HoW 2

Wednesday, August 25

HoW Quotes: 07

Every child is an artist. The problem is HoW to remain an artist once we grow up.

Pablo Picasso

Tuesday, August 24

Odour pong

After three weeks of combine harvester drone we now have muck spreading. Just hope the pervasive reek fades before next week.

HoW Quotes: 06

HoW much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Marcus Aurelius

And not to be sexist - King of New Orleans

A pretty successful secondspin punt this: Better Than Ezra

Another song: Queen of New Orleans

Jon Bon Jovi ... and you can hear, and see him here

it is early. i have my passport. i have not had more than twenty minutes of consecutive sleep all night. in the five hours that i tried. waiting for the hot water to warm up while you are in the shower because no-one else in the block is up yet can go into Dante's modern circles of hell.

HoW Quotes: 05

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. HoW on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.

Albert Einstein

Monday, August 23

weather - tisn't nobler, for sure

Pitch dark and pissing it down here now. Sky TV, seen while at the gym, showed flooded campsites in gale-stricken Norfolk, which is where elder son, wife and daughters age 2 and 4 are headed today, for a week - I wonder whether or not they went?

I DID get as far as clearing the spare bed to pile things on, and selected four books, as well as notebooks ... that's a start, at least.

And in the meantime I am distracted by the delicious odour of curry, as my DBS cooks tea downstairs

HoW to: The Art of Procrastination

Ok, where the fuck is my passport. I know I saw it to take a picture of it only yesterday, or no, it was Saturday already. And I need it to travel for work tomorrow... grr... the thing has grown legs and walked! Taken one look at the drear grey vertical wet stripes that is all the weather has to offer today, a liquid chain-mail curtain, and it's decided to burrow like the cat into a cushioned and cosy corner somewhere...
Perhaps it too has an aversion to packing. I have to be at work for a lift to the airport at 5am, which is a little early even for me. It means I can't pack in the morning. So I am procrastinating. Of course I had to update the TomTom with the latest maps etc. Because I will be on driving duty as we are travelling to a land where they drive 'an der anderen Seite'; or, what I still call home.
I probably didn't have to download the Dalek voice to give me driving instructions, but I just pissed myself laughing when it said "Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate... human" and it makes me smile each time I imagine the reaction of my colleague/travelling companion.
I didn't have to come in and sit straight down to log on at the computer - I mean it had been twenty whole minutes since I logged off at work. I did remember to get the washing out of the machine and turn on the huge towel rail/radiator in my bathroom & drape my wet clothes over it in an effort to dry at least one pair of jeans for the trip.
And I had to check that e-mail again, the one where I was cyber-dumped. Weird. Maybe with cyber naughties out of the way we can be cyber friends...? Too weird if virtual relationships start following the same dumb pattern as my real ones.
Normally if the cat is hiding somewhere, opening a nice meat-stinky packet of cat food will get him to come running. I wonder what works on passports? I'll have my tea and maybe play a facebook game or two while I think about that one.

HoW Quotes: 04

HoW many husbands have I had? You mean apart from my own?

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Guest write: 'Eau d'Joe' with thanks to Joe Gensle

I’m breaking a man-rule by admitting that, sometimes, there are those occasions that I enjoy shopping for clothing for myself. Those occasions are so rare that it’s usually a $300USD day without buying any shoes, accessories, or what I’d call ‘fancy’ clothes. ‘Fancy’ means slacks that need tailoring to finish the cuffs, shirts made for neckties I own but no longer need, and suits or blazers which I love but for which I have no need.

I read the shopping blog, here, and had already made my strategic mission into the mazes of sale racks of men’s shops and department stores. The mission was simple, really. Find clothing that’s impervious to gallon-per-hour perspiration, rain, and splashed drinks. Too, there’s the unique-to-New Orleans Café du Monde syndrome, namely, a ‘house’ custom of blowing one’s powdered sugar from atop the beignet.

We fat people are a sweaty lot, anyway. But blow powdered sugar on me when I’m completely perspired, and in one of my new easy-breathing shirts, and I’m going to be imperiled. I become subject to attack by relentless waves of dive-bombing mosquitoes. I stick to nearly anything that’s dry against which I’ve merely brushed a limb or affected article of clothing. Hell, I might even be mistaken for some colossal dessert by a Southern Decadencer, and you know my size and infirm leg do not the aerodynamic sprinter, make.

So I bought some nice shirts. I already have a share-sized golf-style umbrella that’s somewhat compact. I’m okay in the walking shorts department. I have more T-shirts than fans at a country music festival. Shoes? Well, my black ‘combat’ tennis, i.e. black New Balance shoes will sport fresh stings.

The other clothing needs are adequately covered for the trip.

But I was really short of one indulgence. Whether traveling or not, I like men’s cologne, and am verrrry picky about the fragrances I wear. Lagerfeld was made for my body chemistry, I’ve worn it more than 20 years, and recently ran out. ‘Aw hell,’ I thought, I’ll call my friend, Luv.

Luv works at a local drugstore’s cosmetic counter. So I asked her, “Do you have any of the nicer men’s fragrances at disaster-closeout prices?” and she assured me she did.

Although it seemed a bit sweet, there was something about the fragrance as I sniffed the box. Since she didn’t have a tester, she opened the box and produced a small square of index card-like material, and was ready to shoot. “Wait, Luv-- I need to know what it smells like on my skin.” And it was sweet, but there was also some subtlety to it, and it was mindful of something else of which I couldn’t think at that moment.

I’m the proud owner of a 3.4 ounce bottle of Tommy Bahama cologne. I wore it to work the other day and caught a whiff of myself on the commute. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I smelt of a fucking tropical coconutsy pineappely drink. It was so spot-on, that when I got out of the car, I had the urge to look around to my massive bum to see if a paper umbrella had sprouted from my arse.

Please don’t blow your beignet sugar on me because I think this cologne is going to give me all the looks, comments and bugs I can handle. Or not handle, causing me to flee to my room and shower, clothing and all.

HoW soon - another song

The good news is that the countdown is short and it's NEXT WEEK - so HoW soon?, as Martha Wainwright sings, is now very soon ...

HoW Quotes: 03

HoW vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Henry David Thoreau

Sunday, August 22

Educating Julia

Well, having earlier finished my voracious gulping down of one of my latest sci-fi/fantasy novel purchases (Above The Snow Line: Steph Swainston) I now have to choose a new book to go to bed with, so I have picked "Me talk pretty one day" since several sixers have mentioned their admiration for David Sedaris.

Humour is a strange thing and often doesn't cross boundaries well, so I am interested to see how much I get out of this book. I'm not sure how many American comedians/comediennes I could name/enjoy. Apart from Bill Hicks, obviously ;)

According to Kate Fox (anthropologist & author of the fantastic book Watching the English) the "rules" of English humour are anti-earnestness, irony, understatement & self-deprecation; and the "rule" of English comedy is embarrassment. Think 'The Office' & 'Fawlty Towers'; Alan Partridge if he crossed the water. To quote from her book:-
In other cultures, there is 'a time and a place' for humour; it is a special, separate kind of talk. In English conversation, there is always an undercurrent of humour. We can barely manage to say 'hello' or comment on the weather without somehow contriving to make a bit of a joke out of it, and most English conversations will involve at least some degree of banter, teasing, irony, understatement, humourous self-deprecation, mockery or just silliness. Humour is our 'default mode'

Of course, this is not to say the English are "better" at humour, just that we are always looking to lighten a potentially awkward social situation by being a bit silly... forgive us in advance?

HoW I spent my afternoon

Blue sky and sunshine here in sunny Teesside, and the combine harvester droning in the background, as it has for days now. I went into my studio for the first time in ages and printed four prints from the Jenna collagraph plate, however, being made of tile grout, the detail on the plate deteriorates with each use.

HoW soon is now?

Oh, any excuse to bring a Smiths song into the blog ;)

HoW the...

It's just gone dark at 3:30pm, as a summer storm hits my little town of Siegburg. There are hailstones exactly the size of peanut M&M's (I know, I have just comfort eaten half a packet) battering my fuschias, and poor little Seville, never the bravest of cats is cowering under the kitchen table as the forked lightning appears in the strangely colourless sky...

It is August... it is summer for crying out loud!
It does match the rather torrid day I have had so far, but I am struggling to imagine HoW hot & humid it is half a world away...