Oddverse.com

Classic.

We sail tonight for Singapore,
we're all as mad as hatters here
I've fallen for a tawny Moor,
took off to the land of Nod

Drank with all the Chinamen,
walked the sewers of Paris
I danced along a colored wind,
dangled from a rope of sand
You must say goodbye to me

We sail tonight for Singapore,
don't fall asleep while you're ashore
Cross your heart and hope to die
when you hear the children cry
Let marrow bone and cleaver choose
while making feet for children shoes
Through the alley, back from hell,
when you hear that steeple bell
You must say goodbye to me

Wipe him down with gasoline
'til his arms are hard and mean
From now on boys this iron boat's your home
So heave away, boys

We sail tonight for Singapore,
take your blankets from the floor
Wash your mouth out by the door,
the whole town's made of iron ore
Every witness turns to steam,
they all become Italian dreams
Fill your pockets up with earth,
get yourself a dollar's worth
Away boys, away boys, heave away

The captain is a one-armed dwarf,
he's throwing dice along the wharf
In the land of the blind
the one-eyed man is king, so take this ring

We sail tonight for Singapore,
we're all as mad as hatters here
I've fallen for a tawny Moor,
took off to the land of Nod
Drank with all the Chinamen,
walked the sewers of Paris
I drank along a colored wind,
I dangled from a rope of sand

You must say goodbye to me

Singapore, by Tom Waits, rediscovered courtesy of Susan Patton

The Future's Bright

I had an achievement today. I'm sure I did. I meant to write about it. And then I forgot what it was. It may well have had something to do with finishing writing "A Clockwork Orange". And that's not strictly true. However, I did finish the first draft of chapter 15, which is the last part of it that I am going to write. After this it's up to Gregg to do a couple of minor tweaks and then we can all relax.

Twin Peaks is a damn fine cup of television. Just watching the first few episodes of this brings back memories of the early 1990s, particularly since the whole program seems to have been lifted from the early 1980s. There's some truly corny dialogue in places (deliberately so, I presume) and some insipred weirdness. And there's the killer BOB, who would be really cheesy if it wasn't for the fact that he is scary as hell.

Okay, so I know that the series is going to go downhill rapidly, but I've still got silent drapes, Lara Flynn Boyle being unconvincing, things to do with cherry stalks, and Heather Graham's penguin joke to look forward to.

I sent out a farewell e-mail to all of my staff this morning, and I've had a couple of replies. I think that this one sums up my reasons for being here.

And I personally thank you for the understanding and patience you showed to me, and the actuarial knowledge you shared with me.
God bless.

I am about to leave on my final business trip of this job, and I'm not taking the lap top so I will be very out of touch. I've got 10 e-mails awaiting replies, and I'm hoping that my dearly beloved sister has received the gift I sent her via the usual suspects (amazon). In the mean time, I have put up a page with some pictures on it, which I will add to on my holiday in July. Probably.

I've got nice teeth. They're nice because a nice dentist spent over half an hour this morning scraping them with a rusty stick.

I share the dentist phobia with 90% of the world's population. The last time I went to a dentist was January of 1998. Ah, he said. Time to haul out your wisdom teeth. And so he did. This was my first piece of dental surgery ever in my life - no fillings for me, mum - and it was, rather sadly, botched. There was a piece of one tooth left in the gum, a fact which I was informed that I didn't need to worry about. So I didn't worry about it until it came out three weeks later, accompanied by rather a lot of blood.

So I went to a different dentist this morning. She was thrilled to see my ridiculously healthy teeth, but noted that they were incredibly dirty. Hence half an hour with the stick. And I have to go back next week for more cleaning. But for now, my teeth feel funny, and they look ridiculously clean.

Mr Twinky went to the dentist too, and got X rays fired into his head, but he doesn't have to go back. Such is the inequity of life.

There's a reason why it's called the Great Wall of China. It's a wall. It's also pretty damned impressive. Apparenly wide enough for three horses and carts to ride along it, although you wonder how they would cope with the stairs.

Saturday: We chartered a taxi for the whole afternoon. Possibly an unnecessary extravagance, but one that gave us some degree of certainty that we were going to the right places and not getting too ripped off. So first we went to the Summer Palace, where the emperor and his thousands of porcupines spent the summer months - presumably while the Forbidden City was being dusted. Fantastically beautiful place, once you plough through the hawkers outside desperately trying to flog you the little red book (which is, obviously, both red and little). From there, off to the Great Wall, at Badaling, one of three sites where it has been restored. Up to the top via a cable car, and then walked down it for a couple of miles (cunningly, back to the car park). And then, once more chauffeured back to the hotel. Pretty fantastic way to spend a day.

This afternoon, I am mainly being interested in Baz Luhrmann's cinematic endeavour "Moulin Rouge", a work of fiction about a red windmill. Featuring a pretty impressive sounding soundtrack, the film seems to be set in the seedy backlife of 1890s France that exists in the same strange parallel turn-of-the-century universe as the London where it was permanently night and you couldn't see beyond your nose for the thick pea-soupy fog. It's a doomed love story, naturally. But it's also a musical, featuring the dulcet tones of its stars Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, along with David Bowie, Beck, there's some Massive Attack in there too. And Christina Aguilera.

The lad who loved a showgirl

[buy this]

Wibble.

I've not listened to much music recently, but picked this up because I'd read a sufficiently glowing review of it. And I've been completely blown away by it. I'm listening to it at top volume, obviously, and the mix of styles and the huge mess of contemporary music references is washing over me like a big washy thing. Worth listening to for El Tango De Roxanne if nothing else.

It certainly makes me want to see the movie (which, I'm sure, is the intent). Even Christina Aguilera isn't too offensive.

There's an understandable row over a sexual orientation study that states that research "shows some people can change from gay to straight, and we ought to acknowledge that." Apart from the fact that I have to worry about people who want to study the issue in the first place, and apart from the fact that money would be better spent investigating why anyone would want to do this, there are some very dodgy conclusions here.

It seems like a lot of work to change people's sexual orientation. Not dissimilar to brainwashing, I suspect. Of course it is easy to corrupt innocent heterosexuals and convert them the other way. But I don't think that anyone has done studies on that, just made up a few slogans.

In my experience, the men I know who have 'turned gay' later in life almost all tell stories about how they've actually been gay all along, and just not realised for a variety of reasons, mainly to do with peer pressure, and the misrepresentation of homosexual men in the media. No miraculous conversions, just moments of clarity that bring whole lives in to focus.

We've become more of a police state than usual, due to a variety of dignitaries being in town for the Fortune Global Forum. Mr Jiang has promised that China's economy will be revitalised when it joins the World Trade Organisation. About 3,000 police officers maintained a tight security cordon around Hong Kong's waterfront convention centre. Police boats and frogmen were patrolling the harbour, and a no-fly zone was declared over the venue and a hotel where the Chinese president is staying during his 24-hour visit. However, Falun Gong members staged silent protests in various parts of the city against what they describe as persecution of the movement on the Chinese mainland.

On the way in to the office today I passed half a dozen individuals in yellow tee shirts, some of which bore Pro-Falun Gong slogans. This is a test for freedom of speech in Hong Kong, and a test of the patience of the mainland authorities. I just worry that a lot of people are going to be hurt, disappointed, or both.

Manila was much the same as ever. Security had been stepped up again, so I couldn't go in to a building without getting my bags scanned and a metal detector run over my body. Which usually went off.

The security guards handling these things apparently have to pay for the batteries - presumably to stop them from stealing them. Which means that they remove the batteries to make them last longer. Allegedly. Rather seems to be defeating the point of the exercise.

[buy this]

I bought this book a while back, and I still do not live in a Japanese House. Why this should be is a mystery to me. Perhaps it is due to living high in an anonymous concrete block somewhere in the depths of Hong Kong. Perhaps it is due to the faceless minions of conformity, dragging themselves through my financial affairs willy-nilly. Perhaps I'm getting high on the glue smell from the office that is being built next door.

Manila is mad

The new office smells. There are shouty people behind the fire exit, which is behind my desk. So, I'm off to Manila. Beautiful Manila, where the authorities have ordered the arrest of three senior politicians, where thousands of protesters tried to storm the presidential palace in the capital, Manila. Even more excitingly, at least two police officers and a protester died during the bloody pre-dawn clashes on Manila's steets between security forces and thousands of supporters of ousted president Joseph Estrada. [Source]

Pre-dawn clashes? It's a wonder these people are fit for work in the morning!

Everyone is only attracted to fictional people. Even when they are in love with real people, they're really in love with fictional versions of them that they have written themselves.