Absit iniuria verbis

Posts Tagged ‘meat cleavers’

Wowsers

In Cries for help on November 26, 2009 at 8:20 am

I just woke from a nightmare that lasted all night. Literally all night: I woke at 4am in a cold sweat, went back to sleep and the whole thing began again. I was trapped in a huge house trying to stop a wedding from happening and trying to escape. There were guns and dogs and someone a bit like Heathcliff trying to stop me. And the whole thing was replete with “Oh my God, I’m still in the dream” moments.  I am genuinely shaken.

I’ve never had an anxiety dream before. At the moment I’m re-reading The Monk, The Castle of Otranto and The Mysteries of Udolpho. I think they’re getting inside my brain. At least, I hope that’s all it is. I can’t handle another night like that.

Just had to get that out there.

A brief but terrifying glimpse into my subconscious

In Burning questions, Cries for help on September 3, 2009 at 7:56 pm

I often wake in the middle of the night, with what I imagine at the time to be a game-changingly insightful or brilliant train of thought suspended in mid-air in front of me. I’m immmediately gripped by panic, worried that I might lose it if I don’t get it down. So I flip open my MacBook and start typing furiously. When I’m done, I get back in to bed, and am usually asleep again within a few minutes.

I have about three hundred of these frantically-recorded night-time memos now. Here’s one of them. Read the rest of this entry »

Is it just me, or is @bengoldacre turning seriously weird?

In Announcements on August 13, 2009 at 7:20 am

Don’t get me wrong: I hugely admire Ben Goldacre for his vicious skewering of hacks who peddle bad science. It’s just that I have this irrational fear that one day I’m going to open the newspaper and read that he’s keeping his followers captive in a jungle compound.

I mean, don’t you think it’s all going to his head a bit? Especially since he didn’t win the Samuel Johnson prize. (Sorry, Ben, that just slipped out – I didn’t mean it. Put that meat cleaver down!) Read the rest of this entry »