You are allowed to enjoy this…

I just received the following email:

Dear sir,
REQUEST FOR URGENT ASSISTANCE, I AM A WIDOW.
I am mrs Vero Koumba. The wife of late Hon. Somogou koumba who was the chairman of mineral resources Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), he was appointed to take control of the management of mineral resources of the country during the time of late president Laurent
Kabila who was assassinated. On 15 of may 2002 my husband fell sick and he was flown to France for treatment and later died of ulcer and he has been buried. During his time because of his position he made huge sum money from the sale of diamond which is the national resources of democratic
republic Congo (world widely known). Before his demise, he deposited one trunk box containing the sum of US$18,000,000 (Eighteen million united states dollars) with the bank in Abidjan Cote d’Ivoire (west Africa).
The money was willed in favour of my only child, one boy and myself as next of kin for the deposit. For your personal verification and confirmation I can made available to you the “Certificate of Deposit” with all necessary document to proof the Authenticity and Genuiness of the fund. In fact, since the death of my husband, his brothers has been seriously chasing me around with constant treats, trying to suppress me so that they might have the documents of his landed properties and confiscate them. They have successfully collected some of his properties, yet they never stopped there. They told me to surrender all bank account of my late husband, which I did, but I never disclose to them this deposit with the bank in Abidjan, cote d’Ivoire,
because this is where the future and destiny of me and my child is lying. The family of my late husband never aware of the secret existing of this deposit and they can never be aware of it. Out of fear, and when the situation becomes on controllable because of pressure on me, my son
advise me to leave immediately and also to look for a trustworthy person, who could assist us in releasing this money for onward transfer into his/her account, thus my main aim of contacting you.
Consider my situation as a widow and come to our rescue, Now that I have no ground in the family of my late husband any more, I will offer you 15% as a reward for assisting us as the remaining part of the money will be used for good investments in your country under your care and for the
education and up-bring of my child when the money arrive your destination.
Kindly reply me Immediately through this my email address/ ( vero_koumba7@yahoo.fr )upon receipt of yours of this message, indicate your willingness through my Email and feel free to feed you with more information and modality of this transaction. This business is smooth, secured, risk-free and all arrangement has been concluded for a successful transaction. Most important, the is one of the
bank here in Abidjan cote D Iviore .
Yours Sincerely
Mrs Vero Koumba

Ooooh, I think I know what I am going to spend my share of the money on. Whooo-hooo! I am rich beyond my wildest imaginations!

My other Internet regret is based upon all the time I have wasted pursuing those minor wastes of time. Whether it is music websites, surfing, news browsing or just faffing abuout, I constantly wonder how much time I have lost when I could have been doing something productive. So for me it is an embarrassment that I have somehow become addicted to certain elements of the WWW. It’s tough. At least if you watch TV every night there’s a chance that you might catch a documentary or a science programme and actually learn something. With the Internet, the majority of it is a complete load of toss. So why do I come back? Why do I need to feel connected?
I don’ know. I just don’t know. Sometimes I find its pervasive quality very, very scary indeed.
Maybe I am addicted? I know the odd time when I can’t access the WWW I get a little tetchy, you know. But these feelings pass. I need a holiday. I need to get away from this LCD cyclops sucking my soul out through my sore eyesockets. Gah! Gibber! CROAK!

Hey, I’ve just found out that some podcaster out there liked my Thing-ummi-Jig track so much that he decided to use it as playout music on the weekly podcast he publishes. You can check him and the podcast here:
http://sinceretheory.net/weblog/index.php/2005/10/podcast0010

In the post: The 21st Century Guide to King Crimson, Part II
I did a little monkey dance around the kitchen when this arrived, much to the amusement of The Missus. She wanted to film it for the website, but I declined because I look unshaved and even more like a monkey than usual.

Looking back, it’s hard to remember what life was like before the Internet. I remember I first became exposed to the murky world of the web around 1996. It was a lot different then: there was no MP3 files, no P2P file sharing, no rich media, not a lot really, just a load of text. My first experiences of net life were quite exciting and I got involved with the relatively niche “chat” community that was being run on MSN. It was cool to talk to people around the world, but it was here that I learnt that nothing is ever what it seems. It was also my first of two net regrets.
While chatting, you make a circle of virtual friends and certain people become “closer” to you than others. At one point, I was spending a lot of time chatting to one woman. At the time it was all a thrill and I was flattered that someone on the other side of the world could find me interesting enough to want to talk to me. However, things progressed in a direction I had not envisioned and before I knew it, this person had found out where I was working in London and was sending me packages of love letters and photographs, etc.
As you can imagine this is very embarrassing when you open a Fedex package expecting it to be work related and something unexpected drops out onto your desk. I quickly realised that the web had lead my up a dark alley and I need to back-pedal ASAP. OK – I wasn’t exactly innoncent in all of this as there had been a level of reciprocated virtual flirting, but I didn’t expect the full stalker treatment. It was revealed that this woman had spent in excess of $60 to track me down and more money sending the stuff to me. Long phones calls came into my office, again at my embarrassment and this woman threatened suicide if I stopped talking to her. With those words and that threat, I told her I could no longer speak to her, because it is not good to be put at the end of an ultimatum like that. My gamble paid off and this woman didn’t kill herself. I heard that she found someone else to hook up with. And to think she wanted to leave her husband and child to be with a dopey old, limey, eh?
Well that got your attention, didn’t it? That is my standard warning about the Internet. Sometimes it is very hard to have any perspective because unlike real conversations where you can read body language, facial expressions and timbre of voice, you have no such cues on the Internet. Whereas you might think something is a big joke, the person at the other side of the world is weeping into a hankie believing all is real. Like that story I just told. I just made that up to illustrate a point. Or did I? With the Internet, you never really know…
On the other hand, the Internet has enabled me to do a lot. I’ve managed to torture the world with my excrusiatingly dull music and learn an awful lot of useless facts. Without the Net, would my life be any less richer? Who knows? It’s hard to say, it’s become so pervasive. For me, the Internet has partly replaced the radio or Teletext as an information source. But it is so much more than that.
If you get your fingers burnt, you tend to withdraw somewhat and that’s what I did. There are a lot of strange people out there who use the Internet has some kind of support network. This is great if you can manage it. Personally, it has never worked for me as I have only ever found one other person out there willing to give me any support, but that’s beside the point. I am working towards my other big regret…

Hide his drumsticks… 🙂

When I am feeling a little down, I can’t be bothered to write entries on this blog thing, therefore I guess you can guage my manic mood swings by the quality and length of the material submitted here. If its a good day, there’ll be loads of text; if there’s a bad day, there’s nothing. Or it could be that nothing of any significance has happened.
Well not a lot has happened lately. I’ve just been plugging away with this book thing. I got to chapter ten and now I have over 30,000 words in the bag. Now writing a novel is a lot like growing up. At the beginning, you are full of excitement and energy and ideas and nothing can hold you back – that’s like being a toddler again. When you get to the halfway stage, you have a crisis, you wonder if it’s all been for naught and whether you can carry on – that’s middle age. And when you get towards the end, you just want it to be over, you beg for swift resolution. That’s lying half-dead in a nursing home somewhere.
I’m at the halfway stage and so I am full of doubt and criticism over what I’ve written. Is it any good? Is it a decent story? Will people want to read it? Will a publisher or an agent want to pick it up? Am I writing this for nothing? Why couldn’t I have a practical career that actually earns us serious cash, rather than being a complete and utter parasite who wastes his time with all of this nonsense?
Well I am 10 chapters in and committed to the project by 30,000 words, so I’ve got to continue. I am enjoying telling the story, but no-one else other than the Missus gets to read it, so I don’t have much feedback. When I was working, I used to hand out manuscripts willy-nilly for people to read over the weekend and the feedback was generally good, so this spurred you on. Now I feel adrift in a sea of troubles. It’s at moments like this I wish I had the support network that most other people have, but I don’t, so deal with it.
The thing is, I just want to be vindicated. I just want to be able to produce something that gets picked up and then I can turn around to people and say: “Look I was born to do this afterall.” I mean, I don’t think there’s anything else I can do other than put words together. The problem with that is that I’m turning my back on my only revenue stream (freelance writing) to pursue this. I’m being awfully selfish, but I feel I have to do it. I feel compelled. Oh well, the worst thing that can happen is that The Missus finally has enough of being married to completely useless bum and ups and leaves. Then the Embankment and that cardboard box beckons…I wonder how Alex the Wonderdog will adjust to sleeping under the stars?
Anyway, it’s chapter 10 and I’ve taken the main narrative thread away from Vince Pearl, the ghost, and introduced the reader to the heavy metal band that going to be using his lyrics. Yes, the lead singer Daniel De’Ath is in communion with a spirit and has a hard time convincing his band that the gimmick of putting out an album of dead men’s songs will work. “Well everyone likes Alice Cooper and Manson,” reasons Guy the drummer and so they agree to work on the lyrics for their difficult third album.
Has that got you interested? Nope…ah well, I give up.
Meanwhile, my other novel, my “magnum opus”, my serious novel, the one that is my ultimate expression of characterisation, London Voices (though that title will change), is languishing at a similar stage of development. It’s the halfway mark and I’ve got to pull together a lot of material for that. The problem with that story is that it isn’t a story at all, just a thinly connected series of character vignettes, told in first person.
You would tell me if I am wasting my time, wouldn’t you?