Tinfoil on the Windows

Three consecutive LJ posts from three different people in different parts of the world, all talking about how their friends are suddenly breeding and what the hell is going on.

Weird.

EDIT: My use of 'breeding' was unintended to be loaded. Didn't realise the associations with the whole childfree thing. If anything I thought it was a bit funny. Sorry about that.

Waking to find a carved wooden table next to the bed laid out with bread, olives, hummous, white wine and gourmet chocolate isn't a bad way to start the day.

Best description of Planet of the Apes: Moses dressed like Tarzan being chased by King Kong dressed like Fonzie.

Best description of China: It's the hotel from Barton Fink but with the weather of Bladerunner.

All from the same comedian. Whose name escapes me.

I just sold the article on Memphis to The Age. It's also the last they'll be buying as they're phasing that column out. But still... SALE!

Also, I now have the jet lag. My eyes have a headache and if I don't sleep I feel like I'll be throwing up from another dimension.

Vicki, not sure what our plans were for today, if any, but could we reschedule? And gadge, if you're reading this, we should hang out sometime if you're free. :)

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I don't think this can be answered without  some parameters.

If I got to live forever in good health and relative youth, with all my faculties, sure.  Provided I could still end it whenever I felt I'd had enough.  Otherwise, no.  Unpleasant a fact as it is, the ticking clock gives our lives urgency and meaning.  With limitless time we'd actually wind up doing a lot less, across the board, and consequently wind up with lives that were orders of magnitude longer and of far less worth or interest.  To anyone.

I don't know if my answer changes if everyone else doesn't get to be immortal. At the end of the day I'd rather have quality over quantity, and if the few people I loved the most withered and died while I kept going... nah.  Once that happens a few times I'd change fundamentally, and then have to question the worth of sticking around.  Again, parameters give shape, definition, context and meaning to a life.  It's a journey you take with others.  Sitting in a private car by yourself... it's just not any fun.

And if the rest of the world was immortal as well... Jesus no.  Who was it who said most people who long for immortality don't know what to do with a rainy Sunday afternoon?  Most people wouldn't be able to handle it.  The world would become a place I just wouldn't want to live in.  

Right, so 3 hours sleep and evidently I'm good to go.

I wonder if the cafe down the street will accept Icelandic kroner, Scottish pounds or American dollars. Because I appear to be clean out of Australian currency.

PS: I'm busy Saturday afternoon (I think) and Sunday after 6, but otherwise if you're in Melbourne and would like to hang out for a bit I'm pretty free between now and Monday.

26 hours from now I'll be on a plane. Right now I'm in a Starbucks getting my head together.

I'm prepared for the inevitable post-trip bummer, I think. The sudden need to sort out housing once I get back, now that I'm deeply in the red, couldn't have come at a worse time. But something'll work out. to be honest it just feels like another part of the trip. Hell, even if I have to box and hide my gear and sleep out for a few nights it's not the end of the world. Sleeping in dirt was part of the family holiday half the time. But it won't come to that.

It's gotten so that countries feel like neighbouring suburbs. It's going to be hard getting used to being glued in place. Sussex borders Cleveland borders Reykjavik, and they all border London. That's how it feels.

If the London job takes me on I should be making enough to kill off my debts, live comfortably and save enough to do something like this again next year. Probably not for as long if I still have the job (in this climate, who knows) but I could do a jaunt or two. An Attenborough site, or maybe the Antarctica thing. Or if I stay locally I could do the Glencoe thing I missed out on this time. I'd love to get lost in Scotland for a while. That accent now sounds more familiar than my own. Sev thinks I belong there.

Dmetri pointed out I've now seen more of the world than he has. That surprised me.

If the job doesn't take, well, that's a whole other thing I guess. The recruiter asked where else I'd like to work, so I'll keep in touch with her. Maybe she can score me a gig in Reykjavik. Big things happening there, and now I've got a resume that makes me look good games industry-wise.

cavalorn and I are kicking around a separate project as well. Keen to get stuck into that. I'll knock off the remainder of Fateless on the plane and within a week once I get back. Then it's finishing off a screenplay for 10-minute animated short for a friend. And then I'll properly focus on the Cav stuff, get that going.

And knock off as many travel articles as I can. I'd love to get a longer piece bought by Rolling Stone. Not sure there's an RS-friendly angle on the material I have right now though. I'll have to think about it.

Should probably get back in touch with the temp agency in Melbourne, see if they can throw some monkeywork my way for the short-term.

And I still haven't written about Lebowskifest, Graceland Too or Clarkesdale. Or some other stuff probably. Like Reykjavik and the glacier and... well, thank God for Moleskine and Flickr I guess.

Natty gets back to Melboune a few weeks after me. It'll be weird seeing her in not-Edinburgh. Good to have that continuity though. Feels sane, somehow.

Blue plaques, red buses, the Tube, ancient pubs, great transport, deep history, odd smells... I'll be back. Sooner than later I hope. Fingers crossed and all that.

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Something Reginald D. Hunter said during his set was that we're all reacting to our childhoods.  I've spent a long time trying to unplug the bullshit growing up in a hick town told me about myself: I'm no good, books are for pussies, can't do anything right, nobody likes you, you're ugly, you're doing it wrong, you're an idiot, that sort of crap. 

They say courage is being scared shitless and going ahead anyway.  So with all that in mind the bravest things I ever did were probably decking the guy who had been terrorising me for a year and a half at high school, or taking a role that required singing a torch song and then getting naked in front of 2000 people (and getting an ovation for it), or learning to enjoy knowing I'm right when as much as an entire town is wrong (and then proving it.) 

It took a long time to get to the point where I could return to someone I'd wronged and bring myself to apologise for it.  Now that's no big deal at all. I know who I am, I own it, and it doesn't hurt my pride to admit my mistakes and learn from them.  I've also been a complete coward.  And I've yet to conquer my fear of karaoke.  Seriously.  That's a huge one.

I've interjected in abusive situations on the street and so far still have all my teeth. 

I guess this trip was a big deal insofar as I took myself someplace alien just as I was more doubt-filled than I'd ever been (and I learned from that and all) and made myself work socially.  I was fully expecting long dark nights of feeling utterly alone and worthless.  Aside from the occasional speedbump that never happened.  So go me, I guess. 

Doing standup was momentarily terrifying, I supose, but I knew I was there with good material and I'd been performing for a few years by that point.  Being up there and vulnerable - whether acting or doing standup or whatever - always had an invigorating sense of "fuck you" to it.  I'm vulnerable, a big target, and they've got the comfort of numbers and anonymity.  Fucking loved it.  It was a metaphor for everything I'd dealt with up to that point.  Made the real meaning of the crap I'd been getting from other people very, very clear and I've never looked back. It liberated me forever.  mostly I've never looked at other people's bullshit the same way since.

I know there were times when I was paralysed with fear. I know there were times when I backed out as a result.  I know there were times when I didn't and it always worked out well.  But I can't remember any of them.  I remember setpieces.  I don't remember the little terror-filled booster shots along the way. 

And right now, frankly, I hope I'm done with growing in that direction.  I'd like to throw everything I've got into in-the-moment and ride that to Doomsday.

(NOTE: Tried posting this last night. Semagic freaked and the formatting was all over the place. So the text was written last night my time. Around 10:30pm. Mentioned as much for my own future reference as your current one.)

Photos from the first two days of my visit to Edinburgh for the 2010 comedy festival.

Full Flickr set here.

Notetaking has suffered I'm afraid. The 2-inch buffer's back and it took me two days to realise. Doesnt stop me being utterly floored by the beauty of this town, though. If someone offered me a ticket to anywhere in the world it'd be a flip between Iceland and Edin and I think Edin might win.

Anyway, let's see what I can recreate from a photographic aide de memoire.

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Just got back from seeing the current generation of the Cambridge Footlights do an hour's worth of sketch.  They're actually really damned good.  I saw the Cambridge Limelights and they didn't hold a candle.  These guys could absolutely run with it.  They has understanding and technique.

Walked back through Grassmarket.  Spotted a plaque on the ground I'd never noticed before.  Apparently the spot outside the nearest local was bombed once, in 1916.

By a zeppelin.

Immediately looked up and tried to imagine it.  And I still can't work out why those flawed, fragile, fucking enormous things got past the design phase, or how they ever got close enough to England with hostile intent to do any damage.  Not that I've properly looked into it, mind.

Seeing Stephen K. Amos at 9:15pm and then Gutted at midnight.  Reginald D. Hunter was okay but it was probably the weakest and least focused set I've ever seen him do.  The smaller acts so far have been better than the headliners (Pappys and The Penny Dreadfuls... if they play the Melb Fest, you need to go.)  Not a bad day so far.  And it's only cost me sux poond.

I don't think I can go on living without Irn Bru.  I didn't understand it at first, but two cans in it seems to taste better than coffee with a more forgiving kick but minus the urgings toward blank-eyed homicide.  The ingredients seem to say it's mainly just sugar and water and citric flavouring.  No caffeine, no taurine, no nothin'.  Weird.  Maybe it's just a shitload of sugar.

Gonna miss the endless refrain of "free comedy!" a person is met with every twenty feet in this town.

I need to go back and explore Iceland.  But I also need to live in Edinburgh.