Wednesday 27 February 2008

Descent once more

Went along to the London Blogger's meet last night. Without Aref-Adib, my chum from work, I flailed miserably with my poor social skills. Sat in silence listening to the chap who does this, then chatted to some other guy about search engine optimisation for a few minutes.

I've been doing it wrong, maybe intentionally. Part of me pulls towards trying to get as much traffic as possible at any cost, and part of me pulls towards just doing my own thing, giving no concessions to the crowd. Which just leaves everything I do being a little crap.

Text message from Fiona saying she was going to the Comet Gain gig, so I grabbed my jacket and fled the bloggers. Why is Waterloo station so big? Got to The Enterprise about ten minutes after I'd said I'd meet Fi. She wasn't there, but Comet Gain were just starting. Now they were one of my favourite bands until I last reset my Last.Fm account, but last night they were a little pants, the vocals were muffled and uneven, they guy couldn't remember the names of the words to his songs, the folk onstage seemed pretty unfamiliar with it all. The crowd loved them mind.

Ooh, I saw Kate from Glasgow, we said hi briefly, but I lost my bottle and ran outside to wait on Fiona. Quick phone call to say she'd be there in five minutes and an hour later she turns up with Kerry and we catch the last half of The Wave Pictures, tonight's headline act. They sounded a little like Hefner, with more Brett from Suede vocals. I liked them untilthey played about seven songs too many. It was knackering stuff, but again the crowd loved them, singing along all through.

Cocked up getting the train home, wrong branch of the Northern Line and ended up in Bank.

I got home starving and disinclined to do anything online. For some reason the flat's aol connection is a bit ropey, I can't access hotmail, MS messenger, youtube, indienudes, myspace and a few others unless I use youhide.com.

This chap posted a comment one of my flickr pictures and whilst the comment was positive and encouraging, I clicked through to look at his own stuff and it completely blew me away. Its what I want to do, but miles better than I can do. My post-it notes stuff has reached a plateau, the art's not getting any better in biro, I'm just churning out pictures that look very similar. It stops in May.

I was just dozing off 1am when I woke up, it sounded like the folk next door were having pretty energetic sex, the final thrusts against a wall, shaking the building. Damn them.

Text message from mother the next morning, earthquake, 5.3 on the Richter Scale

Thursday 21 February 2008

Toothbrushless

Its pushing me over the edge, there is no logical explanation. I'm just clinging on desperately to chance and probability theory.

Someone chucked my toothbrush away, they chucked it in the bathroom bin, I saw it nestled amongst the used things, the disposed of thing, the grotty things. It was irretrievable.

toothbrush

There has been a consistent flow of flatmates through my flat since I moved in eight months ago. The bathroom is home to twelve different toothbrushes, including mine. Some probably haven't been used for years, but without in depth time and motion studies, who knows.

It took me a day or two to get a new one from the supermarket, that age old mind bending choise of which toothbrush to get, how many fancy innovations that make the twice daily teethbrushing exercise more effective. It was red, firm, from Oral-B.

I got it home, had my dinner and after three days in the wilderness brushed my teeth.

Evening spent drawing, and doing laundry, but marvelling at my new toothbrush, I used it again just before I went to bed.

Six hours later, I stumble out of bed, shower myself and reach to brush my teeth.

And its gone.

My brand new toothbrush, there no more.

Eleven other toothbrushes all in their usual places. But my new toothbrush - gone.

Not in the bin or on the floor or rolled under the linen basket or in the shower. Just gone.

Why?

Why would anyone chuck out or otherwise remove my toothbrush and not any of the others?

It makes no sense.

This has really unsettled me.