automatonrevolution

So its all change and oddness at work at the moment. Thanks to a bizarre managment decision, the offices I work for are being relocated to….Ratho, of all places. Certainly this is an interesting decision, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the company is unwilling to continue paying rent on a 3-storey building if we’re only actually using one floor. I think Ratho was chosen mostly because they already had a building they could convert out there, and it was easy for the bosses to get to in their cars.

Meh. Its going to be a pain for me to get to. The bus service out to there isnt exactly frequent, and I have to get out to Haymarket to actually catch it.

And there NOTHING out there…barely any shops, the nearest pub is 20 minutes walk away, the only shop is a Scotmid ffs. Ghah.

Anyway, Friday was the last dat at the old office. We kinda, did some work..but not much. We had themed music and silly posters up on the walls and it was all a bit daft. Monday morning is going to be chaos. I got a tour round the new offices on Thursday, and the printers werent set up, the server was having a snooze, and the phones didnt work.

I can’t wait….

So..the question, well…one of the questions, thats flapping around the turmoil and disarray that is my brain, is whether or not the so called “Master of the modern technothriller” has finally given up the ghost. Has Mike Chrichton flipped? Is he bovvered? Is he having a midlife crisis? Did he write his latest “novel” on the back of a bus ticket?

See, the reason I wonder this, and the reason i wrote novel is inverted commas, is that his latest book, “Next”, really isnt very good, definately isnt up to par with even his weakest earlier books (Congo is better than this….thats how bad it is), and shouldn’t be classified as a novel. While it is his usual doorstop sized tome…the actual story is tiny. The rest, all the faux newspaper clippings and the side stories about the transgenic ape and the guy who gets arrested because people think hes been mucking around with the genetics of sea-turtles, are all blatant filler. Its like he hada vague idea that he battered out on a PC one week and then realised it was about a third of the size of his usual stuff.

Hes usually so good at doing characters, giving us details of who they are and what they think, mannerisms that define them as people without making them cliches. Next has none of this. Next almost reads like a movie script for a slasher film…its characters are THAT weak and paper thin…hard to identify with and harder to care about.

Its not good enough. Not from the guy who wrote Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain. And this is perhaps the root of the problem. The “Stephen King” syndrome. Chrichton is SO big, and SO well known, that his books are always going to sell millions, so his publishers and editors are letting him get away with writing any old rubbish without reigning him in. Some tough editor really needed to thrown NExt in a bin and say “Mike, I dont care if you researched all this stuff…you can write better than this”.

They really should.

The problem with blogs, or more accurately the problem I have with blogs is that I never know what to write about. This is of course evidenced by the rather limited selection of posts here on Automatonrevolution. My first blog, the origional “Storm in an Ale Mug” sort of degenerated into a political bitching session, and even I can’t bitch about politics and war indefinately (some people will laugh at that statement…:P).

The thing is, I have lots of things I want to write about..but I don’t know what to give lots of space to, and what should only get a passing mention. I mean, theres the coolness of the World of Warcraft CCG, theres the very enjoyable weekend I recently spent visiting Dave and Kai, theres the pleasant suprise that has been the last few train journeys I’ve taken (weakened slightly by a growing rant about Railway stations), theres Mums new telly, theres the last few days where I spent time with Mum and the doggies….

You see the problem.

Oh sod it.

The World of Warcraft CCG is very cool. I love it, it has me hooked, much like the online game has…(and I can’t wait for January when the Expansion for that gets released….) its fun, has cool cards, and I can manage to make a decent deck with it, which makes a nice change.

I had a lovely time visiting Dave and Kai last week, it was very nice to just be able to chill with two very wonderful people who happen to be very good friends…even though it rained lots. Im actually sort of happy we didnt do lots and lots of stuff, because sometimes its nice to be able to relax in good company, you know? So..much huggness being sent in their general direction.

What suprised me about the train journeys to and from Cheltenham, and also the more recent one to Lanark, was how they were a) On Time, b) Clean (very clean) and c) Relativly comfortable. I’ve been on longer journeys to and from London that have been the equivalent of distilled Hell..but these ones were actually almost enjoyable. Of course, it helps if theres a big smile and a big hug waiting for you at journeys end…

I’ll save the rant about railway stations for another time…I think.

Mum has a new telly…and its huge. Well…huge-ish. Well, I think its pretty big. Its a 26 inch LCD screen and its very cool. had a lot of fun setting it up with the DVD/RAM recorder thingy she got with it, and playing with buttons. The manual reads like the instructions for the Warp Core on the Starship Enterprise (ie, is completely useless unless you already know everything about the telly already). but its still very nice.

Weekend with Mum was nice in general, in fact. Both Rowan and Corrie were there (Rowan is Mum’s crazy crazy Collie, and Corrie is my sister’s crazy crazy Westie “Who knows No Fear!!!!”), so it was Doggie chaos, and lots of fun. especially the way the two of them were playing a sort of “cold war” over this one special squeaky toy…very funny to watch.

Um….running out of words now….

Okay…so I could go into lots more detail on most of these subjects…but Im sure you get the gist….

Contrary to popular belief, I do not Sleep, Eat, Drink and Breathe that utterly lovely and addictive game known as World of Warcraft. I’m not QUITE that much of a fanboy geek. Certainy, I do play it an awful lot and I do also play the card game and have, on occasion, made my friends eyes glaze over by talking about it..but it doesn’t dominate my life and the roleplaying and scheming and plotting hardly ever actually spill over into the rest of my life. I don’t go to bed thinking about what dark machinations im going to be doing when I next log on, and I generaly don’t get all that affected by stuff that happens in the game.

Until last night.

Last night my character was hanging around the pub in Goldshire (its a town, don’t worry about it), when another player started doing the “dancing naked on the table-top then jumping in the fireplace” routine. Now, Goldshire gets about 30 people like that each day, and its really irritating because its meant to be a Roleplaying server, and I personally can’t see much that could be counted as In Character about doing that…so I remonstrated with the person In Character and then Out Of Character I gently explained the whole RP thing. We got to chatting, which was nice because I was expecting to recieve a response along the lines of “LOL U LZR N00B, U SUXOR”. Turns out this was a fairly nice girl, still at school, who’d wandered on to the server to find out what it was like, and so was actually pretty interested in RP. So far so good.

The thing that got me though, was when I suggested she check some of the RP essays that can be found on the server forums, because some of those essays are very well written and could explain things much better than I could. She said she didn’t think she could read a long essay because she wasn’t very clever. I responded with “You needn’t put yourself down like that”. She replied that lots of people at her school tell her she’s stupid. “God gave me a good body” She said, “But not a good brain”.

I was livid. This put me in a seriously bad mood. Because its total bollocks. She’d already shown herself to be articulate and interested in stuff, and yet she was convinced that she was stupid because a bunch of numbnuts had told her so. A 13 year old kid should not have to think like that. Its not right and its not fair.

Apart from anything else, “cleverness” is such a wooly term in any case. Theres so many differant types of cleverness, and stupidity, that labeling someone as stupid is in fact stupidity in itself. I’m not good with numbers. That doesnt make me stupid. I had a chemistry teacher who told me a wouldn’t amount to anything because I was having trouble with my chemistry schoolwork. Yet I have a science degree….

I think im going to keep an eye out for that player, and make sure to say Hi every once in a while.

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of THAT day…(if you don’t know what I’m talking about….”Hello, welcome to Earth. How’s the weather on planet Zog?”)..and I’ve been doing a bit of thinking…about what happened…and the coincidences involved…and about life and growing up and so on.

On Sept 11th 2001, I was at a funeral. We were paying our respects to my Uncle Neil, and I was going through an internal litany of thoughts and emotions while trying to appear strong for my Mum for various reasons…and in the “reception” afterwards, when everyone was sitting around chatting and raising a glass in that melancholy way of remembrance and sorting through our collective thoughts and memories, when my sister Ellie came through to say that someone had just crashed a plane into the World Trade Centre.
At that point it didnt really register. We thought she meant a small plane, like a private jet or something..and we had our minds, understandably elsewhere. Even when everyone started the process of leaving, having said all we could think of to say to each other under such circumstances (I find funerals to be very odd affairs, theres an element of finallity in them that jars with me, because the person isnt really gone as long as we remember them…and the gatherings afterwards reinforce that, because the primary topic is our memories of the person), we passed by a television that was showing the news, and this was before the second plane hit, it didnt seem…well…important. Tragic, shocking, a sad event, but not the world changing event that it turned out to be.
That was the weirdest car journey I ever had. Driving home from a funeral, listening in growing shock and bewilderment as the story of the most horrific terrorist attack that I know of unfolded. Surreal…yuh-huh. It struck me then that ole George didnt seem up to the task…when he made his first speech about it he kept going on about finding the “folks” (his word) that did it. It seemed like he was out of his depth. Oh…and he was already trying to blame Iraq at that point. I remember that very well.

Anyway. Jump forward five years. To Monday the 4th. Another funeral. The coincidence is that it was Uncle Neil’s son, Paul. And let me just say that this guy was someone I have great respect for. In 1999 he was told he had to have a heart transplant or he’d die within weeks. He had the transplant. And he went on and made sure he had a full life, fathering a daughter and living every day to the full. He was a guy who said “get stuffed” to existence and turned a few weeks into six years.

Also, on 31 August, I turned 29. Woo. Hoo. And I know I’m not the same person as I was when I turned 28. Older…yes. Wiser…maybe. A lot has happened, I’ve learned a lot of things and re-affirmed some things and hopefully along the way I became a bit better at being me, and made me a bit better. And also I realised that I’m now a year closer to the stage where I don’t have to make up excuses about why I dont want to go on a Club 18-30 holiday. And thats something to be thankful for, I think.

So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about age..and growing up. Admittedly some of this has taken the form of pondering about Iron Maiden’s new album and the realisation that its not them that had gotten rubbish, it was my perception of them that hadn’t grown up quite as fast as their music had. They’re last album was still bad…(Dance of Death), but it wasnt terrible, and the new album is really good. Its because they’re sound has matured, taken on new intricacies and developed.

What am I trying to say? I guess what I’m saying is that things change, sometimes in big ways, very suddenly…and sometimes in little bits over long periods. But whether the big sudden thing is like a terrorist attack, or a “You have two weeks” conversation, and no matter how strange or hurtful some of those little changes are..Life Goes On. It sort of has to. Its how it works.
We won’t forget what happened on Sept 11th, 2001…and neither will I forget Uncle Neil, or my cousin Paul. Like the world did, I will absorb, reflect, hopefully understand…and develop. I’ll stumble along the way, the way the world does, but thats okay…because in doing so I learn something new…and thats always worthwhile.

Songs are amazing things. I mean that. Not just the lyrics, or the music, but they way they can instantly fill you with emotion and take your mind back to thoughts and memories as if you were reliving them over.

Thats why theres certain songs that, while they don’t fit in with my usual musical taste at all, I will always treasure. Its why I like Simon & Garfunkel and Gerry Rafferty…because of the memories those songs are irrevocably linked to.

Baker Street. The Sound of Silence. The Boxer. Oxygene.

I hear these and I see, as if yesterday. Those songs will always be a trigger in my mind, a passage to something special. Even today…especially today.

I miss you Dad.

Okay…so random piece of news is that I went out with Patrick, Anita and the gang this evening (although it was really last night as its now 5.11 am…), and we went to this Tapas restaraunt called “Shaws” on Old Fleshmarket Close. Now its pretty much my limited understanding that Tapas is generally an Italian/Spanish sort of thing, so I went hunting for Chorizo and Halloumie and all the sorts of things I had last time we ate at a Tapas place. There wasn’t a huge selection of that (although I DID get the Chorizo and hot damn it was good!), because they’ed split the menu into a list of about eight things per country/region, and then picked a whole bunch from all over the world. So in with Europe there were dishes from Asia, Africa and Australia and so on, all done Tapas style.
Then the waitress came and told us that they had managed to get some unusual items for their specials menu…

So I can happily tell you that Wildebeast is like very tender, juicy steak…Crocodile is like tender chicken but flakes like fishmeat…and rattlesnake has a gamey aftertaste but apart from that is like no meat I’ve ever tasted before.

Well….I didn’t know when I would next get the chance…did I?

Pardon the pun. I couldnt resist. Warning, this is a rant.

I hate my subconscious. Its a git. It pays no attention to what the conscious mind does or does not know, or what it believes. Facts are right out the window. The subconscious deals with maybes and what-ifs and has long, convoluted storylines concerning the tiniest of events that the consciousness would dismiss as unimportant.
Its driving me nuts.
I hate the fact that in the back of my head Im worrying about things that I KNOW I dont have to be worried about. I hate that my subconscious just wont leave them alone, and keeps chewing over them like a dog with a very large bone.
Bah.
I have enough things to worry about as it is, thanks.

And I’d like to get some fecking SLEEP at some point, please!!!!

Saw this posted on Kai’s blog, thought I would do it to. For kicks.

A is for age: 27 (for another month and a half)

B is for beer of choice: Tiger Beer

C is for career right now: Office Monkey

D is for your dog’s name?: Rowan

E is for essential item you use everyday: My Bed

F is for favorite tv show at the moment: Dr Who. I dont tend to wathc tv much

G is for favorite game: World of Warcraft

H is for home town: Lanark, Scotland

I is for instruments you play: I dont, really. I used to play Piano and Violin…badly.

J is for favorite juice: Blood Orange. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

K is for whose butt you’d like to kick: George Bush…except I couldnt because that would be cruelty to a dumb animal

L is for last restaurant you ate at: East India Company in Lanark

M is for marriage: Can I skip this one please?

N is for your full name: Keith Foreman. Not very exciting. Some day soon im going to add Michael Ian to the middle…to honour my dad.

O is for overnight hospital stays: None for a very long time. When I was a kid tho…it wasnt so much overnight as over months…I had a lot of things wrong with me as a kid.

P is for people you were with today: So far…Akira, my flatmate

Q is for quote: “Despite the wisdom of defeat, I bare my heart for all to see…and the wonders have seen.” - VNV Nation

R is for biggest regret: Not doing as well at Uni as I could have.

S is for status: ….Single….

T is for time you woke up today: I woke up 5 times today. Which one? My sleep pattern is a bit messy at present

V is for vegetable you love: I’ll have you know I have a platonic relationship with vegetables

W is for worst habit: Being a lazy git

X is for x-rays you’ve had: I dont remember any…but im sure ive had a few when i was a kid

Y is for yummy food you ate today: Green & Blacks Chocolate with Butterscotch.

Z is for zodiac sign: Virgo

So…another 5am…another sleepless night. What fun. What rapture.
Annoyingly enough the list of things to do in this situation is smaller than it seems, because most of the things you can think of are “daytime” activities. Sleep, of course, is out of the question, because if you could sleep then you wouldn’t be deliberating over what to do in the first place.
Reading a book is out at the moment, because I’m nearly finished the one I’m reading and I’d only be getting settled into “reading mode” when I run out of book. And Anyway the subject matter is pretty dark and not the sort of thing I want to be reading in the wee hours of the morning.
Playing World of Warcraft is also out, because the servers are down for their weekly maintenance just now, and anyway WoW is definately a “daytime” thing, even for me.
Watch a movie? Ah, but that then leads to the question of what to watch…I’ve rented Syriana, but that seems like a bit heavy going for 5am…

And of course, while you’re agonising about “what to do”, your mind swings round once more to all the things that are keeping you awake in the first place. At which point theres only one thing to do…

Write a blog post. Ho Hum.