I can still remember how to swim! After about 3 years of not having been swimming at all!

30 lengths of a 25m pool in about 20 minutes isn’t too bad, all things considered. Shoulders need a bit of work — they’re still a bit dodgy after the Thistle Ride, because they’d been playing up for ages and then I muscled Shackleton up out of Bo’ness on a 70″ gear. Didn’t expect my right ankle to whinge, but it did.

Now I just have to work out a budget for all the training requirements they are lining up for me.

Maybe I should get me one of these.

I’m about to join KRT. I think. Or possibly Kirkcaldy, depending on whether I can stand the blue and orange. Which tastes like… like… raw beef wrapped in humbrol-painted polystyrene.

I want to get my running up to 3 times a week. With a long run at weekends (up to about 10 miles or so – offroad).

And fit in gym sessions for strength training.

And getting on for a century ride on Sundays when I’m not audaxing.

And then there’s swimming, which will have to be before work or at lunch.

And I haven’t found a martial arts class yet, but that will have to find space somewhere too.

Help!

Chris Brosius is having an exhibition at the Klein Art Gallery called the Individuality of Scent. It’s on tomorrow and for various obvious reasons I can’t make it, but if anyone out there in blogland can, I’d love to hear about it.

In my recent wanderings I have reacquainted myself with the Psion Guild. It has been nearly 8 years since I last had any dealings with them. There was this big thing about how we were all evil and mad and dangerous and needed to be saved from the evil symbiote vampire that was Core, to which end they were going to burn us out. Or something.

Maybe that whole thing was how come that journalist contacted me asking me why there was a price on my head in the vampire community; and how I was made an honourary member of the Highgate Vampire Society without being asked.

Although it’s not why I was reported to the FBI. That’s a different story all together.

Either way, I thought I’d see if I could find out if there was anything, anywhere, that might indicate what they thought of us these days, and I came across the following:

Excellent psychic combat techniques under “Miscellany”.
*WARNING*
Construct on website may be aggressive and invasive. Do not access the site without ample defenses, or if you are a novice.

This had me somewhat confused. Further investigations revealed that a member of the Guild had found a ‘construct’ on our site that he described as being a worm that attempted to infiltrate the reader through the third eye and change his thought patterns so that the reader regarded us positively and was possessed of a desire to join.

First things first. We scanned our CGI bin and our root directory for wooey.foo but found nothing.

Next thing to do is check our various tenants. Blank faces all round there. It was possible that someone had one up as an experiment but everyone denies it.

As those who have contacted us in the past with such messages as:

“Yo! Sis! You an’ me, we’re like >THAT

will be able to tell you, generally we are actually fairly resistant to people attempting to join our little gang of flakes and weirdoes. So the idea of there being some sort of inflatable pineal worm on our website caused us some consternation.

After some further investigation we believe we have found the solution.

Many readers will be familiar with the concept of the ecological niche. A particularly fine example of this are the hot smokers found along the mid-oceanic ridges. These are, of course, also known as hydrothermal vents and are a byproduct of the geological process of oceanic plate formation. As the two plates move away from one another, hot magma wells up from underneath the Earth’s crust, creating what most would consider to be incredibly hostile conditions for life.

And yet, as Alvin discovered, these places are teeming with life and, indeed, it would seem that hydrothermal vents mimic the conditions of the early Earth and may even give us some insight into how life started on this planet.

Other examples of ecological niches include the underside of damp logs, hot springs, the African Lakes and even the tundra. What they all have in common is that the organisms in there have a particular facility for dealing with that particular niche. So at the hot smokers you’ll find the worms, now made famous by the little yellow submarine. In the African Lakes you’ll find the many species of Acara fish that are found nowhere else.

We think that what we have here is a version of an ecological niche. We think that maybe, just maybe, our website has attracted a community of scavengers whose normal sustenance is the easy pickings found in the more gullible members of what is commonly known as the pagan community, particularly the energy-worker community. They are somewhere between scavengers and viruses, parasites that change the behaviour of the host to make sure they are provided with an ever-ready food supply. Parasites that change the behaviour of the host are well known to science — toxoplasmosis changes the behaviour of rats, so they are more attracted to cat urine, enabling the next stage in the life cycle. See some more examples here, here and here.

These parasites evidently wish their hosts to expose them to as many potential new hosts as possible, and so instil in them a desire to be amongst others, people other than their usual group, who are likely to have been infected already. Because we turn them away, we produce a steady supply of people who go away disappointed and yet still seeking other groups to join. We suspect that those turned away by us may not find satisfaction in the groups they do eventually join and may always feel a hankering to try something new.

As far as we can tell these parasites resemble woodlice rather than worms. Scavengers: feeding on the detritus and waste that is the by-product of energy work and using those energy workers as hosts for their breeding cycle. They seem to exist in meme-space, but there is, as any experienced cyber-pagan knows, a significant degree of crossover between meme-space and the internet.

We would like to thank the Psion Guild for bringing this effect of our website to our attention and giving us the opprtunity to uncover this brand new genus in the taxonomic table of all things Weird. We’ll get the bleach out.

Well. The thoughtform that is the concept of bleach, anyway.

My old Peorth pendant.

The one I thought had been lost/stolen/confiscated.

Went in to set up the PS2 in Mum’s library and there it was. Lying by her mirror.

Now ordinarily Mum would have pegged that as mine instantly she found it and phoned me up to ask about it, see if I wanted her to send it down. That thing has been missing for nigh on 4 years now, and yet here it is. Coincidence or what? I’m not sure whether she found it when I lost it and just didn’t think to mention it or whether it has turned up recently.

I left it where it was. I’m not sure what I want to do about that, apart from feel bemusedly amused.

I like running in the rain.

I generate a lot of heat when I exercise. I do it on the bike – I do it even more when I’m running. I like the Dun Run so much because it’s at night, when the sun’s away and it’s cooler. I prefer cycling in Spring and Autumn because I don’t overheat.

Yesterday I went running in the rain. The nasty, twisty route over rocks and planks, despite my better judgement. It was nice. I did the whole thing without stopping, except ever so briefly to take off my jacket so that the rain could hit my skin. I was steaming, great clouds of vapour coming off me and dispersing as the intermittent breeze boffed at me with pugel sticks made of cotton wool and spider feathers.

I did it in the same time it usually takes me to do the easy route that avoids twists and soft sand by taking the old railway track.

I am also discovering how to make my hair look like muppet feathers. Serious muppet feathers, not Big Bird muppet feathers. This I like. Although I think I’m going to have it cut by a professional in order to facilitate this.

“I’d like you to cut my hair to look like Mortimer, please.”

“Yerwhat?”

Do you think if I take in a copy of Secret War and point at Daisy and tell them I want to look like that during the day (I’m pretty sure Dell ‘Otto modelled her on Angelina Jolie in Hackers) and a copy of Mortimer and Arabel for my personal look (one gets the normal eye, the other gets the black) they’ll understand what I mean?

Frood is taking me to see X3! On its first night! So that none of my rotten teasing friends can go on about how crap it is or how good it is before I get to see it! We’ve got tickets and everyfink!

I’m so excited!

Dahling!

I may use that sig when I’ve got siggy up and running and it chooses it from one of the many random quotes I have in there (along with the one I want as a bumper sticker: “Seven decapitations in one week. Don’t you just hate those who take head and don’t give it?”) but I didn’t originate the quote.

That, RainTurtle, comes from Neils Bohr. I’d hate for anyone to think I’m guilty of quote-napping.

Keith, if you’re reading this, do be a dear and correct the little blighter. It’s rudeness by proxy.

For my more ‘normal’ readers, who aren’t involved in the world of weird: ignore all this. The rest of it isn’t worth reading unless you’re of the bent that gets the joke. It’s all a bit…

Stick in the mud.

Last night I turned on to BBC4 to watch a new programme called Never Mind the Full Stops, a panel game for the grammatical pedants amongst us.

Actually, to be accurate, I ran down and had a quick shower after watching The Pedant’s Revolt so I missed the start.

I came back to discover them embarking on a round about euphemisms and what they called ‘cacophonisms’. I think they meant dysphemisms. Having watched the rest of the round I wouldn’t be at all surprised as they didn’t seem to have a clue.

May I just point out that substituting ‘foul’ for ‘disgusting’ is not using a euphemism: it’s employing a synonym. A euphemism for disgusting would be ‘an acquired taste’.

I think I will have to write to the BBC and complain. This was supposed to be a panel show the likes of which John Humphries would enjoy. It was, euphemistically, lacking in preparation and in need of slightly greater expertise. Dysphemistically it was a demolition derby of incorrect word usage and smug hypocrisy from five people who talked a good game but obviously didn’t really understand the rules.