There are no magic words

OK, so I tried online dating again, despite my opinions of the futility of the exercise.

Apart from the mentioned bizarre responses I got one decent response from someone in Australia. We exchanged a few emails, chatted a bit over MSN, then met for coffee two weeks ago, then went out to dinner on Saturday night.

About 20 mins ago I got the email saying "I just wanna wish you all the best and good luck!"

The problem is, I had nasty, nasty dreams last night, and was pretty much expecting that to happen today. It was just one of those kinds of days. Of course, my slow emotions had started to drift towards actually being attracted to this person, rather than just interested. So now I wonder how much of my 'premonitions' were just gut feelings of reality slipping through, meaning that I am pretty much well and truly detached from it? How can I be so fucking wrong so much of the time?

I take it that as a person I am not at all attractive, in any sense. There is something deeply wrong with me that I am too deluded to realise what it is or how to fix it. From a rational point of view this is entirely understandable; my DNA is simply not worthy of the human species. It is in the interest of evolution that I don't breed; the fittest survive, and I am not fit.

Of course this is a deeply depressing view on life; which is likely the thing that is deeply wrong with me - bad wiring.

Recently I have been going to counselling to deal with that aspect of my life, and it was through positive progress that I decided to try online dating again, or indeed any form of dating. It isn't like it is easy to meet women in Sydney if you are not at uni, don't really like hanging around in the 'meat markets', and don't want to be a guinea pig in the latest reality TV show. As it turns out, it doesn't take much to utterly destroy my self-esteem (again). On one side, I have all the methods of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy that I spent 8 months learning, and that seem(ed) to work well. On the other, I have reality, yet again hitting my in the small of the back with all the force of a major planet in solar orbit.

AND it's fucking raining AGAIN, so no soccer training tonight, I can't even go and try to kick the ball halfway to the End of the World. (Not too far, I can see it from where I am sitting. No really, no metaphors here - Kings Cross is just down the road)

There is some good news - it appears Titan has lakes, so 'Titan' by Stephen Baxter might actually be possible. If you can call that good news. It is my current frame of mind.

Ah, and I just placed the little snippet of music that has been running through my head for the past hour: 'Broken Ice' from the soundtrack to 'Orlando'. Fitting: "Nothing thicker than a knife's blade seperates melancholy from happiness" - Orlando in response to Sasha's rebuff.

The boss has just offered Guinness & toasted sarnies for lunch, as I looked 'miserable'.

I'm yet to write a response email, too, it might be easier after beer.

national economics reliant on space weapons and triffids

It is a rainy afternoon, I am having a cuppa and my usual afternoon-ly random trawl of the web.

Today's topic is 'carnivorous plants' which brings us to triffids, and to the linked gem of an essay.

For example, this paragraph:

"The Nazis were first encouraged by big business to limit the political Left; the Nazis then started to control industry; war when it came allowed a cover the exterminations; the extermination camps provided labour for industry, and for wealth to be stolen and re-cycled. Ultimately the war economy was going to be destroyed, weakened from the inside by the need for soldiers to guard the camps etc, making them unavailable to fight, but the destruction was an integral part of the process of:- big business encouraging Nazism, encouraging war, devaluing life, the destruction of Europe, the destruction of Nazism. One part re-enforces the other. It has happened elsewhere but this was the example that both authors had seen at first hand."

From 'Day of the Triffids' through 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four' to what happens to civilizations that allow themselves to be ruled by blocs.

Fascinating reading, if a little bleak.