anyone know a good hairdressers in town open on sunday pleaase ?:)

1993.
“It’s over.” I said.
There was a pause, a rise in the visual intensity level behind her eyes and a swift punch to my jaw.
I walked back to my car sobbing like my lungs were too small. I slammed my fists down and down and down on the steering wheel and screamed to every living thing, “I will never allow myself to be hurt again. I swear to fucking God.”

2001.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
And she walked out. I sat on the armrest of my couch and let the tears slowly run down my face and on to the carpet. I was a sad sight and I knew it. So I set up a camera to capture just how low and pathetic I allowed myself to become.

2002.
“Fuck you,” she said and slammed the door.
I stepped on the gas and thought about racing into oncoming traffic. It would be fast and I’m sure I wouldn’t feel much.
I felt the slow creep of death overtake the next month.

2006.
“One day we will greet each other with a handshake.”
I let go first, held her face and kissed her lips. And walked out.

I never died. The air came to my lungs, the words returned to my fingers and my face repaired itself with a smile.
I rarely bother anyone with the details – I need to know I can do this alone. It tempers me, it makes me stronger. And if I just keep my head down and keep walking, I know – I am absolutely fucking positive – that time will do its job.
I pass people on the street and am certain that each and every last one of them has felt hands squeeze and attempt to crush their motivation, their will to live and the light behind their smile. I know that each and every last one of them has cried over loss.
And I look at each and every last one of them as an example of perseverance and survival.

I am only alive because you still know how to smile.

2009.


DEMONSTRATIVE MONSTERS
pre-sale begins 11.17.09: 3am chicago time. 8pm sydney, australia time. 9am london, england time.
150 copies ever.
hardcover. $60us/67can/72world. ppd.

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
3. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
4. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
5. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

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Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

I'm working from home this week, and sick of Radio 4. What local radio stations do you all listen to? I like either talk radio or indie/alternative music radio - are there any good FM or digital Manchester-based stations? Save me from the darn Archers!

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

---

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

29 x Green Day (and 2 wallpapers)
26 x The Mighty Boosh


Over here at theiconstop .

fine. fuck it. youll get me at a moment of weakness.
i can already feel the "you're going to regret this in the morning," but fuck it.

you can sit all day online and read about peoples sadness of breakups. the post sensitive-artist drivel that pours out of their mouths and on to blogs around the world. there certainly is no shortage of that. and god, you certainly dont need to read that. but truthfully, i havent felt much. its as if its not really happening. i havent cried or even felt the urge to. which is strange since i have lost it after ending things with girls i barely even cared about. maybe most of those were about the fear of being alone but i think im actually pretty okay with being with me and my head. and really, i have so many of you to thank for it. the more you go around talking about things, the more you learn coping skills. well, thats what the doctor said on the documentary i watched a few nights ago about people who survived plane crashes. but i think the emotions i placed on breakups back then were really misdirected because i simply didnt want to be alone.

but this time is different. oh, listen to the cliches already.
see, i havent mourned. i havent opened up. every last person who has asked me what happened i have told them, "it was just that time,"... which really is just bullshit. its no reason. its the reason you give when you dont want to go into just how badly the other person wrecked you. when asked, "how are you doing?" i have responded, "im fine," no less than 100 times in the past day.

i truly am stoked that i would have so many people out there willing to listen to me. i am thankful of this every waking hour. but this thing, like all breakups, is done alone. you can talk all you like but no one holds your hand while the thoughts of that person making out with someone new race through your head at 3:18am. no one is there when you realize you will never hear that laugh or feel her hands as she played with your hair or the way she depended on you. because it was awesome that she depended upon you. because it made it feel real. fuck all the psychological bullshit about it being unhealthy, it was rad when she looked to me for advice. it was rad to know someone who truly knew me. me. not the funny me, or the writer me, or the internet me, or the pizza guy me... but the me who likes putting my feet on the bottoms of your feet. the me who would just stare at you from across the room even after three years and just watch you yell at a computer screen and think it was more adorable than kittens. the me who thought you were funnier than anyone and everyone combined. the me who thought you were "cool", like fucking cool. the me who loved the smell of your dirty hair. the me who found it endearing when i saw your dirty underwear. because thats how real it was. more real than any of them combined.
(no offense to those who still read this)

and sure, maybe its fucked up that i still wake up with a smile. i eat just fine and go about my day. i laugh and order food and get tea with friends and shop and my life hasnt missed a beat. not a skip. not a moment staring at a blank wall. and that sucks. because i know what that means. it means that i am not prepared for this type of devastation. my brain and heart have not come up against anything like this and they are shutting down. like preparing for hypothermia, they are shutting down parts of my body to protect my core. but its only a matter of time before the bomb drops. before the cold takes over and i feel it. i know what wreckage feels like and if i hold my breath and pretend its not happening, its not happening. but see i have taken it all and walked away from: 5.5, 3.5, 5, and 3.5 year relationships. yeah, add it up. none. none have come close. none WILL come close to this level of devastation.

you know i talk to girls now and it feels hollow. i say the words and play the game and none of it is real. my mouth moves and my brain is just shaking its head from side to side in disappointment. its all words. its all well put together phrases designed to evoke a response.
wanna see?
"you look adorable today. i love what you did with your eyeshadow." instant smile.
its not a lie... but i know what im doing. i wouldnt say it if i didnt mean it but i also know what emotion it evokes. its like i have been cursed because i have studied how to speak to people, how to captivate peoples attention and how to write the words. again, they arent lies. but they are intentional.

i hate this. right now. i hate the fact that i never had to pull any of that bullshit with her when i did with every last girl i even kissed. and you know, its a fucking embarrassingly long list. and not once, well maybe in the very very beginning, but never did i pull that bullshit with her. you know why, because she called me on it. for all the shit i talked she was beyond brilliant with a bullshit meter that could tell the future. and i needed that. i needed someone to call me on my shit. because no one ever did. and yeah, maybe it was messed up and dysfunctional and messy but fuck it was real.

so ill fall asleep just fine tonight, just like i have for the last week. no worse sleep than usual. no staying up late pouring words into some secret journal. no bad mouthing her to my friends and no spontaneous bursts of sobbing. and thats fucked. because i know its coming. more than it ever has before, its coming... sweet, just in time for my birthday on tuesday, the release of a new book, thanksgiving and maybe even christmas.
so yeah, things are "fine" right now. but they wont be.


hey, you said you wanted to listen.

its funny when even kelly clarkson songs begin to have meaning. its also an interesting time we live in when its not so much the words that cut the cord but the click of the 'relationship status' on facebook profiles.

and just like the one before and the one before and the one before her, i will keep my chin up and maintain a smile because next week wont hurt as bad as this week and next month wont hurt as bad as this month. come summer time this will all be but a faint memory obscured by time and the clarity of black and white.

because this is how its always been.

its the rare instance when time is actually our friend.





single.



please be respectful.

I've got a ticket for Seasick Steve at the Apollo tonight that I'm not going to be using. I'm looking to sell it to someone who'll actually use it rather than a tout. I'm after face value or a reasonable offer.

If you're interested reply here or email me at ihatethisbit at hotmail dot com. I'm working until half 5 but I live in the city centre so ill be able to meet up with anyone who wants it from 6 onwards.

Cheers.

on the off chance you havent been keeping up with the to-dos of my life, well let me tell you about how im putting out a new book next month. NEXT MONTH! this is crazy-talk, chris. well its true. but heres the catch. there will only be 150 of them printed. evar. it will be hardcover and yes, expensive.
but let me tell you how stoked i am on this book. but chris, arent you stoked on all of your books? well, sure. each one is like an illegitimate love-child that i get to share with the world. wait.
anywho, when i meet people and have to have the 'oh, so what do you do?' talk, i say im a writer. to which their immediate response is, "oh, can i have/buy one of your books?" nice that they're interested but i dont really have a book that truly represents the short-story style that im most happy writing.
ok, yes, my first two books (on the upswing, which is sold out and a life deliberate) are that style but they're older and i feel that i am a much better writer than i was back then. dont get me wrong, i love the stories, i just feel that i could have told them better. (but dont let that discourage you from buying one of the last remaining 100 copies of a life deliberate over at deadxstop.com, kisses).
my 3rd book, notes from the deep end is sold out as well, my 4th book, selected works 2004-2008 is awesome and all but its all LJ rants and my newest endeavor, REMNANTS is my proudest yet but i only have one story in the damn thing.
so...
i wanted to write something that i can hand someone without excuses. without having to say, "well, this isnt exactly what i usually do," or, "its sold out," or, "well, this book is like my demo tape."

i cant say the title just yet because i have to make sure i can use this image first because it would work so perfectly with what im looking to do that if the artist wont give me permission im going to change the title of the book. yes, im a nerd. but i will tell you it is 10 stories in the style of my first two books and it will go on pre-sale on my birfday, november 17th.


- and now i will leave you with a video of me running game on some marsupials:

Does anyone know of anywhere in Manchester (city centre area) that you can get coffee after 7/8pm?
I think most of the starbucks/Nero/Costa shut around 8 and I want somewhere I can have a coffee later than that (preferably up until 10 or later).
I know there are places like hotels or pubs and clubs that serve coffee, but was looking for an actual coffee shop. Either a chain or an independent place.

Thank you,

we talked about the old apartment today. me and boo. simple talk about playing video games all night. we laughed until i felt the familiar sting of nostalgia come on. i never saw that place as anything more than a transition hole between where i grew up and where i landed in chicago, yet we lived there together for 6 years.
second floor, above the roaches and drug dealers and addicts. mashed potatoes on the ceiling and vomit on the couches. filthy. but today i missed it.

some day i will look back at these moments lying in this bed as a memorable time. the nights of pizza and video games here will hold warm memories and i will wonder whatever became of so and so despite spending hours talking with them into the early morning hours. i will forget names and faces. people and addresses will slowly fade from my memory and i will be living another chapter.

its sad, really. people rust. they evaporate. they slowly erase. and we wonder what happened. was it our fault or theirs? did we neglect the friendship or did they no longer need what we had to give? the boys, the girls. one day their names will begin with, "you know, whats her name."
its tough when you realize that the nature of relationships is constantly evolving, despite every attempt you make to make it last. to live in love. to freeze people in memory.

the rest of my life will be a continuous series of beginnings. of handshakes and text avoidance.

someone freeze me.

The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
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More info on our website - www.manchesteryarn.co.uk

yars revenge:

when atari was in its heyday, yars revenge spearheaded my obsession. it was clean and simple, not jerky and awkward unlike its lost in translation arcade cartridge counterparts like donkey kong, pac-man or frogger. yars revenge was simple yet addicting. your little ship had to eat away at the orange shield all while the little flashing dot was trying to get up in your ass. as simple as pong, as brilliant as snake and almost as hard to advance like ET for atari. the great thing about atari controllers was they were durable as a mofucker and my ass was throwing em like it was my job. say all you want about early video games being aesthetically unappealing, those games were goddamn impossible.




mortal kombat 2:

while the original MK and MK3 were awesome, nothing really sank its claws into me like MK2. this was what spawned my arcade mid-90s revival. sometimes we would have to bring extra shirts because of how much we would sweat while dropping tokens and wanting to strangle the buster who kept doing that damn mileena roll over and over. many nights were wasted and many controllers were broken playing this for the SNES. while one tour last summer i stayed at a friends house. he had an MK2 and when we started playing i immediately got that "imma bite the shit out of this controller" feeling back, so much so i had to put it down and walk away. because it was always the controllers fault. ps. flips were for pussies.




galaga:

the original allowance stealer. this game dominated 80s arcades more than any weed dealing burnout ever could. i remember seeing it for the first time and all the quarters the kids in the iron maiden shirts had lined up along the screen waiting to get "next". it took weeks before i found any down time to sneak in a game. i fell in love so hard that i almost came in my pants when in the winter of 96 my exgf bought me the actual arcade game for my birfday. it still adorns my living room and plays just as well as it did in 1982. sometimes i just sit and stare at it like it is a 200 pound piece of art.




robotron 2084:

you want to know what intensity is, play this fucking game. if the screen shot below is an indicator of how much of mess this game is you have no fucking clue the world of insanity a quarter would buy you in the 80s. no game before or since shreds like this mofucker. none. by time you press start on the game you've got about 18 seconds to slay your way through a never-ending onslaught of robots. its pure fucking anarchy. no skill or tactics are involved because you dont have enough time to even think. by time the phrase, "holy fuck this game is insane" comes out of your mouth the screen is already reading 'game over'. if los crudos and minor threat were a video game, this is what you would mosh dive to.




call of duty:

since the late 70s i have been a boy fixated on video games. i remember when pac-man was the new national obsession, when frogger was cutting edge, when dragons lair was next level, when NHL 93 still had blood, when NBA jam was the jam, when golden eye for N64 made you want to fight your friends, when silent scope was brilliant and when guitar hero made kids never want to play a real guitar again. what im saying is that having been there and played it all, the call of duty series (modern warfare/world at war) is so truly life-enveloping that it feels like you're killing actual nazis. so much so that a rabbi credited it with him getting over his fear of them. modern warfare is the best selling first person game of all time for a reason. and watching fruity get so mad that hes on the verge of tears might be one of the greatest sights of all time.





what are yours?