It's oh so quiet

[j4]

After all the excited realtime election updates ("We're winning!" "We're losing!" "Shut up already!") there's a strong sense of anticlimax. Even the despair feels half-hearted; as in a messy and protracted divorce, nobody really wins except the lawyers. But did anybody really expect anything different?

(My colleague picks up the phone, dials an international number.

"Hello, this is Paul Warner. Can you get a message through to John Kerry?"
[pause]
"Yes, could you please just tell him: DON'T CONCEDE.")

I can't top that. So I'm not going to talk about it. Besides, it's probably more the 4 hours' sleep than the (lack of) news that's making me feel deflated and lethargic at the moment. That, and the knowledge that the main item on my to-do (as in, "what a...") list at work is "pack all my office stuff into big crates in preparation for the department moving offices". We were told that the move would happen over the weekend, so we had to have everything packed by the end of Friday. Today the removal men came in and started ripping everything out. Apparently the move was rescheduled to actually happen on Friday, but nobody bothered to tell us.

In the course of tidying up I keep finding scraps of post-it note that I can't quite bring myself to throw away because of their found-text value, or else a vague feeling that I kept them for a reason. I'm still carrying in my pocket a post-it note which I found on a copy of "DOS for Dummies" in Oxfam; the note says "Buy 'More DOS for Dummies' when I have new computer set up".

I love finding my shopping lists and to-do lists from years ago; sometimes they can instantly evoke a time, a place, a whole situation, but other times they mystify me with glimpses of a life I don't remember having. There's one scrap here that says "C batteries / DJ & trousers! / Measuring-jug for Becky" -- what on earth was I doing? Another tiny scrap of paper just has four book titles/authors listed on it in my cramped italic script:

The War Hound & the World's Pain - Moorcock
Frenzetta - Richard Calder
Mythologies - Roland Barthes
Vita Brevis - Jostein Gaarder

A quick look at my reading list for 2001 suggests that I'd noted them down to remind myself to add them to the record of what I'd read, but it might be interesting to play the accidental archeology game and try to link them in some more meaningful way (same goes for the I-went-shopping-and-I-bought list above) ... any suggestions? I'd recommend them all, anyway; sion_a, particularly, should read Vita Brevis, and everybody should read Mythologies. I enjoyed Frenzetta, but I've yet to read anything by Calder that beats "Toxine". Can't remember anything about the Moorcock except that I thought it was quite good at the time.

Scraps of things, scraps of nothing.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The War Hound and the World's Pain is one of my favourite novels, for reasons I can't easily articulate.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

I've yet to read anything by Calder that beats "Toxine".

It would be very, very hard to top Toxine. It really is a jewel of a story: perferct atmoshpere, and driven along at exactly the right speed, and a haunting afterlife.

Scraps of things, scraps of nothing

Brown paper kittens, tied up with strings?

[acronym.livejournal.com]

The move - so soon? :(

[j4.livejournal.com]

There's still the free bus into town...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The Moorcock's the only one of them I've read, and that was ages ago - but iirc it concerns an attempt by the Devil to reconcile himself with Jehovah, and it is set during the Thirty Years War.

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

I love finding my shopping lists and to-do lists from years ago; sometimes they can instantly evoke a time, a place, a whole situation, but other times they mystify me with glimpses of a life I don't remember having.

When DH (then DBf) and I were both students, he worked one summer with a woman named Pushpa and at some point, someone left him a message on a scrap of paper that just said "Phone Pushpa". I don't remember exactly why, but somehow this scrap of paper became the focus of a game between us; he would hide it somewhere that I would eventually happen upon it, and when I did find it, I would leave it somewhere that he would eventually find it. The idea was that neither of us should ever be actively looking for it, so the "finding a clever place to hide it so it doesn't stay out of play for too long" was really the fun part of the game.

It followed us through at least two different years of college but at some point, predictably really, the paper got lost - neither of us noticed for a while until one of us suddenly said "Hey, what happened to 'Phone Pushpa'?" and we couldn't even remember which of us had hidden it last. It was surprisingly sad to realise that the scrap of paper was gone for good.

Yellow peril

[brrm.livejournal.com]

I like post-its. Quite apart from the ones that surround my monitor (there are more than in that photo, currently), I have been trying to scan amusing ones before they disappear into the office black hole.

For example:
This, left on my officemate's desk.
Transcript: "To the one that sits here - crazed with hunger at 1am, I stole two Almond Fingers.
MMM!
Please tell me where to get them, and I will repay you / have MORE!) -Ted.
A day or two later, this appeared on officemate's desk. Who needs email? :)

The same person also left, amusingly, a photocopy of a message he'd written to me on a sheet from his filofax.

Re: Yellow peril

[brrm.livejournal.com]

Oops, that should be two 4 Almond Fingers". Which is amusing in itself, as the different coloured pen tells of the perpetrator's return for a second raid. :)

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Can I borrow any one of them, next time I'm up in Cambridge?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Any of them except Frenzetta, which I don't have a copy of -- I think I borrowed it from ewx.

The War Hound... was a present from Rowland.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I read the Moorcock years ago, and enjoyed it. I don't remember a great deal about it though.