DR RUTH ON CASUALTY IS GOING CRACKERS. I saw her last night on BBC1. I watched the entire long long thing it was longer than comfortable. It drove me mad too.
I don't know what was eating me last night, I got really upset in an odd mentalist way (not the way I used to feel upset before). Which doesn't make me feel good. I feel whatever went wrong is still going wrong but medication is blocking some of it out. That if I wasn't on those meds I'd be totally crazy.
I'm not sure that's true but that's how I felt. I was really going into one. I had drunk 2 or 3 cups of tea and the caffeine seemed to disagree with me. I think I'm going to have to switch to decaffeinated. Tea is my way of avoiding alcohol, so it doesn't feel good to be avoiding it. Also I like tea more than cigarettes and THAT is saying something!
I didn't use heroin last night. I didn't even look for a needle. I don't need heroin.
What I felt last night was a desperation I do not like to feel. I wasn't "depressed" if I was anything I was going too fast and hyper. But my body was exhausted, so I slept eventually and slept for hours. Zopiclone (sleeper) and risperidone (antipsychotic) helped.
I woke up feeling calm and clear but this is the issue. I keep telling myself I'm OK then I realize I am not.
I don't know what I'm going to do.
*******
I am definitely going to AA; I want their Big Book.
*******
PS: £200 in free bets? I was talking about this yesterday. I think I was getting wires crossed. It was £10. I played a £200 game in Fantasy Money. Dur!
THIS IS WHY YESTERDAY WAS LAZY. It's all happening today. Too much to do!
AKH I'VE GOT TO GO OUT IN A SEC. Got an appointment with a woman down a disused mine or somewhere. She's sorting out my paperwork re the council..? Something. If I'd been "all vague" like that a few years ago I'd have just not wanted you to know. Now I just do not know. Haven't a clue about any of it. Fed up of being an adult baby (not in the fetish sense though ~ you ever seen that one? I saw it on telly. Grown woman putting a man in nappies (diapers). Most hilarious.) Now what was I saying?
O yeah I've got to run out. Gotta go chemist. Gotta see this lady down a disused dripping mine shaft to sort out my paperwork. I can't remember where I actually see her. Somewhere I have a map, but it's gone... I can get their phone number. From somewhere.
By the way I must complain about the voices in the German version of ghost. Now either I was hallucinating floridly through the auditory "faculty" or these really were the voices coming from my telly. They all sound like TV presenters! With that Standard German Accent, which is like standard English from Britain or the USA. Whichever you think of, it's pretty characterless. I expected Whoopi Goldberg at least to sound like a True Berliner, but no! Sounds like she's just knocked off a shift reading the 6 o'clock news on ARD. Plus they didn't sound anything like the original actors. Whatever dubbed film you watch the actors always sound the same.
At least British dubbing has some character. Greatest dubbed drama of all time is the NHK-produced Monkey（aka Monkey Magic), a Japanese rendition of Chinese traditional Buddhist folk tales. It was on childrens' TV in the 1970s. It was on nighttime telly, where I was again glued to it, in the late 90s or early 2000s. My favourite characters where Trippy-something or other [Tripitaka] (young woman playing a little boy) and Pigsy who's more interested in eating magic dumplings than actually saving the day...(!)
LYNN: i made a real hash of my answer to you last night. I meant to say: ~ sorry I don't know about GPs ~ supervised is not a good way of getting control over your dose ~ you shouldn't feel ill mornings ~ then again they want you not to do gear; you crave it; they're giving an inflexible dose, so what are you going to do except use on top...?
hey that's better!
AGE OF LOVE: AGE OF LOVE (SVEN VATH MIX) this is beautiful, that tune that goes "come on dance with me, move your body..." better mix than that long jam & spoon one, or the official video
I THOUGHT I WAS running out of energy, having spent most of the night awake, then pinging down the chemist for my methadone, then going home, then having a black coffee for energy (physically tired), then another coffee, then having the most fun cleaning I've ever had in my life. Then feeling physically like I was on speed. Then feeling like I was going to have a panic attack.
Physically exhausted, I put myself to bed, saying "you are ill, and you are mentally ill, lie down, this will pass" ~ so I slept the expected two hours till it sounded like Loose Women or Doctors was on (different channels; couldn't have been both) ... I put the covers over me like a tent and slept some more, aching all over and genuinely feeling ill. Then I got up feeling so hungry I was sick. I seem to have lost a stonein weight: or the scales I found on the street were inaccurate. I've no idea. [One stone is 14 lbs or about 6.5kg.]
This evening I did some irritating little things I had to. Then shopping. Morrisons supermarket. Tex Mex pizza. Best ever. The self service till was like a robot at a hardcore rave. Please please scan (an) the next itemplease scan WAIT FOR AN ASSISTANT!!) lots of fun. And that pizza is amazing. I only had chips (which are Iceland American style curly fries (do they actually have curly fries in America? These are lovely). Then Holby City (hospital drama) came on. I missed EastEnders.
I'm scanning the radio for decent pirate stuff. The drum and bass they're playing sounds a good 17 years old! Proper Ragga Jungle. That's what I'm looking for.
Drink is down to 2 cans at 7.5% ABV ie 1 litre. It's up to 85p a can! Will this torment never cease??!! Nah, don't wanna be a drinker all my life. The alcohol is GOING!
Now I have to not drink coffee, which I appear to be hypersensitive to. I mean this was full on speeding on TWO cups normal one heaped teaspoon. Coffee has never been quite that strong before. I mean, this was physical, hence the anxiety. The highest hyper highs I have had have been totally out of sync with any coffee drinking. E.g. the Mental Hospital Day ~ hadn't had a cup for five hours. Had only had one or possibly two. Don't need caffeine. Nicotine has to go as well. Cigarettes are a terrible poison. Why should I be dependent on outside drugs to poison myself.
Now I have to finish what I barely started that is clearing crap I don't know what is relevant or not. No I'm not allowed a flamethrower, which would make clearing up far easier. Yeah yeah highly irresponsible I know so it's boring old chucking out. Let me indulge a fantasy once or twice. So now the hunt is on for Proper "Old Skool" as they call it to make me feel ancient (ie hardcore rave 1991, 1992) or Ragga Jungle (probably won't find that) or ancient sounding but probably modern rapid drum & bass with an overgrown schoolboy running out of rhymes on top.
Traaaaaaaa!!!! How are y'all. See I'm not irritably ranting tonight. Clean clean clean and cleaner. Clean me clean up. Live a clean life. Clean and Serene. That's me goal ;-)
21:29 London Radio: Eh, the Greek stuff ain't bad... 01:22 hrs Love FM Live .com (lovefmlive.com) good garage after midnight
UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS has just just finished on reapeat. The original was only on a few hours ago. This was a classic TV serial about servants and posh people in a London townhouse from my childhood. Now the BBC have brought it back with the same actress playing Rose. If you're across the Pond and get BBC America, watch this, it's A1 costume drama. I like a good costume drama but it does have to be good. Upstairs Downstairs is even better than Downton Abbey. Next week that dreadful Larkrise to Nowhere is back on I cannot stand that.
I've been watching night time television. Prince Charles showed us his bird-chirping garden. The feathery little entertainers were singing their tiny hearts out for the heir to the throne. I'd like a garden like that, but I'd go for 10,000 acres, not just 15.
Now enough about television I have just had pasta in Lloyd Grossman tomato sauce. My Mum bought me the pasta sauce. Normally I'd buy Ragu. A Ragu means you can have five times as many tomatoes as weight as they're evaporated down in an oven dish. Welshcakes Limoncello probably knows how to do this. Her Xmas dinner pictures at her friend's house are amazing.
Now I'm in a buzzy mood. Having woken up feeling vile and dire. Like death warmed up. I said I was cleaning and I did have a stab at it but I basically felt ill so I went back to bed in the afternoon and slept till 9pm. Now I'm up and racing nicely. No I have NOT been taking amphetamines or any other drugs. It's just a natural mood swing. I'm only drinking for medicinal reasons. Keeps the jangly edge off. Now I must go I have to scrub this ******* floor. ******* houses. ******* landlord. ******* life. **** **** **** ****! See I'm being awfully prim by depriving you of my obscenity tirade.
I have to go. Keeping moving keeps me UP. And UP gets the cleaning done. I am crystal clear and shining. Gotta move gotta move gotta MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE!!
Do you like my blue smiling face? Isn't it amazing. Blue is the best colour. There's nothing unhappy about blue. Blue is a high by itself. Cool blue .... 4:14am: a catalogue of freak accidents in the US. 8 homeless people burned to death in New Orleans, 5 teenagers asphyxiated in Florida motel, 8 injured in ski lift disaster in Maine ...
Oh yeah and a riot at a Moscow airport due to no de-icing spray (no: staff probably drank it!)
HOW TO WRAP A CAT FOR XMAS This film, with 4,000,000 views so far, provoked "outrage" among humourless animal charities who seem to spend most of their existence flailing about for something to be upset and offended about. I hope they really got their money's worth from this because it's hilarious:
A NEW COSTUME DRAMA hit our screens tonight. Downtown Abbey on ITV.In common with the BBC's dreary, bourgeois Larkrise to Candleford, it's an original, not based on any classic novel.* But it's quite good. A modern Upstairs Downstairs. And it stars Dame Maggie Smith. If you're reading this on foreign shores, keep a look out for it. If you like historical drama, you'll probably like this. I think historical is the only stuff produced for British TV that's in the same league as the best American telly.
My one gripe with the genre is its tendency to reinterpret the past in the light of modern (politically correct) outlooks. For example the master of the house objects to a war-wounded servant being referred to as a cripple. "I hate that word." But in those days that was the expression; nothing condescending or insulting was meant by it. Here's the trailer. Perhaps someone'll load a longer extract to Youtube by next week ...
*that statement isn't quite true: according to the BBC's website, Lark Rise is based on Flora Thompson's memoir of her Oxfordshire childhood...
THE WOUND ON MY LEG is less manky since I stopped covering it up and have been cleaning it with alcoholic ("pre-injection") swabs every few hours. It isn't oozing chocolate sauce, just a hint of strawberry. It still smells like a drain, just not as strong. My wound and I are off to hospital tomorrow to see what the emergency doctors think of it...
I hope y'all had a cheery weekend. What are you doing next week? I'm making a start cleaning my life up in a literal sense. My house is a mess. I have that festering sore on my leg. Not a clean stitch to wear. I have to wash my jeans as they've absorbed pus down the leg. So I'm starting by laundering my clothes so I can skulk into casualty (that's the ER to you Americans) looking at least vaguely respectable. Then I'll get the wound seen to and hopefully dressed. Then I can set about cleaning my house. It was cleaning my house that set it off last time, with things knocking into it making it bleed. It's been itching lately. Itching is a good sign with these things; in my experience it tends to mean they're healing.
ROLL UP ROLL UP FOR A GOOD LAUGH! Eastenders is prime time soap here in the UK.It's probably unique in that it attracts (or used to in its heyday) a roughly 50:50 male-female demographic. In these scenes Phil Mitchell, moody bullying alcoholic "hardman" of Albert Square gets trashed on crack for the very first time. He is with Rainie Cross, the addict sister of Tanya Branning. This is my first time watching somebody on a drug I (used to) love without it setting off some sort of craving. In fact it made me feel a bit sick. I would say the unrealistic thing about this scene is that people on crack don't generally laugh hysterically. In fact, they don't laugh at all...*
And here's Phil just on the lovely old drink... Shouldn't laugh, but this is hilarious:
AMY WINEHOUSE AND PETE DOHERTY WASTED If this ain't them, it's too v accurate lookielykies... And yes that's baby mice they're picking up and playing with. Which you shouldn't do, because the mother might refuse to feed them if they smell of human
*By the way the last thing you want to do is exercise someone whose heart is going haywire on crack. Walking people round is a supposed antidote to heroin overdose. What you should actually do is make sure they are breathing and that the airways are clear. If they stop breathing you'll need to recussitate mouth-to-mouth. Call an ambulance, say somebody has fallen unconscious and cannot be roused. Don't mention drugs. British police are highly unlikely to take an interest in drug overdoses. In fact I've never even heard of anyone getting "busted" for "going over". What I have heard of is people dying because their mates were too scared to call an ambulance in case they got into trouble ....
A TALENT was originally a weight of silver or gold and hence a sum of money. The word entered our language via the Parable of the Talents in the Bible. (Matthew 24:14-30; Luke 19:12-28.)
Spiritual interpretations aside a Talent is something valuable which it's up to us to use and not take for granted. Talented people have made the world a lot of what it is. Talent can change the world again.
Talent should never be wasted.
I was wondering why I felt increasingly uptight about what I saw as other people's "waste of talent". Michael Jackson who could sing so well hardly ever really showed off his voice. He was also a more than capable actor (see yesterday). But he never starred in a feature-film. MJ was said to have a thing about ET, and he knew Stephen Spielberg. Imagine what could have been achieved if Jacko and Spielberg had got together...
As we all know, Michael Jackson's career was all but ruined by child abuse allegations. He achieved more than any other musical star of his or any other generation. And yet...
He died in a drugged-out haze.
If you want to hear him singing a song named Morphine, click here.
Whitney Houston's voice was one of the wonders of the world. (Far better than Mariah Carey. Screaming an octave over top C is not a talent. That's like having extra long fingers or a third nipple. That ain't music, that's freakery.)
I'm more than amenable to middle of the road music, though it's not always my favourite. The only Whitney song I really like, from the first half of her career is the Dolly Parton cover I Will Always Love You. This morning (for some reason) I had Saving All My Love for You swirling round my head when I was buying Value Thin Bleach (20p) from Morrisons...
In the 1990s, having made her name and fortune, she went R&B and did put down a few tracks that are not only memorable but good. (One Moment in Time is memorable, but just did not do it for me.)
She was recently on tour in Europe. The press coverage was nearly all the same. The voice is gone.
The word is, she lost her voice to crack. Though she famously declared to Dianne Sawyer: "crack? We don't do that. Crack is cheap. I make two much money to ever do crack. Crack is whack."
A phrase that has come back to haunt her...
I could give legions of examples of hugely Talented people who made careers in average films, throw-away music... whatever, whatever.
This is not to mention the endless multitudes who can sing, act, create in various ways (I'm focusing on showbusiness because it's common ground. Y'all know what I'm talking about. "High" art I often find not only pretentious but irrelevant...)
I once lived in a house in a bourgeois suburb of London that wasn't posh but "happening". Television faces drank in the local pub. I passed actors and musicians in the street. At one point I sat opposite Annie Lennox on the top deck of the bus. A car once zoomed past with comic actress Maureen Lipman's head (for some reason) sticking out of the passenger seat window. I dunno who she was looking for. One time Phil Mitchell from EastEnders was at the bar. Certain friends kept ribbing me to go up and point out that Phil ("the hardman of Albert Square and a nasty drunk) was on the waggon. I didn't dare. I subsequently heard stories about this actor, more than once, waving £20 notes at the homeless and snatching them away... Mark Fowler (another EastEnders character ~ EastEnders is, or was, Britain's most popular TV programme, with top episodes attracting Royal Wedding-style 20,000,000 viewing figures)... Yeah Mark Fowler. He gave me £1.67 when I was begging outside Sainsbury's.
My point being that everyone in my house and many people in the area all around it, all wanted to make something of themselves. In a short space of time we had two actors, a singer, a yoga teacher, a maker of luxury furniture (it was just under £1000 a dining chair) and a trainee Alexander teacher were all in this house. I was the writer.
What makes me sad is that the singer, who I think did have beautiful warm, pure voice was a lush. She came in drunk most nights. She hung out with people one of the famous pirate radio stations. This was 1996, when the UK style of garage was all over pirate FM stations, soon to emerge overground. She could have been one of the UK's first "urban" artists. I handed her a Madonna biography hoping she might take inspiration and a few tips, because I could have told her more about the music business than she seemed to know. You need an experienced manager, being an obvious one. Madonna took Michael Jackson's old manager. The singer gave it back complaining Madonna was a tart and then mentioned she couldn't see her manager that morning. He was signing on the dole. Then I despaired. This girl hadn't a clue. She thought talent was a passport to automatic success, it is not. What's that phrase about 1% inspiration 99% perspiration..?
None of the people I knew from that time are now famous. Our actress got into a Spice Girls video. The Spice Girls were the phenomenon of the moment. A week later Oasis phoned wanting her to play violin (that is presumably mime) in a video...
So it was all exciting. But in the end not one of these people made a name for themselves. The person with the most drive had the least talent (a sad mismatch). The actor downstairs did get a speaking part in EastEnders though it was only one or possibly two episodes. As far as I know they all gave up and do normal jobs.
Which leaves me, feeling uptight about the paths other people took when they "could have done so much more"... what's the saying? One finger points forward, three point back?
I've lost an entire decade to heroin. The time before that was an odd-crossover period lasting maybe three years when I dabbled increasingly and at two points got myself tiny habits. But I knew what I was doing was not good. I had seen the utter despair of dead-end addicts. I knew the local beggars, "ticket touts" and homeless.
I was buying used one-day travelcards for £1-2. (I think they were £2 before 8pm or some set time; £1 thereafter.) Even the homeless lived by rules. These ticket touts congregated at tube stations. When a train emptied out it was "Finished with your travelcard?... Finished with your travelcard..?" Then people came in "Do you want a travelcard?...Want a travelcard?" You could go anywhere in London free on bus, train or tube until about 2am. A travelcard then cost £3.50, so to get one for a pound was a bargain. It meant I could go visiting in Hackney, Stepney and West Hampstead, where I sat round drinking red wine, eating middle-class Bulgar wheat veggie type food. I wasn't vegetarian but only knew how to cook veggie. I hated the thought of handling dead flesh...
... Anyway. It was through these ticket touts, who were all junkies, that I got introduced to heroin. I saw the life, I saw the misery. I wanted to try it to see what the fuss was all about (I had tried it once years before but took so many other drugs including acid that night, I had no idea what was doing what...) So I tried it, and still wondered what all the fuss was about. It certainly didn't seem worth going homeless for. And I couldn't understand why they didn't just stop doing it but they were like automatons. Get up, probably feeling a bit sick. Use. Feel OK. Go out. Beg. Score. Beg a bit more. Score again. Go to tube station for early evening rush hour. Sell travel cards. go down West End. Beg up huge amounts of money. Score from late night dealer, heroin and crack. Pipe late into the night. Knock self out with huge hit. Sleep till late morning. And so it starts again.
I was never into West End begging ~ around theatreland and the tourist spots. You got endless hassle from police. Some people begged inside the actual underground stations down there, but again you were liable to get arrested. I begged in the suburbs where you got less money, but hardly any hassle. And the dealers were all nearby.
Someone once pointed out to me that what had started out as a joke "I got drunk with the homeless" had turned into a reality. "I am homeless. Plus I'm a junkie." I did feel strangely accepted by these addicts ~ as I never really was by the shoplifting and prostitution contingent (they were a totally different crowd). Even in rehab shoplifters looked down on beggars. What's that saying now...
Rich man, poor man, beggarman ... THIEF!
Everyone I knew who begged did it for the same reason: they didn't want to steal. Or sell their body. (Though judging by the state of a lot of them, they'd have had a job doing that anyway...)
SO! All this happened. And now I'm here. And I still have some talent. And I got keranged round the head with three ideas in two days.
Because Talent is not to be taken for granted, not to be wasted. A waste of talent is a crying shame. So is a waste of a life.
I will not go on about what I'm doing or want to do because I've done that before and nothing happened. So I'm just doing it.
Gotta go, it's quarter past five in the morning and I need a drink...
My Love Is Your Love 1998 ~ already she's sounding hoarse... Contains the line: if I'm homeless on the streets, and I'm sleeping in Grand Central station it's ok if you're sleeping with me.... Thank God that never became a reality.
"Crack is whack... to Dianne Sawyer"
To Oprah. The heavy drugs started after The Bodyguard (explains why she followed the biggest hit of her career with... nothing). "I was freebasing cocaine, but only with weed in a joint". Then she mentions heroin and cocaine speedballing. (I used to luuurve doing that. That's why it took me two years from deciding to give up crack to actually doing it 100%.)
I HAVE BEEN "improving" my command of German by viewing soap opera: Lindenstraße and Marienhof. They all seem to be full of lesbians and cake shops. Everything looks like it was shot in the same place. I also tried Verbotene Liebe ~ forbidden love ~ which airs at 6pm weeknights and is chock full of lesbians from start to finish ~ oo! those permissive Germans! ~ with little discernible plot. Exceedingly boring. Verbotene Liebe is said to have a cult following among gays and lesbians across the world. All I can say is they must have an astonishing boredom tolerance...
Apart from that I am depressed. Sleep afflicts me like a disease. I don't know what to do.
But my German's coming in in leaps and bounds. I know words for "protest at the pig farm" "libel" "barrister" (a legal advocate) and "please don't flush that cocaine, I'm not dealing, I promise you..!"
A random clip from Lindenstraße
Photos from Verbotene Liebe
IT WAS 5AM when I first thought of writing this... somehow an hour has flown by. I am dipping Turkish chockie biccies (Ülker Biskrem Duo ~ they have chocolate creme inside) in hot tea while the birds tweetle and chirp like crazy in the trees outside. On my road just now I saw a giant tubby pigeon. It flapped away the second it saw me. I don't know much about pigeons but there seem to be three types round here: gutter street pigeons (equivalent to me, a gutter street junkie); posh loft pigeons (equivalent to The Queen) these are kept by owners with whistles who race them or do whatever pigeon fanciers do... and finally, the type I just saw, which appears to be a different type, with white sash round the neck. These are wild birds of exquisite rareness. The supermodels of the pigeon world ~ Linda Evangelista or Naomi Campbell. And all I could think as I trotted down the street, chocolate biscuits in hand and spotted it was "that would make a nice pie!" (I must've been hungry.)
I have found the German equivalent to Coronation Street! (A lower-class soap opera. British soap is always working class. I wanted to make a new soap, a kind of modern Dallas-Dynasty combined set in London-Paris-New York (well you'd only need to shoot a few minutes of exteriors per season, most could be improvised in a studio garden anywhere). It would star an ageing Larry Hagman as evil patriarchal billionaire with Joan Collins as his bitchy matriarchal billionaire wife. Roger Moore would come in as Joan Collins's luurve interest. I would do all I could to get Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Sean Connery, Lauren Baccal and the Hollywood old guard to put in guest appearances. The younger generations are all classless so I'd get some dogsbody to cast them. I would ensure that an international cast of actors with followings across the most important television markets of the world got parts, to boost foreign sales and ratings.
The German soap is called Lindenstraße, "Lime Street". Launched in 1985, it was the first ever German soap opera and was modelled on Coronation Street. I would say it is more similar in spirit to the British daytime soaps about doctors surgeries, or Australian soap, than British prime time TV (and this goes out 18:50 hours Sunday on Das Erste ~ which would put it up pretty much against the dreadful Larkrise to Candleford ~ a truly awful piece of British costume drama. I also had an idea for a costume drama soap, but trust me, it would be nothing like Larkrise! More Anna Karenina ~ all aristocrats and ballgowns, laudanum parties and duels. Not chatteringly dullard middle classes. Anyway, the episode I chose to watch on Flashplayer was called Schnee ~ "Snow". I thought "how lovely, a German winter wonderland on TV"... little did I realize the "snow" in question comes in little white lines for application straight up the nose! Of course when I realized it was drugs I was riveted. A butch lesbian dealer had an argument with her femme girl who has a motorbike helmet haircut. If I were her I'd worry about my hairstyle first and sort out the druggie girlfriend later, but that's TV for you.
My Mum has cancer. It came back. I saw her Thursday. I could see she was ill. I went out and bought a gram of heroin after that. My counsellor says I have to talk to my mother. She also says I see heroin as my Saviour. (How did the counsellor know that?!) But now the heroin has less appeal. I can't say why, but it does, and I say that sober. Usually junkies only want to be clean when they are high. Bring them down to earth and all they want is more drugs to get back up to la-la land, where they can look down and convince themselves they want to clean up yet again (but not now: "tomorrow") and on and on the cycle rolls. Eventually they give up on giving up and accept "I am an addict. I am powerless over my addiction, so I will simply go on using". Then they realize addicts DO have a choice and the choice is to STOP. (Using isn't a choice, using drugs is automatic to a drug-addict) ... eventually they might come to a place like NA where they say "I am powerless over my addiction, so I surrendered to a power greater than myself"... This is the mysterious "higher power" these 12-step groups talk about which "restores us to sanity"... I believe only God can save me now. But God would not be interested in someone who loves heroin more than him. (What a Catch 22!) My higher power is God Almighty. For me, no other power is high enough or powerful enough!
As things are, I have left it with the clinic that I'm not interested in reducing my methadone dose any more. That I would rather go on as I am and use several times each week and let nothing change.
I didn't tell the druggieworker this, but I thought, having such a great track record at breaking every resolution and promise I've ever made since Heroin Addiction, perhaps if I promise mediocrity and inaction ~ I might break THAT one too, and all for the best!!
... And you wonder why a mere AVERAGE length of heroin addiction is 14 years..?!
PS I THINK the pigeons I keep seeing are WOODPIGEONS ... they make the famous coo-coo you hear on hot summer days that is not a cuckoo... (they are musical cuckoos)
ILLUSTRATED: "DOUBLE UOGLOBE" is heroin from Burma's Northern Shan State; other pictures refer to Heroin Assisted Treatment, a scheme which might well have got me off drugs long ago ~ and would certainly have severed my connexions with dealers... but as it is ~ miserable methadone or street heroin. Or go through hell trying to stop (probably to use again at the first opportunity ~ let's be frank). What fine choices! Results of Dutch supervised trial of injectable heroin hydrochloride or smokeable heroin base (for "chasing the dragon" though I have never heard ANYBODY except a journalist use that expression ~ most people either say chasing, or when they get old and can't be bothered to sound cool just call it smoking. Smoking or injecting. www.opioids.com/heroin/holland.html
IN CHINA and Japan, man and bird have come together for "mutual" benefit... traditional fishermen keep cormorants on their boats. These sharp-eyed birds scan the waters for fish, soon to plunge in, grab a writhing carp or whatever and obediently spit it on to the old man's boat.
What this popular commercial for the HSBC bank (formerly Midland Bank; HSBC stands for Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of CHINA) doesn't tell you is that the birds' throats are kindly bound with metal twine to stop them SWALLOWING their fishycatch ~ the feathery swines!
1: I AM CONVINCED I am having a mental breakdown of the worst type... How this happened I have no idea. But I somehow have found myself not only watching but looking forward to Murder She Wrote, which comes on between 2 and 3pm weekdays on BBC1. Once the series is finished I shall seek immediate psychiatric help.
2: NOW HERE is a blast from the past.Clickonthis to see a map of my favourite computer game of yore, 1984's Jet Set Willy ~ sequel to Manic Miner. The blurb goes something like this: having found loads of buried treasure in Manic Miner, Miner Willy buys a huge "haunted" mansion (haunted by machines, not ghosts)... whatever was happening to the mad professor the night he disappeared?... blah blah.
You can only play the game properly by cheating it for infinite lives, falling great hights without dying and fixing a bug that meant when you entered the attic the entire game went haywire. Have a look at the map if you like. It is emblazoned on my subconscious. Perhaps this is telling (or not) but my favourite room was right at the top of the megatree, called "Out on a Limb" ~ ;->...
Now this brings back memories: Here is the entire game played on fast forward, maybe with a "sprite innoculator" (ie it's cheated so the baddies can't kill you). Bear in mind before you laugh at the crap graphics, this game somehow squeezed over 80 screens into less than 48 kilobytes. It took nearly 5 minutes to load off old fashioned cassette tape!
I love old country houses, so as you can imagine, I loved this game:
And this is what the gameplay was actually like:
If you really want to, you can download and play the game here. Or play online here. By the way, it's a very good game to play for those of us without lightning reflexes. Though I suspect, just like Marmite, you have to get a taste for something like this when extremely young otherwise it probably makes no sense to you at all!
Before y'all leave showers of comments, have a look at this beautiful fuzzy terrier:
THIS IS WHAT I COULD HAVE SAID (see below) ~ THE X FACTOR!
IT WAS THE GRAND FINALE OF THE X FACTOR (our version of American Idol) yesterday and Joe won it. I was so pleased it was him ~ who can sing Michael Jackson better than Michael Jackson ~ what a tone! ... And not the saccharine Ollly Murrrs!!
Having said that, though slightly vocally not as supreme as Joe I thought Stacey Solomon, who got chucked out in the semi final, had more star quality than the last two put together...
STACEY SOLOMON AND MICHAEL BUBLE: FEELING GOOD X-FACTOR SEMIFINAL 2009
This is Olly Murrs, who I didn't AT ALL want to win, singing Angels with Robbie Williams
JOE MC-THINGIE AND GEORGE MICHAEL ~ DON'T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON ME Not the most amazing tune, in my opinion, but don't you think Joe's got a cracking voice..??!!
JOE McE ~ Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word This is the most beautiful song he sung, I think... what do you think?
I don't know what was eating me last night, I got really upset in an odd mentalist way (not the way I used to feel upset before). Which doesn't make me feel good. I feel whatever went wrong is still going wrong but medication is blocking some of it out. That if I wasn't on those meds I'd be totally crazy.
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