i get delirious

so there's this new insomnia thing that keeps plaguing me. I look like night of the living dead half the time and I don't know which day it is. On a good note, I'm less I sleep the more calories I burn.

so yeah, not sure what is causing the nerves. Zombie walking and my stomach sounds like fucking Flipper.

Actually I do know what's causing the nerves and it's completelyt beige related. I'm happy to report that sterling gained five cents on the dollar in the last month so my salary is bouncing back. It may onlyt take ten years to get me back where I was six months ago. 

Two weeks until I ship back to the mother land and then I can decide what to do with all the crap I can't afford to store. Freecycle anyone? I'm dumoping it all. Going back to being a nomad. Much easier. Dispensing with non-critical things like subject and possibly past participles.  

I feel delusional these days. How are you?

PS took the when will you get married quiz on facebook. Am hoping anyone who reads this blog will know that was a joke. I'm sure there are fb "friends" who thought I was serious. They are on auto-hide.

i spoketh too soon

The dates have come in. May 6 through June 8th.

Now at least I can make some plans.

I go to Croatia May 1 through May 4. Come home. Pack. Get shit sorted. Leave for a month.

Good thing most finiancial shit can be taken care of online.

still no words

dates and length of time for THE CITY are still up in the air. This is becoming problematic for me as I am now thinking of this trip as very disruptive. I have healthcare appointments and a gym routine that are going to be compromised and for those of you who know me, I'm not a very schedule oriented person. I've been working very hard the last six months in the jolly to establish a safe and sane lifestyle, and I will say that I've been doing a pretty decent job imposing structure and order onto what can sometimes be called, an 'out-of-control' life.

The trip is worrisome in that I really don't want to take giant steps backward. Living out of a suitcase for 4-6 weeks is going to tax my newfound stabilization efforts.

*sigh*.

In other news, I employed a new Higgens, only this time around Higgins is a kick ass girl with the best name ever, Kat Bearpark. That is the real name. WHO has a name like that? I'll tell you who. A kickass kickboxing trainer. I'm going to call her katbearcat.  katbearcat is going to put me on the treadmill on Wednesday to see how long I can run. I already told her last week, 30 seconds max. Since then I've brought it up to 3 min. because I don't want to be embarrased in front of katbearcat. I told kbc that I want to be able to run some distance because at least then, if I am without a gym for a bit, I can find a running track and go for a run to keep up the fitness routine.

I've gone in and out of the fitness thing again and again but this time I have external motivation. Basically I'd like to get laid again before I die so this is what is spurring me on to fitness. So far, it's been the most effective motivator yet. Must be the midlife crisis kicking in.

In non-midlife crisis news, after six months, I think I have decided that the area I'm living in London is a little too bland for my tastes. It's nice if you have a double-wide stroller and you have blond hair and blue eyes, and you don't like spice in your food and you feel threatened by kids in hoodies. It's a safe neighborhood. Too safe. Kind of stepford. Beautiful and vacant. Not my cuppa tea. The two areas I have in mind, and these are fairly big areas so there is a lot to choose from, are SE and NE London. Mainly south of the Tate Modern OR around London Fields/Stoke Newington. I've found a lot of good studios that won't break the bank, and the areas are nice and diverse and have some flavor. Music, Art, organic produce, funky people that aren't too cool for school. I'd probably fit in a bit more there then in Tennis mecca.

alrighty then, enough personal disclosure for now. Laters.

obama and your mama

Obama's coming to the Jolly this week. Supposedly there are going to be protests all over the place but who knows. Maybe we'll have riots like the Seattle WTO conference.

I could see it. People are fed up and scared and worried about their futures. The G20 seems to embody all the factors that have brought us to this point.

I should be reading more about all of this but honestly, all I feel like I can control is the tiny little sphere around me (and not even that all the time.) This is sad thinking that goes counter to my hippy upbringing, but lets face it, my parents weren't THOSE kind of hippies. They were the "I do what I want, fuck the man, let's get high" kind of hippies.

whatever.

Anyways, everyone is waiting for Obama to deliver some kind of enlightened message of political, economic, and societal healing. I hope his speech writers are doing their homework.

the rocks who rock

it seems as though life has been absorbed by beige. For some reason, more of my life revolves around beige in the jolly than it did stateside. It feels like the weeks are longer and the weekends are shorter and I'm here in the office longer and I can't make time for things like extra-curricular classes and the gym(s).

Man I need to get to the gym. I have two gym memberships now. I still am not going to either. I know that the gym will counteract the consumption by work and help me deal with stress and whatnot.

This whole second gym thing was spurred on by a recent health scare which landed me "in hospital" as they say. Nothing to worry about ultimately but I was having some scary symptoms of a heart attack and when put together, it added up to me going in to check it out and staying overnight at London Royal. BTW, I like NHS. They were on top of it. Granted, when it was assessed that I wasn't dying, processing slowed down a bit and I got a look at the bureacracy of socialized medicine. However, these guys were thorough. I didn't feel like I was going through the American hospital turnstyle with a cash register at the end of the line.

why did I start this post. . . .

oh yeah, beigeness. so there are three people here who make it worth it and if they weren't here as pillars in this room I work in, I would surely go insane under pressure. they are the rocks who rock and I would gladly work with them in ANY beige. Just sayin'.

coming back stateside

mini b got a promo which was announced yesterday. it kind of shook things up a bit and now my global team will be shuffling around. It looks like I will be heading stateside for anywhere from a month to two.

I have mixed feelings about this.

promises to myself that I may or may not break

promises to myself OR the return of krixfort. this remains to be seen.

I promised myself that I will make time to write each day. This can't happen at beige anymore due to the amount of work so it will have to happen at some other time. It is currently 5:47 am. I can now get up at this time of the day because I don't live in NYC and stay out past 11 on most nights anymore.  Of course this does not preclude the nights when I seem to be jetlagged and stay up playing spider solitaire and commenting on facebeeyotch until 2am.

I promised myself that I will go to the gym in a consistent manner and lose 3-4 stone. Yes. I said stone. It's much easier on the constitution to use a number like 3 or 4 than 50 or 60. I have joined a second gym because the first gym was not in a location that worked for me. It will work on weekends but I should have known better and not been so gung ho to make a life for myself that resembled my New York life when I first got here. What I ended up with was a life that too closely resembled my nyc life where I had a gym membership that went unused.

I don't want to over do the promise thing because that only leads to trouble and recriminations and harsh judgements, even if it is only between me and me.

However, since I have promised to write everyday, I am hoping to get over this hump of just talking about me and me. And me. And start talking about London, and Europe, and politics and funny stuff, like Londoners and Europeans and politics and stuff.

How about those AIG boneses? HEY-OHHHHHHHHHH.

I'm here all week ladies and gents. And now I'm off to work on some writing business if I don't crawl back into bed.

not so instant karma

i just received word via an internet bird that my former employer, aka The Cubes, home of The Hooker, has filed for Chapter Seven.

Liquidation and dissolution. Good riddance.

I am feeling . . . oh the Germans have a word for it. Schadenfreude.

indefinite leave to remain

the last post I wrote when I had too much wine. It was kind of like too much wine and too much whine.

I actually like it here.

I am considering applying for Tier 1 Highly Skilled Worker status which gives me 'indefinite leave to remain' which is kind of like residency, I guess.

I could see being over here for awhile.

I've been emailing my friend Meattooth about the way in which things have changed since we knew each other in SF, back in the 90s. I live a more healthful lifestyle here in the UK than I ever have. I feel like every day, I wake up and kick some ass. . . .and I like it.

I could stick with that feeling for awhile. I'm starting to shed my american things. The crackberry was the first to go. Next will be the crap in Queens that I am hanging on to for some reason. Don't need it. I will go back at some point and get rid of it all, store the important things in Seattle, and ship the rest to the jolly.

Then again, maybe this will all change too. I can't say really.

In other news, I turn 43 next week. I'm old now. I am having a semi-mid-life-crisis, sort of. In my midlife crisis, I am considering going to grad school and studying film-making. I am also considering joining a boxing gym, even though I already joined a gym near my house. Meattooth says "A Masters or Doctorate would be a better way to go--more prodcuctive, anyway--than a sports car and and 8-ball of coke and a string of twenty something gigolos."

I will have to agree with that.

i miss you

I suppose there have been worse days

I must be hitting the five month slump.

shit day at work. shit at home. I am missing New York.

I am wondering if I can remember all the places I've lived in in my life. I don't think I can. I feel like this will become one of those places I won't remember much.

It would be nice to stop everything. I'm tired of thinking. I'm tired of striving. I'm tired of everything.

fuck it, time for a cigarette.

L.

fucking

O

fucking

L

à l'heure jamais

have you ever seen the movie The First Wives Club? Could there possibly be a more hideous film out there? I guess it's okay if you enjoy histrionics and over-fifties shrieking constantly.

Speaking of histrionics, I had the surreal experience of attending this spectacle when I was in Rome.

THE OPENING OF FRANCESCO VEZZOLI’S “GREED” 

It was like walking into a scene from La Dolce Vita, but maybe not as sweet. I'm not sure what to think of the work inside the gallery but what was interesting was the spectacle. Maybe that's what this guy's work is all about, which, if that is the case, is not that interesting at all. In that case, it's interesting that people still buy into hype, and that the art world is a cult of personality. Maybe it always has been.

I will say that the spectacle was well contrived, complete with bouncers holding people back from the gallery, making it seem as though it were entirely the place to be. There was even a private room behind the red velvet curtains; a secret room reeking of status and the invisible divide between those who are and those who are not. There was such a room at Tosca's in San Francisco. Celebrities who found their way to North Beach could be whisked into the back room at Tosca and all the star-fuckers of North Beach would clamor to worm their way inside.

It makes me slightly sad to think about this show. Contrasted with the wonderful Caravaggios, Bernini sculptures, and frescos I was able to see, this event, while making my visit to Rome feel a bit over the top and unlike any trip to Rome I will ever have again, seems to be demonstrative of a world devoid of meaning and lacking soul.

Maybe Europe is turning me into a nihilist. Maybe I already was.

so much and so little at the same time

how can it be that I have so much to say and so little at the same time. what I mean is that there is so much in my head to say yet I am incapacitiated and unable to write it all down. I think maybe my processor is still on overload. The most recent manifestation of this has been in my ill-fated screenwriting class in which I have been rendered mute and impotent.

It was nice to see MM in Roma. I met a friend of MMs there who writes. I asked how Rome was affecting the writing and she said that she was allowing herself to experience it and not trying to force anything. After hearing that, I immediately felt less lame. I can completely understand that philosophy. My only fear in doing the same here is that I will forget everything. I haven't even really been taking many photos.

It's so hard to describe. It's hard to explain how exhausting it is to be here. Exhillarating and exhausting. And beige. . .beige has been a super challenge. I'm flying solo essentially. . . no mini B to protect me. I'm always walking this fine line of knowing the proper amount of support to give. If I give too much I will burn out and people won't learn how to do their jobs without constant babysitting. If I don't give enough and I'm too much of a bureaucrat about giving tech support then I think it defeats the purpose of the company sending me here in the first place. Although challenging at times, I think that I'm reaching a new level of performance here.

anyways, aside from all that, my new favorite pasttime is to take pictures of ugly shoes. There are so many. . .it's hard to capture them all. Soon I will post. My favorite time to snap the shoe shots is late at night on the tube.

okay. . back to beigeness. Hope everyone is doing well.

ps here's what's new. I finally cracked open some video editing software.

when in Roma

I leave for Rome tomorrow morning, weather willing.

weather. yeah. So, if the Germans had dropped snow on London instead of bombs, the outcome of WWII may have been completely different.

My other favorite response to the "Worst Storm in 18 Years" is "yeah. London got six inches. . .for once."

To be fair, the city simply doesn't have the equipment to deal with a heavy snowfall. Fact. It's like Seattle. That type of weather event happens so rarely that there is no need to invest in equipment that will basically sit for two decades. People here were so incensed . . . but why?

Maybe it's because they spend so much time shoving their emotions down their own throats that getting really irate about something no one can do anything about is the only safe outlet.

BTW, I'm losing my New York-ishness. I tend to keep my mouth shut more often than speaking up, which saddens me. I still let my opinion fly, but I'm less likely to call people out. I'm not sure how to rectify this situation.

And this is filed under the Phrases I've Adopted From The Local Lexicon category.

to be fair, . . .  - american eqivalent = in all fairness. Usage: To be fair, she's just acting like a cunt because she's stressed. She's actually very nice.

to be honest, . . . - american equivalent = actually/honetly Usage: To be honest, I don't give a shit if she is stressed, she still a royal cunt.

done and dusted - american equiv = done and done. Usage: did you buy the theater tickets? Done and dusted. we're ready to go.

binned/sacked - american equiv = shit canned, laid off . usage:  everyone of my mates who came out of Uni last year were binned. Everyone's going on the dole.

Okay, those are the only ones I've picked up. I know more but I try not to adopt them.

Rome. I'm going to see Mountain Man hopefully. And maybe some touristy stuff. Avoiding the Vatican.

arrivederci amores. besos.

now it's time for random observations

I know that at times "London style" has been hot. Unfortunately, I look around often and I'm a little concerned. I mean what's up with the following:

Russel Brand's hair?

 

seriously? Seriously gay is what I say.