow accidentally got wired up to Condé Nast. I don't know whether I'm inadvertently producing issues of House and Garden, or they're streaming back copies of World of Interiors straight into my head, but either way it's an arrangement that works for me. You can never see enough nice stationery, in my opinion.

Next week: My Middle Class Dreams, starring Florence Broadhurst and Nigel Slater.

A Short Post About Films

'I know,' said the lovely Mr BC, 'let's watch All Known Films In Which A Body Part Is Severed And Then Comically Mislaid, And In Which A Large Spider Also Gets On A Woman.'

And so it came to pass that last night we watched low-budget Brit-horror-action-comedy Severance, and high-budget Raymond Chandler homage Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. And both of them were great.

Everyone must see Severance, for not only is it surprisingly gripping and yet also pleasingly funny, and not only is Danny Dyer very likeable in it, and not only does a cute blonde chick get to smack up baddies with a big stick, but it was also written by one of us, namely a blogger, namely the mighty James Moran. And a fine job he has done too.

Also I liked Kiss Kiss Bang Bang because it has good colours. And because someone mentions a talking monkey that comes from the future and only says 'ficus', which is the best line in a film ever.

You can see why I don't really do film reviews.

Ontological Grief

The real me has been muscling in on Patroclus's territory of late, which is causing the pair of us all kinds of ontological grief.

The real me used to have the good grace to stay off the internet, choosing instead to sit in a swanky office writing brochures about software packages that do boring, menial things that humans don't like doing.

But the real me was envious of the fun Patroclus was having, with her blog and her wonderful online friends. Perhaps inevitably, the real me bred an army of emergent nanobots, who generated a software package that generates brochures about software packages that do boring, menial things humans don't like doing.

With nanobots now safely in charge of client service, the real me escaped on to the internet to play havoc with my own sense of a single, unified self.

The real me now has her own blog, and her own profile on Twitter. And just as Patroclus fears that one day her 'real' identity will be revealed, the real me fears that one day she will be unmasked as Patroclus.

In some places, the safety curtain between us is already looking distinctly threadbare. Lots of people know at least one of Patroclus's real names. Patroclus and the real me write on similar topics. The real me occasionally accidentally comments as Patroclus, and vice versa. Lexical fingerprinting experts could link us in seconds, probably using this very post.

I'm just hoping we stay separate for long enough to run into each other online. In theory it could be a beautiful friendship - we have so much in common - but I have a suspicion that we don't actually like each other all that much. The mischievous postmodernist in me is really looking forward to finding out.


UPDATE: If anyone can shed any light on what Dante Gabriel Rossetti was trying to express with that doppelgänger painting up there, I'd be most grateful. My book about the Pre-Raphaelites is rotting away in the cellar of my French house, and the so-called 'information supernet' is annoyingly unforthcoming on the subject.

Squeee!

George Clooney is apparently making a mini-series of The Diamond Age!

Hmm, I'd better actually read it, then, eh?

EnglishWatch

Especially for Pashmina*

I saw this notice sellotaped to the automatic doors of Chiswick M&S today:

The automatic doors are not working at this current time. Please use the other doors.

Please don your deconstruction helmets and prepare to march on M&S HQ wielding sawn-off copies of the Economist Style Guide.


* Whom it was lovely to see at the already legendary GW convention on Saturday, along with fellow bloggers and commenters Aimee, cello, ducatilady, Heather, Marsha Klein, realdoc and many, many more...top day all round!

Forty-Eight Hours Earlier

There are many sensible reasons why I should have found it difficult to get out of bed and go to work on Monday. Some of them are as follows:

1. It was cold.

2. It was dark.

3. It was raining.

4. I'd just come back from holiday.

5. The bed was nice and warm.

6. Also, there was a very attractive man in it.

7. My laptop was still broken.

8. I had a thrilling article to write about internal helpdesk systems for banks.


However, none of these things was going to prevent me from springing from the bed at 6am like a newborn gazelle and embracing the promise and joy of the first day back at work. Oh no. But I hadn't really bargained for reason number nine:


9. Fear of zombies.


I probably shouldn't have watched the first twenty minutes of 28 Days Later on Sunday evening. Then I wouldn't have spent the whole of Sunday night having terrible dreams about being chased across Turnham Green by the living dead and (as if that wasn't scary enough!) divebombed by zombie lapwings.

By the time the alarm went off I was still terrified, and refused to leave the flat before it got light, lest I be pursued along Chiswick High Road by shuffling yummy mummies and their undead tots.

Tonight I shall watch Season Two of the O.C., and pray that I don't have dreadful nightmares about being hounded by hordes of skinny comic book geeks sporting faintly subversive indie-band t-shirts.

Although, on second thoughts, that might not be so terribly bad...

Readers: Your Stories Needed

Woo hey yeah (as we thirtysomethings say when we wish to appear hip), I have commandeered the blue cat iBook while its unsuspecting owner is in the bath.

Today I was thinking about my book, and then I remembered that I don't agree with books, as they are simply products of the capitalist machine, designed to manipulate the masses into handing their money over to evil publishing corporations that are probably all ultimately owned by Rupert Murdoch, only disguised as something rewarding and cultural, even though most of them are by 'Sophie Kinsella' and therefore not rewarding and cultural at all, but rather just a list of other products of the capitalist machine designed to manipulate the masses into handing over their money for things that are even less rewarding and cultural, and then I came round and found that I was walking very fast towards Chiswick, mouthing the words to that acid house remix of 'Personal Jesus', and scattering old ladies and infants in buggies in my haste.

Then I persuaded myself that if I did get a book published, it would probably be morally OK if I also serialised it online for free, and that's when I thought I could really do with enlisting the help of my blog readers.

If you've read this far, you shall now reap your reward, because this is where we get to the audience participation bit.

My book (should it be published, or indeed written), is about how the 'participatory internet' has changed life in Britain. And for this, I need your stories and anecdotes about how it has changed things for you.

By 'the participatory internet', I mean anything that's online in which you actively participate, rather than just looking or reading. So, if you write a blog, or take part in chat forums, or put your own music or videos (original or 'mashed-up') online, or post reviews of things on websites, or even email or instant message people, can you think about how this has changed your life, and either let me know in the comments, or send me an email at quadrireme at googlemail dot com?

It doesn't have to be a massive, earth-shattering kind of change; trivial stuff will be just as interesting, if not more so. And although I said I'm interested in how things have changed in Britain, I might change that, so even if you don't live in Britain, please do still let me know.

If this comes to any sort of fruition, I will of course solicit your proper permission before anything is published.

Gentle readers, I thank you in advance, and look forward to receiving your stories.

Still AFK

Laptop still dead, back soon. I hope.

Resolutions

1. Write a book! Woo, yeah, it will be the best book ever, about the internet and stuff, and everyone will want to read it, except newspaper lifestyle columnists, who won't want to read it because it will contain UNPALATABLE TRUTHS.

2. Erm, that's it.


PS Happy New Year!

AFK

Well, the laptop is officially dead, and I feel like I'm practically dead, so it's time for a break.

First I am going to walk up the hill, then I am going to get on a plane, then I am going to get on a train, and then I am going to go into hiding with a book about prime numbers and a book about cholera, and not come out until the 8th Jan.

Happy New Year the lot of you!


UPDATE: I've just realised that this means I won't be on MSN during the GW feature-length special (10pm, C4, Thurs 4th Jan) after all. Bugger. Rest assured I will be with you in spirit, fellow GW aficionados.

UPDATE 2: Also, I urge all and sundry to join in with Tim's chapter-by-chapter critical deconstruction of the dreadful adverb-fest that is The Da V*nci C*de, for which he has set up a special blog and everything. The fun begins on Jan 1, perfect for your New Year hangovers.

Happy Christmas Blogchums!

No doubt I will be blogging right through the festive season*, like the trooper (read: no-life saddo) that I am, but I just wanted to wish a very happy Christmas and New Year to all of you lovely readers, fellow bloggers, commenters and lurkers.

It's been another odd year for me, and you've all been instrumental in cheering me up through the bad bits and making the good bits even better. Thanks to each and every one of you, and I hope you all have a lovely time, whatever you're doing and whoever you're doing it with!

I look forward to reading your comedy Christmas deconstructions and New Year's resolutions in due course. And to catching up with me London-based blogging chums when I'm back in the big city in January.

Patroclus xxx


Oo, look at that, kisses and everything. Has my mum spiked my tea?


* This was an optimistic prediction, made before my laptop succumbed to a festive virus, and I succumbed to a festive bout of unhappiness that prevents me from blogging. Normal service will be resumed at some point, though, I'm sure.

Monkey Songs Redux

(I don't even know what 'redux' means*; it just sounds good.)

Betty brought this one to my attention. Apparently it's *the* electro-house club anthem of 2006, but I wouldn't know about that, because I haven't been near a nightclub since that unfortunate incident with the angels and the ceiling and the TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE FEAR.

But it's by Justice vs Simian, and 'simian' means 'like a munkle', so it counts as a monkey song and is therefore relevant. And by crikey, it is ace.


Justice vs Simian - We Are Your Friends (mp3) - [Buy from Amazon]


If it doesn't put a stupid big grin on your face, I don't know what will.

Oh and there is quite a good video too, including some splendid slow-motion cat-jumping** action, but you will have to go to Betty's to see that, because we don't hold with nasty newfangled moving pictures here on the good ship Quinquireme.


* I don't know what 'gestalt' means, either.

** Not the same as 'cat wronging', for anyone here from the UKMHOF board.

Up The Twitter

At six twenty pm I go on to twitter.com, because apparently it's what all the cool people are doing.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do there.

Apparently you type into a box what you're doing right now, and then you can see what everyone else is doing right now. I type something suitably pretentious into a box, and then I look at what everyone else is doing.

Everyone else is mainly cooking dinner and listening to Hot Chip on their iPods. I fight the temptation to type into a box 'Hot Chip are, like, *so* 2005! You should be listening to Lindstrom*, dweebs!', because a) I am not fifteen, and b) these people were on twitter.com before me, ergo they are cooler than me, even if they are listening to Hot Chip on their iPods.

I type into the void a bit more.

Nothing happens.

A bloke called Mathew is wondering what's so good about twitter.com.

So am I.

I reckon everyone else is just pretending to know what's so cool about it, while they cook dinner and listen to Hot Chip on their iPods.

Mathew wonders if it's because he doesn't have any friends.

I almost offer to be his friend. Then I think that might be a terrible breach of Twitter etiquette ('twitiquette'), and some of the people on there have been there since, ooh, last week at least! They might gather round me and Mathew in a circle and laugh, and taunt, and chant 'you love him, you love him'.

'Twitter is more fun with friends!' says the blurb. Going by the available evidence, I consider that this statement may have merit.

I email James to see if he wants to go on it, luring him with the promise of a site that's so inconsequentially solipsistic it makes blogging look like War and Peace and the Red Cross rolled into one.

Strangely this doesn't work.

In a last ditch attempt to get to grips with it, I inform the Twitter crowd that I am 'moping'.

Nothing happens.

I go and cook the dinner, without listening to Hot Chip on my iPod.

It is now eight sixteen pm. In Twitter time ('twime'), about seven years have passed. Mathew probably now has thirty-eight thousand friends and a column in the Guardian.

'This typing what you're doing into a box malarky, it'll never catch on', I think to myself.

I sit down at my laptop and fire up Blogger.


* Or is it Prins Thomas? I can't keep up.

Three Monkeys

Here are three songs with 'monkey' in the title, hand-picked from my enormous archive of monkey-themed songs.

In true local radio stylee I'm dedicating these to LC, because he needs his mind taking off things, and songs about monkeys are just the thing, I reckon. But everyone else please do feel free to dig in too.

Barry Adamson - The Monkey Speaks His Mind (m4a) - [Buy from Amazon]
Sinister, growly jazz noir, with lyrics I'm not sure I want to listen to all that closely. And screaming. Lots of terrible, anguished screaming, of the sort that you might hear echoing around the Italian marble walls of the loos in Cipriani. Brilliant.

Not sure who - Monkey Gone To Heaven (mp3)
Ahh, the Pixies were great, weren't they? Of course, they would have been even better if they'd booted out Frank Black and drafted in Frank Sinatra. Wouldn't they?

The Emperor Machine - Monkey Overbite (mp3) - [Buy from Amazon]
It's all about epic psychedelic space disco for winter 06-07, kids, and here is a fine example of the genre. I heartily advise you to pull on your silver platform moonboots, project some swirly lava shapes on to what's left of your specialist-polished plaster walls, and get down.


BONUS NON-MONKEY-RELATED TRACK, as requested by Aimee:

Don't know who this is either - Wave Of Mutilation (mp3)


Next up: five songs about axolotls, hand-picked from my enormous archive of axolotl-themed songs.

Blogworld 1, Evening Standard 0

Seeing Stef the Engineer's comment on the previous post reminded me that I've been meaning to write about blog posts I've read that have stuck in my mind.

I might do a proper Review Of The Year In Blogworld later on, but I want to mention this one now, just because it's timely.

Compare these two tales of disaster* survival:

1. My Tornado Hell (from the Evening Standard, via Blue Cat)

2. Stef and the Kobe Earthquake (from Shoot The Messenger)

Any hacks out there still want to claim that journalists are the better storytellers, or that bloggers are the vacuous, self-obsessed ones?


* That's if you subscribe to the view that the Kensal Rise tornado was a 'disaster'. I'm not sure that the loss of a fully insured Cath Kidston carpet and some tangerines is quite in the same league as, say, Hurricane Katrina, but you know what I mean. I'd also be grateful if anyone could provide any insight as to what exactly might have been going on in the mind of Caroline Phillips as she wrote this. Did she really think it was going to inspire sympathy? Admiration? A chick-lit book deal? I'm completely at a loss to understand.


UPDATE: For anyone thinking this article is a spoof, here is an actual picture of it (what I nicked from someone on this forum; thank you, person on that forum!):

Pop Cult

As ordained in the scriptures, I am now Patroclus MA (Pop Cult). Woo! Who wants in? You get to wear pink robes and worship at the shrine of Baudrillard and everything. Polygamy is optional.


UPDATE: To mark this rite of passage, I am declaring a full-on Qualification Amnesty. Please therefore take this opportunity to list your qualifications in the comments. I want the lot!

The Colossus Of Prades

If you liken the human brain to a computer (which is something I like to do a lot), mine is the reconstruction of the Colossus that those two unassuming chaps are working on out the back of Bletchley Park.

This is not because my brain is massive, revolutionary, or the first of its kind. Oh no. Quite the opposite. My brain is like the Colossus because it is devoting a vast amount of computational resource to processing just two questions, which are being repeatedly fed into it on an endless stream of ticker tape:

1. Will I have to move to the rural south of France permanently?

2. If so, how will the rest of my life play out?

There's no way yet of answering either of these questions, but this doesn't stop my brain from endlessly processing, processing, processing. Lying awake at night, processing. Walking in the countryside, processing. Having a bath, processing. Cooking dinner, processing.

There are a lot of things that are worse than moving to the rural south of France. Thousands of Brits do it all the time. Then they write gushing books about it, or articles in the Sunday Times, which attract other Brits, like the bodies of dead ants attracting increasing numbers of live ants. The weather is usually quite nice. The countryside is beautiful. The hedgerows are full of rosemary and thyme and lavender and pears and hares and snakes and shrews. My house is rustic and cosy. The food is cheap and tasty, the coffee is great, the views are fantastic, and the neighbours are forever bringing home-made pies and cakes round.

Wait a second, why don't I want to move here again?


ALSO: Note to Realdoc - I can't comment on your blog at all at all at all, which is really annoying me.

Do Geeks Dream Of Lego Sheep?

Courtesy of the lovely Mr BC, I have a fantastic lego advent calendar.

In my enthusiasm I managed to completely destroy it before I figured out how it worked, at one point laying bare all of the little lego sets incubating in the cells behind each of the doors. It was nothing a bit of hasty sellotaping and folding couldn't fix, though, and the calendar is now functioning as it should.

However, recently the calendar has started behaving suspiciously, as if it knows as much about the inner workings of my life as I know about its.

Yesterday morning, for example, door no. 8 yielded up a festive hospital bed, complete with drip. Yesterday afternoon, I had to take my mum to the hospital (scheduled visit, nothing alarming), where a certain amount of time was spent lying about on a spookily similar bed, watching the news about the festive rail strikes in Clermont-Ferrand.

This morning, door no. 9 revealed a little hospital desk and computer, featuring a fancy adjustable flat-screen monitor. Eerily, today I am writing a brochure about healthcare computerisation (pace Realdoc).

I'm leaving for the airport at 6.15am tomorrow, but there will probably be time for me to open door no. 10 before I go. I'm just hoping I don't get one of these:


Because that would just be way too scary.


UPDATE: Look! This Matt also has the lego advent calendar! And he's put lego Anakin Skywalker on his hospital bed, whereas I've put lego Draco Malfoy on mine! And my lego doctor also put his briefcase in the luggage x-raying machine! It's things like this that restore my faith in humankind.

UPDATE 2: Ooh, I got a bit overexcited there. Anyone would think I was quite looking forward to my little sojourn in London Town.

Blighty

After six long weeks in exile, I'm just about to make good my escape back to the land of Marmite and Twinings Earl Grey, to stock up on...er...Marmite and Twinings Earl Grey. And to check that the lovely Mr BC and I still like each other*. And to meet some people in Hungerford. And to pitch some dreadfully fashionable Web 2.0 malarky to some people in Reading. And to go to the work Christmas party. And to see Tunng and Viva Voce play in Brick Lane, if anyone fancies coming along on Monday evening.

My reward for all this frivolity is a 3.30am taxi back to Stansted on Wednesday morning, and the exile commences once more...


* Which apparently we do. Awww.

Everything I've Been Taught By Men

Here is the COMPLETE, UNABRIDGED and ALPHABETICAL list of everything I have learned about from my four serious boyfriends over the last 15 years:

Acid house, Isaac Asimov, avoiding being killed by hippos, Belgian hardcore, canoeing, class As, football, Joseph Heller, the internet as a metaphor for the hive mind, investment banking, making jewellery, the Mandelbrot set, MMORPGs, object-oriented programming, pool, science fiction tropes, RPGs, skiing, Neal Stephenson, techno, Visual Basic, Kurt Vonnegut, when to change gear.


UPDATE: Well, I never considered this would become a meme, but lots of other people have had a go, and the resulting lists are incredibly eclectic and endlessly fascinating. Have a look at Chaucer's Bitch, Extemporanea, Great She Elephant, Loganoc, Realdoc and Spinsterella, for a start...