Coutelier's Journal

Dreams: The Harlequins

2011-11-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

So, now I'm going to talk about dreams. Most of the ones I've had are rubbish, but there're a few that are quite interesting. I'll probably skip the ones where Jesus appeared to me in some chimney smoke, though... anyhow...

Most dreams don't really mean anything, do they? Just the brain sorting out and getting itself organised. But the imagery in some dreams can certainly have quite a lasting effect on you. One in particular I remember from when I was child. I seem to remember having this same dream quite often, although that might just be my memory playing tricks. But the dream itself I do remember quite vividly. It was a short dream, but it scared me like no other I've ever had:

It started with me in my old house. I was about five or six. I'm at the top of stairs. It's dark. I'm on my own... but I can hear voices. I peer down around the banister and I see of light under the living room door. My family must be inside watching television. Tentatively, I start to climb down the stairs.

Suddenly my breathing becomes faster and heavier as I see them. They're inside the wall, their faces distorting the brick and concrete like it's just a thing sheet of fabric. I need to get to my family quickly, so I try to run. They burst out of the wall, spinning through the air and landing at the bottom of the stairs. Two of them, a man and woman, naked, or as naked as my five year old brain would allow anyway; and completely bald. But their bodies were painted in black and white all over in black and white checkered squares like a chess board. I didn't have a name for them, then. It was only in later life when I told this story that I started referring to them as Harlequins.

I tried to run past, to get to the living room where I would be with my family and would be safe. But they were so fast, and I was so slow. There was never any chance of escaping. The man and woman as they picked me from the ground with ease and threw me between them like a football.

The dream ends with them each getting hold of an arm and leg, heaving and launching me through the air down the hall.

Then everything went black, until I woke up.

The Fast Doctor

2011-06-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

Er... yeah. If you get this, you're most probably British, and most probably aged at least thirty. This is a little tribute to two of my favourite things; David Tennant, the 10th Doctor, and Paul Whitehouse who you may remember from appearances with Harry Enfield and in The Fast Show. Thrown together in Poser 7 using a random collection of props. See it on DeviantArt too.

Cigarettes & Tea & Me: Introduction

2011-05-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

See, I like that title because there's a little rhyme there...

This is my autobiography, which I started writing when I was thirteen, which was… ooh, more than a decade ago now, I think. It’s not important, is it? Anyway, when I was thirteen, my English teacher made everyone in the class start writing an autobiography. You wouldn’t think a thirteen year old really had much to write about, but I recently found my old English workbook with my autobiography written in it, and looking back now I’d have to say those first thirteen years were the most exciting time of my life. So there’s an indicator of how thrilling the later episodes of this thing are going to be.

When you’re young you’re still learning about the world, everything is a new experience, days seem to go on much longer, you’re not aware of the endless mind numbing drudgery that is your future… not that it’s all bad when you grow up though. You can drive a car, for example, or go into the cinema to watch an 18 certificate film… although admittedly I was probably the only one of my class not already doing those things when he was thirteen. Let’s not drift off topic though.

To prepare us for our task, we were made to read ‘Aunt Becky’s Wedding and Other Traumas’ by Jean Holkner, a series of short stories about a Jewish family growing up in Australia. I’m not going to talk much about that though; I’ll be damned if I can really remember anything that happens, and kids just have a natural resentment of having to read anything they haven’t chosen for themselves. I am tempted to look at it again now, but I’m currently having a hard time getting hold of a copy.

The other thing the teacher made us do was write a list of things we should think about when writing an autobiography, or key incidents in our lives, and this is it:

A memorable holiday – I can’t really think… well, I guess that proves I haven’t had any or I’ll have remembered it.

Embarassing moments – certainly have been a few of those. Although when I was thirteen the most embarrassing things I could think of were wetting myself in class when I was eight, losing a race to a girl, and acne.

Learning to walk/ride a bicycle/ some word I can’t make out in thirteen year old me’s handwriting. It’s either stink or slate or skate.

Making new friends / Friendships and falling out – I can remember falling out with my friends once, because they wouldn’t believe me when I said the Sun was bigger and further away than the Moon. I got a glimpse of what it was like to be an astronomer in medieval times; very frustrated.

Accidents – usually, I just blamed it on one of my younger brothers when these happened.

Relationships with my brothers – They were mostly just there to provide me with entertainment, weren’t they? Although they could be a nuisance too.

Family traumas – Well, in my last blog entry I mentioned that my younger brother stole my peace dollar, didn’t I?

The opposite sex / first date / falling in love – I hadn’t had a date or been in love when I was thirteen. Although I can remember the first time ever being aroused by something, which had been a few years before. It was Pamela Stephenson in Superman 3, when she’s reading Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’; absolutely gorgeous (okay, so it wasn’t really the book she was reading that turned me on when I was ten, although I think you all knew that).

My future / first job – these hadn’t happened yet either, which is just as well because if I’d known what the future would be when I was in school, I’d have just given up on the whole stupid exercise.

Anyhow, what I am going to do now is start deciphering and posting my autobiography from when I was thirteen, maybe making a few updates/revisions/changing the names of those involved so as to protect their actual identities… and that will all gradually spill out onto this blog, along with some other garbage.

One Dollar Review

2011-05-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

There are numerous blogs and websites on which people review books and games, films and TV shows… I’m not going to do that. It’s not like you’ll really take the opinion of some anonymous blogger into account on any of those things, any more than you’d take into consideration the rantings of some drunk homeless person who shouts about the pink rabbit chasing him for five minutes and then throws up on you. I want to review something though, so I’m going to try to review things that don’t get reviewed so often, mainly because they are of no importance whatsoever to anyone.

First up, I’ve chosen to review a thing that I’ve been carrying around in my wallet for quite a few years now; a United States One Dollar Bill.

Incidentally, when I was small I used to collect coins and one of the coins I had was a silver dollar. A peace dollar, in fact. Millions of those were made in the nineteen twenties and thirties, so it wasn’t that valuable to anyone except me. Unfortunately, my younger brother, his friends were going on holiday to the USA and, well, they stole it. Not that I’m still bitter about it or anything, although I will say that he’s a ****ing c***. At least I’m not forced to share my toys with him anymore.

Anyway, the one dollar bill looks like this:

As currency, it does the job perfectly well. You can take it into a store and hand it over in exchange for goods or services, which is really all you want money to do. You don’t want fancy electronics inside it that get George Washington to open his mouth and start suggesting what goods and services you may be interested in purchasing; that would just be wrong. As tender there’s not really much to criticise about it. Although, you couldn’t get much for a single dollar; a postcard or some candy, maybe. Unless it’s a rural gas station off an interstate, in which case you might get away with purchasing everything you want in exchange for just keeping the clerk company for five minutes.

Also, it is only legal tender in the USA. If you’re anywhere else, you’ll have to take it to a bank or travel agent to exchange it for local currency, and you won’t get very much for it to be honest. In the UK at the time of writing this, one dollar is worth about sixty one pence. About enough to buy one Mars bar. Not even a king size one; just regular.

On both sides it says in big capital letters “THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”, which is useful, I suppose, if you’re an American and you somehow forget the name of the country you live in, perhaps having experienced brain-melt because you’ve been forced to watch a Fox News Special about climate change. But one thing about being in the USA is that you’re not reminded of it very often; they’re such a shy, modest folk that it can be very easy to forget that they are actually Americans and not normal people.

On the front of it there is a picture of George Washington, who is looking very stiff upper-lipped and British. He didn’t want to be British though, so I’d have thought he would look happier, having won the war for Independence and founded a whole new nation. Maybe he’s had an horrific vision of how it will all end? With a mad Alaskan woman in The White House, after what she describes as a ‘squirmish’ with China.

Now on the other side of the dollar, the green side, there are actually things which are very interesting to a lot of people:

There’s a pyramid with an eye on it, The Eye Of Providence, and some writing in a strange tongue called Latin, which is creepy because it’s old and only spoken by Cardinals and Lawyers, who are all really creepy.

These are taken by some as being symbols of the New World Order, who have been secretly been plotting to take over the world for thousands of years. Don’t know why it’s taking so long and, really, why would such a secretive organisation want to leave clues to its existence on the back of something regularly being exchanged by millions of people?

Others say the symbol represents Freemasons and their influence on the founding of the country. In fact, Masons didn’t start commonly using the eye until a couple of decades after the United States seal was created, so who’s influencing who?

If you’re interested, the Latin bits say Annuit Cœptis (God has favoured our undertaking), and Novus Ordo Seclorum (a new order has begun), which, okay… I can see how that could be interpreted as talking about a New World Order. But, again, why would they advertise themselves like that? Eh? Why?

Anyway, that just about wraps up all I can say about a one dollar bill. Not a high monetary value, not great exchange rates, grumpy face, but within the US at least a perfectly functional and acceptable way of paying for things.

Maybe I’ll get one hundred dollars next time (pfft… yeah, I wish…)

The Loss Of An Old Friend

2011-05-26T18:59:00.001-07:00

A few months ago, a terrible tragedy happened to me. I had to go to a training day; I left at 8 AM, after having shutdown my computer, waved goodbye to my mum and dad, and petted the family dog. When I returned in the evening, the computer wouldn't start up again. I was devastated. All my work was on there.

I'd had that thing for about four years, and the last two it caused nothing but grief to be honest. I've replaced parts a good few times, uninstalled and reinstalled software, and just barely managed to keep the thing running. This time though, it had packed it in for good. Still, I soldiered on and just bought a new one the next day. I was even able to save my old hard drive, so few things really got lost this time at least. And yes, I was staying with my mum and dad at the time. So what?

Now I've been reinstalling my old software on my new PC, and finding I'd forgotten what a pain some of them could be. Poser worked for a short time, then inexplicably stopped working, now works again. My biggest gripe, however, was with Games For Windows LIVE. It's a Microsoft product so, naturally, I can't expect to install it on a ****ing Microsoft operating system and expect it to just ****ing work afterwards. No. I have to go messing about with the command prompt and registering DLL's and all this s***. Oh, it makes me so mad...

Anyway, I rose above it and am now back up and running again. And all that stuff I said I would do before... I'm doing it now. Thank you for your patience. You've more than I've got, quite frankly.

Welcome

2011-02-10T21:46:00.000-08:00

Here on this blog I post a lot of random stuff that I can't categorise anywhere else on my other websites. I may also post some rough draft versions of features that I'll put on my own site later.

Some of the eciting things you can expect to come up on here are my autobiography - real Alan Bennett type monologues. I promise you'll be fascinated. I may post some of my dream diary; I've often thought that people who talk about their dreams are boring and just have nothing else to talk about, but, you know, if the shoe fits...

Comments on news, reviews of stuff, some history of the science fiction genre which is very important to me, I'll look at some fascinating 'unexplained phenomena' (well, doesn't have to be explained because it never really happened).

Oh, and adventures of Blinky my pet Dalek.

So look forward to all this coming up.