Singing away the curses

About my dying computer. I seriously wonder if in some spooky way it's just me?
I like to think of myself as a rational and intelligent person, but some things just aren't rational.


Let me tell you about the weird effect I have on

electronic things. They re-adjust themselves, develop

alarms that I have never set and don't know how to

unset, break down in strange unexplicable ways.

I  had a toyota corolla car from 1990-4 that in 1993

started to kill things: animals and birds came diving

under my wheels every 2-3 months? In two years I hit a

pheasant, a hawk, a rabbit , a weasel,a large dog,

several small birds, etc. The rabbit came at me, I

swerved and braked and it leapt in underneath. I also

hit a man who stepped out into the road right in front

of me looking the other way, but I had managed to

brake hard first so he was clipped but not hurt and

apologetic for frightening me. I sold that car and

bought another old cheap car while still living in the

same place, living the same lifestyle, and hit nothing

in the following year.

Don't quite know what to make

of it. Was it a warning of the absolutely foul time that
 came next, when my life was in grave risk over several months?

Or was it makutu, Maori sorcery? A curse that I carry still?

 

Going gentle into that. Goodnight.

 My computer died on Monday. It had a terminal illness first, freezing occasionally during 2005, then rebooting occasionally from the start of 2006, then rebooting ALL THE BLOODY TIME. Then, just when I was sick of that, it stopped rebooting at all.

It had major surgery: two reinstallations of windows, and a new HD, an internal cleanout and reseat. And a great deal of attention. So it had a good life and probably did its best for me.

The good news is that most of my stuff is on the HD and can be moved straight into a new old box. The bad news is that it all takes time when I have other very important things to do, and money when I have a deeply important project that will take more money than I have available as it is.

So I've decided to look on it as a challenge and an inspiration. I have begun a story about a person who experiences life as a process of rebooting and rebooting and... 

And I have also decided I will get there come hell or high water, whatever the bastards 
throw in my way.

Sunday evening blues

There is something about the dag end of Sunday that often gets to me, possibly the sum total of the dag ends of the seven previous days. Plus I got very little writing done this week.
Perhaps it's guilt, because I'm letting the nation down by barely acknowledging the ...(what sort of football is it they're getting all excited about for the next two weeks?)
In fact it's been a great weekend: I mowed the lawn. And what this lawn lacked in area it made up in height and density. For a start I kept hitting treetrunks and not being able to proceed in a forward direction, but then I discovered the art of raising the front of the damn thing and dropping it down on top of the small trees that were starting to claim squatters rights here. I even mowed the hedge, and the patio. Violence was done. Shades of the lawnmower man.

And my daughter has swanned off to Orcland to be a star at the Oz Psych Assoc and lent me her cute little car to drive for the fortnight, while her bro has moved to Wembly.

Now, what sort of suburb calls itself Wembly. I think it might be psychological state: Ooh, I'm feeling very wembly at the moment. Or that wasn't very wembly of you darling. Maybe.

A niobe moment

Well, after literally years of procrastinating, I now have a web presence: in a few hours, I registered my domain, and created and launched my homepage for my website jessicavivien.com.

I see Ben Peek is having fun pushing Amazon to the limits by setting his own definition of "Dinnerparty" language on his author's blog associated with the Agog! anthologies now on sale on Amazon. Check it out. I hadn't realised until yesterday that being published in "Agog! Fantastic Fiction" gives us the right to have author's blogs on Amazon linked to our publications. Not sure if Ben is being subversive or is carrying out a very clever marketting ploy designed to bring more hits to his blog and the book. I'll see if I can find out.

So...I am discovering my webnaivity in this big bad webworld. There will be "oh my gauche" moments when I discover that on the web as in life I have insufficient knowledge of etiquette. C'est la vie.

Chewing things up and over.

It's been a tough week.

First my car broke down because back in January my local mechanics fitted a squaretoothed waterpump which chewed up my roundtoothed timing chain and dropped the compression down to "dead car" level. Then my tiny burmese catDoushka got chewed up by the monster tom across the road and spent a couple of days in a state of shock and pain. Finally I had to watch an old man plead guilty to an assault charge, even though he didn't do it, because a big group of people who didn't like him were prepared to swear in court that he did. And throughout the week I was helping my son and daughter move house and clean up.

But on the plus side, I am putting together an application for an ARTSFLIGHT grant, and have had some wonderful support from lovely people like Cat Sparks, Lyn Battersby and Van Ikin which reminds me that I have to find a way to fit my writing in somehow, whatever else is going on. And I am lucky to live close to the bush where the tiny wild orchids and sweet friesias as coming into bloom right now.