Time, I suppose, to do something here - to confront my very real fear of large, white open spaces.. although this too, of course, is just another exercise in procrastination...

I've been on Everything2 for four years and loved it and frowned at it at different times and in different moods. There are some great reasons to love it... the people here are, on the whole, wonderful: I've been to two nodermeets and had a great time (I apologise for being very drunk for the first, and being peculiarly absent for the second). There is, too, some very excellent writing here - and that makes me smile.

So why frown at it, at all, however briefly? Well - Butterfinger McFlurries, and all that that, and they, entail, are most of the reasons... (go read, go read)... And because, by its nature, it's about 'Everything' and I seem to be having big, and spectacular, problems with 'everything' at the moment.

Postpreamble:
None of it in any particular order...
I did say the people here were wonderful... These are they what I have met...
Conquest, sharq, Oolong, Wertperch, ascorbic, teiresias, trust the doctor, princess_loulou, booyaa, StrawberryFrog, siobhan, henry, call, frankie, bexxta, mdn, insanefuzzie, camtarn, arieh, gounthar...
(I even remember some of them...)
Not many, but then I am sort of shy, too...

And me? Well... I've been banjax for ages and ages. I live in the UK, spend more time on here than is good for me, watch too many films, eat too much food, sing too many songs (loudly and flat), write too much guff, drink too much wine... I read too, but I don't think you can do too much of that.

What I read...
John Irving (The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude), Donald Barthelme (40 Stories, 60 Stories, Snow White, The King, The Dead Father), Bill Bryson, Douglas Adams, Scott Adams, Iain (M.) Banks (esp. Espedair Street, The Bridge, Use of Weapons), Stevie Smith, Sylvia Plath, Wendy Cope, Joe Orton, Dario Fo...

And what I listen to...
Pet Shop Boys (music for every possible, conceivable occasion), Jean Michel Jarre (arty, arsey, French crap), ELO (magic music from the west midlands), Sheryl Crow (love 'er), Crowded House (although I don't understand them, particularly), Dido (cheerful girl), Madness (loud and happy), Less Than Jake (louder and happier), Reel Big Fish (very, very loud and very, very happy), The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (the loudest, and the most pissed off), Smash Mouth (their cover of 'The King of the Swingers' is exceptionally fine), Meat Loaf (if baroque architecture could sing...), Kate Bush (bizarre beyond words), Alison Moyet (The Voice), Annie Lennox (raising misery to an art form since the 80's), Elvis Costello ('That Day is Done'), Thomas Dolby (genius - it's that easy), Michael Nyman (swanky orchestra - velcro music), Fascinating Aida (rude - funny, and very, very rude)...

What I've been...
A kid, a student, a layabout, a barman, a singer, a juggler, an actor, a clown, a fall guy, a bear (I'm still a cub, but it's a different thing), a gorilla, a games-player, a balloon modeller, a face-painter, a smiler, an astronomer, and a student once again... I think I'll stay one of those; at least this way I don't have to pretend to know any answers...

What I want to be...
Asleep less... (yes - really...)

And what it matters...
Probably not a lot...

(Jean Paul Sartre once said 'In order to write my own biography, I became my own obituary' - (okay so it's a misquotation, but he'll have said it in French anyway, so it doesn't matter...) - Biographies? Passe (with an accent that I don't know how to do)... Imagine, then, the credits rolling...)