"I tend to think that if God wanted us to believe in him, he'd exist"
Linda Smith.
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Technorati tags: quotation; quotes; incurable_hippie; religion.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Photo Friday: Light
Photo Friday. Fireworks, taken at the weekend on Bonfire Night.
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Technorati tags: Photo Friday; fireworks; incurable_hippie; photography; Guy Fawkes; Bonfire Night.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
I'm not ok.
The horrible realisation that in only 3 weeks time, it will be the first anniversary of my Dad's death.
It's a real, physical pain in my chest and it hurts like nothing else.
I read last night in a novel that the only things humans need to survive are water and hope. I think when the doctors told Dad that they couldn't make him better, his hope evaporated and that was that. I think that's why it was so much quicker than anyone had thought.
I miss him always. I'm doing a photography course, using his camera. It makes me feel closer to him, but it adds to the pain when each and every week there are more things that I need to tell him. Snippets of info and tips and facts. Same with my OU short course. There's so much in there that he'd love to know. And that I can't ever tell him.
I don't know how many times a day I scream inside my head, 'I want him back'. And I do. I cry so often, nearly always alone, and missing him seems to get bigger the longer it is since I saw him.
I still don't know how to cope with this. I can't believe it's so close to a year on. And that this is it, forever.
It really hurts.
It's a real, physical pain in my chest and it hurts like nothing else.
I read last night in a novel that the only things humans need to survive are water and hope. I think when the doctors told Dad that they couldn't make him better, his hope evaporated and that was that. I think that's why it was so much quicker than anyone had thought.
I miss him always. I'm doing a photography course, using his camera. It makes me feel closer to him, but it adds to the pain when each and every week there are more things that I need to tell him. Snippets of info and tips and facts. Same with my OU short course. There's so much in there that he'd love to know. And that I can't ever tell him.
I don't know how many times a day I scream inside my head, 'I want him back'. And I do. I cry so often, nearly always alone, and missing him seems to get bigger the longer it is since I saw him.
I still don't know how to cope with this. I can't believe it's so close to a year on. And that this is it, forever.
It really hurts.
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Technorati tags: grief; incurable_hippie.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Photo Friday: Destruction
Originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.
Photo Friday: Destruction
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Technorati tags: Photo Friday; destruction; incurable_hippie; photography; Claywood Flats Sheffield; Sheffield; demolition; nibbler; building demolition by nibbler.
Friday, October 13, 2006
To the Woman in the Opticians
who made me feel shit.
You might have been feeling all superior in your pretty, spot-free thinness, but that is no reason to make me feel utterly dreadful about how I was looking.
Your job is to sell glasses, and yet you decided instead to tell me how little each of the pairs I tried suited me, resulting in me not only not buying any, but also in me feeling unpresentable to the point of wanting to run and hide.
It wasn't your fault that the day I had a load of new spots coincided with my opticians appointment where I would have to look closely in a mirror a lot, to try on new frames. But it was your fault that your whole attitude and reaction to everything I tried on - even the ones I told you I liked! - made me feel horrible.
Please don't do that again. To anyone.
You might have been feeling all superior in your pretty, spot-free thinness, but that is no reason to make me feel utterly dreadful about how I was looking.
Your job is to sell glasses, and yet you decided instead to tell me how little each of the pairs I tried suited me, resulting in me not only not buying any, but also in me feeling unpresentable to the point of wanting to run and hide.
It wasn't your fault that the day I had a load of new spots coincided with my opticians appointment where I would have to look closely in a mirror a lot, to try on new frames. But it was your fault that your whole attitude and reaction to everything I tried on - even the ones I told you I liked! - made me feel horrible.
Please don't do that again. To anyone.
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Technorati tags: body image; incurable_hippie.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Alas, a Bastard.
So alas, a blog (I won't do him the dignity of providing a link), a supposedly pro-feminist male, has sold out to pornographers. Great.
See Fuckery and Betrayal, Alas, a sell-out, The Revolution will be Commodified, No, really, I'm a feminist, Alas, an eruption, alas, a blog, sold out to pimp my ride and many, many, many more.
You probably don't want to see what he has done, but if you do an example is here. Needless to say, he has been 'de-linked' from my right sidebar. I don't want to be partial to funding any of this shit by links from hippie blog.
What is it they call men who profit from women's sexual exploitation? Oh yeah, a pimp.
See Fuckery and Betrayal, Alas, a sell-out, The Revolution will be Commodified, No, really, I'm a feminist, Alas, an eruption, alas, a blog, sold out to pimp my ride and many, many, many more.
You probably don't want to see what he has done, but if you do an example is here. Needless to say, he has been 'de-linked' from my right sidebar. I don't want to be partial to funding any of this shit by links from hippie blog.
What is it they call men who profit from women's sexual exploitation? Oh yeah, a pimp.
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Technorati tags: anti-porn; angry; incurable_hippie; sell-outs.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Photo Friday: Thin.
Thin rays of light beamed through the narrow slats of shutters.
Photo Friday: Thin
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Technorati tags: Photo Friday; photography; incurable_hippie; thin.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
It's really bloody cold.
Gabcast! incurable hippie's musings and rants #2
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Technorati tags: audio; audio blog; incurable_hippie.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Quiet Just Now...
My Quiet Just Now list in my blog roll to the right was getting ridiculously long. It's where I list blogs I have once read and loved, but which closed or stopped or faded or disappeared or flitted.
The list will now live in this post. For the foreseeable future, links may be added again to the right side bar, to be merged into one post again later should that become necessary.
But the list, up to now, is:
The list will now live in this post. For the foreseeable future, links may be added again to the right side bar, to be merged into one post again later should that become necessary.
But the list, up to now, is:
- QUIET JUST NOW
- le blog de Tryo
- A Frenchman in England
- Albion: mes tribulations outre-Manche
- Rob Manuel 1
- maZine
- Wherever You Are
- mercuryfern
- Little Brown Dress Journal
- Got Scurvy?
- The Black Dove
- amhainn
- The Blackboard Jungle
- Demob Happy Teacher
- Nahdendee
- The Girl Behind
- Election 2005 blog from the Guardian
- 2Queens
- Just Zip It
- The Lefty Directory
- M.J.'s Blagh Blagh Blagh
- My Karma Just Ran Over Your Dogma
- Don't Bomb Us - a blog by Al Jazeera staffers
- Dolly Dimple 3
- Dolly Dimple 2
- Bloggerheads
- Hippiegrrl Explains It All
- Practicalhippie.com: Weblog
- Ditch Monkey
- Insanely Inane Thoughts
- weather station
- Odd Socks
- Margarita's largo el pasillo
- Flowfield Unity
- Fractured Muse Chronicle
- Creativity takes Courage
- Eyes Wide Apart
- bubblegum
- Oh My, Two Lines (1)
- Creative Collage
- The Sparkly Pink Princess
- Femivist
- Ample Ramblings
- Sguelachdan
- Run Over By The Truth
- Vociferate
- Uniquely Alike
- greenfairydotcom
- samscam
- dazed-and-confused
- borderline teacher
- Girly Dyke
- Feminist Blogs UK
- Brutal Women
- A Bird's Eye View
- yehovahyireh - Taarna (1)
- 360 Degrees of Sky - Life in Rural Zambia
- I Blame the Patriarchy! (1)
- Chasing Daisy 1
- I Could Have Been a Contender
- Survivor Worker
- Altered Books: Karen's Whimsy
- Call Centre Confidential
- My Daily Om
- Some Way Out of Here
- The Infected Papercut
- Pas de Deux
- February 30th
- Menstruating She-Devils
- Life, Interrupted
- The Church of Critical Thinking - Your Suspicion is our Mission
- Lins Blog
- Democracy Is Choice
- Hunkabutta Tokyo photos, a stranger's life in pictures
- Steve, Don't Eat It!
- Do Buddhists Watch Telly?
- Eccentric Bohemian Hermits
- Mostly Decaf
- Letter from Gotham
- Adventures in Ethical Consumerism
- Thoughts of Kaili
- Thoughts of Kaili 2
- Dolly Dimple 1
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Technorati tags: blog roll; links; incurable_hippie.
Happy 60th Birthday
Woman's Hour. Here's to 60 more (and a bit more politics please)...
Woman's Hour is great. There are the odd, predictable, whining complaints along the line of 'Why can't we have a Man's Hour?'. Well, the other 23 hours of the day are Man's Hour, ok? Deal with it!
Anyway, a good proportion of Woman's Hour listeners are reportedly men, so maybe there is some hope.
Woman's Hour is great. There are the odd, predictable, whining complaints along the line of 'Why can't we have a Man's Hour?'. Well, the other 23 hours of the day are Man's Hour, ok? Deal with it!
Anyway, a good proportion of Woman's Hour listeners are reportedly men, so maybe there is some hope.
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Technorati tags: woman's hour; radio 4; incurable_hippie; bbc; women.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Audio Audio. Test.
Gabcast! incurable hippie's musings and rants #1
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Technorati tags: audio; audio blog; incurable_hippie; test.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Photo Friday: Anger
Photo Friday: Anger
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Technorati tags: Photo Friday; photos; incurable_hippie; anger; Park Hill flats; Park Hill, Sheffield.
Lunatic Enters Number 10.
That was the headline I saw when I rushed by a newsagents today. It was something along those lines and was on, I think, The Sun (junk).
My genuine first thought was 'He's been there for years'.
My genuine second thought was 'Has there been an election?'
It was only after considering the above that I realised they were talking about a guy that nearly broke in with a knife, or something.
I think I was right with the first thought actually. (And that's not even going into the appalling language which only feeds fear and prejudice against people with mental illness...)
Good photography-type news is that Schmap have used four of my photos for their Sheffield guide. Quite odd selections, but I'm not complaining!
I got a £50 cheque from yougov today. Marvellous!! They do surveys - some market research, a lot political - and it's taken a while to get to the £50 (which is when they'll send the cheque), but blimey was it nice to receive! The main reason I do their surveys, though, is that periodically the results of a survey you take part in get onto the news or the topical comedy programmes, and you can only exclaim "I DID THAT ONE!" and be joyous! (Small things may amuse small minds, but that's fine by me). So yey, £50, that will help pay my rent. Fantastic!
My genuine first thought was 'He's been there for years'.
My genuine second thought was 'Has there been an election?'
It was only after considering the above that I realised they were talking about a guy that nearly broke in with a knife, or something.
I think I was right with the first thought actually. (And that's not even going into the appalling language which only feeds fear and prejudice against people with mental illness...)
Good photography-type news is that Schmap have used four of my photos for their Sheffield guide. Quite odd selections, but I'm not complaining!
I got a £50 cheque from yougov today. Marvellous!! They do surveys - some market research, a lot political - and it's taken a while to get to the £50 (which is when they'll send the cheque), but blimey was it nice to receive! The main reason I do their surveys, though, is that periodically the results of a survey you take part in get onto the news or the topical comedy programmes, and you can only exclaim "I DID THAT ONE!" and be joyous! (Small things may amuse small minds, but that's fine by me). So yey, £50, that will help pay my rent. Fantastic!
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Technorati tags: UK Politics; photography; incurable_hippie; polls.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Pierrot Passed Away. Bless.
Pierrot hamster left us for hamster heaven on Saturday. He was quite an astonishing little blokey, not least for living until a couple of months before his 4th birthday (hamsters generally live until about 2 years old). He was a very gorgeous and cute thing, and sadly he had become quite ill and deformed in his last days. He had a great life and my house is trying to get used to just having the one hamster in it.
Here he was in his glory days:
Here he was in his glory days:
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Technorati tags: hamster; pets; incurable_hippie; video.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Photo Friday: Girl
Otherwise known, by us on the beach, as The Seagull Worrier.
Photo Friday: Girl.
Originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.
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Technorati tags: Photo Friday; girl; incurable_hippie; photography; beach.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Amazingness on the InterWebNet.
http://www.futureme.org.
You can write yourself an email which it will send to you at a time in the future - I went for a year today.
I am in love with this idea and may do more of them. I have written about today, and wondered about this time next year. I quite hope that by next year I will have forgotten all about it, so when I get the email (from myself) I'll be surprised.
Special mention also to Eiffel Tower panoramic view like, truly panoramic.
and George Carlin on God.
(Quickie today. I'm around, just not so loquacious).
You can write yourself an email which it will send to you at a time in the future - I went for a year today.
I am in love with this idea and may do more of them. I have written about today, and wondered about this time next year. I quite hope that by next year I will have forgotten all about it, so when I get the email (from myself) I'll be surprised.
Special mention also to Eiffel Tower panoramic view like, truly panoramic.
and George Carlin on God.
(Quickie today. I'm around, just not so loquacious).
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Technorati tags: cool links; future; incurable_hippie.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Photo Friday: Bright.
Taken by me in the Winter Gardens in Sheffield earlier this year.
Photo Friday, topic BRIGHT.
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Technorati tags: Photo Friday; bright; incurable_hippie; photography; plant life; Sheffield; Winter Gardens.
Monday, September 11, 2006
5 Years Ago Today.
A lot of the online chatter today is 'what were you doing on 11th September 2001?' I can join in with that.
I had been at a day centre that morning, and a member of staff had organised a cinema trip for service users, and was quite upset that virtually nobody wanted to go. In the spirit of improving her mood, I agreed to go with her, and thus I sat through the incredibly dull and ridiculous Planet of the Apes. (Which one? The one that was out on 11/9/01!)
It was even more appalling than I had anticipated and I hated every minute. I have never been so glad to leave a cinema. We had a quick coffee in a nearby cafe, and then I returned home.
I sent a text to various friends, something about having just seen Planet of the Apes, and it was one of the worst films I had ever, ever seen. What a waste of a few hours, etc.
I received a bewildering reply from someone I didn't know so well, along the lines of 'How can you complain about that at a time like this??' but I had no idea what she meant. In the end, a friend phoned and told me to turn on the TV.
'Which channel?', I asked.
'Any', she replied.
At that stage I realised there was something very big happening. My friend on the phone was explaining what had been happening (two planes into big tall buildings, another crashed somewhere else, another into the Pentagon) and all I could think was that it was some kind of Armageddon (planes falling from the sky and all).
I didn't actually know what the World Trade Centre was, but as the news reports went on I got an idea of what they were, what they represented, and how many people this would have affected. This knowledge led me to believe that this was some kind of anti-capitalist attack. Wrong again (kind of).
I, like many others, watched hours of TV, mainly made up of the same few minutes of footage again and again and again and again. It looked horrific, the numbers injured and killed looked like they could have been going into the tens of thousands, and there was a huge underlying feeling of 'is it over? who's next?'.
There were reports that London was being evacuated (which turned out to be wrong), and everything came to a halt for all the attention on New York.
I hadn't heard the word 'unprecedented' on the news so much since the death of Diana ('unprecedented outpourings of grief'), and the shock from America at having been attacked for the first time was almost audible.
I remember thinking, 'Well now they know. Horrific as this is, they will see that sudden random killing attacks are devastating and they will surely never, ever do this to anyone ever again'. I really did think that. Me and my eternal bloody optimistic mind.
I thought, how could America attack anyone after this? How could they consider bombing a town anywhere in the world, when they know how it feels to be under attack.
I didn't think I was being naive and idealistic, but the follow-up proved that I was.
Hugely revengeful attacks on Afghanistan followed, then Iraq, and God only knows where else. Increase in hate, increase in terror, exploiting terror and fear to get away with whatever Bush bloody wants. Increase in racism, in US and UK abuse of human rights and allegations (ha!) of torture.
What the hell did we learn that day? Nothing, clearly.
Over the last few weeks there have been various documentaries about September 11th, of which I have seen / heard a couple.
One I was watching, contained the only footage of the attacks from inside a tower. A French guy who had been filming a documentary following New York firefighters, and found himself in the midst of all this.
Watching the footage - actual video of inside the buildings during the attacks - was terrifying (especially because, unlike we're supposed to with movies, I did know what was gonna happen next) and made me question how I would have coped, reacted, saved myself, or not. Would I have jumped from a window with no hope of surviving? Would I have been able to outrun the fog of dust?
That kind of footage - films of the apparently inconceivable events that happened - filled our TVs at the time of the attacks. People were witnessing these events as they happened. How many times did we see those planes go through those buildings? A hundred? A thousand?
And it struck me. Would the world be so complacent if we had seen footage, a hundred times in a day, of a bomb going through an apartment building in Lebanon, or if we had seen footage, five hundred times in a day, of a hospital being blasted in Iraq, would we be so complacent? Or would we be memorising the dates and reminiscing and weeping for those people so far away?
Because we bloody should be.
I had been at a day centre that morning, and a member of staff had organised a cinema trip for service users, and was quite upset that virtually nobody wanted to go. In the spirit of improving her mood, I agreed to go with her, and thus I sat through the incredibly dull and ridiculous Planet of the Apes. (Which one? The one that was out on 11/9/01!)
It was even more appalling than I had anticipated and I hated every minute. I have never been so glad to leave a cinema. We had a quick coffee in a nearby cafe, and then I returned home.
I sent a text to various friends, something about having just seen Planet of the Apes, and it was one of the worst films I had ever, ever seen. What a waste of a few hours, etc.
I received a bewildering reply from someone I didn't know so well, along the lines of 'How can you complain about that at a time like this??' but I had no idea what she meant. In the end, a friend phoned and told me to turn on the TV.
'Which channel?', I asked.
'Any', she replied.
At that stage I realised there was something very big happening. My friend on the phone was explaining what had been happening (two planes into big tall buildings, another crashed somewhere else, another into the Pentagon) and all I could think was that it was some kind of Armageddon (planes falling from the sky and all).
I didn't actually know what the World Trade Centre was, but as the news reports went on I got an idea of what they were, what they represented, and how many people this would have affected. This knowledge led me to believe that this was some kind of anti-capitalist attack. Wrong again (kind of).
I, like many others, watched hours of TV, mainly made up of the same few minutes of footage again and again and again and again. It looked horrific, the numbers injured and killed looked like they could have been going into the tens of thousands, and there was a huge underlying feeling of 'is it over? who's next?'.
There were reports that London was being evacuated (which turned out to be wrong), and everything came to a halt for all the attention on New York.
I hadn't heard the word 'unprecedented' on the news so much since the death of Diana ('unprecedented outpourings of grief'), and the shock from America at having been attacked for the first time was almost audible.
I remember thinking, 'Well now they know. Horrific as this is, they will see that sudden random killing attacks are devastating and they will surely never, ever do this to anyone ever again'. I really did think that. Me and my eternal bloody optimistic mind.
I thought, how could America attack anyone after this? How could they consider bombing a town anywhere in the world, when they know how it feels to be under attack.
I didn't think I was being naive and idealistic, but the follow-up proved that I was.
Hugely revengeful attacks on Afghanistan followed, then Iraq, and God only knows where else. Increase in hate, increase in terror, exploiting terror and fear to get away with whatever Bush bloody wants. Increase in racism, in US and UK abuse of human rights and allegations (ha!) of torture.
What the hell did we learn that day? Nothing, clearly.
Over the last few weeks there have been various documentaries about September 11th, of which I have seen / heard a couple.
One I was watching, contained the only footage of the attacks from inside a tower. A French guy who had been filming a documentary following New York firefighters, and found himself in the midst of all this.
Watching the footage - actual video of inside the buildings during the attacks - was terrifying (especially because, unlike we're supposed to with movies, I did know what was gonna happen next) and made me question how I would have coped, reacted, saved myself, or not. Would I have jumped from a window with no hope of surviving? Would I have been able to outrun the fog of dust?
That kind of footage - films of the apparently inconceivable events that happened - filled our TVs at the time of the attacks. People were witnessing these events as they happened. How many times did we see those planes go through those buildings? A hundred? A thousand?
And it struck me. Would the world be so complacent if we had seen footage, a hundred times in a day, of a bomb going through an apartment building in Lebanon, or if we had seen footage, five hundred times in a day, of a hospital being blasted in Iraq, would we be so complacent? Or would we be memorising the dates and reminiscing and weeping for those people so far away?
Because we bloody should be.
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Technorati tags: September 11th; 911; incurable_hippie; anti-war.
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