In a (New) World of My Own

Its that day. February 14th. Valentine’s day.

For women across the Western world, it’s a day of boxes of chocolates, roses, hugs, kisses, dinner and a night of sensual love afterward. For men its steak and BJ day, which is also every third Saturday, conincidently. Who is the real winner here?

And for me, February 14th is a day of reflection as due to my upbringing and personality, I’ve made a very concious choiceto have no friends in the flesh and hey, I’m perfectly happy with it most of the time. I live my own full life as I wish it and I really don’t get the whole stigmata behind being a social extrovert, or a loner, to all you non-PC types. Really. I’m not fucking Gollum, I don’t go sneaking around at night from a basement, stealing women’s underwar from washing lines and bringnig them home to sniff them and mutter about “precious…” under my breath. Most of the time. I kid. Somewhat.

I digress. So on this day, I see the lovers strolling hand in hand through the bright spring daylight…and by that I mean “huddling together in the drizzling rain,” and it puts me into a reflective mood: What would my life be like if I hadn’t made the choices I have? Oh, most of the time I have the internet to turn to. I have true friends out there whom I’ve never met in the flesh and probably won’t either. I participate in many communities, big and small, mainstream and exotic. Irish groups, Linux groups, gaming groups, photographic groups, Irish Linux gamers who enjoy photography groups. And so on! Cory Doctorow has written brilliantly about online communities in Eastern Standard Tribe an excellent and freely available work. Download it and read it if you are a self-respecting geek. The catch with an online life is that anyone with whom I might swap Valentine’s wishes with would live several timezones away.

And still I digress! I look at the happy couples hand-in-hand and look back at my own life and wonder how things would be if I hadn’t pushed away everyone who had been close to me outside of – and inside – my family. For all that I am a geek with a select range of interests, there had been women I had been close to and involved with to some degree. I wonder what would have come of things if I had called Helen back that one night or wrote to Cathie like I promised, and so on…

It doubly poignant for me as on this day last year I was off to Paris for a few days with a friend. The trip was very intentionally non-romantic and that it stayed, to our mutual satisfaction. But since then things between us have turned to a deep and mutual loathing over, which is something we equally holdblame for. What if we had just made that bit more of an effort to understand each other? Ah well, what is the past is ultimately the past. If I go digging too deep, reflection will turn into regret, which is always the great and evil posion at the edge of my life.

And to everyone with a Valentine there to share this day and night with you: You bastard. You lucky, lucky bastard.

I yet live. I found so many things piling up that I wanted to write about that I kinda fled screaming, mentally. I had a nice viritol-filled rant on the whole matter of the Muhammad cartoons. No one is right in this matter. The cartoons were insulting and of the worst possible taste, but the paper has come clean and apologised. The Danish government has no call to apologise for their work. After all, I didn’t see Saudi Arabia rushing to apologise when their citizens killed a little shy of three thousand people.

So neither side is in the right. The Danes were wrong, but burning their embassies and killing their citizens over two cartoons doesn’t make you right. To quote Spider Jerusalem:

“You people don’t know what the truth is! It’s there, just under their bullshit, but you never look! That’s what I hate most about this fucking city — lies are news and the truth is obsolete!”

That felt good.

Past all that, my loathing for people not cleaning their WEEE items before they return them. I refuse to take them from you for reasons, you know. Here’s a good one:

“What is this nonsense,” you ask. “A photo of his hand!” you chortle. Note the plaster. I was removing a WEE item from a car at an awkward angle when it slipped and caught my finger. The item was filthy, but no biggy. I cleaned it and paid it no more mind as I get grazes like that every day. Come 3 o’clock this morning, however, and I realised that my finger was exceptionally sore and stiff. I looked at it and I realised the entire cut was infected, swollen and filled with pus. Lancing it, disinfecting it and putting a plaster on it was oh so much fun.

Lazy consumer of the world, I hate you.

Past that, I went to Connemara with the family on Sunday last. We saw the sights, took in the air and I got wonderfully sick when someone opened a pack of cheese and onion crisps. Huzzah. Still! It was a wonderful chance for me to take great pictures and to improve on my editing work.

We started our trip by driving through Oughterard and Maam Cross and then up to Leeaun and Killary Harbour. I took a series of shots of the fjord that I stitched into a spectacular panorama of the harbour.

I spent more time messing with lighting and colouring than I did with stitching as the day was so bloody overcast and dull. Ah well, the consensus on the photo so far was that it was frakking great.

After that, it was up the high road and over to Cong, where travel sickness struck. Smells make me sick. Exhaust fumes, alchohol, tobacco and especially bloody cheese and onion crisps will have me puking. No more need be said.

We stopped to allow me to get some air and I took the opportunity to take more shots of Lough Mask that I stitched into another great panorama. After more misadventure we reached Cong and spent a good two hours wandering around the grounds of Ashford Castle, as is our want. Its a spectacularly beautiful place when the weather was good, which is wasn’t. As it was, all of my photos from there were mostly muck, bar one.

And that was my last week.

Oh yes, go watch the The IT Crowd if you are a geek.