Author: foxtongue

insignificant

A friend of mine sent me this and I thought you would enjoy seeing this link.

The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida has put up a very interesting Java applet on their site. It begins as a view of the Milky Way Galaxy viewed from a distance of 10 million light years and then zooms into towards Earth in powers of ten of distance. 10 million, to one million, to 100,000 light years and so on and then when it finally reaches a large Oak tree leaf. But that is not all it zooms into the leaf until it reaches the level of the quarks viewed at 100 attometers.

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index

This is a fantastic representation of how magnificent the Universe is and how vastly infinite it is both in the macroscopic and the microscopic level.

hired

So as if to tell lie to my friend who yesterday said that i obviously haven’t been trying very hard to find a job, today I’ve been hired. Disapointingly to a telemarketing firm, but with injuries, what more can I honestly hope for? I went dancing last night at Sanctuary and almost died. Odd though, the more wrecked I stumbled off the dancefloor, the more people I knew crawled out of the woodwork to ask if I were okay. It was somehow odd. I was half delirious, dizzy, and feeling collapsable like an oprha hat when people I hadn’t seen in almost a year or two came up and asked after my health. Jonathan even loomed out of the darkness to hug me and offer my a drink.
^break for mini-story^
(Course, it’s about time that brit offered me a drink – last time I saw him at Sanctuary, he O.D. on something nasty on the dancefloor and I helped take him to the hospital. Waited around till three a.m. in a bright unwelcoming hospital hallway with his blood soaking through my clothing – this same fellow months earlier had decided somehow through some sort of induced haze that I was terribly desirable and needed my toes sucked. He’s so utterly adorable, so I’ll forgive him for his hair.)
^end of line^

My first day is on Thrusday. 9 – 4:30, mon – fri and every second sat. Paycheck is weekly and pay is $8/hour. I’m fairly sure that I could do much better with an audio/visual firm, but until I can haul projectors around again, telemarketing will do.

nice day

today I went and met up with my friend Chris Nicholson. *grins* That was wonderful. He’s so sweet, and I felt so much better about leaving him after he’d had some cookies. *laughs at self* We dropped by Blenz and I got a steamed caramel milk. What an interesting thing to fetch from a coffee shop. Nummyness. Anyhoo – we had a loverly fun talk and caught uup with a lot. We haven’t seen eachother in over a year. His sculpting is making him a tiny bit of money now, and he seems to be doing really well. On our way back from hanging out at the park, we ran into . Pleasant surprise, that. He’d also shared the skytrain with me, though we hadn’t met until the escalator. Adrian’s fun – a total Microserf. (Yes, I will make you read the book. It’s douglas Coupland, don’t worry.) Which, in it’s turn, amuses me, because friend has just discovered microserfs and is transcribing portions into her journal. *grinning* Just now I chatted with her on-line, and ealier two people cam eto see the house. One is the son of my friend Dans’ girlfriend, Kia. Heh. Think that three times fast. And before they came over, (the son, by the way, seems to be a shoe-in), Bill had a group of people over as a going-away jam for our friend Drew who is going off to Afghanistan with his group Rock Paper Scissors to entertain the troops.

*sighs* Loverly day. And now we’re off to a dance piece at the Cultch.

Today is a people day and I am so glad of it I’m giddy.

join mistersleepless

another reason you should befriend Warren Ellis as mistersleepless.

She opens her perfect mouth and the sound of a modem pours out. The long shriek of signal, and then the radio-static-and-rubber-band song of connection.

And then another. She looks up, opens her mouth, and the electric scream beats up into the night. Another two, three signal-songs harmonise. More. A row of Shrieky Girls, all in black and hazmat orange, standing outside the club, looking up and dialling in.

Inside the place, there’s an ozone pressure from the mass of Shrieky Girls beaming internet whispers to each other. Shrieky Girls dance, turning slow circles on the floor as the DJ plays tripped Bristol beats spiked with Shrieky connection-sound samples and tranquillised by sibilant female voices whispering about sex and vodka in the dark.

Shrieky Girls lock us out of their world. Their shared gaze darts around the room in flock patterns, homing in one on one guy’s piercings, one woman’s shoulderblade brand. People still flinch when they see twenty, thirty girls all turn around to look at them at exactly the same time.

In the back, picked out in stopmotion by strobes, a Shrieky Girl stands against the wall and pulls a boy in to her. She unzips him, closes fingers around him, pulls him inside sharply. Her lips part, and you expect a sigh, but you hear connection hiss. On the floor, twenty, thirty Shrieky Girls stop dancing, and all their backs arch in exactly the same way. Heads thrown back and mouths open in modem screams.

It’s not that Shrieky Girl who finds someone worth going home with. But, when morning finally comes, it’s all of them who share the modemed sensation of a warm arm closed softly around them. It’s all of them who see him wake up and smile at them and look at them, and see him keep looking and smiling at them even though the make-up’s half gone and the hair’s been smashed by the bed, because it was them he wanted to be with, not the look.

Two, three hundred Shrieky Girls smile just a little bit and hold an invisible hand for a while.

Shrieky Girls are never alone. They live in an invisible web of constant secret conversation, transmitting raw feelings like they were texting notes.

Twenty, thirty thousand Shrieky Girls smile just a little bit and turn away to dance.

(c) Warren Ellis 2003