and finally the rest of you can join in - yes the site is finally viewable by the great unwashed of the internet: Internet Explorer users welcome! :)
thanks to Owen for the much needed insight into where my messy html was fouling Microsoft's messy browser (for it is a messy browser, yes it is Hamish)
The random musings and happenings of a young-ish professional-ish man who lives in Scotland, thinks in Mandelbrot shapes and frequently feels too much
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Tuesday, July 08, 2003
something's missing...
I learned relatively recently that there's a handy psychological trick you can use on yourself when drawing and painting objects in the real world. It seems that our brains find it easier to accurately interpret the space around an object than the object itself...
just now this came back to me in another context and I started wondering if that same tendency crops up in other ways: for example if I'm low (which happily I'm not right now) I have a tendency to start defining myself by what I'm not, losing sight of all that I have got and focusing in on empty spaces, like the lack of a "significant other" for example.
in some ways we live our lives around the gaps: Going to work each day thinking about that promotion you're after, or daydreaming about the guy you saw on the bus and didn't speak to, or still sleeping on one side of an empty bed... it's often this stuff that makes us unhappy, so does this mean that the more accurately we percieve our lives the less happy we are with them? surely not.
I swear, contrary to appearances I really am in a good mood today, sometimes this stuff just pops into my head...
just now this came back to me in another context and I started wondering if that same tendency crops up in other ways: for example if I'm low (which happily I'm not right now) I have a tendency to start defining myself by what I'm not, losing sight of all that I have got and focusing in on empty spaces, like the lack of a "significant other" for example.
in some ways we live our lives around the gaps: Going to work each day thinking about that promotion you're after, or daydreaming about the guy you saw on the bus and didn't speak to, or still sleeping on one side of an empty bed... it's often this stuff that makes us unhappy, so does this mean that the more accurately we percieve our lives the less happy we are with them? surely not.
I swear, contrary to appearances I really am in a good mood today, sometimes this stuff just pops into my head...
Monday, July 07, 2003
pants on fire...
this weekend for the second time in as many weeks I found myself on a date with a fit attractive, engaging man who (part way through the date) announced that he'd lied to me about his age.
now before I go off on one - and you know I'm going to ;) - lets get one thing clear: I have no problem whatsoever with older men, in fact almost all my relationships have been with guys who were at least a couple of years older than me... in both the recent 'pants on fire' cases I already knew that each of them was older than me and I was OK with that, what I wasn't OK with was finding out that they weren't OK with just how much older they each were.
You might say that from the lofty heights of my 25 years I'm not really in a position to judge? that as a young man I couldn't possibly understand the social pressures of this youth obsessed culture we live in? well you'd be right as far as the specific circumstance goes - it naturally isn't part of my own direct experience, but lying about an aspect of myself is, as I expect it is for almost every gay or bisexual man or woman on the planet.
I understand all too well what it's like to feel that some part of yourself is going to repel people, or change the way they see you, and I understand better still that that feeling is something you grow out of: it's perfectly understandable to be chronicaly insecure about your identity as an adolescent, but as an adult?
I've owned every aspect of myself to a greater or lesser degree for years, and long since discovered that the people who really matter to me, the ones who actually love me for who I am, don't give a damn about incidental details like who I'm sexually attracted to, or how many years since I was born. The idea of lying about myself to someone I was hoping to form such a relationship with is baffling. I'm not expecting total disclosure, I don't need to know everything about someone before getting into a relationship, and I appreciate that some things take time to be comfortable sharing, but your age really should not be one of them.
bah.
now before I go off on one - and you know I'm going to ;) - lets get one thing clear: I have no problem whatsoever with older men, in fact almost all my relationships have been with guys who were at least a couple of years older than me... in both the recent 'pants on fire' cases I already knew that each of them was older than me and I was OK with that, what I wasn't OK with was finding out that they weren't OK with just how much older they each were.
You might say that from the lofty heights of my 25 years I'm not really in a position to judge? that as a young man I couldn't possibly understand the social pressures of this youth obsessed culture we live in? well you'd be right as far as the specific circumstance goes - it naturally isn't part of my own direct experience, but lying about an aspect of myself is, as I expect it is for almost every gay or bisexual man or woman on the planet.
I understand all too well what it's like to feel that some part of yourself is going to repel people, or change the way they see you, and I understand better still that that feeling is something you grow out of: it's perfectly understandable to be chronicaly insecure about your identity as an adolescent, but as an adult?
I've owned every aspect of myself to a greater or lesser degree for years, and long since discovered that the people who really matter to me, the ones who actually love me for who I am, don't give a damn about incidental details like who I'm sexually attracted to, or how many years since I was born. The idea of lying about myself to someone I was hoping to form such a relationship with is baffling. I'm not expecting total disclosure, I don't need to know everything about someone before getting into a relationship, and I appreciate that some things take time to be comfortable sharing, but your age really should not be one of them.
bah.
Saturday, July 05, 2003
meow
I'm really not a cat person... that said I'm quite enjoying having Benny about, except for the fur that is getting everywhere (happily there are no carpets in the part of the house he's allowed in) he's really driving home how unfair it would be for me to have a dog though. Cats are supposed to be all independent, and yet he makes it very clear that he doesn't like being left alone, a dog would go out of its mind here *sigh* must find a job that lets me work from home...
Friday, July 04, 2003
Friday again
how did that happen? where did my week go?
I suspect that an unexpected jaunt on Wednesday night is responsible for this - Lora (a good friend of mine who moved away to University a couple of years ago) turned up out of the blue (as is her wont) and announced that we were going out to celebrate her birthday ("I'm 20, that's so old" - now I know how other people feel when I moan about being the ripe old age of 25!)
celebrations included a fantastic Mexican meal (paid for by Lora's incredibly lovely parents) and copious quanties of alcohol, most of which was in the form of tequilla which is an evil substance that makes patricks very drunk indeed...
anyway so now I find myself at another Friday afternoon with another weekend stretching invitingly before me - 'rah! Some of the weekend will be taken up with entertaining an unexpected guest: my friend Jane's cat... anyone reading this whose eyeballs didn't just pop out at the idea of me voluntarily allowing a cat into my house, can wait for the (impending) publication of the revised 'ideas' section of splateagle.com and see what I think about cats as a species since that's what's on my mind at the moment and will almost certainly be one of the first posts.
Oddly enough, Benny isn't driving me to distraction, in fact he's quite a welcome adition to the house so far, which I guess goes to show that the rule about prejudice and the individual (something you can also expect to see linked into the ideas section very soon)
Happy Friday all!
I suspect that an unexpected jaunt on Wednesday night is responsible for this - Lora (a good friend of mine who moved away to University a couple of years ago) turned up out of the blue (as is her wont) and announced that we were going out to celebrate her birthday ("I'm 20, that's so old" - now I know how other people feel when I moan about being the ripe old age of 25!)
celebrations included a fantastic Mexican meal (paid for by Lora's incredibly lovely parents) and copious quanties of alcohol, most of which was in the form of tequilla which is an evil substance that makes patricks very drunk indeed...
anyway so now I find myself at another Friday afternoon with another weekend stretching invitingly before me - 'rah! Some of the weekend will be taken up with entertaining an unexpected guest: my friend Jane's cat... anyone reading this whose eyeballs didn't just pop out at the idea of me voluntarily allowing a cat into my house, can wait for the (impending) publication of the revised 'ideas' section of splateagle.com and see what I think about cats as a species since that's what's on my mind at the moment and will almost certainly be one of the first posts.
Oddly enough, Benny isn't driving me to distraction, in fact he's quite a welcome adition to the house so far, which I guess goes to show that the rule about prejudice and the individual (something you can also expect to see linked into the ideas section very soon)
Happy Friday all!
Thursday, July 03, 2003
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
sunshine on a rainy day
It's been a pretty rotten day today, for starters the Fireman on our calander isn't a patch on Mr. June, and to be honest for the 1st of July it's been quite unacceptably miserable weather too. Happily though, just now on the way home (late, of course) the day redeemed itself, and I'm starting to think that just maybe July isn't so bad after all: let me paint you a word picture...
I'm driving (something I enjoy immensely even on the worst of days) through one of the prettier stretches of South Lanarkshire. The road is winding its usual way through the drizzle and cloud that have characterised today when the sun, on its way south for the night, peeps out from below the cloud-line illuminating the rolling green of the hills around me in that warm yellowy pink light that's usually reserved for implausable holiday brochure photographs and coffee commercials.
It's still gently raining and the wet world around me begins to shimmer under the setting sun, as my iPod begins playing the tentative opening strains of Lemon Jelly's Lovely Weather for Ducks (which if you haven't heard, you really should).
As the track gears up to full swing with its quirkily optimistic mixture of guitars, voice, synthesiser and chirpy precussion, the sun makes its way lower into the clear patch of sky and casts its light long over the landscape, as if making up for its conspicuous absence today with one spectacular appearance.
The faintly unreal quality of the stretched out evening light throws the hillsides into sharper than natural relief, picking out their detail to the point where I can almost see individual blades of grass on fields that are miles away. As I round the bend onto the approach road for my home village, and Lemon Jelly lift Ducks into its wonderfully silly closing trumpet crescendo, the sun (now behind me) adds the finishing touch to the show with a short but brilliantly couloured rainbow which arcs up beside the railway bridge and over the fields behind, glinting briefly in the windows of my house as I pull the car onto the driveway.
Some days it is unusually good to be home.
I'm driving (something I enjoy immensely even on the worst of days) through one of the prettier stretches of South Lanarkshire. The road is winding its usual way through the drizzle and cloud that have characterised today when the sun, on its way south for the night, peeps out from below the cloud-line illuminating the rolling green of the hills around me in that warm yellowy pink light that's usually reserved for implausable holiday brochure photographs and coffee commercials.
It's still gently raining and the wet world around me begins to shimmer under the setting sun, as my iPod begins playing the tentative opening strains of Lemon Jelly's Lovely Weather for Ducks (which if you haven't heard, you really should).
As the track gears up to full swing with its quirkily optimistic mixture of guitars, voice, synthesiser and chirpy precussion, the sun makes its way lower into the clear patch of sky and casts its light long over the landscape, as if making up for its conspicuous absence today with one spectacular appearance.
The faintly unreal quality of the stretched out evening light throws the hillsides into sharper than natural relief, picking out their detail to the point where I can almost see individual blades of grass on fields that are miles away. As I round the bend onto the approach road for my home village, and Lemon Jelly lift Ducks into its wonderfully silly closing trumpet crescendo, the sun (now behind me) adds the finishing touch to the show with a short but brilliantly couloured rainbow which arcs up beside the railway bridge and over the fields behind, glinting briefly in the windows of my house as I pull the car onto the driveway.
Some days it is unusually good to be home.
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