The Dark Side of Car Enthusiasm

I have a problem. There, I've admitted it, and apparently that's the first step on the long road to recovery.

My particular issue? I judge people by their cars. I know, I know, I've said in the past how much I hate being judged myself, and yet I do it to others! It's terrible. But I still do it...

This morning I was behind an ageing Saab 9-5, in silver, with a tow bar and a British Bulldog sticker on the boot. We entered a slight patch of fog (by which I mean slight - visibility limited to only a few hundred metres) and the foglights came on. Oh dear.

Immediately I imagined the worst, not helped when whoever was behind the wheel decided to stop driving very slowly and drive very fast instead. I jumped to all sorts of conclusions, and these are they:

1. The driver was a man (I know what they're like, after all I am one)
2. He is northern, and in his forties or fifties.
3. He likes caravanning.
4. He doesn't hold with foreign food.
5. He begins broad, sweeping homophobic and racist statements with the words "I'm not being funny, but...". Too right mate, you're not being funny, but not the way you meant it. 
6. The Daily Mail informs his views - he especially harks back to the days when Our Lady Di was still around, though he won't entertain conspiracy stories involving the Royal Family.
7. He'd like the death penalty re-introduced for murder, homosexuality, paedophilia and Jeremy Clarkson.
8. He thinks the BNP are a reasonable political party, and although he would never vote for them he thinks they should have a voice.

All that from a few details of his car and the way he drove. 

Thing is, I can't convince myself I was wrong. Judgemental git. 

It's all in the mind

One of the things I've blogged about to some reasonable extent in the past is my tendency to have a lot more going on behind my eyes than I let on. I'm not talking about intelligence (actually, I have a lot less of that than most people think), but rather my incessant imagination, which regularly runs away with itself.

One of the real world things I repeatedly daydream about is what it'll be like if I'm lucky enough to follow my dreams and become an author. Here are a few of the conclusions I've come to:

1) I'm going to have to get a new wardrobe, since this will be part of the identity of my alter-ego. 
2) I'm going to regain a little of the individuality which has been mercilessly ground out of me by office life.
3) I'd really like to have a room with a view in which I can write.
4) I will be able to justify buying: (a) a small laptop for writing on the move; (b) lots of Moleskine notebooks; (c) more pens. I like pens.
5) I'm going to have to get better at organising myself. 
6) I'll actually have to do some writing from time to time instead of spending my days developing exciting plot lines but never writing stories to go around them.
7) I may have to learn to touch type instead of looking at the keyboard every few seconds.
8) I'll be able to justify finding the perfect keyboard.
9) I'm going to end up spending a lot of time surfing the net. 
10) I think people will be surprised. 
11) I really hope I don't have to do any signings where my friends live. 
12) I'm going to have to learn to take criticism.
13) I'm going to have to learn to edit my stories.
14) I'm going to have to learn how to play piano (nothing to do with writing. Just one of those things).

That's it. 

January 27th 2010

<sarcasm mode>

OMG! Apple are releasing a new product! OMG! I've spent weeks trawling the Apple fansites for tiny scraps of information as though the second coming was predicted. My whole day will be spent in an excited fervour, hopping from one news site to the next trying to find out what it is. Then I'm going to queue for 48 hours outside a shop in the rain just to get hold of one, EVEN IF I DON'T NEED IT!

OOOOOOMMMMMMMGGGGGGGGG!!!!

</sarcasm mode>

Isn't it funny...

I don't have a favourite Ben Folds song. The one I'm happiest to listen to changes depending on my mood. However, there is always one which always appears in the top three or four absolutely regardless of current mental condition.

"Battle of Who Could Care Less" was the first Ben Folds song I ever heard, on the radio back in 1997. It took me more than a year to find that song again, and when I did it changed me forever.

So, there you go - my first, and probably my overall favourite.

Kafer: Super-Mouserer

Our cat, despite appearances, is occasionally a fairly useful thing.

We discovered this evening that she had killed and carefully deposited not one but two mice beneath our bed. Both were gifts, that much is clear - if she's in it for the eating she'll usually take the feet.

But both were fully intact, and killed particularly cleanly, the dispatch achieved in both cases with a clinical bite to the chest, stopping the heart. They were laid out in an almost ceremonial fashion, too.

We're not overrun with small furry things, but they do tend to cause some damage, so well done, Kaf, well done. 

Three recent landscapes and a bit of machinery

Just because it's been a while since I posted any.

Retro!

A quartet of really old CG images. Dwarf is a copy of someone else's thing, drawn to get some graphics tab practice in. Could probably do with crediting someone for that, if anyone knows who did the original about 15 years ago in White Dwarf. 

Nothing of note

Just having a play with CG art, not done any for a while. Not sure this is even art. 

Paris Transport

I took the pictures below on a business trip to Paris last year some time, and they've been sitting in a folder on my computer since. I thought the contrast generated by the juxtaposition of the two is nice.

Female Chauvinism

Yay! The bad old days are, if not entirely behind us, at least dying slowly like a second-rate soap character. Although sexism has not been entirely eradicated, we're not doing too badly.

Except perhaps not as well as I had hoped. You see, and let's be quite frank these are isolated cases, it still lingers on in the hearts of some. My line of work brings me into contact with plenty of 'old boys', whose attitude to women would lead to the bachelor life if they hadn't already subjugated their wives when it was all the rage to do so.

What surprises and annoys me is that a female associate of mine is just as bad as any man, continually stereotyping in a rather strident voice about all the men in her life. It wouldn't be quite so galling if she didn't spend a large proportion of the remainder of her time moaning about how she, as a woman, never gets taken seriously in a male-dominated sector.

Does she realise that if she doesn't give respect she won't receive it? Why should she be treated equally if she's unwilling to extend the same courtesy to others? Hmmm.