Photo Friday: Accidental

Photo Friday

---
Technorati tags: Photo Friday; photography; incurable_hippie.

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.

---
Technorati tags: grief; incurable_hippie.

Photo Friday: Destruction

Originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.

Photo Friday: Destruction

---
Technorati tags: Photo Friday; destruction; incurable_hippie; photography; Claywood Flats Sheffield; Sheffield; demolition; nibbler; building demolition by nibbler.

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.

---
Technorati tags: body image; incurable_hippie.

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.

---
Technorati tags: anti-porn; angry; incurable_hippie; sell-outs.

Photo Friday: Thin.

Thin rays of light beamed through the narrow slats of shutters.

Photo Friday: Thin

---
Technorati tags: Photo Friday; photography; incurable_hippie; thin.

It's really bloody cold.

Gabcast! incurable hippie's musings and rants #2

---
Technorati tags: audio; audio blog; incurable_hippie.

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:

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

---
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.

---
Technorati tags: woman's hour; radio 4; incurable_hippie; bbc; women.

Audio Audio. Test.

Gabcast! incurable hippie's musings and rants #1

---
Technorati tags: audio; audio blog; incurable_hippie; test.

Photo Friday: Anger

Photo Friday: Anger

100_0407
Originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.

---
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!

---
Technorati tags: UK Politics; photography; incurable_hippie; polls.

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:

---
Technorati tags: hamster; pets; incurable_hippie; video.

Photo Friday: Girl

Otherwise known, by us on the beach, as The Seagull Worrier.
Photo Friday: Girl.

Originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.

---
Technorati tags: Photo Friday; girl; incurable_hippie; photography; beach.

Breaking News...

http://fakegaynews.com/index.php/2006/08/toaster-ovens- replaced-by-newer-gadgets-in-effort-to-boost- lesbian-enrollment/

---
Technorati tags: lesbian; incurable_hippie.

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).

---
Technorati tags: cool links; future; incurable_hippie.

Photo Friday: Bright.

100_1191
Originally uploaded by incurable_hippie.

Taken by me in the Winter Gardens in Sheffield earlier this year.

Photo Friday, topic BRIGHT.

---
Technorati tags: Photo Friday; bright; incurable_hippie; photography; plant life; Sheffield; Winter Gardens.

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.

---
Technorati tags: September 11th; 911; incurable_hippie; anti-war.

Music Meme.

Open iTunes/iPod or Windows Media Player to answer the following.
Go to your library.
Answer, no matter how embarrassing it is.

How many songs? 2273

Arrange by artist:
First artist: Abdou

Last artist: Zorba the Greek!

Arrange by song:
First Song: 4st7lb US Mix - Manic Street Preachers

Last Song: Zither - Doves

Arrange by time:
Shortest Song: Latin - Father Ted (6 seconds)

Longest Song: La Mer - Debussy (24:02)

Arrange by album:
First Album: 1967-1970 - The Beatles

Last Album: Women's World Voices 2

First song that comes up on shuffle: Pay Attention to Me - Orlando Brown (Thirteen)

How many songs come up when you search for "sex"? 2

How many songs come up when you search for "death"? 1

How many songs come up when you search for "love"? 103

Arrange by play count:
Which is your most frequently played song? Free like a flying demon - E-type


PS, you can see what I generally listen to here at last.fm.

---
Technorati tags: music meme; music; incurable_hippie; memes.

Are you feeling naughty??

Edited to add: Apparently they have caught on, and now if you offer to pay less than their 'suggested amount' they won't let the transaction go through. Nice while it lasted though, eh?!

Well, get rid of that filthy mind, and read on...

Shopping Spree

How to Get Free Books, CDs, and Movies from Focus on the Family—Thereby Taking Money out of the Pockets of Anti-Gay Bigots—in 12 Easy Steps by Noel Black.

Gay marriage is on the ropes and you may be feeling despondent about the tedious process and dim prospects for any kind of meaningful change in the near future. And why wouldn't you? There are a total of eight states in the U.S. that don't have Defense of Marriage amendments either on the books or in the works, and Massachusetts is still the only state that permits same-sex marriage. The Washington State Supreme Court handed down its anti-gay-marriage decision several weeks ago and Washington's gay community is licking its wounds and contemplating an incremental push for civil unions.

When I'm feeling despondent over the state of gay rights in America—or the concurrent assaults on reproductive freedom, science, and rational thought—there's just one thing that helps me overcome my feelings of despair: getting free shit from Focus on the Family!

Few people know that Focus on the Family — the powerful evangelical Christian para-church based in Colorado Springs—will give you, absolutely free of charge, books, CDs, and DVDs. Usually people pay for these products, and the millions of dollars raised helps Focus on the Family produce yet more books and CDs featuring Dr. James Dobson and other Focus "experts." (Focus on the Family's experts, when they're not chatting on the phone with Karl Rove, run around the country teaching people how to stop being so gay and when it's appropriate to kick their kids' asses.)

Not only does ordering free stuff from Focus on the Family—sent to myself or people I don't like—satisfy a deeply juvenile impulse, it has the added benefit of taking money directly out of homo-hater Dobson's pocket. The one drawback is that getting free shit from Focus on the Family is a tad time consuming and a bit tricky, but it's well worth the effort.

Here's how to do it:

1. Go to www.family.org and you will see their home page.

2. Once you're at the home page, look for the "Resources" link in the blue bar on the left-hand side, right above the "Search" box, and click it.

3. Under the "Resource Category" menu on the left-hand side, you'll notice categories such as "Homosexuality." Go ahead and click that for shits and giggles.

4. It's time to start shopping! Scroll down a little bit and feel the homophobia flow. How about a nice copy of A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality? Go ahead and click the "Add to Cart" button.

5. Now comes a tough decision: Do you have the book sent to yourself so you can sell it on eBay for cash (my personal favorite) or do you keep it on your mantel as a high-larious conversation piece to point at and laugh when your friends and family come over? Or do you send it to a jerk? I always opt for sending it to myself. Yes, you may end up on the Focus on the Family mailing list (though I've been doing this for some time and have never received anything beyond what I ordered), but reading Focus on the Family's junk mail is a good way to keep tabs on their activities and it will cost them even more money in postage.

Please note: Focus on the Family won't send you more than $100 worth of materials for free in any given shopping trip, so be sure to keep it reasonable and return often.

6. Select "Add New Shipping Address" and click "Proceed to Checkout." Or, hell, continue to shop and pick up a box set of The Chronicles of Narnia on CD.

7. The next screen will ask you to sign up for an account and give your information. Don't worry, they don't ask for your credit-card number. Enter whatever name and address you like, because you won't be paying. You might want to make up a phone number, too.

8. Once you've filled out all the required fields (you can also create a fake e-mail account if you're super paranoid), click "Proceed to Checkout" one more time. You'll now find yourself at the "Here Is Your Cart" field. Annoying thing alert: You may have to reenter your info again after this field to actually set up your account. But just keep going until you get to the "How Much Would You Like to Donate?" page.

9. So, how much would you like to donate? Zero dollars, obviously. Don't be fooled by the field in the lower-right-hand corner that shows you the suggested donation amounts. Simply select "Enter other total amount" and enter 0.00 as the amount you would like to pay. (Don't put in a dollar sign or it will ask you for credit-card information!) Proceed to checkout.

10. You'll now be led to a screen that will try to make you feel guilty about the amount you haven't donated. But don't feel bad! Just proceed to checkout again.

11. Jesus! Here you are on the twelfth step and you still don't have your self-hatred materials! And you thought preventing homosexuality was supposed to be easy! Click "Checkout Now" and you're done.

Congratulations!

You have just removed a few dollars from the coffers of a major anti-gay organization. You can further capitalize on your brief investment of time by selling the item/s on eBay. You'd be surprised how much money you can get—a friend of mine makes a few hundred extra dollars every few months on this perfectly legal activity.

And if your conscience begins to bother you, think of it this way: Focus on the Family would probably like for you to have the materials anyway, because there's that minute chance that, once in your hands, the materials may inspire you to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

Finally, don't forget to pass this information on to all your friends. Proselytizing isn't just for Christians, you know. Go gay!

(NB, not that I'd know anything about it, international postage adds $10 to the cart, so account for that in the $100 limit...)

---
Technorati tags: free stuff; anti-bigotry; incurable_hippie; narnia; creative protest.