Athens: AcropOliver

Forced play on words? Doesn't really work? YOU BET.

Anyways, coming up the side of the Acropolis, I stopped (along with about the first fourty Japanese tourists I saw. Some stereotypes are there for a reason, as they say) and snapped a few shots of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus - which was refurbished about fifty-seven years ago so that it could be actually be used. This is unlike the other theatre leading up to the top of the Acropolis, the Theatre of Dionysus, which has been left to ruin.Eventually I reached the gate at the top and saw the what is arguably the centrepiece of the Acropolis...The Parthenon!

Athens: Greece's Pieces Part Three

The neighborhood of Pelaka wraps around the northern and eastern sides of the Acropolis. It's known for good cafe's and shops. I ate here a couple of times and enjoyed several walks through the neighborhood. If you don't like being harrassed by middle-aged men who want you to eat at their cafe, you might not like it as much as I did! As with taxi's, don't take any of their shit - there will be another cafe in ten to thirty seconds of walking. To my delight, there is a real dearth of fast foot in Athens (I saw one Subway and a burger chain called "Goody's", that is all!) and thus a vast multitude of cafes and restaurants. Moving on!
I shot up the wrong path while trying to find the entrance in the wrought iron fence which surrounds the Acropolis and all the while I kept noticing this mountain palace in the distance. It definitely seems to be the second highest point in the city and nobody I asked could tell me if it was a mosque, a palace or what. Ten thousand internet points for anyone who can figure it out! It's also very easy to end up wandering through people's homes on the eastern Acropolis mountainside. More than once I wound up in people's back yards, but luckily avoided causing an international incident. Eventually I figured it out though, I'm such a clever boy.
Tonight we finally ENTER the Acropolis. Until then let the cold, touching, loving, court-order defying stare of Triplex keep you company. I found him in a great print shop in Pelaka.

He's gonna touch you in places no Doctor has ever found.

A little victory

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but the Network Rail depot I work at didn't have recycling in any form whatsoever. Considering how much paper an office uses, this is just absurd. So I've been busily fighting my way through several layers of indifference, bureaucracy and incompetence to try and get a regular paper/cardboard pickup here. I started this about three months ago, maybe a bit more.

Yesterday we finally got a bin dropped off and it felt so damn good to get that reassurance that if you raise a big enough stink and make sure that enough people know about something, you will eventually get results. I then, with some help, took the mountain of paper from the top of a spare desk (which I'd been encouraging people to use as a stop-gap measure until the bin arrived) and cleared it all out. This felt pretty good too, since we no longer have a veritable Wall of Oliver dividing the office (seriously, I'd have taken a picture if I'd thought to - it rose about five feet above the desk surface and cast a remarkable shadow in the afternoon).

Meanwhile I've also had some success bringing recycling to my house. It didn't get any pick-up due to being inside a courtyard, but I found a spare blue box and have been taking the house's recycling to a nearby drop off point once a week for the past five months. It takes all of ten minutes and gets me outside while my pizza (or whatever) is cooking in the oven. This is in addition to the little things (i.e. not leaving appliances on and turning lights out which nobody is using). Doing this stuff has allowed me to finally regain a little sanity. Back in January there were some nights I'd genuinely lose a lot of sleep from worry about what's being done to the one planet we've got. At the worst moments I couldn't help feeling that my life goals were flaky and irrelevant given where, it felt like, we'd be in twenty or thirty years.

I mention these things not to solicit a pat on the back, but because I think that perhaps there are not enough personal, small-scale examples of success with THE BIG OL' ENVIRON-MINT THANG for people to see and feel encouraged by. I think that it can be not unlike when someone sets out to start a big exercise regime and radically overhaul their diet...then looks at the long list of things to do as well as how long before they'll see results, becomes discouraged and throws their hands in the air. I've watched people see all the things they can do to be more environmental and interpret it as some kind of long list of optional chores.

But as with getting fitter and eating better, I really think that living more environmentally is something better approached as a changing of, or integration of new, habits done at a pace that you can assimilate into your daily life. Once you no longer think about being mindful of electricity use, get recycling....once you no longer think about that, look into composting and so on. Well, at least that's my advice.

Meanwhile, on the Big Picture front, Australia is banning old fashioned light bulbs all-together. I think this is a great first step and hopefully more countries will follow their lead. I mean, think about just how many light bulbs there are and what a difference it would make if they were all the greener variety.

Athens: Greece's Pieces Part Two

On day one I rolled out of bed for the free hotel breakfast, then rolled right back in until 2pm. Thirteen hours of travel (including some hilarious delays in Frankfurt) plus jetlag just wiped me out. But I forced myself up out to go see the main sights and sights of Athens which it is famous for - The Acropolis and its surrounding ruins. My guidebook map was not so hot but luckily the hotel was helpful and had a guide which a) labelled every road and b) wasn't so large I'd have to lay it out on a conference table to get the best use. Though I went with a Rough Guide to Athens, I'd almost recommend not to bother with guide books. None of them offer very satisfactory maps and a little bit of web research could have told me most of what my book had to offer.The bus system isn't too shabby, though they have this system where you don't drop the ticket in a box - you stick it in a stamping machine that puts the time on it (tickets are valid for about three hours I think). If you're a cheap bastard you can usually get away with not stamping your ticket, though I wouldn't suggest it on the tram system as those aren't so crowded as to leave the inspectors flabbergasted into inactivity. Thus a total of two bus tickets got me through my entire time in the city... Point is, I took the bus up Syngrou and, getting off one stop later than I meant to, started trotting around The National Gardens. Inside which you can find the Zappeion, which I thought was their Parliament BUT NOPE. It's just used for special functions. Oddly, I didn't take any pictures of it. Odder still, the Greeks use their parliment for a parliment.The paths in the National Gardens are very sprially so I got hell of lost for a while before popping out near where I wanted to be, conveniently. Specifically, I was outside of Hadrians Arch. Thanks to my bee-yoo-ti-full angle, you can see the Acropolis through the arch.
From there it was onto the first of the big six and I expected to part with a chunk of my cash here. Luckily you can get a very good deal on seeing the six main sites of central Athens, any of them will have a ticket vendor that can sell you an all-inclusive ticket for €12 (about $17 CAN or £8). In the end I only saw four of the six sites but even that felt like a pretty good deal for what I paid. First off, right beside the Arch but behind large fences, is the Temple of Zeus.
It's huge, as you might guess - but first here is a picture with a LADY standing near it to give proper scale.
It was around this point that a similar feeling of being steeped in history to that which I've felt in certain parts of London hit me. Not too surprising since Athens has a history which dwarf's that of London just as London dwarf's that of the New World.
The fact that several areas around the temple were archeological sites in progress only augmented the sensation!From here I then crossed over to Dionysus Promenade, which leads up to tomorrow's pictures at The Acropolis!

Not Athens, sorry!

All my pictures are at home, waiting to be uploaded when I get home from work.

But I do want to share something. I'm sure Tony Blair's stepping down (finally, he announced it almost a year ago) this past weekend has had a reasonably prominent place in news outside England. What might not be coming out at a loud enough volume for all to notice is the answer to the question "So just what is Gordon Brown going to do?".

This article breaks it down into various categories, the Climate Change section being the one that prompted this post. I added the bold section but otherwise left it unedited.

"Mr Brown commissioned and accepted the results of the report on climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern in October 2006, which said that global warming could shrink the world economy by 20%. He has supported EU and British targets for carbon reductions. So he is on board for international action over climate change, which has come increasingly to dominate world economic discussions. In March 2007 he said: "The foundation of this must of course be a new international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2012." He added: "My ambition is to build a global carbon market, founded on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and centred in London." He has even appointed the former US Vice President Al Gore as an adviser and action on global warming is another issue on which he is likely to differ from President Bush."

I've found myself wobbling a bit in regards to wanting Gore to run for President. He certainly could do a lot if he won. But if more world leaders start appointing him as a kind of climate change court wizard...well, it's a tough thing to figure out in which role he could accomplish more.

Athens: Greece's Pieces Part One

Phew! So I'm back and today itself wasn't too bad. It turns out that my magnificent prize for being temp of the month was a free lunch at a nice restaurant in Holborn with my recruitment agent, a nice girl with a penchant for athleticism. That plus half a day off which left me in Central London...but the heck with that -OFF TO ATHENS.

Crossing the channel, just as we hit France.

So yes, I left late the previous Saturday, stopped over in Frankfurt and then hopped down to Athens. I arrived at something like 2:30am local time. I was a bit knackered but luckily had the chutzpah to not take any shit from pushy cabbies. Athens, no exaggeration, probably has about one taxi on the road for every three other automobiles. One piece of solid advice I can give is that if you go to Athens and a cabby seems pushy or suspicious? Fuck'em, wait (often literally) thirty seconds and another will come along.

The view from my room, looking down Sygerou avenue - a main strip that runs from the docks up through central Athens.

Sorry to just drop two lame-o tame-o pictures and end it here, but jet lag just coshed me over the head and I have to sleep or die. Tomorrow I should be over the time displacement and be all set for a long narrative about my first day, in which I tromped all over the classic sites of ancient wonder which lay within the city proper.

Vacation Status: Phase One Complete

Now to head off to Uffington!

Plenty of pictures etc will flow through my interloins (WHAT?) starting Monday. Until then here is a store which I greatly wish had been open when I walked by it in Glydfada.

Goddammit I'm on the internet while in Athens

While looking up the details on the tram I want to take to the beaches of Glydfada tomorrow, the first paragraph of the main page struck me as too tragic not to share. Bold has been added by the douchbag with the sunburned forehead.

"Forty years ago Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis (the first one) was photographed proudly tearing up the tracks for the original tram of Athens, which in the eyes of many people signified the switch from being a city where people relied on public transportation to one where everyone has their own car. This led to the Athens of the last three decades, choked with pollution and traffic, where getting from one side of the city to another required a lot of patience or some imaginative routes, which as more people discovered them also became choked with traffic. It might be said that when the Athenians embraced the automobile they screwed up Athens completely. "
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Addendum: A big hello to the person in England who found this website by typing "I wet myself today" into Google!

Okay NOW I'm gone for a week

I just had to share this first of three episodes in Adam Curtis' latest series The Trap. The man is just brilliant and makes Michael Moore look like a chubby teenager with his hand down his pants while swearing loudly at a poster of Ronald Reagan riding horseback.

Belated birthday sketch

Strangely, I finished doodling this before the conversation in the last post's comments truly got under way. Alas, the text on the right got smudged and had to be replaced with cee gee eye!.

Well, screw everybody, I'm off to Athens tomorrow. I'm taking a vacation from work and all things internet OR computer related until late Sunday the 24th. Email me if you wish, just know that I shan't be up on my correspondence until at least that point in the future.

Thanks to everybody who wished me a happy birthday! It was pretty swell. I greatly look forward to coming back from my vacation with a clearer gameplan for the rest of 2007 and piles of photos of Athens.

And maybe some finished blueprints for Scarlett RoboJohannson 1.0

Addendum: Superman fights the real life KKK in the 1940's

*Tootle Parp*

Wheeeeee - apparently I have the same birthday as Chris Onstad. My webcomics success is now assured by this divine omen.

I know I've mentioned this to some folk already, but I thought I'd mention here that in the UK there are "Youth" discounts as well as the usual "Student" discounts. I think that's pretty okay, since it's unfair to assume that someone going straight from High School to the job market should be expected to pay the same rates for transit etc. as someone further down the road, who isn't working the kind of jobs one can get when only in possession of a high school diploma.

The cut off for this "Youth" discount is, you guessed it, twenty-five. My gorgeous Youth Rail Card picture is now but an archaic relic of times gone by! Here's hoping a pack of archeologists don't abduct me while I'm checking out the Acropolis in three days time.

Less than twenty-four hours of being twenty-four to go...

This panel is from chapter three, page nine of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell. I recently spoiled myself with the softcover and after the mandatory re-read I feel like I may have found a format that sits at just the right point along the line from rigidity to flexibility. The above panel is the standard size used throughout the work in a 3x3 grid. Always, the page can be split along those lines and throughout Campbell cleverly chooses to merge different combinations of these panels in various manners which change the rhythm and flow of a page - as well as simply allow larger illustrations!

If I run with this then I suppose it is a theft of sort, but honestly I think that technique is one thing and style another. To me, "stealing" the former is always acceptable because otherwise nobody would ever learn how to do anything but by reinventing it entirely from scratch. The latter is much less so, with cherry-picking being widely accepted as another method of learning but flat out copying being just as wisely frowned upon. Unless, of course, it's an homage or you're being postmodern.

Meanwhile, if the Adam Curtis documentary I posted below got you interested in the man and his work, there is an rather good interview with him that has the headline "Our anger is being ironed out of us".

Two days until THE AGING

I'm trying not to rabbit on about the webcomic too much now, since I'm hoping to have it up in a somewhere in the four to six week range. But I thought I'd put a little up today. Generally I've been busily filling a sketchbook with practice on hands and rough experiments in style, since I wouldn't say I really have one of my own yet. But I have been trying to get one "template" image down for each of the four main characters that I can then refer to whenever I draw them. To the left is an older one of Ben that I drew about six weeks ago and to the right is one of Charlotte that I drew last week. I don't think they're worth a thorough dissection but I will say that the reason my characters always seem to be pointing or laying their hand away from themselves is simply my way of forcing more hand practice.

Meanwhile, shucks howdy but job hunting has been a strange creature this time around. Now that I have a few months behind me of data entry, I'm getting a couple of calls a week with offers of moderate to high paying jobs (proportionate to my current pay) where I'd get to work in the heart of London.

Which would be great, except that these jobs are always just evolved versions of what I'm doing now. I've been able to find some better job listing sites and an agency that claims it deals with media (publishing/film/tv) and it actually does - as opposed to the usual, which is that they deal in media sales....but that is too recent to expect results yet. Man, it's a tough thing this drawing a line in the sand about my next job having to relate to my degree and/or passions but if you keep taking "anything" jobs then you'll only ever be more qualified for FURTHER "anything jobs".

To conclude: The Greek word for "Wanker" is "Malaka". It is sometimes used as a coloquial greeting, such as "Hey there, my [Malaka's]!". Knowledge is power!

The only boobs in this post are politicians

ZING.

Check out that biting, political commentary!

Actually, you'd be better off checking out this brilliantly put together documentary - in three parts - called The Power of Nightmares. It traces the history of the of the ideological groups which have polarized the world over the course of this century thus far and manages that rare feat of being both factually and stylistically impressive in it's exection.

Yesterday...

...a picnic at St.James was great fun and along the way we spotted a whole lot of people lined up along The Mall (to clarify, this is the name of the long road which leads up to Queen Victoria's monument which is in turn just outside of Buckingham Palace). A policeman told that soon there would be the second last practice parade for the Queen's birthday. Impressive that literally a few hundred people were lined up just for the next to last practice.
What you can see in the background of this picture is a part of that practice heading towards the Mall as seen from where we settled to eat, which was a several hundred years up and over from the Monument. As you can see, everything has greened up since the last time I took pictures in St. James park.Now then, I might not have included that poor photo of the procession but it's needed for contrast to the other procession which caught me unawares as, hours later, I trumped down Oxford Circus in search of bits and pieces for my trip to Athens.

Why look!
Is...is it?
Why yes it's hundreds and hundreds of naked cyclists!
Call me a pervosexual if you will but, as you can plainly see, I was far from the only person pulling out a digital camera or mobile phone. After the initial "Oh me, oh my!" I found it neither arousing, disgusting nor even fearful!
It wasn't the hunt for perfect bodies that made it hypnotic, it was a two part equation that consisted of 1) the sheer volume of people that kept snaking by for well over ten minutes and 2)the fact that you were getting a pretty egalitarian cross-section of human bodies.
I mean, let's face it, we all know that 98% of the naked bodies we're exposed to in film etc (even dead bodies in murder mysteries, which sometimes makes me raise an eyebrow at the implication that even corpses must be sexy!) are uniformly "perfect".
The cyclists were doing this to raise awareness of motor vehicles contribution to climate change, to suggest to us that if more of us rode bicycles that it would do a great deal to help alleviate the problem. It was an interesting thing to imagine a society where bicycles are the dominant mode of transport and all that would change. But what they unintentionally raised awareness of was that maybe we shouldn't fret about our bodies not being sculpted like Hollywood film stars and take comfort in the fact that the vast majority of us simply are not made that way - and that that is okay!

Today

A little over £113 got me my €150 for Athens. Lucky me, a Canadian who works for Network rail dropped by the office yesterday. She was from Calgary but more importantly, she had been to Athens recently. To my relief, she told me that €150 would be plenty for three and a half days there. "Could you manage Ottawa on about $215 spending money for three and a half days?" she wisely put it to me.

Talking with her, I won't deny a little homesickness crept in. Actually, I've been wrestling with it on and off for the past two weeks. Partially because summer is coming and so my mind drifts back to last summer, one of the best in my memory to be sure. Then there's some recent family events which have brought thoughts of mortality to the forefront and made me have a few lingering thoughts about being so far away from my parents. Not to mention the little things, like Toronto's secret swing, concerts in Montreal or the Manx pub in Ottawa. Oh and maybe my friends, I guess.

But I'm still only nine months into this two year experiment of mine. Progress from the second to the third draft of Momentum is much greater than from the first to the second - I hope to have a draft worth shopping around before I leave for Athens. Though I've signed up for a little more time at Network Rail, job offers are coming in and eventually the right one will come. Though I don't like to prattle on about, what with my desire not to make the people I meet feel like their every move is being reported on the Internet, I have managed to get the seed of a social life to bear a little fruit. Being a writing hermit stopped being romantic after awhile!

The jury is still out on whether or not I'll stay in England for the extra-long haul. I have to say that on the negative side of things, I find it difficult to cope with how crushingly backward this country is when it comes to the general populations attitude towards the importance of the environment. More than once now I have hear a good deal of resentment directed towards the issue at large and I've even heard more than one person say "I fucking hate the environment".

What?

Is this not like a fish saying it "fucking hates water"? Perhaps while chewing a sausage roll and reading The Guardian?

Plus the culture of fear in England is much closer to America's hysteria than the general attitude of Canada. I know I was poking a bit of fun with it, when I made my posts about Brasseye, but pedophilia nonce-sense is still pretty bad. Though the Labour party has done a lot to block a lot of the proposed anti-terror measures which would bring England in sync with America's draconian, crippled joke of a legal system...it is still a contentious issue. Running parallel to both topics, the newspapers are just as shameless in exploiting these fears to sell paper as they were (and often still are, somehow) in exploiting the Princess Diana escapade of the late 90's. These are all things which can wear me down on a tired or otherwise down day, to be sure.

I'd like to have a clear conclusion to this train of thought, but I guess the point is that I don't!

Apparently you can set off an atom bomb in the sky without the general public knowing?

Tom just, quite fairly, asked me how on Earth he could miss this?

I'd like to ask, how did I? How could anyone? Was this ever given proper news coverage?

Great Gumblin' Gumbles

Huzzah, first world (computer) problems have been surmounted!

So I mailed back the overpay....and I guess it was the right thing to do. Heck, apparently I made "Temp of the Month". If only I could articulate how that makes me feel.

Tomorrow I'm going to nab some Euro's. They aren't as wonderfully cheap as ye olde Canadian Dollar but the pound still trumps it by a reasonably consistant margin. When I checked this afternoon I saw that 100 pounds would net me 147 Euro's which is roughly what I've been recommended to acquire for the trip. Red swimshorts have already been selected.

Job hunting is proceeding apace, but I may have to work at Network Rail another couple of weeks. I think I could survive this, now that I know that since my initial contract has been filled I can just give two weeks notice like a normal human being. There is one production house which offers one year, paid contracts for runners which would be a good way of getting my foot in the door. The contracts become avaliable in July so it's just as well that I can get a few weeks more out of NR. Plus I still get my vacation, so that should at least recharge me.

Nowt much else today, but lasers saving the earth and talking paper!

Addendum: www.firstworldproblems.com is mine! Nothing up yet, but it's on the way...

A £1,700 Kick in the Crotch

So! I have recieved a kick square to each testicle.

Kick #1) I checked my bank balance and I seemed to have been paid about £1,700 more than I usually am in a given week. I know in my tiny, robotic heart that I will have to call my recruitment agency on Monday and tell them - but god damn if it isn't a hell of a tease to think for even a moment that you, all of a sudden, have enough money to guarantee visiting Canada in December, move house to somewhere closer to the centre of London and take almost all the stress off of your current hunt for employment.

Kick#2) My damn computer has a corrupt system config file which means it can't start up. I don't have a Windows XP backup disc because of a shared stupidity between the retards who packaged my computer and the retard currently typing this message. So I guess my "e-presence" will be "e-much less" until I get this sorted, which will be tricky if only because there doesn't seem to be such a thing as a proper comptuer store in London - only retail outlets where the employees only know how to sell, not how to fix or help, and computer pawn shops which I wouldn't let my laptop near in a hundred years.

Ro-bits

Trying to get a better idea of robot's imitating human movement vs actual human movement, I've been watching assorted clips of the Honda ASMIO and the Sony QRIO. While doing so I came across this suprisingly "Aww..." inducing clip.


Meanwhile, I also discoverd that a cluster of QRIO's performed in Beck's video for "Hell Yes". This gave me untold joy and perhaps it will do the same for you?

Macbeth at Regents Park Open Air Theatre

The temperature was perfect and a cool breeze played through the trees the whole time. I'd have taken picures of the show in progress but it was so good that I completely forgot to! What I saw of Regents park while we found our way to the theater was also rather impressive, I'll have to return with my camera during a sunny day and give it a do over.

Oh! The reason the set may look a bit odd is because they chose to make the play anachronistic, with the usual period dress during court scenes but a mixture of Scottish military get-ups from the 17th through 20th century during most every other scene. It was a bit of a surprise when, in the opening battle scene, the King came swinging in on a jeep!

This country is also doing bad things

America deserves a whole hell of a lot of critical attention but, as this article from the Ottawa Citizen which not all of you may have read points out, it realllly is far from the only country that does.

Shibbidy shabbita don't let the monsters grab at ya

Two weeks 'til Athens, two weeks 'til Athens!

Ahem.

Sorry it's been a bit quiet lately, mostly I'm finding myself consumed with job hunting this past little while. But tonight I'm going with someone to see an open air production of Macbeth, in Regents Park, and I'll be sure to bring my camera.

Meanwhile, I found a very good and easily digestible article put out by a UK based group of scientists with a long, distinguished history, The Royal Society - A Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change. Give it a peek, I dares ya.

Misanthropists unite!

Although, by definition, I'm not sure if they could!

The new season of Big Brother is on the way and from the depth in which it has permeated all forms of media in London, you'd think God had announced A)That he actually exists and B)He's swinging by for the taping of the first episode, where he'll finally clear up which religion is right about him.

Naturally, I tripped over some of this while perusing the BBC this morning and the entry for the first two contestants was just too vomitous NOT to share.
****
NAME: Sam and Amanda
AGE: 18
OCCUPATION: Students
Sam and Amanda are the first set of twins to enter the house. They have their own "Twin Song" which they use to introduce themselves to boys.
-As well as studying social work in Manchester the twins also work as promotions girls in a nightclub.
-They "find politics confusing" and until recently had never been abroad.
-They both believe that "men should always buy women drinks".
****
I was once highly amused at the idea of someone singing a song which would end the Earth - but now I find it hard to laugh, having discovered what that song will be.

It will be: The "Twin Song".

Bonus Points: THIS
*ALSO*: A somewhat relevant Cat and Girl strip!

Bits and Bobs and Bikes

One thing to know if you ever plan to live in or do a bike tour through London is that regular sized bikes are not allowed on the tube - the just take up too much space. This, amongst other factors I'm sure, has helped fuel the rise of folding bikes. They are pretty fun little guys, mostly resembling BMX's, and generally cost as much as a new bike of comparable quality. On Sunday I was riding the escalator in Liverpool station when I saw someone standing in front of me with a folded up example. It stood on the step in front of him and was about the size of a modest trash bin - the like you'd find by a desk in someones study. I guess you could say that I stalked him in that I kept track of him from the station doors to the street so I could watch him unfold it. No special key seemed to be needed and it took him only about 30 seconds. Depending on where the winds of employment take me, I might look into one for myself.

Though I can't help being a little hesitant, foolishly, because of something else I've been seeing in regards to bikes and London. I'd say about every third bicyclist that I've seen on the street has been wearing a face mask air filter thing (rebreather?). When I see someone sitting directly behind an eighteen-wheeler I guess I can understand, but the implications - as well as the imagery - just creeps me out. It really reminds me of one of the old clean air advertisements from the early 1990's where a bunch of lawyers with personal air masks are strolling through a street where everything is a shade of brown or grey while a homeless begs for change so he can suck a few precious gasps of clean air from a kind of vending machine (Ten points if anyone can find a clip of it). At least there are plans for this, such as the Low Emissions Zone (which is the vast majority of London, but for a few communities which lay outside of the M25 highway that encircles the city), the Emissions Influenced Charges Proposal and the steady increase of congestion charges.

It's all well and good that we've made fun of them alot

As much as they may amuse us, popular humor shows making fun of Scientologists do not - at least directly - impede those lunatics.

Luckily, Tom has put something under my nose that can. All British citizens and expatriates are being called upon to sign this petition pleading that Scientology does not gain official status as a religion in the UK.

To those of you who read this and would be able to sign it, or could pass it along to someone who could, please do. If this seems like I am being unfair by singling them out, well, let's just say that they really have established themselves as fair game and leave it at that.

Rain, rain go away...

Though I shouldn't complain as A)I'm staying inside to write, anyways, and B)apparently I'm in England?

In other news, Giles Peterson's excellent weekly show has alerted me to the existence of a really enjoyable electronic soul group called The Elektrons (the Myspace tracks are decent but their segment on Giles' show was really something). They have a show on the 6th at a different Brick Lane venue which I will check out, provided the steaming entrails of my weekly sacrifice to the disembodied ghost of Carl Sagan tells me that it shall be so.

If this were a Mad Magazine article it would be called "The Assault On Raisins"

Those witty, witty guys..."M.A.S.H." becomes "M.U.S.H." in their crazy, mirror universe!

Ahem.

No outrageous adventures to report at the moment, though I suppose I can provide a small amount of local colour by letting you all know that Charing Cross is the place to go in central London for an incredibly dense grouping of book stores (both chain and independent). I went there today to hunt for Al Gore's new book, "The Assault On Reason". At the third store I found it and have devoured half the introduction on the way home.
It's so strange to see a man we used to know mostly as "Bill Clinton's VP" and "The exceptionally boring man" turn into a savvy, entertaining and intriguing speaker who more than stands out from his old bosses shadow - which is more than Mrs. Clinton can say. The article I linked to in the last paragraph gives a nice sample, but I think his interview on The Daily Show (Parts one and two) is quite useful as well. My apologies for not embedding it, but the code which Comedy Central provides is, basically, poop. To sum up what the book is about in a sentence: Al Gore finally applies the analytical and problem solving skills he demonstrated an abundance of with An Inconvenient Truth to the troubles with political and public discourse as it relates to democracy in America.

Though it is written with Americans in mind, even in just what I've read so far, you can easily apply it to Canada and Britain as well. My admiration for Mr. Gore is growing steadily - but of course I still had to find and use a picture of him where he looks like an absolute tit. Such are my fickle ways!

Addendum: BEARD. At the risk of getting stupid in that most internet of styles, may I suggest a Gore/Frakes 2008 ticket?

It is too hot in herre

So I have removed some or all of my clothes. Holy crap it's only about +22c or something and I feel like my head is wrapped in twelve towels soaked in boiling water. I....I hear Greece is hot? Particularly in the summer? Man I hope my body adapts soon!

Meanwhile, the neighborhood in which I work (Barking) is generally littered with litter and the chav's who like to loiter while they litter. But there is one park/bird reserve which serves as a refreshing island of green and blue amongst all the grey and porno-neon advertising. Today I had my camera on me and so this is what you get (to see today).

New Layout - ha cha cha cha

Ta-da!

Working with paw on the website for the webcomic, I've been thinking more about proper site presentation and how it relates to being easy on the eye. The old template I used was snazzy and stylish, but cramped and somewhat counter-intuitive. Let me know if you like this profile better, if you don't, if you don't give hoot or a holler...or if you think that maybe I should have , instead of Athens, booked a trip to the secret city of Laos.

As for the webcomic site, my two favorite designs have always been Chris Onstad's and Ryan's. The use of whitespace, centering and minmalism all come together for something visually pleasing. Neither site ever feels cluttered - which is impressive on the latter given how many features Ryan has packed in - and my eyes are automatically on the comic as soon as the page loads. I find with some of my other regular reads that if I'm a little tired or distracted, I have to re-center my vision slightly and this can be a little annoying (FIRST WORLD PROB-). Sounds like nitpicking in the extreme, I know, but I strongly believe that even the tinest annoyance - repeated consistantly over a long period of time - has the power to make people less inclined to come back. Plus, let's face it, Internet usage seems to drive a lot of people to Olympic levels of laziness.

It's the first proper sunny, summer day in London today. Looking out of the kitchen window I saw a long string of roses reaching from the neighbors lawn and stretching out along the clothes line. It's invigorating as all get out, which is grand as that's just what I need to help me finish pinning the second draft of Momentum to the mat.
Addendum: Speaking of content and opinions and all that...feel free to make suggestions requests or coments regarding what you liked seeing here and what you might like to see. Now that I've been in London almost six consecutive months and England for almost ten I find that some of the touristy-ness is wearing off, perhaps leading me to leaving out interesting details which I'm glossing over as I become more assimilated.

Someone who really is on the front lines of womens rights

I admit that over the past year or so I've gotten in the habit of burying my head in the sand as regards what goes on in Afghanistan and Iraq - particularly since Saddam's disgusting treatment.

But thanks to my growing addiction to the BBC, I found out about something - someone - in Afghanistan that just blew my mind. I knew that there had been improvements since the Taliban had been ousted from power, but had heard of several backslides which eventually lead to the "hear no evil" approach I'd been taking.

I had no idea there was a woman MP in the country - named Malalai_Joya - who, despite numerous death threats and the bombing of her home, says all the things that need to be said there. Like the surprisingly obvious yet not universally regarded "We probably shouldn't allow former Taliban leaders to take positions in the new government" (I'm paraphrasing). Here is the article which drew my attention and here you can see her personal website. What she faces and what she is trying to do just impresses the hell out of me, while putting the pundits who ponder the ways in which warrior womyn can further engorge their sense of entitlement into proper perspective.

ATHENS AHOY

I booked it!

I'll be leaving late June 16th and arriving back late June 20th.

This is berserk, after years of grouping anywhere but England, Canada and the U.S. in roughly the same sphere as Narnia and Atlantis (for all the odds of my ever going there).

I also splurged on a day tour for the middle of my trip. Originally I was going to shun tours since I figured I could get around the city on my own power just fine and that I'd have a more "natural" experience that way. But then I noticed a tour which would take me sailing around three surrounding islands (Hydra, Poros and Aegina). I do not have a yacht, so I thought this would be worth it!

I have also hear that Greece is "cheap" for British tourists so I won't have to get a pile of spending money (thank you, all-mighty pound sterling). It's not a shopping trip, so really I'll just need enough for food and perhaps the odd trinket (hopefully I'll be suave enough to weed out the ultra-touristy crap from genuinly interesting artifacts).

I'm not sure what else to say at this point, other than just A-WHEEEE!

A blobbidty bibbida

As someone who is sometimes cheeky enough to call himself "a writer", I feel I have to try and avoid cheap literary analysis or expression of my own experiences...lest I get caught in the fallacy of trying to fit everything I do into a grand structure.

But it's a very tricky thing to resist the implied parallel when, upon waking up this morning, not only was my head physically unblocked (hurrah, illness has at least receded) but I woke up to find myself already deeply into a writing fugue after three days of barely being able to review my script notes. A trance, a fugue, a vomiting out of ideas, call it what you will but in five minutes I'd filled several pages in my trusty green, hardback notebook with a detailed outline for an entirely new script and in the frenzied rush I'd also filled a page of my yellow "Momentum" notebook with frantic shorthand resolutions to problems I'd been trying to solve. This state continued through breakfast and the ride to work - though I'm normally up in a blink, today I still feel the sleep falling from my brain almost three hours since I awoke.

This is, I think, the kind of inspiration and rush that so many before and after me have clawed at madly, with excessive drink or drugs. I can't say either has ever brought it on for me, but if it works for others then I can certainly understand.

When I say that I woke up halfway in, this is because for the first time in a long while I vividly dreamed a story I could actually relate to people who do not have my exact memories. Usually my dreams are so tactile and rooted in memory that it would be a tremendous pain in the arse to convey them. This dream had those two qualities but had a third facet in that multiple threads and themes of childhood were present. A strange thing for me as I've been looking forward to and considering what is to come with such intensity for the past few years. I don't know yet, of course, if this story will develop into something that could be made - but I do know that I shall have to explore it further when I visit Uffington to retreat from London/Las Internet for a few days.

After Greece, that is! Yes, Old Man Money bounced me on his knee and said that I could get away with both a four day venture into Athens and a four day retreat in Uffington/Oxford. Exciting times! During my weekend stupor I was able to investigate a decent flight and hotel package that will put me along a main road which seems roughly equidistant from the Aegean sea and the core of Athens where such wonders as the Parthenon and the temple of Zeus can be found. The only decision left to make is if I should include one of the little tours in the package and how obnoxious a pair of swim shorts I should purchase.

Addendum: I was warned London would be dirty compared to Ottawa, and parts of it certainly are, but it could be worse.