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THE VOICE OF REASON
An Ellon youth writes exclusively for blogspot
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Thursday, April 28, 2005
 
My Day Pass To Heaven

It's been a busy week again, needless to say. But you knew that already.

I finally received my three orders from tshirthell about two weeks after placing them, such is the discrepancy between ordering and receiving items from overseas. Expecting them to be delivered to my door, I was duly informed by the courier that I would have to walk down to the post office to claim my goods as there was an import fee to pay. So no, that means I can't just pay her at the door and then grab hold of my tshirts, that would be too easy. I have to wait for her to walk back down to the office after doing the rounds, walk there myself, and then pay an absurd ?9.27 levy on top of the postage fee I had already dished out. Had the tshirts not been so super-sweet my blood pressure would be reaching alarming levels this week.

This first tshirt has a, rather outdated now thanks to the hypergay transatlantic delay, pope-embroidered motif on the front with the spiritual leader pulling the "Rock On!" hand gesture with the tagline "Only The Good Die Young." I heartily expect some new design to incorporate Ratzinger as a Nazi mowing down Jews with an AK47, such is the level of depravity at the Worse Than Hell section, but I think the motif I chose was tasteful and, umm, current. Maybe. The second is slightly more vague and less in-your-face with the subtle slogan "Bad Samaritan" beneath a halo with devils horns to re-emphasise the point. It's kind of a cheeky tshirt, which I like but is bound to instil a lot of ill-feeling in the more secular of my camaraderie. The third is pretty self-explanatory, saying "I Won't Remember Any Of This" in swirly white writing, more a pre-emptive "forgive me" rather than anything else. It's also a little apologetic and should save me valuable time the next morning when I indubitably have to send the "it wasn't me it was the drink" texts I invariable have to send so as those of a more sober inclination know that I'm insincerely sorry for pulling their skirt/throwing up on them/punching them/all of the above.

Keeping with the religious theme, I recently attended a tolerance fair under the guise of "International Day" at the Union, frequented by an unnerving number of Asian people. Walking casually by the stalls, pretending to care, a Sheik or someone of a similar appearance thrust a palm-sized book entitled "Discover Islam- Your Birth Right!" into my hand. Now I'm not going to say his beliefs are stupid, because Allah forbid they are, but you can't seriously expect a Caucasian Brit like myself who wasn't beaten into believing the Qur'an from an impressionable age to suddenly realise his "birth right" and shriek "sweet Jesus, I'M A MUSLIM!" The potential for lawsuits is unfathomable. Flicking the pages, I noticed an abundance of "p.b.u.h" after each name, later finding out that Muslims have to say "Peave Be Upon Him" after each utterance of any Muslim religious figure. They also have to pray five times a day and wash their hands and feet at the same time, for some reason, I dunno, why not just have a shower?

The religion clearly wasn't for me, for a start I like pork and pre-marital sex way too much and my day tends to be busy enough without all the absurd generational rituals. How they manage Ramadan I have no idea, imagine sleeping in after a large night out in the summer- you couldn't drink water until dawn the next morning! That would teach me the vice of drunkenness in a manner I cannot imagine otherwise, trying to appease Allah with my stringent self-denial of common H2O.

In my spare time I was checking out some pro-religion websites, the best of which pretty much outlined all the passages that say homosexuals will be judged and sent to hell on Judgment day and they are on the same level as thieves and prostitutes. Even the fucking Pope is a hard-line anti-gay! One of my friends, who I will call Pickles for reasons of anonymity, refuses to believe that women should be allowed to be Priests. Pickles is great comedy, he manages to deny evolution, pre-human creation, dinosaurs, unoppressed women, astronomy, in fact, any facet of science that updates what humans believed nearly two-thousand years ago. He shakes his head, saddened that we won't meet in God's glorious heaven, as I suffer an eternity burning for my worldly sins. Some people have all the luck.

Swiftly changing subject, there's a cunt in some of my lectures I just have to tell you about. I call him "Permagrin," because he walks about with the biggest grin this side of Nick Marr, looking like the cat that got the cream. He's always wisecracking with his cunt pals and generally doing his best to maintain his laid back boyish profile, wearing three-quarter length shorts and a polo-neck tshirt with long brown ruffled bed-hair. What a cock. I bet he listens to fucking Morrissey, the White Stripes, Kasabian and any other Indie/Rock band typical of the chilled-out college wideboy stereotype that I have sorely attempted to distance myself from for longer than I remember. He's adorably self-styled with cheeky boy looks and imminent bumfluff pushing through his babyface, toying and joking with the lads about his crazy nights out, oftentimes liasing with the hotties in my class with his loud mouth style and devil-may-care attitude. What a wanker, I hate scruffy Indie cunts like Permagrin who get all the chicks because of their laissez-faire attitude to work and who wear three-quarter length shorts along with suitably grungy tshirts.

So that's Permagrin for you- a surefire cunt if ever you saw one but not quite established enough to grace the hallowed Cunt Of The Month award pages. Elsewhere I've been fairly busy trying to get my ass into shape for the upcoming BUSA championships this week up in sunny Glasgow by generally training harder than I probably ever have before. It will be a long journey, rest assured, but this time I will be travelling up to Scotland with a double-decker bus full of banter without the worry of engaging any fat slags or power-hungry ticket vendors. There is a niggle in my left hamstring but two ice baths and lashings of deep heat will hopefully keep it at bay so that I can progress through to the finals on monday (UPDATE- I went to the toilet after applying deep heat only to use the same hand as I used to apply the lotion. It stings like an STD does, erm, I imagine).

I've been busy panicking mainly because I never managed to get any work done for Uni over Easter, so I've been playing a lot of catch up. It's not interesting and to be fair I'm bored writing about it already. Tutmoses, who you'll remember is a pain in the ass to sit next to in lectures, was winding me up again this morning by sighing ceaselessly and scribbling prose about how bored she was all hour long, disrupting my learning to no end. To her credit, the lecturer was harping on about sleep patterns for a full hour, the last thing I needed at nine in the morning. I could see everyone around me slowly dozing off, drooling over their jotters, being lulled to sleep by the monotone yawnfest telling us all how great sleep is albeit on a psychophysiological level but I pretty much decided to hear what I wanted to hear about my favourite subject, sleep.

Writing about sleep is making me kind of tired, so I'm gonna hit the sack so that I don't feel like complete shite like I did this morning. There are more tales to be told, just at a more convenient time. As for my quest for eternal salvation, I really should unroll a prayer mat, clean my hands and feet, hail the one deity and reclaim my birth right.

I'll take my chances and just go to bed.


Thursday, April 21, 2005
 
There, Their

I'm sure I've ranted fervently about this before but for the sake of clarity and reassurance I'm going to reiterate a point I feel quite strongly about. If you can't spell "their" or aren't sure when it should be used then you should not be at University. No exceptions.

As part of a group coursework I recieved a file where we would each copy and paste our portion of a discourse analysis. I was aghast to read, in the first paragraph no less, this horrendous error:

"you would like to garentee that..."

This wasn't written in ink, it was printed in a Word file and sent via email as an attachment. A Word file, I presume, that was transcribed into binary from the related presses on an accompanying keyboard using the customary Microsoft Word for Windows application that has, as one of its many features, a spell checker. A spell checker no less that actively underlines in wavy red each misspelt word along with suggestions as to how to rectify the error.

But avast mortal reader, this conspicuous clue was merely brushed aside like so many similar mistakes in a display of complete and utter ineptness the likes of which I feint to repeat in public. There are excuses; being discourse analysis, it might have been pronounced garr-ent-ee or maybe she was slightly rushed and failled to notice the glaring red underscores beneath these disgraceful errors. But none of these excuses prepared me for the next grievous infringement on the good name of Literate University Students:

"that people lost there jobs (1.5) hhh °you know°"

There?! There jobs?! After thirteen years of tutoring and a successful application to further education it pains me to read this, as I winced through parted fingers at the pageful of glaring mistakes. The frequency of moronic misspellings made me moan incredulously as I bewailled the standard of literacy in our Universities to a rather disinterested Monseiur.

I sifted through the document and made the necessary changes, thinking back to my stunningly awful 52% effort in a previous essay. Unless there is a very acute marking curve I have to take that 52% as a sub-fifty effort as other entrants no doubt titled theirs (sorry- theres) "Sikeology" with thick red Crayola and drawings of boobies surrounding the periphery, still managing a score with distinction in the mid seventies. If there is a balance of justice in this Universe, it is heavily tipped against me.

Speaking of things that are wrong with the Universe, I had the displeasure last week of travelling in a train carriage (I never get any breaks with the public transport industry) next to a group of eight fat slags out on a Hen party.


The largest of the slags needed a panoramic
lens to fit her torso in its entirety.


As they boarded the carriage brash and full of cheer I had a sneaking suspicion they would park their enlarged anuses in near proximity. With Mystic Meg-like accuracy in forseeing ambiguous future events, they settled themselves but a mere arms length from I.

Cracking open the Beezers and fags I could tell that getting even a fleeting moment of serenity would be a tall order as the slags passed the alcohol-laced fruit juice and upped the speech tempo to verging on a hundred decibels. The slags were, as all loud and obnoxious slags are, grating and extremely frustrating to try to block out selectively. At a pitch that I thought only dogs could hear, the Queen Slag- anointed by virtue of her birth coinciding to forty-five years ago, wearing a tiarra- screeched:

"FITS AT IN YER CAGE?!?!"

Thinking I could shrug off her ear-stinging advances, she somehow manages to further irritate me with repeated questioning not disimilar to Al-Qa'ida interrogation techniques and twice as annoying as sitting in a room playing endless white noise. Realising her persistence can only be stopped by answering her question, I mutter "a hedgehog."

"A HEDGEHOG?! GIE US A LOOK!!"

Sighing, I explained that I wasn't going to take him out while her and her friends continued to smoke. This seemed to quash the problem of her trying to engage me in conversation but it did nothing to dent her unabashed and inconsiderate screeching in synch with her overweight chums. All the while I stabbed the back of the seat in front of me with my pen, hoping to disseminate the rage flowing through my veins in a purgative manner.

The journey dragged for eight and a half long hours, but a timely stop to change trains allowed me to leave behind the gaggle of infuriating bitches to drink and eat themselves into an early grave.

Of late I've been pondering buying myself a new mobile phone. Having earned what most financial analysists would describe as a "shitload" of cash, I feel it time to dig into those pockets and replace my faithful old Seimens. I've set myself a cap though, being the conservative that I am, being that I won't buy a phone until they come equipped with a 3 megapixel camera. This might sound unreasonable, but I firmly believe that 3 megapixels is future proof for two years to come, so I'm going to have to ration my money until then.

In the meantime I've been browsing monthly contract deals as a rough guide but have been a little affronted at the shite these companies come out with. One booms "Up to 500 free texts!" whilst others brag about giving away free phones.

These phones are not free and no one believes they are so why don't they just cut the crap? You don't get a ?200 phone for nothing, if you did you wouldn't have to sign a yearly contract (known as "line rental") or pay an absurd ?25 a month for the privaledge of renting a line. Whatever that means. It'll be pay as you go for me, I think I can live without 1000 'free' minutes that I'll likely never dent or even approach filling that quota for a year let alone one calendar month.

Finally, before I go, just news of a prank six months in the making that has recently come to fruition. When the poll officials came round to our house to confirm tenancy, I couldn't resist the temptation to change a few housemates' names. Mark would have been "Mark Hamed Shaheen Bin Laden Taylor," if he hadn't bust me in the process of changing Jibba's name, Tom would have become "Doctor Thomas Payne" (that probably went right over your head) and James would become the illustrious "Earl James Atkinson IX". It is simple things that please me, but the gleeful opening of Jibba's poll card reading "Jonathan Hartley-Worchester" (missing an 'h', curiously enough) had me in stitches for reasons I am not entirely sure of yet.



What a dorky double-barreled name! Subtle humour, I'm sure you'll agree, and a largely pointless exercise in messing with the polling system.

I could so be a punk rocker right now.


Um, I'm fairly sure that you used the word "feint" incorrectly. However, I could be wrong. ~Blogger Okapi
Also, you misspelled received and monsieur.

Sorry.
~Blogger Okapi
Yep, there tends to be a few spelling errors in my posts! I appreciate the constructive criticism though, you don't notice these mistakes until someone points them out to you. ~Blogger Star
Friday, April 15, 2005
 
The Gravel Pit



"The scene was like a locale from Resident Evil; dank and derelict, with an abhorrent stench and spatterings of pigeon faeces the floor over, the place unnerved me to my very brink of sanity as I attempted to clear the pit of ingrained droppings with only the distant cooings and eerie noises of the forgotten nook for company."

I have visited hell.

Unto every generation man has been defined by his willingness to venture jobs that weaker men and women would not dare face; from manning Spitfires in the world wars, to working as a miner, to braving trenches or cleaning sewers in Victorian London before that, there has been and always will be a subclass of men who undertake perilous or unthinkable work in the line of duty. For centuries men were forced into hard labour as slaves, but even in our enlightened times there is always someone, somewhere, who has to do the jobs we feint to imagine. These men go home reeking to high heaven, often grossly underpaid and valued, but yet engage in their work with the same level of reliance and effort as their white-collar counterparts.

Last week it was I who would have to suffer, for a couple of days, the same depravity and squalor in vocation as some of history's most unfortunate. I was to clear out the Gravel Pit; a place so crudely indecent it ranks up there with shitholes like the Little Chef.

For decades there has lain a cavity behind the shop where the fire exist is supposed to exist but until now has been a dusty and junk filled hole, utterly impossible to negotiate in any significant period of time. It is a festering hole of disgusting depravity, with generations worth of accumulated dusk, cobwebs and bird remains. Few people have ever ventured out back for fear of the secrets the pit holds and what entering its sacred hold will do to their fragile minds, the smell usually being a stringent and early warning that all is not well in that pit.

It came as no surprise that I would be elected to don the Marigolds and boiler suit to tackle the pit, given that I have one of the highest hardcore ratings of the entire shopfloor. Using an advanced formula, I finally cracked the code mid-Easter as to what makes a worker hardcore. There are two basic parameters: longevity of hardcore and recent measures of hardcore, as demonstrated by the formula below:



So for that week I emerged with the highest rating with a percentage in the late seventies- far in excess of the nearest competitor, the Manager duly noted. Suffice to say there was only one man for the job, and with tempered acceptance, I stretched the waterproof gloves on and prepared myself for the very worst.

As the stiff door finally gave way to hard shoulder-thrusts, I burst onto the landing utop the stairwell. Before me was a misty haze of the dust settling from the doorlight behind me, and the fetor of decayed boxes melded with pigeon feces, urine and bodily remains. The place, as the photographic evidence above testifies, was an insufferable hellhole.

To begin with, I scraped the floor of dust and bird remains for hours using a shovel and brush I found lying at the bottom. It was a laborious and extremely torturous task, made less pleasant by the offputting and continual coos and flapping of ruffled birds who wouldn't let me do my job in peace. I sympathised with my rehoused spectators as I scooped up nests and dead bodies, uncovering unhatched eggs and dreadful things I never want to mention in the process. The smell- oh, the smell!- was something that I can't convey by word, it is just something that you will have to trust me on. It was foul like a thousand farts; worse, even. In my face for hours on end. If I had ovaries, I would be seeking professional help for the trauma suffered down that pit.

There was so much scattered debris I managed to fill over a dozen black bags with dirt, feathers, syringes, pigeon carcasses, used condoms, and crisp wrappers. There were assorted planks of wood, crates, boxes, stands and tubes, most of which were no doubt unceremoniously dumped by adjacent restaurant Les Amis in an effort to quickly and cheaply dispose of their unwanted junk. It was an operation removing these, I can assure you, but I managed it in the end.

Finally, after countless hours of scooping up age-old remains from an untouched pigeon colony, the floor was clear. Standing proudly, still able to hear the flutterings of birds barely visible, there was only one job left and that was to wash the whole place down with the power washer.

The power washer turned out to be an extremely efficient method of removing the cobwebs and ingrained dirt found around the site by blasting away the places I couldn't reach or face removing. It was a satisfying end to a repellent task that had me doing a job even the cast of a Life Of Grime would have reservations about doing. It was backbreaking, odious and repugnant work all rolled up into one monstrously execrable weeks labour that has either scarred or made a man of me. Only time, or even a shrink, will tell depending on the larger effect this project has taken out of me.

I have only provided surface details of what really happened. What goes on in the pit, as they say, stays in the pit.


Friday, April 08, 2005
 
Judgement

My dad and I have a very curious bond. As a person he is about the most negative I have ever met, constantly trying to belittle, undermine and chip away at any thread of self-like I have or claim to have. Sometimes the jibes are rather petty, always coinciding loosely with something in topic but usually exerted solely to grate at me and usually masked as a comedic comment but quite obviously not. It's rubbed onto me and people pick up on it, the negativity, and sometimes I am taken aback at how inappropriate my unintentionally unkind comments are.

Yet, for all his negativity, I've managed to keep it in check and ignore his obnoxious comments. However abrading he is there is a marginal degree to how you can block it out, at least consciously there is. In Loughborough, though, I had an experience that made me think differently to all this.

Everyone knows that I rarely dream, and when I do they're pretty inconsequential and meaningless affairs with a face value of zero and no latent content to really try to decipher. But one night, for whatever reason, I awoke with a jolt and my arms shooting out as if to grab something. I dreamt that night that for some reason I had just had enough of his constant aggravations and during one of our spats I just went to grab him. The feeling was so intense that it woke me and my pulse rate jumped ludicrously high and I felt pumped for a moment, like the situation had been real and not mere fantasy. I don't want to grab him, evidently, but the dream was so lucid and vivid that it caused such a strong physical reaction like I'd never experienced before.

Most of his non-subtle comments regard things that could be categorised as achievement-centred. Whether it's driving (I once failed my test, don't you know), academia, sport, personality or anything that can be vaguely measured his opinion is precisely zilch. He doesn't know the URL to this website because I value his opinion so little and on some level I've never allowed him to know the real me because he'd find a way to hit me on a level that would actually hurt. He does the same to me too, and I've never really felt like I know who he is either, other than the parental figure of old. As I mentioned in a previous blog, what I know of father is solely from what he has told me- I have never met any of his friends from before the time he was 50, never seen any school reports, never met his father and he doesn't have any siblings. The only person who can remotely claim to know him was my late grandmother, but I was too young to be privy to any information of real value. Thus, all I know is what little he has told me, and being so distant to him this is tantamount to very little indeed.

During a rather special drinking session with Jenny I found out that dear old father Wales accumulated 6 points on his driving licence the previous week. It might sound a little rudimentary to you, but without Jenny's honesty I would never find these things out. His self-image is one of near perfection in that it is almost impossible to pick fault with him in an argument because he doesn't let on what he doesn't want me to know. As a parent though he knows my every flaw and uses it to his distinct advantage, and I see this in myself. As far as faults go, I am very guarded and tell very few people exactly what it is that makes me who I am and where my faults lie. On some level, I'm not sure if I've even admitted them to myself yet.

Coming back home fills me with mixed emotions, a sentence I have stolen from a previous blog because it sums up the situation perfectly. Being at home means attempting to be civil and responsive to someone who has all the weapons against my imbalanced psyche and deploys them routinely for what gain I still haven't worked out. For the most part I have futile material of which to reply, I just grin and bear it or if it gets on my nerves I'll come out with "you would say that, wouldn't you?" It's not hard-hitting or particularly witty but you soon learn that the best coping strategy when dealing with someone like my father is refusal to acknowledge him. You can't ever give them the satisfaction of knowing they have the upper hand.

Tonight, as a recent example, during the Newcastle/Sporting UEFA clash he stops me from taking a beer from the fridge and delivers a rant that in summation says "my sources say you can't handle a beer, you're the weakest drinker of all your friends." I didn't really know how to deal with that one to be quite honest. His 'sources' sound like a weak alibi to support an argument based on his opinion, of where I'm not sure he got it from because all my drinking is done in a pub, friend's house or my house when he is not present. More to the point I wanted to know what he expected to gain from saying this.

Was his point that I don't drink enough to keep up with my friends? Or was it another one of his half-baked stabs aimed at making me feel low? Whatever his intention was it pissed the hell out of me, chiefly because he was making a pointless and detrimental accusation that he had evidently fabricated from thin air. I know that whatever I do he will have a low opinion of it but to come out with this fruitless argument kind of summed up more who I am than anyone else ever could. I saw a lot of me in that statement, and if anyone had been in the loop with the whole Kayleigh incident they'll probably understand the startling similarities between my father and I inherent in that proclamation.

He does it all so cleverly. There are countless undercurrents running underneath that statement, you really have to think about it before you can hope to understand his rationale. It was akin to saying that I'm a failure even as far as alcohol tolerance is concerned, something that I've never exercised in front of him beyond a tea-time glass of wine. It wasn't just a stab at me, but there were implications that I can't even keep up with my friends and that I'm the laughing stock who gets drunk after two half-measures and tends to vomit before 10pm. He was questioning my masculinity, and a bigger man would have stepped back and said "fair dues, think what you want." Of all the digs over the years, that one pissed me off the most.

I'm not especially proud of my drinking habits but it annoys me when people think they know me because I'm athletic. I get pigeon-holed into the boxed classed "lightweight" and while that means nothing to foreigners up here in Scotland it's about the most personal insult you can ever give someone. As if he'd slapped me in the face, I needed to retaliate. I wasn't going to let this one lie.

Forgetting myself, I challenged him to a drinking game. "Just you and me" I said, looking him in the eye. "Then we'll see who can and who can't handle their drink."

In some circles this would all be terribly pathetic and a little distressing, but if he's such a big man then he can have the courage of his convictions and put his assertions on the line. It won't be the first time I've been in this situation but this time will be the sweetest. My only concern is that he declines when he realises I'm being serious, but in that case I'll rightly tell him to shut the fuck up in future. I know him well enough to know that his pride won't allow him to concede a challenge like this so the only matter now is for me to arrange a suitable venue and date. No gimmicks, just lager-shot-lager-shot every few minutes until someone submits, either in the pub or at home.

For the first time I finally have the necessary weapon to better him. Sport, academia and achievements all rely on challenging the ghosts of the past, the trump card my father always plays, but now he has twinged on something that we can both compete at and I won't let this drop.

If he has anything to say for himself, it will be judged not on his words but for once the reality of his convictions and not the biased fabrications he purports to believe.


Monday, April 04, 2005
 
Morna's Plimsol Slippers

Even during her adolescent years the kids in Tarves feared Morna's plimsol slippers



There is a point in everyone's life when they unwittingly gaze into the mirror and realise for the first time "my god, I look just like my dad/mum!" Whether it's the onset of male pattern baldness, the way you dress or even the advent of parenthood, there inevitably lies a fixed point in time when everyone is taken aback at the startling resemblance in some manner of themselves to their parents as they know or remember them.

For young Morna that day was the fourth of April 2005, a day that arrived worryingly early for the teenager. On that day Morna not only looked, sounded and acted like her mother but for all intents and purposes was her mother. If that makes any sense.

Dressed in a reserved and respectable skirt, blouse and floral top, Morna looked like she had raided her mother's wardrobe and stole her pearl necklaces in the process also. With square-cut glasses and the jangle of house keys in her pocket she looked exactly like her mother did that memorable day when she took our class for English, a day of such hilarity that it has etched itself as a flashbulb memory that will likely never leave me. Wearing trademark plimsol slippers, Morna had clearly taken a leaf out of her authoritarian mother's book by selecting the sturdy footwear used not only as an aide to walking but for bringing unruly or disobedient children back into line. Collectively, Morna had nailled the Mother Laing look to an uncanny degree and well-practiced stern don't-talk-back-to-me-young-lady face that means business.

It was like the Disney film "Freaky Friday" and I had to probe her for any tell-tale signs that Morna was trapped in her mother's body and vice versa. Her story seemed to check out although she feigned surprise when I pointed out the numerous reasons why she is her own mother or at least a very convincing replica. Had her mother found the elixir of life and used her youthful visage to play a cruel trick on her daughter by masquerading as her?

All through the evening Morna was coy and reserved, a strategy well used by people pretending to be other people.

"So, Morna, how was your weekend?"

"*Giggles* Erm, it was interesting..."

That was the general theme for the evening anyway. I sat there staring at her imagining some quasi-Smirnoff advert flashing after each staid and unrevealing statement of Morna in some weird kinky latex outfix lashing five kneeling men and spraying them with silly string. She'd then add "just your usual weekend" and images of her straddling Mr Universe wearing a pig mask grunting to the camera with the slogan "As Clear As Your Conscience" filling the screen. She was trying to be all mysterious leaving the finer details to the imagination but I'm still convinced it was her mother all along playing a safe strategy. She's probably laughing to herself right now at us mugs for buying it all, sipping at more of the age-reducting potion and plotting where next to take her new body.

It's hard to tell exactly what has changed and what hasn't but from the exterior it looked like a concentrated attempt to mirror her mother, even going so far as thumbing her slipper and warning me to "not make me take off my slipper" when I made a passing remark about Radiohead being the lamest band ever. She looked much like the photo above with the stern don't-push-me face that clearly was in no mood for a smartass reply, so I piped down to avoid her having to brandish her famous slippers.

Before she left though I uttered the word "damn" and she nearly flipped out, grabbing her left slipper and striding towards me. She said she was only kidding but for a brief moment there I was convinced that I would suffer the same fate as many a child has in Tarves when they crossed the path of a Laing family member. For that short moment, I saw a vision of Morna's future that I cannot help but feel so certain she will, some day, become.


Friday, April 01, 2005
 
Googlewhack?

Unfortunately not :( If you type "egotristic", a word I made up instead of typing egotistical, into Google then the only result displayed is from this site. This does not make it a Googlewhack because a Googlewhack must be a two-word query and both words must be listed in the Oxford dictionary.

So close...


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