Slippers

- Having been busy all of yesterday, and only having a small amount of time spare today, I'll save my Harry Potter rant for another day. I'd just hoped you'd be interested to know that my spare Harry Potter books are selling on like hot cakes. I've only four left (all childrens covers). I wouldn't want to attempt to make a living from selling on books, but I have high hopes that I might be able to make even.

In other news, we have a new cat.
sli 5:31 PM

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- What with Harry Potter sweeping the world and the sewers, it became a requirement to discuss it here. I must admit to being an avid fan of Wizard School Boy. I watched the movie first, then got drawn into the books; one by one, until there was nothing left to read. In terror at having lost the magic of the first read (and believe me there is magic in the first read) I dabbled in the fanfiction side of things.

Fanfiction is a dirty, dirty art - especially when involving a continual story like Harry Potter. People make a big thing about the continuing thing, presumably hoping that one day that the ever growing up Harry will get dirty with some trampy sloe eyed whitch from the village. Fair enough, it worked for the first four books, but the fifth? Well, by the time fanfictionists have toed through the waters of all the possible things that could happen next, it seemed impossible that JKR could come up with anything original. Which is a bit of a piss take isn't it?

So there I was at the bookshop, towering over a bunch of eager school kids, on the Saturday morning. I'd spent all Friday afternoon at the pub, and had come home too plastered to be capable of driving to the local supermarket where they were holding one of the midnight openings. I was woken at four in the morning by the telephone from a friend who said that the superstore was sold out, but he'd sourced a bookshop that was opening at six with five hundred copies going. I told him great and I'd be over there in an hour. He said he was going to crash - having been up all night - and could I possible buy a copy for him, and six other copies for various friends and relations who he'd promised to deliver books to.

Anyway, the shop assistant comes to the door wearing a bright smile, and starts to go through the routine of unlocking it. The kids around me start getting wildly excited, chanting "HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER!" over and over again, pushing and shoving their way to the front. Being the only adult, and fortunately not knowing any of the kids personally, I felt duty bound to join in both activites. "HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER!", and shoving the little shits out of the way so I could get to the books first. I could see through the glass door a big table in the middle of the shop, loaded with the Harry Potter books. I haven't been this excited since England last won at the rugby.

The door was pulled open, and we crowded in. I dashed for the books - the manic desperation to get to them before any of the snotty kids was overwhelming. But there was a problem! There were two sorts - Adult covers and Children covers. Which to buy? Oh - which to buy? (Remember I had to buy eight of them and my mate hadn't stated a preference for covers.) My mind was made up quickly. The kids were pulling them off the table in a frenzy and if I wasn't careful they'd all be gone. Taking a stack of the children cover ones, and a stack of the adult cover ones in my arms. I hotfooted it to the single line for the till.

It wasn't moving fast enough for my liking, so I shouted, "Chop Chop! Some of us are waiting!" But still I wasn't going forwards. Now, with a stack of books under each of my arms, in addition to the early nature of the time of day, I was beginnning to get slightly tired. I pushed my way to the front, and demanded to know what was up. The poor shop owner was distraught. There was an eight year old, who'd clearly been saving himself for the big day for so long, and had only been given a five pound note by his parents to buy the book with. It clearly wasn't going to be enough enough, and the shopkeeper didn't know how she could break it to the poor kid without upsetting him. Obviously action was called for! Setting my books down on the counter, I picked up the kid's one and put it on top of one of the piles. "I'll buy it for him." I said and winked at the kid, "Christmas comes early eh?"

The shopkeeper smiled happily. It was obviously a perfect solution to the problem.

The kid, who'd been on the verge of tears, looked really happy - making me proud to think that I had done a good and charitable act.

I was happiest. I'd cunningly skipped the rest of the line waiting for the till.

I bought 23 copies of the book this morning. They cost me twelve pounds each, so that's quite a bit of money. I confess I didn't look at the reciept, and put it on the plastic. I'm hoping I'll be able to sell most of them on. My mate came round this afternoon and chose the ones he wanted, and paid me - without commision I might add. And of course there's the one I bought for the kid as well. So that leaves only 14 or 15. I hope someone will buy them....

After all that, I've still got to tell you whether or not I enjoyed the book. I will say more tomorrow, because right now I have more important things to do - eating as a primary concern.
sli 9:17 PM

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- Maybe being a slipper salesman leads to the having of interesting insites. Maybe it doesn't. Here's what may or may not be an interesting insite.

Fire is hot.

There it is.
sli 6:13 PM

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- I had meant to write something here yesterday, but I had problems. A lot of people either use their blog as a massive set of links - the "look at me! I can tell people where the grooviest things on the interenet are!" phenonemon - or they do a load of copy/pasting. I couldn't do that, because it would be dishonest. Hence, it takes a lot of effort to write anything meaningful here.

There are some utter dickheads around the internet, as if that isn't new. I run into them all the time. Some primly little twat will raise there hand and say "But YOU must be a dickhead if you call everyone dickheads!" Get this nobsack, I only call people who should be called dickheads, dickheads. I have respect for a lot more people, and I don't even know most of the world's population. So take that 'everyone' outside and shaft yourself with it.

sli 5:38 PM

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- Let's be frank with ourselves. The internet is about people.

People.

People meeting, people talking, people e-mailing, people flocking to the latest crazes, people creating their own crazes, people making love and people being sad gits in chat rooms.

People will cluster around the most obscure and obscene parts of the internet; where they will either stay for the rest of their lives, or move on to the latest fad - the latest hip place to be seen online. I believe the expression is 'Surfing the Shit' - riding the tide of internet crap continually looking for cheap and heartless laughs.

And which, you may ask yourself, is more human? Are the people who move on constantly elite in comparison to those who gamble around message boards and IRC channels for hours on end?

The answer is in your soul.
sli 9:01 PM

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- Friviously wasting time. But time isn't really real. An old friend of mine came up with an explanation as to why time travel isn't going to ever work. Time is, like slippers, a man made (or man assumed) continuality. It can't be mixed up.

I disagree. Lots of things are assumed by humans, and only a few of them can't be mixed up. Consider time as being the fourth dimension, something that science boffs will go apeshit about. Now, we've managed to find ways of moving in the first three, otherwise we would be unable to walk, talk, or buy slippers. It's only a matter of time (excuse the pun) before something sorts itself out for messing about with the next one.

So what will happen when we do? Will you be able to kill your own grandmother. In my view there are three possibilities as to why we haven't yet heared from people in the future about how great it is and how much fun they're having.

1: There are alternative realities. Parallel universes. Every single decision you make leads you into a different place, where presumably, there is a chance of everyone elses decesions reflecting, affecting and causing things to happen in you're own self appointed bubble of shame. This theory has had a lot of time and money wasted upon it. It isn't the answer, simply because it would be the stupidest thing ever.

2: Upon making timetravel, the guy who patents it does two things. Firstly he goes forwards to the end of time and patents it until he's got exclusive right to it for the rest of human living (is that even possible? it would be rather neat) then he would lay down a law stating that no one is allowed to go back in time before, because by doing so, the entire science of it would vanish due to quantum principles.

3: Something else, much more exciting and much more interesting will happen. This is the best of the three, because if truth be told, we don't have a clue what is going to take place when the light barrier and thus the time barrier is broken.

Whatever, slippers will be needed until the end.
sli 11:41 AM

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- Well.. blog. Long time not seen, 'Ave Ave Aladr' and all that contempory Latin rubbish. Oh wait a minute.

Back again, having just failed in my attempt at smacking the living daylights out of a bluebottle. Bluebottles are extraoirdinary little things. Full of vigarous spirit and Buzzing energy. Half a tick, I can see him now, and he's not doing anything.

Got the little runt. He was hemmed in on both sides by the window frame, and I slapped a book into his face before he could blink. Laugh? I nearly cried. It left a hell of a mess on the window, but nothing a damp cloth won't sort out. Incidentally, the tome with which I ended his unhappy existance contains a frankly marvellous collection of short stories, written by a Mr K O Raymond. I haven't a clue who he is, or indeed, where the book came from. Maybe his middle name is Oliver.

In the time between the last entry and this one, I've enjoyed the luxury of shifting a reasonable amount of slipper stock, along with following some interesting persuits that I certainly wouldn't bring myself to mention here. No matter anyway, as they are of little importance in relation to what I have to say next.

You see, it's the proverbial part of doing something that means you don't. Every piece of matter has an anti-matter, and thus every doing has an anti-doing. This is complicated, as instead of having just one factor to oppposite out, there are suddenly hundreds. Imagine a simple task - Cleaning the Car for example. Now, aside from the water going off the car into the hose (the inverse to it coming out) you also wouldn't have a hose but instead whatver the 'anti' to a hose might be. This is why the universe as it is is so bloody confusing.

Until next time.
sli 2:29 PM

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