I've been reading with interest about the space craft that will replace the much loved shuttle...the C.E.V.

But having looked at it...and compared it with the shuttle...I can't help feeling that instead of moving forward, we are in fact taking a giant leap back.

Basically it's a cone shape again...on the end of a rocket...The Ares 1 to be precise. This is good for those times, I guess, for all those times we'll want to get to the moon. But how about when we need to get folks to the I.S.S or when we need to fix Hubble again?

I understand that the shuttle, as it stands, is becoming outdated. But surely flowing forward to better and updated designs of the shuttle, the technology inside, and the thermo-insulate shell that covers it...is a far better route to follow?

There will come a time when we will need to stop relying on rockets to get us anywhere...

Otherwise we will never get back out there and beyond again...

I'm clear :D

Countdown has begun to having a cyber optic sounding...I'll have two mates with me (not in the actual room though) so reckon I'll be ok.

Could be worse...

Could be better...hope I get to keep the walnut...I'd love one last long term partner before I die.

If anyone who mutually likes me...will deign to go out with me...

Meanwhile, I'm being brave and getting on with rebuilding my life.

Sorry it's another boring post...not feeling witty right now.

No...

It's not the name of an old movie. It seems an old ghost may have returned...

On the 11th of May I need to go to Bronglais Hospital in Aberystwyth to have two tests...an ultrasound, and a cystoscopy.

The tests for the illness I had recently came back as expected...all except one. Which means my prostate has become enlarged...

Which is now why I'm unsure of the future once again. After March the 13th 2004, I didn't know whether the testicular cancer had been caught in time. Now I'm not sure whether my prostate has become cancerous until those tests.

Now, I'm living under a big black cloud again, under a spectre that may take everything. It hovers all around just out of sight and behind me...lurking.

I await my sentence and wonder.

If again, it's caught in time, I lose something of being a man...and this time I lose all ability to make love completely. I will be thoroughly emasculated...an eunuch.

So what then...

Join the Sangha...

live out a lonely life...

Give up on being a man?

It's a hormonal imbalance that got me into this, that caused the hypergonadism...that also caused the body shape problems...it also caused some gender dysfunction.

For most of my life I've been caught between everything...including gender.

I've not been ever sure whether I ought to be a man...or a woman. Now there doesn't seem to be much point being a man anymore.

'cept I wouldn't exactly make a great woman.

If I don't succeed...and it's too late...Then it's all moot and I have to prepare myself.

Maybe it's nothing at all...maybe, maybe...

It's a Seldon crisis...but the possibilities are collapsing to darker ends.

Where do I go from here?

And if you've not guessed all this moving because of what happened has messed up deadlines for assignments.

I'm doing my best to catch up.

Rufus

1. I'm no longer living at No. 1.
2. I'm now living back on campus.
3. I'm no longer speaking to two three of my former housemates.
4. I've still forgiven them, but no longer want them in my life.
5. I've been diagnosed as Dyspraxic.
6. Today I had the mother of all anxiety attacks...I need someone to be there...a specific person, but due to stuff going on for them...they couldn't be there. Not his fault.

In short, my life is as mixed up as it ever was...Someone care to put a gun to my heart?

More later...

Dear Readers,

Yesterday I had a temporal bout of insanity that hurt a very good and close friend needlessly. It was down to several things:

1. A week without testogel, because I forgot it.
2. Me not taking my pills reg like.
3. Me sinking several litres of caffiene related products when I know they cause mood swings
and hypersensitivity.
4. Me also eating several cheese based products, even though I know they make me ill and add
to my depression.
5. Me misunderstanding my friend once again.
6. And lastly a weird assed glitch on Facebook that seems to be affecting what comes up on my
news feed.

I will now hold up my hand and admit to being a class A idiot and will be working damn hard to heal the damage caused the by 6.5 on the richter scale.

I'll also be looking at healing other friendships that have somehow been neglected.

I also clearly need some kind of help to get over my paranoia and fear of rejection. Quite how I intend to do that is another matter entirely.

But really, the food has to go...no cheese or coke, ever, ever again...

This has been, as ever, Rueful Rufusbagmonger

Take care and remember...

It's 8:25pm...do you know where your village idiot is? Because I'm here ;)

Ciao for now

Dear Readers,
I've been visiting my bud Salem, for a week, and I return, tomorrow, to the Welsh version of Brigadoon. I'm hoping that nothing too out of the ordinary will have happened there in my absence, but you can never tell at "The Hogwarts School for the Gifted".

I'll also be able to greet another housemate as my "adopted little sister" has also moved in. This now makes four of us; Scouse Lass, Miss Trinian Hockey-Player, Gwen Torchwood-Dirtymind, and me Rufus.

The house swings between ordered/clean and chaotic/seventh ring of hell, but I'm hoping all will be well. We all have to live there for a year and there are three more to move in.

It's a new year, and there will be some trepidation for all. Our University has been struggling somewhat and there have been major problems concerning our VC.

The fact that he resigned siting ill health is one reason, the fact that he's decided to recuperate in the South of France at the students expense is another, but the worst one is that he is also sought by the Police on charges of fraud and they can't find him...

Rumours have been going round and it maybe that we have to merge a second time, while somehow raising the student numbers.

So this is really the undiscovered country, for all the students at Lampeter, and those of us at "The Schloss of Inequity" (we wish!)

Meanwhile, I'm getting prepared for the new term, books are being bought, borrowed and ready, pens and folders bought and stratagems drawn up.

So while the holiday has been somewhat restful, I've still been getting organised. I barely got through the first year and don't intend to repeat that.

*Sighs* I have to go, there's a camp balding Irishman dancing on T.v. and he's rather entertaining.

Until Saturday, dear readers.

Rufus

A break in the clouds! No rain! Now, what do I do with this bloody clipboard?

Dear unassuming reader,
Now that things have returned to normal (ish) and the cast has been removed, I can tell you that the first diagnosis for my wrist was, in fact, wrong.

In fact, it's far more wonderfully freakish and just adds to all the other weird things that makes my body the ramshackle shed I've come to accept. Those who really know me will tell you about the hormonal imabalance I've had since that puberty. The imbalance that left me with a reasonably stacked chest that would look good on most women...but not on a bloke like me. It also left me wondering whether I was indeed a guy, when on some mornings I'd wake up and think wrong body...

So now comes a new abnormality...it seems I hadn't fractured my Scaphoid after all, what has happened is that the bones that go to make up your wrist, never quite formed properly in mine...so they've ended up fusing and the scaphiod looks like a underdeveloped fang.

In short I have a genetic abnormality and sprained wrist. Not only that, my arms are about an half and inch to an inch shorter that everybody elses. This does not, however, make me a T. Rex, just annoyed that I can't reach most top shelves ;P

So I'm fine, still some slight pain in my left wrist, but other than that, I'm ok. It just leaves me wondering what else hasn't developed quite as it is meant to have.

No, I can assure you THAT is in full working order, now go wash your mind out with soap.

This has been, as ever, your (now skeletally challenged) host

Rufusbagmonger

Geoffrey, so long and thanks for all the fish...may you always know where your towel is and maybe the Pangalactic Gargleblasters always blow your mind.

Oh and tell Douglas we're all thinking of him down here.

Sleep well Dude...

Oh and by the way...did I tell you dear readers that somehow it's STILL been raining?

Rufusbagmonger reporting AGAIN from New Atlantis...

So in a change of anecdote, I've decided not to relay the tale of G.O.D.'s coming out, because of the nasty bitter twist the situation has taken and how it affected my friend G.O.D. quite badly in the end.
Yes, I suppose that does mean I, the amazingly liberal queer-assed Scottish bloke, have a direct line to G.O.D. and you don't, you bitter twisted hypocritical fundie, so get over it. And yes the irony is not lost on me...
Instead, I'll tell you about how I've become somehow weaker in one of my wrists (*sighs* yes THAT irony isn't lost on me either) thanks to me, at the age of 37, deciding that I'd lived life a little too safely and promptly strapped on my secondhand bauer roller blades.
It was a comedy moment to rival anything that Messrs Laurel, Hardy, Chaplin and Spencer could have come up with. When I wasn't clingin on to any wall, railing or fence in the vicinty for dear life...I was moving forwards, somehow, flailing around like some epileptic octopus on ecstacy.
I suppose it was inherently graceful after a fashion, but movement was hard and it lacked any type of coherent progression. Down by one of the University entrances, I bumped in to "Father-of-Luke" who did his best not to laugh and look vastly amused...but failed as I bumped, staggered, rolled and almost fell over the road to where he was standing. Then I begged him to walk with me while I'd try to skate over to the gym and he could guffaw to his hearts content while doing so.
So we chatted as he walked and I flailed my way across campus only to have my one and only major crash next to the S.U.
I'd lifted one rollerblade up on to the pavement and was in the process of lifting the other...when they both went out from under me and I put my dominant hand down to break my fall. This would have been ok, had it not been for the massive white-face creating, almost puke-inducing pain I felt as left hand met tarmac. More so had I not been having an exam in two days and I was going to getting the revised essay I had to do finished and handed in for the next morning.
Instead, I ended up spending the next two days travelling back and forth between "The Hogwarts School for the Gifted" and Bronglais A&E having first a splint and now a green cast.
Yes you heard me correctly, green. Apparently you can get them in different colours now which include red, blue, purple, white and the green. so I, queer-assed liberal that I am, decided to colour coordinate (because you straights expect nothing less of us supossedly queer-assed liberals) and have black on green :)
V. dramatic especially when I was told that I had a fratured Scaphiod (not an alien from current sci fi no) in my left wrist and might need surgery :S which might mean 12, and not 6 weeks, in a cast and me ending my life as a cyborg.
Metal pins are included in the definition...go me :)

Does this mean that I'm giving up rollerblading? Does it feck...I'm going to get a cast in ever colour before I die ;P

This has been your anarchic host (as always) and I've enjoyed your company. Do come again :)

Back pain
Head pain
Junk food exhaustion
Rain, rain and more feckin rain
Fallout with a blowout
Break up with no make up
Did I mention rain?
Sun and somehow finish most assignments
New house
Move house
Yay for Somerfield Bakery
Ditch some mates for fakery
Achey achey arms
New guys with lots of Charm
Numbness
Numb nuts
Leave bakery
Some lad with obvious snake charmery
Good mate gave good Reiki
Still damn achey
Amazing party
Off for x-ray
Ix-nay on the old-may
resits
no nitz
Uni staff having conniption fits
New diet
Wanna dye it
Hit the Gym
Ribbing Jim
'bout Jimcest
'n all the rest
Missing buds
Making puds
Cycles turn
folks yearn
New year
MORE BEER!

facebook when really I have better things to do...like lj or essays...

Dear Reader,

This is the SECOND post in as many hours...not because I'm ill this time, but because I was hoping to call the beloved and actually DO stuff today. Important stuff that would mean I didn't have to become a prison bitch for the debt collection agencies...again!

But no...it's Wales. So what does it do? What has it been doing for more than a WEEK?

it's raining...

Heavily...

In a way that make Noah happy to get out the oars again.

I'm actually quite glad now that there's a storm drain under our kitchen, but I'm buying a clip board tomorrow just the same and looking for some animals to count.

I swear I've not seen anything like this since Scotland...but even then it never rained THIS much. It just SEEMED like it.

Oh well...I was wanting to get a wet suit and a surfboard anyway.

Until tomorrow Amigos...This Rufus reporting from New Atlantis.

Dear reader,

I made the mistake of eating solid food on Wednesday when I went out for a meal with some of the folks from my media production course. A mistake for which I dearly paid for on Friday when I realised I wasn't just ill but incubating a baby alien. Well that's what it felt like every time I crawled face down to the loo. Now by then you'd have thought that I'd have learned my lesson and let real food alone for a while, but no...because I felt better today (Saturday) I ran a little experiment...all because the mild fever broke.

I ate a sammich...and discovered I never want to see the stuff ever again. I may still have the bug, but the actual act of eating made me want to throw up. As does drinking anything now too :(

This is some what problematic...especially since I want to LIVE. Quite an embuggerance you'll agree.

Ergo a trip to the Docs maybe in order.

Bear with me while I try to get back on track...

Best wishes

Rufus

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Wales's most flippant journal. A journal so dark in humour, it makes the black country look like the off white paint from Dulux.

A couple of days ago, after a fitful but reasonable nights rest, I managed to get up well before everyone else. However, this is no mean feat, since the night before had been Drum and Bass down the Xstention which is Lampeter's premier student nightclub. Oh..ok...well...Lampeter's ONLY student nightclub, but at least OUR'S isn't in what looks like two portacabins slapped together, unlike Lampeter's only LOCAL nightclub. The bohemian decadence would have have been positively flowing and I'm sure the sound of drums continued to be heard later that day once everybody else had woken up and realised that the music stopped eight hours ago. Hence me banging around in the kitchen washing my dishes :)

It was while I did this that one of my neighbours Somerfield Deli Guy walked in and we chatted (well ok grumbled more like) about the state of the kitchen.

Now, since September last year, we had an alarming situation develop with our floor down stairs in kitchen of lower Harford II. In that the floorboards were rotting away and leaving a bloody great hole in teh floor. It was increasing also at an incredible rate...about two inches a week making the floor covering a bloody big trampoline.

In fact Irreverent Lad had been trying to burst the hole hoping to fall into the foundations and break his leg to escape a greek exam. He failed thankfully, but I commiserate with him. Translating greek? He'd have been better trying to translate wingdings.

Anyway Somerfield Deli told me that he'd been there when it had been fixed, and there were no foundations to our kitchen...

If Irreverent Lad HAD succeeded in going through the floor, he'd have ended up four foot down in a storm drain, sucked deep into a large wet hole...like a lot of guys usually are at a gay sauna.

Yes Ladles and Gentlespoons, the only thing that stops us from from vanishing into the depths of the university, is a collection of two inch bits of wood and the porters aren't finished yet. There's more to do because the floor is STILL crumbling.

I'll keep you posted on developments.

Your probably wondering why it's taken me so long to write another post and why I didn't write about GOD's unfortunate situation. Well, it seems I've been wanting to sleep a lot of late, which has been somewhat of a change from my usual erratic states of sleeping.

Yesterday, I found out why thanks to a massive amount of stomach pain, but I've no way of knowing whether it's a bug...or poisoning. Not that I care, I just want it gone. Having mount Vesuvius in my arse is not a very pleasant experience. So most of yesterday was spent lounging and reading until Irreverent Lad came round to keep me company.

One good thing has come out of all this...I've discovered that cup a soups have become quite yummy :) Oh and Dioralyte is amazing if you get ill...just a tip.

Okaaay...I gotta go mail my Course Admin and then go rest.

I'll be back when I'm a bit better.

Ciao my Lieblings

Dear Reader,

It has come to my attention that there isn't a currently living brain cell amongst those we laughingly call our elected politicians here in Britain.

Verily, there must be scores of villages up and down the breadth of our fair island that are missing their idiots. Why, I hear you muse, do I say all that? It's because some dimwitted berk has decided that nuclear power-stations are going to be BETTER than either wind farms (gracefully and beautiful) or tidal farms (squat and ugly but mostly out of sight). Even though nuclear power is very wasteful and never runs at 100% like the others do.

Quite HOW they managed to figure THAT one out is beyond the ken of any self-respecting Quantum Physicist, but I'm sure miracles can happen.

Now I don't know as much as I want to about hazardous material and it's containment, but I do know that building most of the power stations on the bits of England that may flood...aren't a wise idea. Even worse is that they're going to be privately owned but funded partly by the public.

Idiots...couldn't organise an orgy in a brothel if they tried.

Anyway tomorrow I report to you the public coming out of GOD, Yes I nearly spat my tea across the Mac when I read that, and the hatchet I'm going to take to The Gent's bathroom if the Porters don't fix the thing.

Oh and that class? Never ACTUALLY meant to miss it...but I did. Will do better next week.

Good night from the loudest Quiet hall in Britain it seems.

Dear reader,

If, by chance, you happened to wander past this journal and thought you'd drop in for a drop of freshly brewed tea, some delicately sliced angel cake and light and inspirational chat...you really need your head examined. Look at this place! Does it scream Cranford's Tea Shop? Hmmm? The local Blue Rinse Society Grumble Shop is that way, across the minefie...er...busy road. (I have the cake at least, made from fresh angels...though you might want mind the feathers though...they get stuck between your teeth...ahem).

If, however, you love your comedy dark, your observations though provoking and your wit so sharp it could separate a Politician from their annual pay rise...you've come to the right place. Is that one Schadenfreude with extra Pathos? Coming right up.

Y'see it came to my attention that in my OTHER journal...yes, but you'll not be able to tell which one, unless your one of me friends currently groaning and holding their head in their hands, (about...now) that I was being too introspective and no one could figure out what the hell I was talking about.

So here, under an assumed name (to protect the guilty), will I catalogue the semi-graceful chaos that is my day-to-day life here at University and maybe my thoughts on current world palavas.

Oh, your wondering what the title means? Well I'm getting to that. Trust me...the stuff that goes on here is enough to make the worst psych unit look like a convent. Funny that, since this place used to be a divinity college...But they don't like talking about that. Not since the incident with the Saudi Arabian funding and a ton of baby oil...No, no condoms were used I believe...allegedly.

For the hard of understanding (ie Republican Wasps and the blue rinse brigade) that was a joke...No...then come back tomorrow when I can offer you a cut price lobotomy and trepanning operation for only 20 dollars with a free wooden box your size thrown in for free *grins like an alligator*.

*begins recounting the previous nights events...(trust me they're integral to the story)*

My very good friend, Irreverent Lad, and I, had been having dinner and watching the none too bad "Stepford Wives" (and by the way Scouse Lass...Nicole Kidman has no tits...) when a loud commotion, similar to Anfield football ground on a saturday...loud with no free balls, could be heard outside the bedroom door.

It seemed that the remainder of the flat had returned from the Bond night, and that at least three were the worse for what passes as the local liver pickling solution.

Sadly, curiosity got the better of Irreverent lad and I. So heads were promptly poked out of said room, followed quickly by one body...mine. Three people were there, hence forth now known as Russet-haired Vamp, Exasperated Bruce Willis look-a-like and Miss Trinian Hockey-Player.

They were holding court in the kitchen with Exasperated standing in the door way trying to get Russet-haired to do something for him. This stopped when he saw me step out of Irreverent Lad's room and looked mildly shocked. I muttered something about having had dinner, watching Stepford Wives and Nicole Kidman's tits (I tell thee...she had none!) and Exasperated muttered that he was having none of it and making up his own story instead...

So I'd like to refute the current rumours that I was seen with a cheese grater and a lightly greased badger in my hand...it was a racoon! Get it right! ;P

It was at this point that Russet-haired appeared from the kitchen and moved toward me and Irreverent Lad. Following her was the voice heard, but not the visage seen, of Miss Trinian.
"Is that Rufus?" she called, "I wanna hug!!!!!"
"Yes it is," I sighed...before running for cover.
We ran because Miss Trinian, tanked up on the local liver pickler, had decided she wanted a hug and she moves very fast. More than that was the destinctive feline look on the face of Russet-haired. I say feline, because it's the look a cat gives it lunch/dinner/light afternoon snack just before it pounces.

We managed to escape back into the room and lock the door, even though the hug-hungry Miss Trinian and co kept pushing open the door as quickly as we were closing it...think day of the dead with scrabbling hands through the door and you get the image to a T.

The next three hours were spent with Irreverent Lad and I hiding as Miss Trinian and Russet-haired threatened to take the door off it's hinges by unscrewing it. I also spent time listening to Miss Trinian banging on the door begging to be hugged. Quite why she wanted to be hugged by a man who does it the Oscar Wilde way...is quite beyond me.

Eventually after much screaming and scolding from an unknown third party...all went quiet and we ventured from our sanctuary...to find a scene straight from bedlam. I even stuck to the floor like one of those gum traps they have abroad...squirty cream on the carpet, with milk and coke on the kitchen floor.

Thusly I gingerly made my escape and rushed home. However, I was thwarted for sleep as Miss Upatallhours was upstairs using my friend The Gent's toilet with built in brass section (air bubbles in the pipes dear). Really it does sound like a herd of Elephants passing through from the Serengeti...but NOT endearing at four in the bloody morning.

I eventually woke up at twelve and did some research (wasted time more like) and bought back several pets on facebook...all pretty gruelling stuff...ahem.

I then rolled out of my room and down the hill through horizontal rain (unique to Wales and Scotland it seems) and completely missed my terribly exciting IT skills class.

Did you catch the Pathos and sarcasm there? Oh good...you did.

Actually, on the way over to my only class of the day, I saw Miss Trinian on the otherside of the river.
"Why didn't you open the door to let me hug you?" She called over looking quite upset.
Feeling guilty I opened my mouth to explain...only to have my third brain kick in with the hitherto unknown up grade to Tactless Vista and call back before i could stop my mouth.
"Because you're scary when your drunk!"

If there was an Oscar for style and flair in tactlessness...I'd win it...EVERY year...

So, anyway...this IT skills thang. I'm doing a BA and they want me to do IT skills? Dear Lord have mercy. Anyway...it was a breeze and after I went and bothered my mate Backcombed Blue-boy for all of five minutes. after which I came back via the union sat and talked to Jared Leto's love child...my best mate here next to Irreverent Lad and Blond Gent (Blond Gent stepped in and did something that I'm grateful for some point last year...)

Alas I realised that I had to come home and do chores...like clean the tardis shower (it's smaller on the inside) and hoover the floor.

I was about to get stuck in...after another hour on facefook...when my mobile rank eerily. I say eerily as it rang with no signal. It was Jared Leto's love child again inviting me to dinner. I said yes and condemned the rest of my evening to a clash of massive priorities. Do I get down to cleaning like a butch queer in Laura Ashley? Or slip into that little black halter...no erm wrong story I think :S

Eventually, I hummed and hawed and got there too late for food and too late to clean back at my room...

It's in this curious state of Shroedinger's decision making that I spend most of my time. Unable to choose because I'd lose out. It is an infuriating state of affairs for a Gemini and one that I loathe with a passion. Backed into a corner and paralysed...I finally made a decision.

Bugger the cleaning!

And went via Somerfield to pick up deluxe biccies...

Hence why I'm stuffing my face at 5:07 and feeling none too guilty either. Real food can wait.

Anyway must go...I've a class at ten I must miss so I'm off to sleep. Toodle pip ol' fruits :)

yours in vassalage

Rufus Bagmonger The Exponential