Would the real Doug Shaw please sit down

At a Star Trek thing I was at last year there was an individual going by the name of Doug Shaw. He said that he was a writer of books on economics, and was busily speed reading (both of which habits I associate with psychopathic conditions) through a huge book (the kind you could use as a weapon) on the History of Western Philosophy. He had a tense, unhinged charisma and a scar on his cheek and struck me as being someone on whom I could loosely base one of the villains in a story that I'm working on. So who was this person? I embarked on an epic google, but it turned out that trying to find a specific doug shaw is tricky. There are hundreds of them. They even have a collective website, dougshaw.com. But then, if I were a real villain, I might also purposefully choose a name that allowed me to get lost in the crowd.
I finally found one with genuine villain potential. A MENSA member with a scheme for every occasion; a rampant capitalist whispering into the ear of politicians, offering the planet up for sale in so many ways; the host of strange pay-at-the-door parties and then: the piece de resistance – some sort of rabid underground religious evangelist. ACME Evil Genius! Absolutely perfect! I don’t even care if he’s not the right doug shaw! So, Doug Shaw, if you’re reading this (no, the other doug shaw. No, not that one, the other one… ) I hope you don’t mind too much. It’s a compliment.

Verily, my friends (and VERILY, my enemies!!!), I have risen up in the world. I have been quoted and also shamelessly flattered in a real article by a real editor lady: http://www.women24.com/Women24/Columnists/Article/0,7173,12-147_9791,00.html
The article is all about silliness, and how it’s okay to be silly, and about how silliness can actually save the world. I am vindicated, and newly galvanised to the promotion of the Great Way of Silly. From now on, this blog will be nothing but silly, silly, silly!

Lost Property

A friend recently failed the Scientologist's personality test. This is unfortunate, as I was hoping for a contact on the inside. I don't know any practicing Scientologists but I know people who claim to have escaped Scientology, and they're reluctant to discuss it - they seem a bit embarrassed and a bit broke, and one gets the feeling they'd rather just forget about it altogether. I'd very much like to know more about the interesting Scientology story regarding the alien ruler Xenu who fixed the overpopulation problem on his 76 planets by bringing millions of people in for a tax inspection, then drugging them and shipping them off to earth (presumably unpopulated at the time), where he had them stacked around volcanos before nuking the volcanos. The way I understand it is that most personality problems experienced by people today can be attributed to the fact that the lost souls of those unfortunate nuked aliens attach themselves to humans, clinging desparately to some vestige of existence and causing all kinds of schitzophrenic glitches in the average human's matrix.

Of course, this might just be a story made up by anti-Scientologists to discredit the religion itself. I don't know. One of the most interesting things about this church is the vehemence of its opposition. Something which is so hated by outsiders must surely be hiding great truths. Or not.
I wonder, if my friend made a substantial enough donation to the church, maybe they'd ignore the failed personality test and let him in. He can infiltrate, and we'll be able to see if all these stories are true. I mean, if I could prove that I had thousands of anguished alien souls hanging onto my aura, it would explain a LOT.

Girl put your records on...

...tell me your favourite song, you go ahead let your hair down...

This blog began as a medium through which I could stay in touch with friends and family all over the globe and in particular, with my sister B who was living with us at the time. That’s funny, hold on, let me check that… Yes it’s true: so I could stay in touch with B although we lived on the same property, in the same house in fact. It didn’t work quite the way I’d planned – I thought I’d make chatty, newsy day-in-the-life type entries. Looking back at the blog I’m laughing at all the concrete evidence of best laid plans coming to ruin…

But I don’t think I could stay in touch with my own pinky finger, quite frankly, because I have too many Fishies. Fishies are those bubbles that some people have in their heads. They go, “plook, plook” in the silvery depths and mostly it’s like Chinese torture, although sometimes, on really lucky days, it’s like an epiphany, or Christmas-tree lights. Some people have Nebulas, which are pretty much the same thing, just more sophisticated. I always felt odd because of them, and never fitted very well anywhere, least of all in my own real life, until I discovered Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” some years ago. The character Delirium, who often trails a flock of bobbing rainbow-fish balloon-things and seldom makes sense in the traditional meaning of the word, was a revelation to me because I already knew her so well. I felt a bit better about my own fishies after I met Delirium because although she’s odd she’s basically a good person. When I discovered much later that Neil and Tori Amos were friends, and that Del was partly based on Tori, the world began to make a whole lot more sense to me, non-traditionally of course but nevertheless.

Anyhow, this is to say, I’m sorry about all the Fishies. There are a handful of people in this world who I love too, too much for words, among them: Ray; my Terrifical Teenage Daughters; Mom and Dad; B; Weez; Mom Joss; Nu; Dio; Migi; Choz; Alli Cat… if you’re reading this, guys – thanks for putting up with me.

The end of days is nigh, as usual

A while ago, after reading up about carbon trading, I wrote something about our planet being able to withstand the ravages of human nature, that for all our delusions of grandeur we could never actually destroy it as such. Destroy environments conducive to the wellbeing of our species and others, sure, but not destroy the actual planet. Well, I was wrong. It IS possible. See http://qntm.org/destroy

Well, Really!

! A request has been made to this blog. It comes from none other than a Compliance Officer (Resistance is futile). So: One of Two, also known as Nu, having been mightily impressed by our (patent pending) mouse-over-and-waft Sniff-n-Sneeze© plugin, asked that we develop a mouse-over-and-spell-check gizmo for the comment box. It seems she’s been unable to access the Natural Comment nano-betaframe thingy itself because of blogger-VS-word cut/paste (ERROR!!!DINGDING!!!FATAL:ERROR!!!! put your hands on your head and drop your cookie settings now:ERROR!!!) non-compliancy Issue no: 73.9. You know the one. Ok, fine, we’ll see what we can do but personally I think that this is just a terrible excuse - we geeks (hehe) know the error’s actually to do with her Sink Notification Socket. Thingy. And the way she always forgets to charge her Svchost Antimatter Modulator – I mean really, it’s no wonder.

Captain-Postman Pete said he’d tried to look at this blog but suddenly everything went all funny on his keyboard. So he tried to blame me for dropping some or other virus on him. Oh puh-leeez, come on. Pff. Like, I don’t have better things to do than script viruses all day long and fling them at non-geek friends and family. People like us (us geeks, you know) must just take a deep breath and count to ten, I suppose. So in the interests of the sanity of geeks (like me) everywhere, I have added to the FAQ. Sigh.

FAQ continued:

7. Why does my computer wig out when I look at/try to post comments to your blog?

Either a.) You're technologically challenged and should not be allowed within a 10 Km radius of any computer or b.) You have some heavy internet karma.

I can't help if the answer's a, but if it's b I can't help.

So try this: Go into the garden and find a portable-sized rock. Talk to the rock, let it absorb your frustrations. Feel the power of the rock. Respectfully pick the rock up and carry it to where your computer is. Place the rock gently on the desk near the computer. Now, while wearing a red knitted hat with a bobble on top (like the ones they wear in the movie "The Life Aquatic") inside which you have hidden a moth's wing, a blue marble and a flat penlight battery, sit down in front of your computer and switch it on. When the desktop appears (or, when it doesn’t – like if after waiting for over an hour all you get is a black screen with an ominous dos prompt instead of a desktop, for instance), put your right hand upon the rock while addressing the machine thus: "you bloody bastard computer, don't mess with me or I'll hit you with this rock." Then, phone a geek and request an emergency consultation. While waiting for him, keep your hand on the rock and your eyes on the monitor, scowling dangerously. When the geek arrives, have him look at the computer, but all the while, do not let go of the rock. The geek should have the problem sorted in no time, because in my experience too-big-for-their-boots computers always respond very well to geeks when there is a primed rock handy. This is a seriously dark and deep binary magick, you understand, so while you are performing this entire ritual it might also be an idea to have a shaman (or other intermediary) available, to intercept any demons which might want to take advantage of a rip in the fabric of spacetime.

If this fails (because nothing is perfect), then try seeing the loss of all your stuff (treasured letters form far-flung friends and family, for example; or your entire portfolio) as being a wonderful opportunity to start afresh. No, really. For heaven’s sake, stop crying. And next time, back up.