Here it goes again…

The segment concerning Promap is a relic from my old blog. The rest is new.

(don’t judge me too much. i was young)

FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING CHRIST.

FUCKING PROMAP!

(a post written two years ago is found in the dreary wastelands of a search engine that races its min d with arbitrary worrrrds a nd comes up with mag-ick)

(wanderers stumble across such a treasure and th-black-ink that they know what it means)

(they do not)

I would like to remind any and all visitors to this site that this post from an old personal blog which was written in August 2005.itellthembutdotheylistenohtheydonot.

(and so, two years after this post was created, these wanderers scrawl one final message before the wi nds of life dis-murder_mystery-solve them)

(and i cannot answer them)

the memories are stored in everything that you can imagine_ smell especially, but not limited to that_ i heard someone say a phrase and my mind was flung to huddled in front of the breakfast club and eating peanut butter raw from the

and smiles and sunsets and grumpy eyebrows that furrow and smile and shine and feel of silk and god that silk

but enough distractions.

I’m liking this.

The lecture finished and people filed out of the hall as quickly as they could - having already packed up while the lecturer was in her final comments - and I was left alone at the podium. I was waiting patiently for the lecturer to notice me as she ducked under the desk and gathered up her own things. After a while I grew impatient.

‘Shona?’

Her head shot up from below the desk, her fingers ringed with silver clutching a long brown coat. She looked at me, bewildered for a moment, before producing a well practiced smile.

‘How can I help you?’

‘I was just wondering if you were taking any tutorials this semester,’ I asked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The tutorials for the course on Power. I was wondering if you were teaching any of them.’

She glanced at one of the pieces of papers lying out on the worktop in front of her. A crudely drawn timetable was on one of these, and she scanned it quickly.

‘No, I don’t think so. My timetable’s really busy this semester so I don’t have much time for anything else. They might slot me in there though,’ she reached down and lifted her leather handbag to her shoulder. ‘May I ask why?’

‘I was just wondering if I could transfer to one of your classes.’

She laughed. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘I find you interesting.’

She was taken aback, but she barely showed it. There was the slightest flutter of her eyelashes and her eyes focused properly on me for the first time since we began talking. She placed her bag and jacket on the worktop and leaned on her hands, spreading her sparkling fingers wide. ‘Who’s tutoring you now?’

‘Billy.’

‘And what’s wrong with him?’

‘Nothing. Well, nothing much. He doesn’t handle debates very well. He’s good at teaching the main points of the topic, and he can govern a discussion, but he’s not really good in a debate.’

‘Ah, but I have first hand experience with Billy. He’s a good tutor.’

‘But he fires down a debate at the first sign of inflammation.’

‘Hmm. Can I ask, what’s your name?’

‘Jonathan. Jonathan Mercer.’

She smiled at me. There was a spark in her eye that only appeared when she was lecturing something she felt really passionate about.

‘Ah. The infamous Mercer. I have an email to send to you.’

I laughed. ‘This wouldn’t happen to be about the sarcasm I threw your way on the university message board is it?’

Either she didn’t hear me or she just didn’t answer. She pulled on the jacket and slung her bag over her shoulder. ‘I need to go. My train has long gone by now, but I still need to hurry to catch the bus. It was nice talking to you Jonathan.’

And she was gone.

Despite the rain the ground outside was relatively dry, so I sat on the steps in front of the building and lit a cigarette. She had said ‘The infamous Mercer’ with a devious grin. I wondered briefly at what I had done to win myself such an illustrious title, but when the list of probably noticeable acts I’ve committed exceeded the fingers on my hand I realised that it was probably better that I didn’t know what I had done to have my name passed around the faculties.

It didn’t matter anyway. It was just cool to have someone recognise my name.

As I looked out the window onto my balcony, I had the sneaking suspicion that the garden chairs I sit on are of Persian origin. A quick check of the mold tells me that they are, in fact, made by Homebase and that the supernatural levitation can be explained by the gale force winds that caused me to levitate back into my living room. By the time I pick myself up I’ve decided that the wind is an evil bastard.

Like most people, I own a TV. And this TV (in spite of my crippling financial status) has the benefit of a satellite connection where I am connected to over one hundred channels of television goodness. It’s good for after a day of hard work, or even a day doing no work, to sit back and relax with a good hour or two of mindless twaddle. But the wind! Oh the wind has its own plans to disrupt my mission of wasting my brain away, for two weeks ago the bloody wind blew my satellite off course, causing my television to be nonoperational for too long a time. My brother and I coped though. We honed our videogaming skills, we rewatched every single DVD we could find (apart from the bestiality movie that was a fantastic souvenir of mine from Barcelona*), and basically did everything that didn’t include reading a book.

So, for two weeks we were without TV. Numerous blunders with the TV repair men meant that our agonising wait seemed like forever. But lo and behold, they arrive, they fall off the roof twice (this is no joke, there were real dramatics up there), and they fix our TV! It was brilliant! I could waste the day again with a pizza box perched on my lap and the remote glued to my hand as I sequentially flicked through the channels at my disposal.

But the wind had other plans, that devious bastard.

I’m sitting at home, writing a bit and watching Jonathan Ross in the background, and the wind kicks up a fuss outside. I can hear it press against my windows in that pseudo-threatening roar it has, and my TV flickers. For a moment it becomes garbled, but soon returns to normal. I eye it suspiciously, but soon forget about it as Jonathan begins another witty anecdote. He builds up the joke, pauses for the punch line, and the screen garbles for a second before cutting out completely. The screen turns blue (oddly resembling the classic Windows blue screen of death) and “No signal being received” flashes up. I look on in dismay, but the picture returns to normal with Jonathan smiling and the audience laughing at whatever the great joke was.

I return to the show, waiting to laugh from the build up before to come, and sure enough there is another build up. I listen, waiting intently for another wacky story of his, when right at the punchline, it cuts out again.

It’s been doing this for two days now.

Every time I’m watching a funny program, sit-com, or cartoon, the wind blows a gust and cuts the signal out right at the punchline. And it’s ONLY with funny programs. I can watch two solid hours of the Dog Whisperer or some random documentary, and not a single interruption, but as soon as I flip on Robot Chicken or Scrubs, the signal cuts every minute or so.

I hate Scottish weather.

*I use the term bestiality loosely here. It’s forty minutes long, and twenty five of those minutes consist of three men in gimp masks having sex with a really fat woman before said fat woman molests a really, really unattractive dog. I mean, they could have picked any dog, but an unattractive one? Still, it was a good laugh to browse through.