San Francisco. I thought I hadn’t seen San Francisco; of course, I’d seen something of it, seen the centre and the buildings and the cable cars avalanching by; but I felt there was a social San Francisco out there, the supercool city of Maupin, which I was somehow missing by not knowing anyone there.

Yet, first off, the city’s much smaller than I thought it would be – it doesn’t feel as big as Manhattan by itself - and a lot more of it is suburbs than any major city I’ve been to. It also feels self-contained, because it’s on this cut-off peninsula and, more importantly, feels totally artificial, with typical cross-cutting streets and standard movie-magic houses. It's like someone took an Acme American Town flatpack and rolled it out over the island before they noticed the hill. It's like it was designed by a weeping tycoon or despot with a team of cartographers, Nero looking for his new Rome, Charles II’s London or Hitler and Speer’s Berlin. An odd analogy for such a liberated place but there’s a certain totalitarianism about its ideal of freedom, like any ideal that claims to count for a specific proportion of humanity.

This is terrible. I normally do freelance for money (to gain it and to take up time so I can’t spend it) yet I’ve found myself looking forward with vicarious delight to a certain piece of my freelance; Computer Upgrade’s Time Wheel. It takes me ages, I’ve got to get my own images, and it only pays seventy squid (before tax), but I love it because I get to research.
Basically, it’s a history of various technologies; cameras, joysticks, video, whatever they ask me to do. I go online, and I just read and read and read, until I’ve developed a theme, and can talk with authority about the topic, and hopefully introduce crazy elements of interest into the history. For example, the first proper joystick? Used to control the Heinkel Hs 293 wire-guided bomb from 1940 when launched from Luftwaffe bombers. The first camera precursor? The Camera Obscura, described by the Chinese Philosopher Mo-Ti (Micius) in the 5th century B.C. The first computer display was based on loom technology. The first And so on, and on.

Scientists create animals that are part-human - Stem Cell Research - MSNBC.com: "On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs."

Agh! The very concept of a sheep with a human brain scares my Welsh blood; make them stop Rhodri, else they'll be more suits against the Church of Wales than a branch of Moss Bros. At least those poor lonely shepherds will have someone to chat to now, post-coitally...

Was meant to be living frugally and doing freelance. Was sat at desk, attempting freelance, hours after a work. An evil Alan whispered sweet nothings in my ear, and I found myself whisked away in a Jag to a land of chips, pie and poker, where I lost all my money and had my allergies tested by a team of yapping puppies.

Now I'm in debt, full of freelance and fat. But oddly happier.

Rejected Love Is comics

Thirty Oxford students hurt in May Day leap into shallow river:

"As 8,500 students gathered on the bridge to listen to the traditional dawn choir, more than 100 people, some still wearing formal ball gowns and dinner jackets from the previous evening's May Ball, clambered over the fencing,

But most were unaware that the Cherwell, after an unusually dry spring, was just 3ft deep.

While paramedics treated some students at the scene for minor injuries, 10 were taken to hospital with spinal injuries, broken legs, ankles and ribs.

One man had a serious back injury after another jumped on top of him and a Russian woman was impaled on the 6ft fence."

Oh, you daft apeths. "Toller was later seen propositioning the Russian lady, claiming that '6ft is nothing'."

Suspended animation becomes a reality?
"Let's continue with the science fiction theme I seem to have developed over the past few weeks. First we had The Black Hole and then Journey to the Center of the Earth. Now, a group in Seattle, WA, has published a report in Science this week, with the remarkable discovery that hydrogen sulphide (H2S), the terrible smelling gas given off by rotting eggs and sewage, can reduce the metabolic rate and core body temperature of mice. Or, in plainer English, it induced a state similar to hibernation."

Brilliant. When do the aliens land?

The Time Traveler Convention - May 7, 2005: "The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(events start at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT"

From Jonty.

Hayseed Dixie World Service - Put Your Lips On This!

Classic music being done to death by hicks... I love it. Also see Quiet Street for classic String Quarter cross-overs.

I'm going mad. I get back from San Fran, tanned, fit and healthy, and the first thing Bath does to me is send a team of shitting pigeons. Now my tasty cord jacket, nostalgic battered rucksack and perma-borrowed laptop have been visited by the ghost of Jackson F*cking Pollock.

And sitting at my desk, I realise I can't keep up. There isn't time in life to both dream, do work, read all the fantastic blogs I've subscribed to and books I've acquired, and plan for the future. I must choose two of these. In accordance with my hedonistic principles, I select read and dream, and let the others fend for themselves.

Also, I appear to have forgotten everything. I mean *everything*. I realised I can remember, like, three memories from my university days, and very little from the following four years. There's flashes like eating an enormous matzoh ball in NYC, or kneeling in a suit and gown in a pool of my own vomit in an Oxford toilet, but little else. And no it's not drugs, it's just… gone. Very odd.