Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
A Menace To Science
"that's exactly why you do scientific research [...] Otherwise it wouldn't be called 'science', it would be called 'assuming', or 'guessing', or 'making it up as you go along'." — A wonderful piece by Ben Goldacre (who I love) on Gillian McKeith following the ASA's ruling that she can't call herself a "doctor" in her advertising anymore. [guardian.co.uk]
Humble Pie
I bitch about my parents a lot. Not excessively I feel, just on a slight bewilderment level — about their overt religiousness and their (assumed) inability to grasp who I am as a person.
But dammit, sometimes they do things that are outstanding, and leave me slightly speechless. And it's at times like that this, that I get a little whelt in my throat and wish that we were more close as a family, so that I could tell them that I love them.
Perpetual Obscurity
When was the last time you did something utterly brilliant?
I'm really pleased with this photograph I took yesterday. There was an intent — I guess — to reignite that 'lost' part of me that generates pleasure from shoving too many macro extension tubes on the end of my Canon, and pointing them at every single transparent thing in my house.
There's something uniquely satisfying at ploughing your way through several hundred cock-ups and amorphous blobs and finding one that jumps out at you and says "YES!"
Maybe it's the colours, or maybe (as in this case) it's the strange intrusion of 'humanity' — the 'man-made' uniformity of a straight line — into the Bokeh Soup ... whatever. Sometimes things just work.
But it's not brilliant though is it? It's not the awe-inspiring collection of RBG values that'll prompt me to invent a new 'ism' and vainly write my own Wikipedia entry on it (and myself), and infuriate my peers.
It's not a genre-redefining construction that will have Nicholas Serrota scrabbling at my doorstep, or something that will cement the name "Curran" in the next Thames and Hudson.
It's just a blurry close-up, of a wine bottle, with an accidental horizontal line running through it.
...
As bloggers, we're addicted to the Brilliant. We try — almost every time our fingers touch the keyboard — to spin a few (or usually more) lines of prose on a subject that will profoundly touch anyone who chances on it.
Even if it's just a short ephemeral snippet of our day — something that caught our eye on the bus, or a tiny quip that we wish we'd made at the time — we fling it out as text in the hope that someone, somewhere will pick up on it and share our emotions.
And when we do write something Brilliant, there's the inevitable head-rush of glory as it starts to gain momentum as tens hundreds thousands of del.icio.us-enabled browsers start annotating us with their tags. We see spikes in stats, bumps in our egoratis, our name or url in unexpected places...
...and then it dies down, and we're left with an emptiness that we didn't have before. The heady sensations of Brilliance are replaced by the guttingness of being "yesterday's link", and our traffic — whose bar has been raised — seems somehow more meaningless than it did before.
Some people seem to ooze Brilliance out of their fingertips. The sheer 'ineffort' they seem to expend when casually tossing off something gut-wrenchingly stupendous into their everyday flow must belie hours of graft and honing — yet it never seems that way.
...
Me, personally, I measure my Brilliance in terms of "usefulness", but on a scale of "Candle to Halogen", I always seem to hover around "Tungsten". If I had a pair of 80A glasses then that would be fine — or perhaps, an endless supply of my 80A-replacement substitute — but I don't, and the consistenly yellowish tinge of reality pours out of my monitor and stains my fingers.
Oh wait. That's the nicotine.
Sorry. I'll stop feeling sorry for myself by Friday — I promise.
Pah. Anyone can do effortless brilliance. The really hard part is making it look so difficult.
Incidentally, the "addicted to the Brilliant" section was. If the intention was for someone to identify with it/you, it succeeded (no, I'm not being sarcastic).
Which leads me on to the final point: call your parents. Even if it's a one-off rush of affection, go with it.
Yah, me too.
Call your parents.
Just make sure your sober when you do it, else they'll probably assume you're sitting in the bath with slit wrists...
Right. Yes. Thanks guys — and remind me some day to write a hideously long post explaining my relationship with my parents.
I did call them. Everything is good. And I even got some tips off my Dad on how to make sure that the feedback you give students (which is what I'm doing tomorrow) sticks.
Now though, if yous'll excuse me, I need to have a bath, wash my hair, get ready for the week ahead, and potentially shut this sodding Mac down for once so that I can invest my time in a bottle of 80A¹ and wait for Friday to get here.
¹ I believe I might just have coined a new phrase there
Pasta phobia
Although by the turn that the comments make, it should be titled "Button Phobia"
I am very tempted, BTW, to leave a comment at the end saying something along the lines of "Me too! And it turned me into a transvestite!"
But I won't...
Fuck off
Hello
So 'phone them up and tell them. Seems like you've got an excuse (should you need one): "I just called to say I think (such and such) is outstanding and I love you." See — easy!
I guarantee that if you don't do it, then one day you'll wish you had.