agentblack

I cannot sleep.

Which is a bit shit. We've got a web cam at home now. I think it's sinister. It's squatting on top of the monitor, a slick plastic slug. I feel like it's leering at me. I'm staring back at it. I dislike it, because of the possibly that someone might catcha glimpse of me at the computer. I'm never doing anything weird, I just don't like the idea of being watched.

The cat just fucked a moth up with a fairly ninja paw smash. He let the dog eat the remains. He's generous like that.
The cat is watching me type. He understands that sometimes I don't sleep on the weekends because I'm out of a routine, and that means that I turn to shit. I need to be in a disciplined enviroment, in much the same way I need a woman's touch to keep me from the madness.
The cat can sleep anywere. Favourite places are Sofas. He'll move for you eventually when you want to sit down, but he'll treat you to a really disdainful look first. Then pick on the dogs.

Got an e-mail from an ex, it was mildly flirtatious. Haven't spoken to her in a while. I kept it polite and friendly, but what does she want really?
I reckon she had a fight or some sort of fall out her boyfriend

and wanted to reassure herself that she's stiil attractive.

I've got my headphones on, but I've clamped them over my temples. I can hear the music through my skull. Don't like feeling them over my ears. I like hip hop. I like lots of things. I like things you would never guess that I would like. I like spotting books or films or paintings or stuff like that, and KNOWING who else would like it. It make me feel wise.

I saw this today. It made me think about robotic antelope, grazing on weeds and nettles poking through the smashed rubble of our abandoned cities. Preyed upon by gangs of feral children that scavenge the remains to forge into weapons, primitive rifles and radios. What do you think future archaeologists will make of Norwich? Or Bluewater?

I always liked the idea of Future Archaeologists. I never knew why until I realised that Archaeology can only exist when there is a break in the flow of society. Catastrophe, however slow, fast, widespread or local has to occur, so that the past stops being history - that which is recorded and documented - and becomes something unknown and lost, which has to be rediscovered.

The idea of society, our culture, being so fragile appeals to me. I dunno why. I like walking out into the fields near my house. If I look in the right direction, you can't see any houses and the sound of traffic is muffled and faint. You can pretend you're the last person in the world.

I used to think about the end of the world all the time when I was little. Dinosaurs used to stalk all other the earth, until their world ended. In the fossil record it took an instant, but how long did it take, really? What would, what will, kill us off?

A few miles up the road, it turned out the government had built a bunker. The end of the world is everywhere. It's a tourist attraction now.
When I was little, the radio antennae nearby used to scare me at night. Red lights at the top of it looked like eyes. I coulld imagine it was the Iron Man. The steel beams and it's wire frame structure made the atennae look ike a looming alien skeleton.

I see it now driving home from work, and I find it comforting. The memory of the fear is a funny memory now. It still looks sinister, but for different reasons. This is a relic of the cold war. An end of the world I grew up around, along with AIDS.
When I was small the world seemed caught between Gorbachev and Reagan, and the officials on either side around them. I always prefered Gorbachev to Reagan. He had a nicer smile and a funny mark on his head. he waved a lot more. He seemed more reasonable.

Reagan vibed Bad Authority - the same kind that clung to teachers and important types you had to be polite to. People who did things for Your Own Good. Even when I was little, I could sense the near senile fuck would condemn us all to screaming nuclear hell and slow wheezing death through fallout poisoning just to stop us ending up commies.

Or maybe just if Nancy's horoscope turned up bad.

But I found all that out later.

Reagan's Dead now. Thatcher will be soon. (I had to check that she wasn't) AIDS is still here. I remember Thatcher on TV. I remember thinking that she wasn't very nice, that she had the same feel as Reagan, that they would do things for you, for your good, but that they weren't really sincere, and they would always be too busy to actually talk to you.

I was older when I realised what a crazy old bag she was, and malicious - but she was doing what she thought was right. And a lot of people liked her. Essex is solid tory. You'd be able to find people that would vote for her again here no problem. It's complicated.

The miners strike was complicated. Thatcher was in the wrong - but had a point. And Skargill was just as bad, self righteous, naiv, a victim of his own cult. And the miner's were caught between the two of them.
I ought to read more about it. It was a long time ago. It was another end of the world, country on a knife edge, Maggie considering sending in the Army. Martial law.

Would it happen again? I don't think so. People are too concerned with paying off their credit cards. It's not a criticism, it's just the way it is. We're supposed to be living in a time of great prosperity, but we're all in debt. I can't afford to move out. I'm twenty four and still living at home. My mum was married with two kids by the time she was my age.

I doubt I'll ever have that kind of responsibility.

I was supposed to go out with a girl tomorrow, but I don't see that happening Too tired. I feel all drawn out and wasted. I'm listening to Sparks at the moment. My dad got me into them. THIS TOWN AIN'T BIG ENOUGH FOR THE TWO OF US.

Cats disappeared, little fuckers probably sleeping somewhere. I'm jealous. I catch the wee bastard on my bed we'll have a set to.
Things I've been thinking about. Our phones are mobile computers, increasing in complexity and abilites as they reduce in size. Camera, 'Phone, Internet, Music, all of it contained in a robot hornet fashioned out of mono-molecular sheets of alloy and organic plastics. One sits behind your ear, vibrates sound through your jaw bone or skull to your inner ear, another sits above your larynx, you press it against your thraot when you want to speak.

When not in use they orbit silently around you or sit unobtrusive upon your shoulder. Controlled by intuitive manipulations of a stick of microstrand laced foam plastic. make shapes to dictate function. Crescent bend for phone, loop for camera, bent in half for internet, etc.

It's almost morning. I remember I used to wake up in the mornings and the rooks would be settled in the field outside like litter, cawing and strutting and pecking at the ground. After a while, when they had finished clearing the field, they would take to the air like a blizzard of thick sooty flakes in reverse. The roosted in trees just over the road, big balls of twigs hanging in bare branches like skeletons of gaint nightmare fruits.

it's called a parliment of rooks, apparently. I don't see what's wrong with "flock"

I haven't seen them in Ages. Are they gone? Am I just sleeping too late? I dunno, I'm going to sleep on the sofa and pick on the cat.