...
and it made a sound like everything going to shit
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/29/2004 11:16:00 am

 
No more of the story below will be forthcoming
cos I really can't be bothered, and I didn't like the direction it was going, bit too Hitchhikers Guide for me. Anyroad, I'm sure there will be more mental diarrhoea before long.

As for today expect a long, very possibly frequently updated rambling post on no fixed subject. My manager is ill, the buttmonkey assbitch fuckwit (AKA Sharky) is away and the office is thus quiet and less stressful than normal. I of course will be working harder than usual or simply writing here instead.

so commuting haiku:

"Bite me!" my eyes say,
blank fish eyes stare back at me,
are they fish? or sheep?

My headphones are loud,
but at least I'm listening
to decent music.

I don't smile, don't blink,
and never show emotion,
Give me a busby.

Alternatively
If I'm really fucking good,
I'll be a banker.

[can anyone remember what a double haiku is called? It has a special name, and do you have to say bless you twice? Or is there something else to say?]

The wind cuts across our path beating the grasses flat,
A little trail meanders through the weather,
tempting us degrees away from true.
We walk, trudge and march along a line,
Unmarked, unseen by us or by the light,
appearing through the clouds
We hold this figment in our minds,
A perfect, fixed mark that leads us upwards
Always upwards, always through the bogs,
and always onwards, further, just beyond the peak.

A cairn marks a place to sit, windswept,
battered, soaked, exhausted and relieved
we dump our packs and rest a moment, drinking, eating what we have.
And up, and off, another line, another hill, another cairn.
We cross a river, filling bottles, praying there's no sheep
upstream, rotting into bones as we have seen in other leats,
And carry on, boots squelching, all our feet are wet,
each pace brings forth a puddle,
We know that comfort simply means the water's warm,
The blistered heat of hard-worked feet is all we know.

The time is simple, walk and walk until we're nearly there,
and rest when rest is needed, food and drink the same,
Our minds are needed elsewhere while we walk,
our bodies never noticed any loss,
The freedom that this leaves in us is here to stay,
The tiredness will not be in our bones for long
and brings inside our hearts a quiet pride,
We came, we saw, we walked until we finished what was set
we did not yield, we did not stop, we did not lose ourselves
we found a courage no-one had before and set a peace within us free.




I Am A: True Neutral Half-Elf Ranger


True Neutral characters are very rare. They believe that balance is the most important thing, and will not side with any other force. They will do whatever is necessary to preserve that balance, even if it means switching allegiances suddenly.


Half-Elves are a cross between a human and an elf. They are smaller, like their elven ancestors, but have a much shorter lifespan. They are sometimes looked down upon as half-breeds, but this is rare. They have both the curious drive of humans and the patience of elves.


Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.


Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of NeppyMan!



- posted by Buntifer @ 1/28/2004 11:37:00 am

 
I have just returned from the Gents at work and I feel I have to state quite frankly that I am amazed that there exist people who still undo their belts, buttons and flies to take a piss. I remember when I was maybe six or seven, on my first day in primary school doing just that, and having my trousers yanked down to round my ankles and the piss [no pun intended] taken. I learnt very quickly to pull my "piece" out of my fly and urinate, so I again state that I was amazed to find some poor t**t laboriously refastening first his fly, then his button, then his belt next to me as I used the urinal.

I resisted the urge to de-bag him and make fun of his incompetency, but I felt that might lift my mood too much this afternoon.

Talk about taking the piss
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/27/2004 12:44:00 pm

 
The Chronicle: 11/28/2003: The Scholarly Lecture: How to Stand and Deliver
The Scholarly Lecture: How to Stand and Deliver

Thanks to Greg's site my university complaints about lecturers, especially science lecturers are justified officially...oh I hope they read this and realise that I did bloody well to stay awake in the few lectures I actually attended. God how much do scientific lecturers suck? Even tho their subject material is almost interesting to me......their charisma is drained by use of powerpoints and overheads for text....fools.
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/26/2004 10:00:00 am

 
There ain't nowt coming your way today folks. For those of you who aren't in the know I am in the process of trying to get a job that I would quite literally kill small babies for, I am on third interview and the woman who needs to see me keeps being unavailable, so my boss at my shit job is getting irritable with me taking mornings off, and I am getting irritable cos every time I turn up at the theatre she has been caught in a meeting.

I will change this post when I post more of the story below.
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/22/2004 01:11:00 pm

 
Tony climbed out of the pod and banged his head on the one above. Not a good start. He blearily rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the urgently flashing message on the screen in front of him. He could just make out the colours, it was yellow text on a red background, but the letter still swam across each other. He crouched and fumbled around for his shorts, looking around for other signs of movement, There were none, all the capsules were closed. He found something made of cloth and pulled it onto the lower half of his body. As he felt the unexpected draft chilling his testicles he looked down and squinted. He had his legs in the arm-holes of a t-shirt. His genitalia swung free through the neck aperture.

"Bollocks"

He stripped off and put the t-shirt over his head. He trod on a shoe and twisted his ankle. There were still no shorts to be found. He put the shoe on his left foot and looked around for another. The next one he found was a second left foot. He pelted it at the flashing alarm screen and continued to fumble around. Finally he found another shoe, he had a sneaking suspicion it was companion to the one he had thrown at the screen but it didn't matter. He shambled over to the flashing screen and squinted at it.

"System Failure" was flashing across the screen. He tapped it. No change. Tony looked for a button that might shut it up but there were none to be seen in the vicinity. A second screen squawked behind him. He span around and found himself facing the Admiralty Chief.

"Dammit turn that alarm off!" The face on the screen shouted, "and what the hell do you think you're wearing soldier?" Tony looked down at himself. He had a t-shirt which read, "Born for Porn" above a stylized phallus, one pink trainer and a heavy army boot.

"Bollocks." slipped out before he could stop it.

"I can see that you idiot. Turn the alarm off!" The face was still squawking.

Tony shrugged, "I don't know how, Sir."

The face scowled and muttered something off screen. "Just touch the screen itself with your palm." And put some bloody clothes on."

Tony turned away and pushed his palm against the screen, the flashing did not stop but the alarm was cut off mid squeal. He turned back to the Chief.

"I can't see without my glasses, and the ship's computer stored them at the beginning of the trip. I don't know how to retrieve them."

The Chief closed his eyes in desperation. "Do you know what the problem is on board?"

"No, Sir. I've only just woken up, I can't see anything, I am freezing cold and phenomenally hungry. I need my glasses, a basin of hot water and a cigarette and it looks like I'm going to get precisely squat contrary to my instructions upon departure." Tony was angry. It had not been a good day so far.

The screen bearing the Chief flashed with static, "I thought only the best of my marines had been sent on this trip, what the hell is a four eyed smoker doing on board?" He was obviously not addressing Tony. He reached over and placed his palm against the screen, nothing happened. He looked closer and discovered a switch next to the screen which was currently set "on." He flipped it up, the Chief was cut off mid complaint.

Tony was a scientist. He was not a hugely good scientist, none of the really good ones had been available to go on this trip, they had all had better things to do, papers to finish, conferences to attend and experiments to do. Tony had had none of these things. He didn't know why he had been suggested, nor why he seemed to be the only person to have been woken up. He had less than no idea how to work the ship and absolutely none about where they were going, or what they were doing. It had been classified until they left Earth, and they were supposed to have been put to sleep for the duration of the flight, only waking up when they reached wherever they were supposed to be going.

"Bollocks." Tony muttered. His eyes were still swimming but he was just able to make out the outline of a pair of shorts. They were pink and had "Vixen" embroidered across the backside, but they were shorts, and it was getting nippy. He pulled them on and settled down on a chair to figure out what was going on.

He closed his eyes and listened to the thrumming of the hull. It was soothing in a way, and Tony certainly felt in need of soothing. He opened his eyes to find a small drone hovering in front of him. He batted at it but it avoided his hand with ease.

%Oi Chief Scientist Reader! Don't mess with my drones like that!%

Tony jumped, he hadn't heard anyone else come into the room. He looked round, but there was no sign of anyone in the room.

%Look at the drone!% Tony screwed up his eyes and leant closer. He could see a small screen displaying the words that had been spoken.

"Who are you? and where are you?" He asked plaintively. He made no attempt to cover up his esoteric mix of clothes. It was only a matter of time before the marines woke up and started taking the piss. They had been unbearable in before liftoff, giving him a wedgie like they were all back in the playground. One of them had promised to gaffer tape him to the front viewing screen for the landing. Tony hoped they wouldn't wake up soon.

The drone wobbled. It bumped him on the nose to get his attention, then chirped, %In a manner of speaking I am all around you. I'm also in the drone. I'm the ship computer.%

Tony put his head in his hands. The lasty thing he wanted now was to be stuck on board with a chatty and badly rendered AI. "Any chance of getting my glasses?" He moaned.

The drone zoomed off, clipping the doorway as it went. %That'll soon be back with your specs. In the meantime, do I have to keep calling you Chief Scientist Reader?%

Tony shook his head.

%What should I call you then?%

Tony kept shaking his head, "I didn't know I was Chief Scientist. Nobody told me."

%Well you are the only Scientist on board. Your official title could be Chef I don't know. I'm just going by your file. If you'll be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal.%

Tony raised his head in horror.

%I can call you Betty, and Betty when you call me, you can call me Al.%

He plunged his head back into his palms, screwing the heels of his hands round and into his eyes, hoping desperately to wake up. The drone arrived back with his glasses and nudged the crown of his head.

%Betty? Your spectacles...%

Tony looked up and took the proffered glasses. As he slipped them on the room jumped sharply into focus, he could see the drone. A nice little piece of design work, and the switches that he had failed to see by the sides of the screens. The floor looked like a mess, with clothes scattered everywhere, mostly girls clothes as far as he could see.

"Why?" He gestured weakly.

%The marines had a party before they bedded down.% The drone was zipping across the floor, picking up items of clothing and flinging them into a chute on the other side of the room.

"With women?" Tony goggled, he had been unaware of any women in the crew, not that he would have had any chance with them any way, especially if they were the type who liked marines. He counted four brassieres and at least six pairs of knickers, two suspender belts and multiple high heeled shoes.

%No,% the drone gurgled, %There seems to be a tradition in the Marines of dressing up in womens clothing and getting very inebriated.%

Tony let his head fall back down into his hands. "Coffee..." he murmured.

%Just a minute!% The drone sounded almost irritated. %I know you left instructions as to how and what you wnated to be woken up with. You want a cancer stick as well don't you?%

"Is that a technical term, or are you deliberately trying to irritate me?"

He caught the tail end of, %Well it isn't good for my air filters.% As the drone flew out of the closing door. He had been woken up to fix an emergency that didn't seem to exist, apparently been billeted with some cross dressing marines and was stuck with an AI who held definite opinions as to smoking and Paul Simon.

When the drone returned Tony enquired as to what the emergency had been. The drone produced a seat, coffee, biscuits, cigarettes and perched itself below the monitor.

%The emergency was that the cryogenic pod that had been keeping you asleep had malfunctioned and was waking you up.% The drone sounded apologetic.

"So the fact that I'm awake was an emergency?" The drone bobbed itself in assent. "So can't you just put me back to sleep now?" The drone paused, and then shook itself from side to side minutely.

"..." Tony drank some more coffee and lit another cigarette. "..."

The drone just sat there. "You can't put me back to sleep?"

The drone repeated its miniscule movement. It looked almost sheepish.

"So how long am I going to have to wait till everyone else wakes up?" Tony's hand was shaking.

The drone refilled his cup of coffee. %Ninety three years, seven months and thirteen days. Then the crew will travel together learning of their destination and mission for a further eighteen months before landing, completing the mission and returning.%

Tony dropped the cup of coffee but the drone was ready for it, it caught the beaker before a drop had spilt. Tony looked into infinity. "Ninety three years..." He tailed off.

%Seven months and thirteen days.% The drone finished for him.

"Can you fix the pod?" The drone shook from side to side.

%All the diodes blew. I checked the stores and the case of electrical components for the pods were switched by the marines for cases of clothing.%

Tony started to cry. The drone prodded the biscuits in his direction. They were floating on a plate near his head. The dish banged into his head unnoticed. A custard cream flipped over the edge and landed by Tony's feet. He lifted one and ground the biscuit into the floor. The drone dipped and began to hoover the crumbs up. Tony put his boot on the drone and pinned it to the floor.

"Wake one of them up. They chose the clothes, they can fucking well deal with the consequences." The drone lifted itself out from under his foot effortlessly and shook itself.

%They are more essential to the security of the mission. The pods are hard wired internally anyway so it will be impossible to tinker with them until they open themselves.% The drone pulled away from Tony. %And if you touch me again you'll pull back a stump.% It flashed red and accelerated through a tiny port in the roof.

Tony concentrated on the cigarettes.

[TBC]
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/20/2004 01:14:00 pm

 
Online Risk
I have found little to inspire me today, other than a version of online risk which I can play at work without a download. How time flies...

Here it is
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/19/2004 04:59:00 pm

 
Je suis uninspired
I'm tired and uninspired today. I feel like everything is catching up with me and making me a little bit more apathetic. I'm waiting for a job that never seems to come, dreading learnig that I haven't got it and not even thinking about what I will do if I don't, all I know on that front is that I can't stay where I am. I have been doing absolutely nothing for about a month because I want to know whether I got this other job, and I'm just waiting. Waiting for anything saps your will to live. It happens in queues everywhere, by the time you have reached the front, after three and a half hours, you are not really sure you want to buy whatever you had chosen, or even whether you can really be bothered breathing any more. Waiting is simply a form of suspended animation, it encourages you to bend all your interest, energy and attention to the coming of some abstract moment or event. This event may or may not ever materialise, it may or may not be a let-down, but you can guarentee it won't turn up on time.

It is a way to make time go quicker, to take interest in nothing until the moment you are waiting for comes, but it is also a waste of that time, because when you are waiting you care nothing for the time that is slipping through your fingers and away from you on the floor. You can spend your whole life waiting for something, the apocalypse, the second coming, someone you really love, and then look back and realise that if you had spent your time doing something a little more constructive you might have got what you wanted anyway. The moment might come, in which case it is worth it, but if it doesn't you will be left feeling deflated, let-down and exhausted, unmotivated and apathetic, and frequently, if you have spent your whole life waiting for something, dead.
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/19/2004 01:37:00 pm

 
Necrocard
Necrocard... Anyone want me to get them one at the same time?

[note to brunette: this is a joke]
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/15/2004 09:33:00 am

 
I am pleased to report that
the latest search term to have found my site was "Bethlehem Nailgun Incident" Needless to say I am very interested and if anyone should have heard about this incident I would be most grateful for the details. The story below should be updated and finished today at some point but I have better things to blog about which shall be coming your way well soon.
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/14/2004 09:21:00 am

 
Eschatology
It was a frosty night in early December and the stars were twinkling virulently in the sky. Jean-Pierre lay on his back outside, watching the sky through the smoked glass of his radiation suit. His breath, thrice filtered, dehumidified and deoxygenated passed out into the air around him through microscopic pores in the outer layer of the suit. He could hear the warning geiger crackling dully in the headphones and he reflected somberly that the suit had been created to deal with short exposures to reasonably high levels of radiation, not for years of use, repair and patching in a medium/high radioactive environment.

Four years ago the stars had shone especially brightly for six weeks. The whole planet had turned out to look at the phenomenon, marveling at the beauty of the spectra, the auroras cast upon the atmosphere and the diamond brightness of the sky. Children had stayed up late to see and lovers had crept out to enjoy each other in the lights of the universe. It took six weeks for the effects to begin to manifest. Those who had been observing the stars most closely were the first to feel the sickness. They shut themselves indoors and told themselves it was just the flu, but when they started vomiting blood they realised they were sick. Their hair began to fall out as they twisted in their sleep and the diarrhoea that woke them up was black with blood.

Hospitals did not notice for too long, because the sufferers, once they realised it was serious were too ill to leave their beds. Police began breaking down doors to find whole families huddled together, dead, surrounded by crusted pools of body fluids. The hospitals became crowded, and then became morgues. The cities became giant mausoleums, rooms crowded with dead, roads empty, traffic lights directing deserted thoroughfares. The occasional car, crashed on the roadside spoke of some optimist whose hopes had proved false once again. The world was dead. Television channels showed only static.

There had been very few survivors. Those lucky enough to have remained inside throughout the exposure were generally convicts and invalids, many of whom perished whilst incarcerated or incapacitated. Those invalids that recovered after the exposure often died from exposure to the highly increased background radiation that had overwhelmed the earth. Jean Pierre was, or rather, had been an archaeologist. He had been lucky enough not to have ventured outside for the entire six weeks, indeed the first they had known about the apocalypse that was happening outside was from a text message one had received as they ventured closer to the surface.

His team had been investigating diggings found in Swilgoe's Wallet, a particularly wet cave in the West of England. It was supposed that many of the caves round Somerset and Dorset were interlinked and that there had been a thriving community of Vagabonds and less-than-honest tradesmen who actually lived, breathed, shat and bred underground. His team had found these remains and begun their dig only to find the waters rising to cut them off. The area where they were digging was not threatened but their exit was. A way was found to pass food in but it was deemed too risky to try and venture out themselves unless absolutely necessary so they lived in the caves as the vagabonds had, with a weekly ration of food passed in and with no ill effects, fewer at least then the people on the surface. They had nearly emerged two weeks after the worst exposure, only to receive a text warning them not to. Three members of the party had volunteered to exit and find radiation suits for the others knowing that they themselves would die in the process. Two of the remaining party had died while the three were gone. They showed symptoms of radiation poisoning brought on, Jean-Pierre had assumed, by the fresh food they had been receiving in the weeks they were underground. He himself had suffered stomach pains and mild diarrhoea but had recovered quickly, and, when the three returned Jean-Pierre was the fittest of the group. The three who had left returned in their last few days alive. The least affected of the three was able to pass news of the state of the cities to Jean-Pierre. It was not good news. They died later that week, leaving Jean-Pierre with a group of four, two of whom were looking increasingly likely to die.

He left the group with the other healthy archeologist, a young chap called Peter, who was overly religious and kept moaning on about the apocalypse. The two left behind tried to follow, staggering after them. Peter had wept and begged to be allowed to aid them but Jean-Pierre was in a hurry and he refused, pulling Peter along after him.

He had been in a hurry to get to the cities, before the scavenger animals began to eat the bodies, and before the flies became too bad. It became evident to him very quickly that he was too late in this respect, and although there were people moving here and there in the streets he could see from their gait that they were dying quickly.

Electricity still functioned, just about, and petrol was plentiful. Jean Pierre had taken a thirty tonne lorry and spent two days loading it with all the tinned goods he could find in the nearby supermarkets. He packed one hundred and thirty four tin openers and estimated he had enough food to last for two years. It took him six months to comprehensively loot Bristol by which time he had four of these thirty tonne lorries parked outside the cave. He found a fifth and packed some supplies including concrete, oxygen cylinders, which were very difficult to find, and enough firearms to start a small regime change operation, which were alarmingly easy. Most consisted of shotguns and air rifles, but he had found two semi automatic rifles and one huge rifle designed for hunting and shooting stag. He returned to the cave and concreted an iron door into the entrance. He and Peter had then transferred all the contents of the lorries into the caves, which had taken another month, then Jean-Pierre had throttled Peter.

He had been happy to throttle Peter, if only to stop the incessant droning on about God's second apocalypse and the sins of mankind, but had figured that with only one person the food would last longer, and since he was unable to breed with Peter and had no intention of befriending him he didn't need him. He had taken his suit and dumped the body outside in the pile of rotting flesh and bones that had been the rest of the archaeologists. The two they had left behind had been dead by the time they returned to the cave.

Three years later Jean-Pierre had met very few other people, none whom he had wished to invite to join him in his subterranean paradise and some of whom he had had to repel with arguments made of lead. He had found several other entrances to his little cave system and lived much as they had thought the vagabonds had lived, using the caves to navigate from place to place unseen. He had fitted iron doors to the other entrances and kept them locked. He made a daily round to check that none had been interfered with. Best of all, when in the cave he was able to take off the damned suit and walk around with a little more freedom. He had seen the madness in the eyes of the people who came from outside and knew that it was caused by having lived within a radiation suit for years, constantly scared of tears or rips and having to perform the most undignified manoevres to rid oneself of waste.

Jean-Pierre had conducted secondary cursory raids into Bristol and the surrounding villages to supply himself with a plentiful stack of porn magazines, music and as many batteries as he could find. He had been contemplating striking out to London to see if he could find some clockwork powered radios to butcher and play his CD collection. Unfortunately for Jean-Pierre his training as an archaeologist had never trained him for electronic tinkering and he had a high failure rate. He was also becoming very tired of the limited selection of tins he had in stock, and while he calculated it would eight or even ten years before he ran out of food he might go insane from having to eat eight thousand tins of macaroni cheese in that time. He especially disliked tinned rice pudding, which he found insipid and sugary. It gave him a headache and the shits.

Jean Pierre coughed gently into his face mask. He had never quite got rid of the cough that had racked him the last time he had had a minor dose of rad poisoning. It was not as deep or as painful as it had been then but still troubled him. It would not be long before he too was either taken by rad-exposure or by one of the groups roaming the land. He had seen signs of their depredations. It looked like they were on the most part ill from eating food that had been exposed and from having to remove their suits outside for measures of time. He was safe removing his suit in the depths of the caves. There was a low level of radiation underground. It was higher than it had been before but low enough to affect him only slightly, or, as he worried more these days, gradually.

He lay and looked at the stars. He supposed that they had returned to their natural level of brilliance when the ionosphere returned, he had not been watching. Jean- Pierre's concerns were more immediate. He wanted to know when the scorched earth would be safe once more to walk upon unconstrained by the suits that everyone had to wear now. He wanted to find a woman to try and start a family in these little caves. Jean-Pierre had appointed himself the task of trying to begin the human race again. Casting himself as Adam he had but to find himself an Eve and make his underground garden of Eden available to her along with his one eyed snake.

It was his destiny, or so he thought. He looked up at the stars, so beautiful, so distant and pure, their light twinkling as small clouds whisked across his field of vision far up in the atmosphere. They would never be thought of this way again, but now as harbingers of death and decay.

The geiger counter readings had been getting lower outside. As an archaeologist Jean-Pierre understood the process of radioactive decay, at least as used in carbon dating, and he had been taking readings to try and work out the half life. He had worked out that well within the eight years he had allotted himself food for radiation levels would fall away to nearly the levels they had been before the eschaton. He did not know, however, what a safe level for constant human exposure was. He needed to find a woman.

He was safe in his caves, and hoped that the low levels he had been exposed to had not hindered the ability of his salmon to swim upstream, as he put it to himself. He knew that the vast majority of women out there may well be in the hands of the bandits now roaming the country, he was prepared to bet that there would be a fair proportion of them who were not willing captives, and was more than prepared to kill the rest of the band to free the woman. He had visions of himself, wrapped in a radiation suit like a suit of shining armour riding into a bandit camp armed with a semiautomatic and a sawn off shotgun on the back of a pillaged Harley. He did have a Harley, but rarely used it as it was no good for looting. Cut to slow motion view of the guns bucking in his hands as he despatched the bandits one by one, cutting them down dispassionately while the woman looked at him desperately. Curiously enough she was never clad in radioactive suits, merely diaphanous veils revealing shadows and curves.

A shadow fell across his view. The stars were blotted out by the head of a figure.

"Looking at the stars?"

These were the first words Jean-Pierre had heard since he had throttled Peter. They were not precisely revelatory but Jean-Pierre shot upright as if the ground had kicked his ass. He tried to speak.

"Who are you?" came out with much croaking and squeaking. His vocal chords has long since gone to sleep and needed lubrication to get them truly moving again. He noticed that the figure was not wearing a suit.

"My name is Echo, but that is less who I am than what you may call me. I am also called the Walker. I have been called less savoury names, but they were by detractors and without cause."

Jean-Pierre saw that the figure was a young man, his face rotted, nose collapsed and eyes glazed with the dullness that signals impending blindness. It had no hair, and the lips it used to speak were blackened with rad poisoning. Jean-Pierre was not scared, for the figure looked weak, and he could do with news of the outside world.

"They call you the walker because you travel across the land by foot?" he asked.

"I travel by foot because I wish to see the land beneath my feet, rather than having desire to reach another place. You seem also to have foregone travel." The figure waved a limpid hand at the iron door, standing ajar at Jean-Pierre's feet.

He grunted and stood. He had no idea what the etiquette decreed. He had a half open tin of macaroni cheese inside the door and could well afford to offer the stranger some, but in the same vein as not feeding animals he had no desire to inform strangers of the fact that he had food to spare.

"Do you travel with a group?" He had seen that there were bands of these 'muties' gathering and traveling in packs. People who had been unlucky enough to have been robbed of their protective suits, and those few who had survived without had begun their own new race, feeding off whatever they could find, and even beginning to breed by the looks of things. He had no wish to invite these folks into his realm.

"I travel alone" the stranger offered, "but I am not hungry. I would simply like your company for a while."

Jean-Pierre sat up, he had been lonely for a while, before he had stopped caring. He understood why this dying creature wanted to talk. He did not care to think about how the creature had divined his purpose in asking its social status.

"Ok, I'm interested in what you have seen of this new earth. Would you care to tell me?"

The creature sat down next to him and tapped him on the knee of his suit. It lifted a scrawny arm and pointed West.

"That way," it croaked, "Lies the sea." Jean-Pierre nodded impatiently. He knew the basic geography of England. "And beyond the sea lies another land."

"America." Jean-Pierre interrupted, "I know geography a little." It felt good to be sarcastic.

"No. Not America. America died with its population. Now on the continent that was once America there is another land beginning. They have more people than we have on this piece of land and they have started to rebuild."

"How do you know?" Jean-Pierre put in. He had forgotten all thoughts of sarcasm.

"Because they sent a boat in this direction, crewed by skeletons. They found people upon this land and they took them back. They need more people, but they do not want us muties." The figure laughed, and then coughed up blood.

Jean-Pierre hoped that he was not being included in that group.

"The people still alive here don't want us either. We will grow stronger than them in time. They are leaving piece by piece, traveling to the west, leaving behind a weaker race." The creature creased up coughing. "I myself was one of you once. I had a suit, food and a friend, but it was taken from me. He gestured to the pile of skeletons across the field. Perhaps you took your suit from someone."

Jean-Pierre was alarmed, "This is my suit and I am the only person who has worn it since it was broken out of its packaging." He sat up a little straighter. "Do you think the boats would take me? I mean are they coming back?"

The creature stood and looked out across the moors, long shadows cast by the disappearing sun crawling across each other. It shrugged, rotting muscles lifting under discoloured skin. "You would have to go and ask. Give me the key to your castle and I'll tell you where to look." It turned and gazed upon the doorway before resting its eyes upon Jean-Pierre's face.

Jean-Pierre stood quickly, he saw that all the mutie was after had been his stash and his base from the beginning. He backed into the door and slammed it behind him, locking and bracing the iron portal against any intruders. He then retired to his living chamber and took off his suit. He had a little light from solar powered lamps that he charged during the day and he settled down to read awhile.

The room was cold and damp in places, but Jean-Pierre had done his best to make it comfortable. There was an armchair and a bed, a couple of shelves propped up against one wall for various things, and posters wrapped over the rounded walls. After a while Jean-Pierre fell asleep, the lights would burn themselves out before he recharged them in the morning.

He was woken in the night, in the dark by a sound. There were no other living things in the caves with him, or at least he has never before come across any. Never before had he been woken by sounds this deep underground, nor felt fear in his veins. He curled forward off the bed, his hand groping blindly for the shotgun on the floor beneath his bed, and when his fingers touched the butt they curved round it gratefully and scooped it into his hands. The lights were all but dead, casting that low level of glimmer which only intensifies the dark. Jean-Pierre's eyes swam, he tried to focus but it was too dark and his eyes only made out swirling vortices of colours dancing before him.

He rose from the bed and lowered his bare feet onto the cold floor, two paces later and he couldn't tell where he was standing, let alone what he was facing. Another sound, stones scrabbling down a rock face echoed round the room, ricocheting from side to side. Jean-Pierre span helplessly in the middle of the room, eyes watering now, hands clutching the shotgun so tightly they hurt.

A voice. "I was born in decay and dead things." The sibilants creeping round the darkness and shivering up Jean-Pierre's spine. He let out an involuntary yelp and began to micturate. The urine was warm and washed down over his toes, warming them momentarily before the new cold came rushing back.

"God gave me life when man had taken it." Jean Pierre pulled both triggers. The sound rolled out into the cave and was returned threefold. His ears screamed in pain as the sound reflected from the walls and returned to menace him. He felt the lead shots bouncing back off his legs and chest, power spent having ricocheted off the stone in front of him.

"God gave me sight in the dark and strength to start again." Jean-Pierre collapsed to his knees and threw the shotgun away from him. It clattered on a rock and fell silent. He waved his arms around, trying to find his position. He knew these caves in the dark, every morning he would get out of bed and collect the lanterns in the dark before trudging up the slope to the door to put them out to recharge. He couldn't bring himself to his feet, something prevented him. It clouded his mind and brought fear, unreasonable gibbering fear to him.

"I asked one thing of God."

Jean-Pierre put his hands together and began to ask something else of God. He felt hands close around his neck.

"You left me to die, but God kept me alive. Now I'm going to make sure you are dead before I leave you." The hands tightened. Jean-Pierre could see lights dancing in his vision, he could feel his face tightening with blood. It was difficult to concentrate.

The lights coalesced into flames from torches carried by muties. They filed into the cave and stood in a line facing him. Jean-Pierre could feel his vision fading, a cloudiness passing across his eyes. He knew he would pass out soon.

"Have you met my family?" Jean-Pierre noticed a small child, that couldn't have been over a year old in one woman's arms. He saw one licking cracked lips. and heard the voice once more before he passed out.

"We haven't eaten fresh meat for a long, long time."
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/12/2004 09:18:00 am

 
If we imagine someones aura to be formed by the electrical emanations which every living cell produces then we see a picture of someone very much like a kirlian photograph. A body, standing surounded on all points with a thin film of electrical emanations. We must suppose that we may detect these by some method, perhaps kirlian photography, and that they may be manipulated by similar things that manipulate electrical fields, such as the magnetic fields thrown out by all other electrical devices. This includes other people, for they throw out an electrical field of their own in the form of their aura, and also computers televisions etc.

Leaving aside the idea that this effect may be very small, it is likely that when our aura is manipulated, as with similar electrical fields, that this will make a difference to the electrons creating the aura and thus to the cells themsleves, and via this indirect route to ourselves.

Think about the shape of an simple aerial, then about the shape of larger more elaborate devices for sensing/catching electrical fields, for that is what aerials do. Think about the nervous system of an earthworm, and how similar that is to a simple bipolar aerial, then think about out nervous system, from our brains down the spinal cord and fanning out thinner and finer across our bodies, and think about what a superb aerial that is.

Then think about the saturation of electrical garbage we are washed in every day by our electrical devices [just for a second]

Maybe hackers can sense the workings of a computer so well because their auras are attuned to the changing electrical signal from their computer.

Maybe the ESP experiment where volunteers were shown tachistoscopical presentations of pictures, some nice some nasty and were reacting to them before they hit the screen [I will try and reference this] was their bodies reacting to the changing data flow of the computer before each picture.

Maybe the reason it is possible to take irrational dislikes to people, or to fall in love with others is connected to the aural interference between people, especially when in intimate contact with each other.

Maybe introverts have an unusually sensitive aura which they find it necessary to play down to live life normally, and extroverts have a respectively insensitive aura.

Maybe geeks interact well with computers.

Maybe crystals can affect our auras and thus our moods.

Maybe cannabis expands or contracts our auras.

Maybe prayer works, not by divine intervention, but by constructive interference.
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/09/2004 01:00:00 pm

 
The Random Surrealism Generator
ravenblack.net : The Random Surrealism Generator: "Is this a lathe which I see before me, the duvet cover toward my midget? Come, let me arse around with thee. "
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/08/2004 11:35:00 am

 
Mutual Respect
The French have banned the wearing of veils in their school, by anyone. This obviously includes, and indeed is aimed at the Muslim ethnicities whose females are made to cover their faces to a greater or lesser extent. Somone asked me whether I thought that was a good thing and I was stretched to answer.

From my Atheist point of view I think it is a good thing to demystify these sorts of things and to help integrate these people into their country's society. But from a humanist point of view I think it is a bad thing because if they really want to wear these things then they should be allowed to.

I think it might be found that the children wearing these veils might rather appreciate being banned from wearing them, as I am sure that there must be a few who wear it at the behest of their parents rather than any personal desire to seperate themselves from the rest of the children. Then their must also be those who are happier behind a veil.

I believe the original reason of the veiling was to prevent the women being judged on their physiognomical beauty, thus ensuring they were judged on their bodies instead. And while this works when everyone is dressed as such it becomes rather useless in a country where most of the population has their faces out there "in your face." The veils worn thus throw up another, new barrier, and one which cannot be entirely conducive to integration and friendliness. It now marks them out as different, and thus its usefulness is over in its original purpose. They will be judged by their veil, and this, I feel, is not fair either.

Now I came down on the side of the government not banning veils, as nothing so essentially harmless should be banned. Personally, and having cycled regularly through Rusholme, I can safely say that they should be banned for drivers. If they are that bothered, they can install tinted windows.
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/07/2004 11:44:00 am

 
Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation
Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation

I think I have got RLS. I also think I know why it is caused, and why it is most prevalent in America. It comes from doing no exercise with your legs when once you did. All these Americans come home from the gym and proceed to do absolutely nothing, and then act all surprised when their bodies are tense and ready for action. What a gym does is prepare you to do active things...if you then don't do those things it could be compared to psyching your body up for something and then never going through.


I sit at work with my legs jiggling under my desk. It even annoys me but if I don't then I either want to kick something or piss myself...

or it could be that I just want to get the fuck out of this office.
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/07/2004 11:13:00 am

 
Quicksilver
"It does not resonate sweetly with my observations of the world as a good hypothesis ought to."
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/06/2004 01:56:00 pm

 
Pain Forums
I don't know why but sitting in front of the computer letting my mind empty, waiting for the new blog subject to float in always, without fail, always brings, floating inappropriately into my mind the Monty Python song.

"There are Jews in the world,
There are Buddhists,
There are hindu's and mormons and then
there are those that follow Mohammed,
but I've never been one of them.
I'm a Roman Catholic, and have been since before I was born.
The thing you can say about Catholics is
they'll take you as soon as your warm,
You don't have to be a six footer,
etc [he hastily fills as he forgets the next line]

I'm hoping that having finally got it out of my system it might go away and allow me to think of blog topics in peace.

[wanders away humming "I'm a lumberjack"]
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/06/2004 01:56:00 pm

 
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
the Polish undertaker caught smuggling cigarettes in a hearse to a pair of one-legged Brazilian prisoners skipping jail
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/05/2004 09:28:00 am

 
Done
with the festive season and back to work...fuck me how depressing.

On the plus side...

hmmm... back to work...

And suddenly I'm struck down with admiration for people like teachers who go through life with incredibly long holidays...ok...so that is a plus but that means that every year you have to go through that awful impending doom thing as the end of the holidays approach. I can understand that being a kid it might seem worse at the time, but the kids get to go back to school which, lets face it, probably was the best years of our lives...the teachers have to go back....to....WORK [crashing evil chords] which is far and away the worse of the two choices. HOW can they do it? HOW can anyone bear to go back to work after three months of holiday...I think I would rather go on the dole than go back to work after that. After uni is different cos by then you are fed up of uni and going to work is exciting and new. It is only when you realise that work is boring, worse paid than studenthood and about as intellectually stimulating as wanking that you realise that work is boring, worse paid than studenthood...hmmm...

So running away to Thailand for a gap year is putting of what will become necessary...NO If you can sponge off your parents then I urge you to do so, they have been working for decades to get where they are...their minds and souls are already tainted...you are fresh and free, your mind is not set in its pattern of despair yet and the longer you can put that off the better. Save yourselves. Your parents would be glad to know that they have enabled you to live a happier better life than they...

I'm off windsurfing before my mind becomes twisted beyond all recognition.
- posted by Buntifer @ 1/05/2004 09:00:00 am