Unemployed Watercooler Fridge Buzz Commiseration, Alienation and Mental Anti-Stagnation Society (DNRIYHM)

Afternoon everybody

Bleurgh. Afternoon. I'm feeling kind of otherwise.

Going to force myself to draw this afternoon, but I feel like I really should be researching for the Psychogeography Gang's walk this weekend. Like, are the Wittenham Lumps actually signature Capability Brown Clumps or are they overgrown Neolithic earthworks or something else?

They appear to have their own website! Or rather, a website dedicated to Paul Nash's paintings of them. I'm worried I might get obsessed.

http://www.nashclumps.org/

Ah, it appears they are both. they are chalk outcrops, with earthworks on top, and yet the beech clumps are some of the oldest planted beeches.

A Wittenham Lump:

http://www.nashclumps.org/images/portfolio_big.jpg

But now I am worried I will see them not as their own Lumpy selves, and not even as the drawings I will no doubt make of them, but as Nash paintings.

I'm sure you will have fun.

do any brits post on ilx now? it seems empty in the mornings until the yanks come online. Are they all on facebook or livejournal?

I blame the Austerity, man. Austerity.

i dont get the love of facebook and lj myself. or twitter.

I'm usually here in the morn...

i miss the tales of the grout schoolrun

Yeah, it's all "right tara youse two" either I'm out the door before them, or vice versa. They all grown up and walk to school themselves...

you must miss it. What age are they now?

I mainly lurk on here these days and find that there are a diminishing number of threads I want to post on, or even comprehend from their titles. And I no longer have the kind of job or the inclination to click on 'blue writing' I don't understand (perhaps sadly).

Very busy at the moment, lots of travel. Was in Chester yesterday and will be in Leeds and Bingley on Monday!

But yes, the walk is ON. Huzzah for Wittenham Lumps!

WCC, thanks for the Buche/Book thing. It solves a mystery for me. There is a kind of finch which is called Buchfink auf Deutsch and I was trying to figure out the connection twixt books and birds!

there are a diminishing number of threads I want to post on,

Why I'm so glad to see the cooler back!! I really missed it.

Yep Pfunkboy, I missed it too!

Bird was this geezer (if that's not a contradiction) -- a chaffinch:

http://www.natur-server.com/Bilder/THK/001/thk00005-buchfink.jpg

They are 13 and 11 (14 and 12 next month)

I don't post much about them here thesedays, they have their own Facebook profiles (around 100 pics of themselves on there).

Still, Alice is a dab hand at finding old pics posted on this place..

they could be posting here and you dont know! Like when enbb didn't realise who roberto spiralli was!

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y161/MarkGrout/SmallHats.jpg

is that them now? I forget which one is the eldest

Amber is the eldest.

Between books and birds, no, but between birds and beeches, and beeches and books, yes! the link between books and the paper they are made from is strong in many languages - another analogue is codex as latin for book, and codex as latin for bole. (Though that confuses me as I think of a codex being vellum.) But yes, boring linguist is boring.

I don't know. I don't think that Facebook or Livejournal have hived off any more people since the Great Schism. (Well, 77 might play a role? I don't know, I'm not on it and never will be.) I think it's just natural attrition. That a messageboard is like a forest, that you have tall oaks like Ned and Dan who have been here since day one, and then you have an undergrowth of people who come, stay for a while, and move on when their work gets busy or they have babies or whatever. The thing is, in US ILX, there's a constant refreshing of the undergrowth. But UK ILX, the recolonisation has taken much more slowly. People have left and their footprint has not been replaced. Sorry for the forest metaphor, but this beechwood book I am reading is fascinating.

Whenever I complain about ILX and think that it's awful, well, spending a couple of weeks to a month on any other messageboard quickly cures me of that. It could be so much worse. I also get that tiredness when I look at new answers, and there's *nothing* I want to talk about. My answer to that is always, start new threads! But it's tiring when you try to coax a little thread into life and find that no one at all gives a shit about sea arches except you. But every now and then I see a thread which I started, and which sputtered and went out, creep back into the SNA and suddenly it catches fire for whatever reason, and then I've got people talking about that thing I wanted to talk about, back then.

But, you know, it's kind of a slog when SNA is all American television programs and American sports and American politics etc ad nauseum and it becomes reinforcing because maybe new British ppl don't stay because they think it offers nothing for them.

But this is all boring meta blah blah blah and I'd rather talk about beech trees and chaffinches.

I would really like to be present when a sea arch collapses and becomes a stack. That would be something.

Vellum, parchment, whatever.

But I suppose even a parchment codex looks in profile like a hunk of wood or the bole of a tree, even when they're not made from wood pulp.

But this book thought the link between beech/buche/book might be spurious, though it was supposed to have been associated with writing on bark. Maybe.

x-post did you see the Cornish LANDSLIP video that was posted last autumn? It wasn't actually a sea arch, but it was a massive amount of a Horse (the coastal rock formation not the beast) that dropped into the sea one stormy day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdsxtCtX5nk

That is indeed the one, and it was slightly alarming as it was right near where I'd been staying, I've walked that particular bit of coast many times.

Not in Cornwall, but.

The famous Marsden Rock was always a sea arch for many years.

Then, one day, it collapsed in the 'bridge' section. Leaving a big rock and a column. Then men came along and bulldozed the column away.
It's still a rock, I guess...

Pics or it didn't happen!

Anyway, I need to stop skiving and ink my EXTREMELY POINTY AND VIOLENT spires pic that I've drawn.

Without jellyfish, despite all the requests for jellyfish.

In Cornwall, but not a sea arch:

After that "We'll take manhattan" Bailey/Shrimpton thing, I wondered what had happened to J. Apparently she had bought a hotel in Marazion and become a recluse. Which seemed odd because I then found a recent interview with photo, and I thought to myself "A bit rubbish at being a recluse". And then I realised, I'd actually seen her. I'd gone into a hotel in M to get drinks for the family, and I noticed an oldish lady, skinny, looked 'unfriendly', but wasn't. Again, not exactly 'reclusive'..

I had no idea that there was a rock formation called a horse!

I wonder if it is etymologically linked with the animal (as clothes horses and the type you vault over def are) or if it's a "false friend"?

pic, ay? OK..

before:

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/02/78/027889_b4c6011f.jpg

'during'

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3167/2623009640_30d382e095_z.jpg

after:

http://www.southtynesidehomes.org.uk/media/image/g/j/Marsden_rock.jpg

I was all ready to say that I use FB in completely different ways to ILX, when I found myself using it for a discussion on eggcorns, malapropisms and mondegreens!

I stand corrected! It happened!

Oh, a "Horse" - erm, I don't know if that's the actual geological name, but there are lots of rock formations in Cornwall called like, The Horse or The Tobbin Horse etc and they're probably called that because, from certain angles, they do literally look like a horse. Or at least, a Horse's head, because they're sort of triangular with a bit sticking up at the head with a sharp angle at the sea edge and a longer angle like a horse's neck towards the land. They're promontories of land where the bits on either side have either been eroded away by the sea or mined away (or both) and then the top tilts and falls into the sea at an angle. I'll try to find a photo on my iPhone, or the web.

Tobban Horse, even.

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/02/35/023506_268ce0cc.jpg

Blah. headache. I knew I shouldn't have drunk that leftover red wine last night.

Trying to figure out if I'm going to make it to Cornish class tonight. I didn't last week (my god, was that last week already?) because I let time get away from me. Dragging myself into London for an hour just seems like such a waste of time and money, no matter how much I enjoy the class.

23 users online. Its busier at weekends I think!

that must have been a lot of leftover red wine to give you a hangover

No, it took a mere thimbleful, I think I am growing increasingly sensitive to the stuff. Which is terrible, as I do love the tastes.

what musics you been listening to lately? Still playing the old krautrock? turkish psych?

i miss tom d sending out old classics in cookie club

btw this is great
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17013285

OK that does look cool. Ocean trenches = terrifying and amazing life forms found down there, those vent-dwelling sulphur monster worms and the like.

I'm mostly listening to, erm, *mumbles and looks at feet* my imaginary boyfriend and it's embarrassing to be consuming so much comfort music but there it is. Mostly digging through the remix albums.

My discovering new music process has been brought to a grinding halt by having such a shit internet connection - I did manage to get Spodify to run, only to discover that it eats up my monthly data allowance in a matter of hours.

I think the last new thing I got was the Julianna Barwick album, which is awesome. I'm waiting for the new School of Seven Bells and Grimes albums to be physically released to get those, which will pretty much be my listening sorted for the next few months.

<I>2) a thread on atease where I am being where I am mercilessly derided as an intellectual (as if this is an insult?) and accused of being a troll or possibly insane because I used a word like "salient" in conversation</I>

girl I know I'm like 3 days late on this but dear god it would have saved you so much pain if you'd told me you were thinking about doing this so I could have convinced you not to.

Fucken LOL!

Nah, it wasn't really any pain, it was more utter perplexment and confusion. (The only thing approaching pain happened when they started pulling stupid stalker shit, but I recognise my views on internet privacy are different from your average teenager's.) I guess I'm just spoiled because my experience of "Radiohead fans" is, well, "ILX Radiohead fans" i.e. you, and other people who are also intelligent, well-read and very interested in exploring ideas and concepts as well as more interesting music.

I forget that the rest of the internet that is not ILX is, well, like reading below the comment line.

It's strange, because, like, every 20 posts or so of teenagers going "LOL fuck u I don't understand" someone would wander into the conversation who would be all "wow, actual conversation, how refreshing" and say something really interesting and participate. And I had a couple of really good and interesting exchanges with knowledgeable articulate people but then there would be another wave of "OMG u r using such big words shut up LOL my cat's name is stanley." The signal to noise ratio was just too much. There's actually a higher level of intellect expressed on Cheesecake Archive, which is really saying something.

Trying to decide who to draw next. There's a really adorable RDJ pic I want to draw because I'm LOLbored but I have an awful feeling I'm going to end up drawing more Thoms because once I start, I tend not to be able to stop.

I guess the point is, on ILX, I am just so *not* an intellectual, in any way shape or form. But compared to the rest of the internet, I'm Judith fucken Butler. Ha!

hurrah ! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-17154494

They're lucky they found it, that it didn't just get melted down.

I'm having a real "wah, why am I not in Cornwall" moment today. I think it's the sun.

you have sun?

I have remembered something awful about myself. I find waiting for a train oddly relaxing. I find waiting to meet someone else to catch a train incredibly stressful.

Jesus Christ, Southern Oxfordshire you are SO DAMNED PRETTY, how can you be so pretty, you are killing me! Especially in the low, slanting golden light late in the day that turns the Thames into a mirror. Abingdon with your wonky inns, and your city hall on stilts, I love you. Clifton Hampden with your thatched cottages and your perfect one lane bridge, I love you. Dorchester with your genuine Tudor not mock Tudor wattle and daub and your flocks of geese and your avenue of pollarded trees I LOVE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH WHY DO I LIVE IN LONDON!?!??

What an absolutely glorious day. We didn't even make it up the Wittenham Lumps, we will have to save that for another day and another walk, we admired them from afar and nearer and nearer until they were almost on top of us, but the sun was going and we had to leg it through the gloaming to catch the bus back to Oxford as it was, but ah, another evening when the day is longer. I promise.

I can't believe the Wittenham Lumps haven't been namechecked in a Half Man Half Biscuit song.

Dear Didcot Power Station: we know you can move about. STOP CREEPING UP ON US LIKE THAT. Thanks.

sounds like you had a fun day. how many went?