dead brains don't dance

I'm more pleased than I can express to report that Aliss, as hoped (but no longer quite expected) did indeed beetle back into the house this morning, chirping.

She's very thin, but otherwise healthy and well as far we can tell; whether she's been trapped somewhere or just out on a wander for her own inscrutable reasons we don't know, but she's not been eating much either way.

She's eatenravened, and has just had a full and frank exchange of views with Iggy, so all is (I hope) back to what passes for normal here.

Images from 1968 (Chicago), 1984 (San Francisco) and 2008 (from here); prompted by listening to Short Sharp Shocked this afternoon and being reminded just how good an album it is.

Does anyone actually need reminding that Obama not being McCain doesn't mean - whatever happens in November - that there's going to be any real change in the US? The walls are closing in everywhere and I can't see anything happening to stop, let alone reverse, that in the foreseeable.

Have a nice day, and remember that the innocent have nothing to fear.

We got a phone call this morning from the vet in Nailsea: Pepper was hit by a car and killed on the main road through the village late last night.

There's not a lot I can say right now; I feel raw. She was the Prettiest Cat In The World, the most vexed, and the most charming. She'll never come running into the house sounding like a fishwife again; she'll never lie on my legs in bed attached, grumbling, like a Klingon no matter how much I turned around in the night; she'll never be assaulted by Mustrum, her abusive partner, again.

Go well, Pepper, you would have been on this planet for nine years next month: I'm glad I spent those years with you.

As I type, 2300 new botnet addresses have gone onto our servers' firewall rulesets since midnight, nearly all from attempted attacks on the same website (ramtops' personal site, FWIW; yesterday it was mostly Newswireless).

I suppose they don't actually do that much harm as such, and it's a handy way to harvest compromised IP addresses, but it's still a PITA. Can't help wondering how many sites there still are out there vulnerable to that SQL injection attack.

Too hot.

I cycled off to the shops first thing Saturday, before the weather went from Too Hot to Batshit Crazy Hot: to Whiteladies Road for a lens cap and skylight filter for the Nikkor 50mm; not to the bike shop in Cotham (it hadn't opened yet); Gloucester Road for ankle straps and a quick steering bearing adjust from the poncey bike shop, sausage from the Polish grocer, and a two-for-one pair of fly zappers from Maplin. Thence to St Marks Road past Montpelier Station, where I took the crappy photo adjoining (now immortalised on the Bristol Traffic blog) after having to circle on the pavement around the three cars blocking the end of the road, more sausage from another Polish grocer, and squit, coriander, chilis and a jar of cornichon from the Sweet Mart. Finally, back home via St Werberghs (cheddar, apples, bananas and mushrooms) and the Centre, Anchor Road and the Floating Harbour.

Up to 25° as I got back to the village. ramtops and I decided that now was the time to divest the pnod of its infestation of underwater Leylandii in the form of reeds and a lily that between them rendered it impossible to see the fish, and barely even feed them. I should've taken photos: the whole lot came out as a single, huge and heavy lump that had covered pretty much all of the ledge in the pnod - maybe 3 or 4 foot round a curve and a good 18" across. Sawing the fucker up for disposal took the rest of the afternoon: that was wood in them there roots, and the four housebricks buried inside the mass demanded a degree of care in the sawing. I split most of it, but extracting the plastic pots that the two plants originally emerged from had to wait.

We discovered that one of the new zappers was dead. Checked the unit to be sure: 630VDC on the grid; 240VAC on the socket; nada from the UV bulb. Maplin said they'd replace just the bulb if I took it in, which seemed fair.

Sunday, after Mac's nasty but, thankfully, consequentially constrained fall on the grass bank by the pnod (she's written about it elsewhere), and aching somewhat from the previous day's exertions, I finished the splitting and greenbagging of the triffids. The pots were cut free, but there was no way that either would ever be separated from the solid mass of root it contained, so they went in the car as was. The idea was that the whole lot could go to the tiprecycling centre, along with our current load of plastic bottles and sundry other crap; this we did after swapping the UV bulb (they had to extract one from another unit; I'd assumed they had bulbs in stock when they said they'd swap it ;) and buying a tenpack of solar powered LED garden lights at Maplin, and getting the key that Mac had cut on Saturday filed down so it might actually work at Sainsbury.

We went on to Cleeve, to buy a few aquatics to fill some of the new space around the pnod (and perchance to keep the Tribe off the fish and frogs; well, we can hope); we got a couple of garden plants and tomato feed while we were at it. The afternoon saw ramtops and me mostly gardening, front and back. This is all getting horribly traditional middle-aged weekend occupation, but it's probably best if I don't think about that too much. Still, everything looks much better now post weeding and planting, and the day was ended wonderfully by a sharp rainstorm just after full dark. We sat for a while on the patio under the awning with last drinks listening to it fall and looking at the lights scattered around the garden, before finally going to bed.

A good weekend, on balance.

We are returned, packed (eventually) like sardines into one of BoggerAir's¹ 737-800s yesterday evening from Shannon to Bristol.

What is there to say? It was the West of Ireland, there was Weather, there were ferry trips to islands, the impacted tar and dead nanites clagging the lungs of my soul were blown away; maybe only for a short while, but blown away they were and are for now.

I may write more later (though likely not) but highlights?

» It's Ireland! People talk to one another as they pass in the street. Without blinding myself to its downsides (though the Church seems to loom now less than ever), on a day-to-day level there's much to be said for living in a country where people aren't all thrussened up as they are here. ramtops and I would move tomorrow if only the idiot tax would oblige.

» A (too short) day walking around Inishbofin. We've said this before, but next time we will stay there at least one night so we don't have to think about ferry leaving time as the afternoon progresses.

» Staying again at Rosleague Manor which, though the food wasn't quite up to the standards of last time and the rebuilt conservatory isn't perhaps as friendly as it was, still served me my best meal of the trip and was a wonderful base for the three nights we were there.

» The Blue Nile in Galway! That was, after all, our reason and excuse for going in the first place, and a very fine gig it was too. Paul's voice seems to get a little more fragile every time we hear them, but more poignant with it. The Radisson's ballroom is an odd venue, but it was packed, friendly and enthusiastic, and seated where we were (seating was unassigned, and ramtops picked the best possible place just behind and to the left of the desk), we probably had the best sound in the house. Not that Nile gigs ever have bad sound, of course.

Photos will follow, when I've extracted, processed and uploaded those few that might be worth the attention.

Lowlights? We've both been bitten (of course), the aforementioned airline, and the horror that's "electronic stabilisers" on the Aran Direct ferry to Inis Mór: replacing natural movement with the waves with a complex, non-periodic lurch and judder is not an improvement and made that journey something to be endured, when the sea trip is something I've always looked forward to (whatever the state of the sea).

As usual, I'm going to make little if any attempt to catch up with LJ or other blogs; if there's anything you think I'd want to, or should, see from the last week, please let me know.

¹ HTT to ianmcdonald - it could perhaps be said though, that by making the process of flying as vile and miserable as it could be (thus discouraging their transportees from enduring it again), and by packing their tin cans full to brimming with presumed human bodies (and so minimising per-capita resource usage and environmental impact), they might actually in some way be to be commended. It wouldn't be said by me, however.

On this grey and drizzly summer solstice, here's a winter solstice gift of darkness and light for you all from The Book of the Night:

The finger of the moon touched the face of the rose window and suddenly, as if in answer, a thin film of flesh covered the bones of the abbey and the bones of the abbey became rounded and soft, and the towers became … what is it … knees. And the crack of doors, a human, fleshy ass, and the rose window—the great seat of birth—burst open with the light of birth as a living eye. A cathedral of flesh, the abbey became, her belly the roof of it all. I raced from the barn but stopped at the Tree of Life and hid, somehow, in its shadow. (Aah, Nicholas, you fool.) There I saw her navel, the nave, her arms outstretched into the apse, and her head as altar. Her woman part opened in the red-gold of light. I saw her and knew that I looked upon a woman with her knees in the air, giving birth to living light. What had been the soft gold reflection on the glass, now became her own fire. I watched. Stars rested on her fingers and glinted on her kneecaps.

And then she stood and shook stiffness from her limbs and the transparency of flesh became solid and she walked along the Street of the Dead down toward the sea, past me, knelt, dropped her long dark hair into the pool of sea, and washed herself. And then she stood and spun over the fields, her robes of moonlight twisting about her, twisting until she became a triangle of light, five parts four, four parts three, shimmering, and the moisture from her hair dripped as dew on the fields. She lay down again where the abbey had been, lifted her knees to the sky, stretched out her arms across the fields, opened herself, her woman part, and was stone again. Doors, towers, window, stone. The moon rose above her knees as if it had been born from them. I saw the miracle, that night, only once, but I knew then that the true light came from the darkness and it was to the darkness I must go. I could not hide.

[ via lpetrazickis ]

The 5 Love Languages quiz:

Score	Love Language
11	Quality Time
9	Physical Touch
4	Words of Affirmation
4	Acts of Service
2	Receiving of Gifts

How to interpret your Profile Score:

Your highest score indicates your primary love language. Your second highest score indicates your secondary love language. If two scores are identical, you are bilingual (you have two primary love languages). If the scores of your primary and your secondary language are close (for example, 10 & 9 respectfully), it indicates both are important to you. Whatever a significant other does to express love in either of these languages will get emotional points with you. The highest possible score for any language is 12.

I took my bike trailer out for its first proper run yesterday, to North Street[¹] and Sainsbury[²]. A smidgeon over 7 miles. My tentative methodology - buy small stuff first and put in backpack that I can wear between shops and take into Sainsbury - worked well; the only (and anticipated) hassle was parking the bike/trailer combo: it's long. A lamp post on North Street did me well, but the bike racks at Sainsbury were too close to the wall really, with only two positions I could have used at all and the front of the bike sticking out slightly anti-socially even in one of those. Manoeuvring backwards takes some getting used to too: the tow bar has very little sideways angular freedom, so it's actually more difficult than backing a trailer on a 4-wheeler.

Coming home, I certainly noticed the extra weight both up and down hill - it would be very easy to run out of brakes if careless in descent, so I'll make sure I don't do that :)

In the afternoon, I set off again (sans trailer) to CostCo[³] in Avonmouth, via the Avon Gorge leg of NCN41. 10.2 miles each way, and I was feeling it when I got to the climb up from Bower Ashton to the Ashton Court car park on the way home. The nicest part, though, was that just as I started climbing the Avonmouth bridge on my return into a brisk and cold head wind, the sky started drizzling on me. And I was too hot in the morning: we get weather more than climate in this country.

[¹] thin and round rye crispbread, 2xconc. apple and blackcurrant juice, breadflour, dishwasher tabs, smoked paprika, pumpkin seeds, G&B almond choccie from the Southville deli; ginger root from the greengrocer

[²] plain and spinach lasagne, 2x24 bogrolls, sliced ham and beef, milk, soured cream, marmalade, binliners, jaffa cakes, plain chocolate Bahlsens

[³] 2 packs of kabanos, 2 packs of bagels, a pack of part-baked demibaguettes, 2 packs of butter, a wheel of brie