Hey Extroverts...Don't

You know there's a difference between being introverted and being anti-social.  That's what I tell myself.  I don't consider myself anti-social - I get on with people, I have friends, I'm fine at conversations and small talk if the need arises, I like hanging out with small groups of friends at a bar or wherever.  I just prefer not to go out in large groups, partying or clubbing or doing fantastically extroverted loud things with lots of people or groups because I don't have any particular love for it and I don't see the need.

Therefore, I don't see why people are all up in your grill in public places because they think that it's socially okay to quiz you like a Jeopardy contestant.  Take the laundry room.  I'm totally fine with saying "good evening" or polite claptrap about the weather, or the holidays - just enough for the wait not to be cloaked in a silent stew of awkwardness.  But I don't know what gets into some people who seem to think that occupying the same space at the same time stipulates they can get all kinds of familiar.  What's your name? Where are you from?  What apartment do you live in? Have you lived here long? What do you do?

DIE IN A FIRE, that's what I do.  I just met you, dude, while I'm washing my smalls, you can't ask me anything personal.

I'm not sure how to deal with such over abundant questions I don't feel like answering from someone I don't even know.  I thought maybe I'd try one of these:

1) Pretend to be Bulgarian or something and speak some made up language.
2) Stare at him without blinking, like a serial killer, not saying a word.
3) Shout, "MY NAME IS VEG WHO ARE YOU, THANKS FOR ASKING" at the top of my lungs so that he gets confused and runs away in horror.
4) Say, "Do you want to put my underwear on your head?"

What is the proper etiquette for such things?  I'm not sure I'm qualified.

Cyber Funday!

Monday, December 2nd, 2013

Well hello, Cyber Monday!  Nice to see you.  And it's nice you are doing your sweet thing on a Monday because Mondays are just pointless otherwise aren't they?  Dragging you out of a nice, warm bed way too early to scrape cold shit off your car before you can go anywhere?  Horrible.  Anyway, here's hoping everyone in the entire world listens to Scope and comes out to play.

Anyway, I hope the blogosphere responds because man, I miss all my old buddies, who're no longer out there and the rest of us who are when time permits, which isn't as often anymore.  I've had so many laughs out of this place it's been unreal.  Nowadays everyone's all "Tweet me this" and "Facebook me that!" and it's sad because is that all our attention spans are now?  Little bite sized chunks of information.

Plus dudes?  "Facebook" is not and should never be, a verb.  Or indeed a thing.

I like Instagram though, which FB owns, but shhhhh don't tell anyone.

How are you all this fine Monday? For me, this weekend was spent being too ill to celebrate my stupid birthday, then trying to fit insanely large Ikea furniture in a less insanely large car, putting together said furniture (always such a fun, fun occupation, though immensely improved with the addition of an alcoholic beverage) and trying to jettison this damn flu thing into orbit or anywhere that isn't in me.  I've half succeeded, but the death rattle cough remains.  My neighbours LOVE me.  Soon as I'm horizontal, [insert hideous rasping cough straight from some hell demon, here].

Next week I start a new painting for my living room because I'm sick to death of staring at a blank wall that needs a giant-ass Airstream on it so that means a trip to the art store (yay!) so I can lovingly finger canvases and special paper and tweak the ends of brushes, all without fear of arrest.

So as I sit here, in my pleasant smelling John Dies at the End t-shirt and hair that hasn't seen a brush since Saturday, I bid you a gigantic, resounding HI! And I hope to see some of you either here or at your place or around because, wouldn't that be fantastic?  I miss you guys!

Oh Here Comes The Whine

Wednesday, November 27th 2013 - I am sick, goddamnit!

Seriously guys.  I haven't been sick in a good couple of years now and suddenly I'm hit with this pestilence that would fell a buffalo, clear out of the blue. I hate being sick. I'm like a man when I'm sick.  You all know what that means. I have no energy, I can't sleep worth a damn because I lie down and cough up a lung and I think I may be in some parallel universe.  On the positive, I have been watching a shit ton of old X-Files episodes on Netflix instead of sleeping so that's been fun.

It started with a dry, rough throat, which progressed to a sore, dry throat and then moved south in victory, right into my chest, where it now lives in an ocean of phlegm and bronchal patheticness.  Every body retching cough makes me wince and I feel like Mike Tyson did some practice on my midsection.  I walk like I'm ninety and I work up to every cough like it's a goddamn contraction.  When did coughing get so painful?

Anyway, I've barely eaten anything in about five days but managed to drink enough orange juice during that time to fill the Pacific.  Funny thing is I never drink fruit juice unless I'm sick then I crave it like babies' blood.  I'm kidding about the blood.  I just want orange juice, it's addictive like meth. I had some Campbell's tomato soup too.  I mean who can survive illness without THAT?  An alien, that's who.

So I need entertaining/sympathy/jokes/insults etc., etc. Please see to it.

I'm off now to see what you guys are up to and it better be good.

I Wish I Was Better At Titles

Thursday, November 21st 2013 - Eff Me, It's Cold

I don't know why winter takes me by surprise, seeing as how it happens every year without fail and it usually announces itself by turning leaves orange and yanking them off the trees a few weeks earlier, yet somehow, I always wind up hosting an expression of utter confusion as if something untoward has occurred without asking my permission.

I saw "Gravity" for the second time last night (because who can see that movie once and not sit slack jawed with awe at the effects and not want to see it again?) and shot out of the warm bosom of the movie theatre and right into the cold, heartless crossfire of the first mini-blizzard of winter and a car that could make ice faster than any freezer.  The flurries of light snow swirled right down my parka hood and into my cold, dark SOUL.  I uttered some bad, bad words.

In other things that slightly surprised me this week, I went to A&W before the movie last night, for some fast food, which I hardly ever do because not being a meat eater the choices are slim in such places and if they do have a veggie burger of some sort it's usually pretty much like a piece of cardboard covered in a tomato and angst. However, A&W have a pretty kick ass veggie burger I discovered and it has onion rings and sliced dill pickle and tomato and well....yeah!!! I approved. Tasty! How did I not know of this?  I thought I knew everything.

How's everyone today?  Stoked for the weekend?  I hope so.

Behold the New Overlords

Today, around 7:30 a.m., as I was walking in the half-light, around our site on my way to my office, a rat the approximate size of a German Shepherd, shot out from behind some pallets, scurried over my foot in its haste to scare me to death, and made me emit a sound like a 1940s' horror movie victim as she opens her velvet drapes to find a glowering Dracula hovering there in mid-air, like a vampiric, satanic fart.  I honestly don't know who got the bigger fright, but I'd wager it was me.

I don't know what's going on in our place, lately. The creatures that frequent it are like colossal mutants, full of food plant leftovers and homicidal intent.

One early morning, I was walking down the thin, paved path, at the back of the factory, when I found my way blocked by the Orson Welles of birds - a giant, rotund thing with a scowl like Kiefer Sutherland when he finds out his car's broken down in a dry town.  The avian Tony Soprano was blocking the entire path (and possibly the sun!) with its fearsome aura of malice.  He was clearly sizing me up before turning into one of those crows in Hitchcock's "The Birds" and mowing me down in a bloody pool on the paving.

Now technically it was a seagull, but like no seagull you've ever seen this side of Hades.  Eyes like tiny, black currants, if currants can be straight from the depths of Hell. It had a body the size of a milk cow, a hooked beak you could moor a boat on. He was a gargantuan, murderous beast of a thing. And he would NOT BUDGE.  Most seagulls see a human approach and they sigh and reluctantly fly off while maybe weighing up the options of spitefully shitting on your head.  Not this guy. He sat perfectly still, like he was stuffed, and he stared me out with his beady, Danny de Vito, death eyes.  I swear he was smirking.  When I got almost all the way up to him he came right out and said, "I hope you don't think I'm going anywhere, human. And you even THINK about walking around me and I will eat your eyeballs."

Oddly enough he sounded a lot like Nathan Lane, which I DID NOT EXPECT.

Man, that bird owned that path. Damn thing sat there and had a Mexican stand off with me for about five minutes before I distracted him with half of my lunch, and ran like the wind towards my office door.

Things are afoot in creatureland, that's all I'm saying.

Well...

"What's a really fun thing to do on a Saturday night, Veg?" I hear you cry (or it could have been the wind)  Well. How about drink some wine and write a blog entry, because what could possibly go wrong with that?  Nothing!

The wind is really howling outside.  Sounds like Kanye West sat on a kitten, only less offensive. I decided a night at home with wine sounded pleasant because, doesn't it? I'm too happily introverted to give much of a hot damn about going out and doing social things when I like being home because I have a recliner, some candles, wine and some Swedish TV shows on Netfix and what could beat that?

Oh, oh! Is it wrong that I'm stoked because I bought six pairs of obnoxiously loud stripey socks today? I'm talking socks so bright that Stevie Wonder would probably swear and put on some stronger sunglasses.  They are FANTASTIC.

Sorry about the Stevie joke, was that too much?  And also sorry that I'm excited for socks. I just saw my life from the outside for a second and it was a whole big pile of WTF, so I poured another glass of wine and figured I might as well just go for it.

But it's the weekend. God, I love the weekend. When I wake up at six am, instead of having to drag myself out of bed, dripping curse words from my lady-mouth, I can cheerfully roll over and go back to sleep. Especially since it's dark till about 8 a.m now although the clocks go back tonight.  An extra hour in bed?  SIGN ME UP!

In other news, my big toe is weird.

Remembering the Magic

Autumn has arrived complete with blazing orange leaves and sharp cold and even the occasional blue sky.  I like it. The contrast is breathtaking. It's not at that place where you curse when you touch a metal object with your bare skin or scrunch up your toes in your boots to keep the blood from freezing, but it's slowly getting there.  Winter is always on the horizon.

I loved Halloween as a kid, and a few days later, if you were in the UK, Guy Fawkes night. In my memories the nights were brisk with cold, dark with a scattering of stars and our breath suspended in the air while the darkness became illuminated by fireworks and bonfires.

One of my earliest memories, harks back to when I was about three years old, sitting on a step in the back garden of the old tenement flats where we lived, with Slow Sandra, a little girl my own age who was mentally impaired. I didn't know it at the time, though.  We rode tricycles together and played with dolls. Then I grew up while she stayed a child.  Slow Sandra had a much older brother who would set off fireworks for us to watch while we sat in our winter coats and clapped.

Nowadays, all I clap for is people falling over on ice and when someone offers to refill my wine glass.  Where is the magic now? Do we just grow up, grow old and nothing is special any more?

I spent some time in the desert, fairly recently. The wonder of the colours, the heat, the vast, open expanse of hot, sandy nothing and the clear blue skies, made me feel alive. It made me remember the magic and I realized that it is, in fact, still present, you just have to know where YOUR magic lies.

And that's the corniest thing I've said in a long time.

Still Groovin'

Monday, August 19th, 2013  - Yeah.

Jesus people, what a week. Busy, busy. Nothing interesting. Just work busy. My eyes sort of feel like they've been freeze dried at this point from too many hours staring at my tiny work computer screen. I feel myself wake up in a cold sweat in the dead of night, mumbling things about "raw material specifications" and I'm pretty sure the other night I woke up and uttered the phrase "fucking disodium phosphate!"  Because this is what my life has become.

I was so tired this morning, on my way to work I put my headphones on, turned my iPod up as loud as it would go, and blasted myself awake with something noisy and exuberant which may have been some vintage Barenaked Ladies and which permanently (probably) destroyed my sound detection centre (waxy ear holes!).  It did, however, improve my urge to dance around with an inane grin on my face, immeasurably so there's that, I guess.

Enough of that nonsense. It's Monday again. Funny how those roll around. The only good thing about Monday is I get to watch last night's "Breaking Bad" because thanks to Netflix - you marvellous, glorious bastards - streaming the next day means not having to acquire stuff via more uh....secretive...methods. Yay.

Damn Mondays.  Still, on the upside, it isn't Tuesday!

Hey, anyone fancy a drink?

Gibberish

Weird things are afoot in the highlands....

Not really.  No more than usual I'm thinking.  Bunch of northern weirdos.  Ha!

What the hell am I talking about?

Well it's been a quiet, part rainy, sweatfest this weekend.  I can't understand it.  One moment it's monsooning (new word alert!) from the heavens and the next, even your ears are sweating like tiny moist cauliflowers.  It's most unpleasant. Make up your mind, weather. Jesus. I appreciate the desert even more now.  It might be five hundred degrees and out to kill you in a hundred different, nasty ways, but at least your cleavage remains dry as a Death Valley canyon.

Only you know...less sandy.  Or deep. Or less full of psychopathic hippies. Usually. Moving on...

I have a Miley Cyrus song stuck in my head.  And this can't be normal for any human being who isn't actually demented.  It won't leave.  It just dug in its hooks and there it is on a loop.  How do I even know this song? I am alarmed at my psyche and its devious grasp of social media. Git out damn song! I recant my invitation.

That works for vampires, apparently.

Another Monday morning looms.  Won't someone make them illegal already? Huh?  Here's to you all having great weeks.

Thursday Rhymes with "Worse Day"

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Today work was out to kill me.  It often is on Thursdays.  It's some cosmic law made by some colossal knobhead.

I don't know why Thursdays particularly, but they are always busy, stressful, tiring and leave you muttering to yourself on the bus afterwards and rolling your eyes like someone who's got a weekend pass from an asylum. Obviously by "you" I'm being loose here.  I mean ME.  By lunchtime on Thursdays I'm usually cursing inside my head and wondering if I have a wine strong enough to cancel it all when I finally make it home.

To make matters worse, THIS Thursday - today - it was raining heavily enough to sail to work.  That might be a touch dramatic but you get the picture. RAIN. And warm too.  Too warm to wear a coat.  I had no normal formal work type of umbrella but managed to find an old transparent plastic thing - the kind that comes right down over your face like a giant plastic tent-bubble.  It was emblazoned with the words I "HEART" LONDON on front. It might have well have announced "I am a tremendous douchebowl". I have no idea where this monstrosity came from. I have no feelings about London either way. Mostly I want it to shut the hell up and send me its weather.

I had two choices - lose my dryness or lose my dignity. Thankfully dryness won out because, plastic tackbrella in hand, I got outside to find that some plebian fuckwad had moved the entire bus shelter, leaving only a pathetic pole in its place with a bus stop sign nailed on.  What the actual feck? WHO MOVES THE BUS SHELTER ON THE RAINIEST DAY OF THE YEAR?

Who moves a bus shelter at all?

So I stood there in the pouring rain, in my damp work pants and little cardigan and big fuck-off, "I AM NOT ON TOP OF MATTERS", umbrella straight from 1979, and said a bad, bad word.  Then I planned to immediately eat some cake upon arrival at work and felt better.

The end.

Not really.  What I'm saying here is Thursday is a huge asshole and I am not friends with it.  Hope your Thursdays were/are better?  I'm off now to maybe open that wine...

Hot and Royal

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013 - Alive And Kicking

There are times when you are actually blindsided by things you didn't expect. Like getting all enthused and excited about recommencing blogging with gusto; with boring everyone senseless with stupid swear words and thoughts no one cared about to begin with; with your latest works of art or embarrassing stories - only to find out that your fingers have no idea what to do to make the words come out, the second you sit down at the keyboard. And you ask yourself, "Jesus eff Christ, Veg, has it really been that long, you cretin?"  And the answer is always "Yes.  Yes it has."

But here I am typing nonsense anyway, and I have no idea what, because I have no plan I'm just seeing what happens when I make my fingers dance. So you know, be prepared for some yawning.

Did you know we've had a heatwave for the past three weeks? Because we have! Seriously, don't pass out cold.  No rain till yesterday and even then I was chill about it. "You go ahead and rain, dude." Today the nice weather is back.  It's like a beautiful dream.

Of course a heatwave here really means "Meh, it's a lot nicer than usual". The hottest day we had was about 29 degrees (about 85 degrees F) so you can see, this is just a normal warm day anywhere else on Earth.  For us, however, it's a goddamn, world-melting, lavafest where everyone sweats and complains a lot about the sweating, the lack of air conditioning, the store being out of ice pops, how your butt cheeks feel slippery (really) and all the news can talk about is HOW HOT IT IS.  Because even though we've cursed the rain every single day for a year, we don't really know what to complain about without it.

Except, then the royals had the audacity to interrupt this good cheer by birthing a future king to steal attention away from our heatwave. Me, me, me, thanks a lot royals.  I'm not sure I care about royal stuff but hell, good luck to them and their new royal child, who I don't mean to be mean but, I hope looks like his mom.  It's just that in the boy side of that family they seem to give birth to adorably blonde, tousled, cute little imps, who age into frightening gargoyles with no hair.

In further proof of just how darn awesome I am, in a work poll this week I correctly forecast two of his names and my colleague nailed the third. We rule!

I was still hoping for "Joffrey" though...

Yup

I have eyestrain so badly at the moment I look like I am constantly smelling the inside of a sumo wrestler's butt gear.  Diaper. G-towel.  Whatever that thing is called that doesn't hide any of their ass quiver at all . I've been doing these reports that take all of my time and have me squinting at scientific data in tiny wee type on a spreadsheet all day long and my peepers have decided enough is enough. Combined with the super early start and the fact I am ridiculous at getting to bed anywhere close to early, weekdays are just a blur of puffy eyes and frowning till I can get home to my little warm place, eat some cheese and not say another word till next morning.  My eyes look like Daryl in "The Walking Dead".

Well, not like him per se, that would be weird.  But like his eyes.

Daryl is kind of dirty hot isn't he?  Ladies?  No?  Suit your damn selves.

I'm also enjoying the fact it's almost April and has snowed the last few days, blowing an icy, bitter hell wind right in my poor defenceless face (We spell it with a "c" you can get over it), which is just what you want when you've just tumbled out of your warm, multi-blanketed bed into some sort of frigid city wasteland at 5:50am.  This paragraph was sarcastic.  In case you were fooled. I don't enjoy it one tiny iota and neither should you.

Changing the subject entirely, my phone has the loudest text notification I've ever heard.  It just went off unexpectedly making me throw peanuts in my cleavage accidentally and I wouldn't be surprised if I stamped the inside of my pants with an umber raspberry, I got such a fright.

You're welcome.

Tell me about you.

Then There's This...

Wednesday, January 17th 2013

Awwww yes! The sun is shining and turns out there IS a world out there.

I hope you are all well?  I'm not at work today, but I AM hard at work, procrastinating.  Not just anyone can procrastinate at my lordly levels, I'll have you know.  It takes practice.  Routine.  Coffee fueled marathons of staring blankly at things, while hoping they take care of themselves.  They don't. Yet still I live in hope.

I have developed a tickly cough.  I am not sick in any way (except maybe the part of my brain that weaves elaborate tales and talks to animals) I just have this cough.  And also, my hair is too long again.  And I haven't touched it with a brush today.  And I have bags under my eyes.  And there's a rumour I might still be wearing pajamas. And starting lots of sentences with "and".

But there are good things!

1) I have commenced on the second draft of my NaNoWriMo 2012 project, after a month of not going near the thing and a complete rewrite is underway as well as some big changes.  Obviously this is good for ME, not necessarily YOU.  Sorry to be misleading.

2) Also it's actually almost light when I get to work in the morning now, after a "30 Days of Night" scenario (thankfully minus any rabid Danny Huston vampire types!) where I barely saw daylight at all for a month or so.

3) Dogimo has a new Stranger Lido episode up and well...I just fucking love The Stranger Lido to death, so you should go read that and the nine earlier episodes too and see if you don't just fall in love with TSL too.  I might just be weird.  You decide. (don't)  I also have Boz Scaggs' "Lido Shuffle" stuck in my head now, so eff YOU, guy.

4) Greek yogurt with honey, how come that isn't the elixir that heals the world?  I think I may have discovered this fact, get right on that, Middle Eastern leaders and reality show divas.

5)  I added three of my latest paintings to the sidebar.  Some of you have already seen them, most of you have not.  Almost all of you don't give a shit.  Ha!  Yes, two of them are Airstreams, AND???

Okay, on reflection that's not a LOT of good things, but it's a start.  I mean it's only January, for crying out loud. And I apologize for all the profanity but well.  I don't really care either.  I'm foul mouthed, I deal with it.

Interlopers

 Monday, January 14th, 2013

Well helloooooooooooo.

Did I scare you?  Because I hope so!  Happy new year. What's that?  Yes, I'm still here, lurking furtively and sometimes wearing pants.  I hope you are all well during my hiatus, I'd hate to think you were floundering in the murky depths of psychosis or something.

Me?  Why thanks for asking.  I'm fine.  Enjoying a glass of wine even though it's rose and I'm generally a red wine girl after years of denouncing wine as a "poncey" drink because I clearly only ever drank wines that were appreciated by the types of people who live under bridges. My sister has introduced me to some wines that actually do NOT double as paint stripper and my palate has been redefined into something more classy. Still, I got the rose from a colleague at work for some stuff I was helping out with, because some people are just that nice and it would be rude not to try it.  And it's pretty tasty!

Other than the wine, I'm okay. Still poor, still "enjoying" the rain (does anyone enjoy rain, I'd like to meet that rare animal), still full of intent to be less lazy and write more. Still talking to myself, but who doesn't?  You should be so well adjusted!  Still cursing at having to get up at six am and go out in the dark and cold to earn money.  Which totally makes me sound like a prostitute (I'm not).

What are you all up to, assuming any of you are still there?  Because whether you're there or not, I'm rejoining my effort to write an essay on every state in the USA, you have been warned.

Also, unsettling news, I may have reconsidered my opinion that the Oxford Comma is an evil grammar interloper and, instead, accepted it into my bosom.  I hate myself a little bit.  But it makes so much sense.  I will tell you this, however.  I will never, intentionally, put ONE space after a period. (edit: I now do this too. I am ashamed)