...coming out as an actor. Really, you?

It's really strange, you know, the whole idea of acting.

It's one of those things I haven't really admitted to other people.

There's a couple of reasons for that. One, I haven't actually done anything to completely commit myself to this title but much more importantly is reason two. If you say you're an actor, it provokes strange looks and one of two main responses, so I've found. Firstly, the other people instantly wants you to perform, as if acting requires no preparation or material. I imagine it's the same for comedians; make me laugh, now. The other person wants you to perform Shakespeare or fall over or something. The second reaction is of a curtain level of dis-stain. A persumed amount of arrogance or ego.

I'm ok with people thinking i'm a bit of an egotist. I can imagine that when I'm not so talkative, I project a curtain arrogance, so that's fine. It's the other thing that worries me.

Do I have to go out with a rehearsed sketch or monologue, permanently etched into my brain? No, thank god. Well not in Glasgow. Thanks to a friend called Woody, she apparently reads this blog from time to time. Well, one of my blogs. Hope it's this one, the other one's about my car. Anyway, she told a number of my friends that I stated I was an actor. Well, that did it. Thankfully, no-one said it was beyond me, well, not to my face.

In a strange way, in a really good way, it lifted a weight of my shoulders.

I've told my mother and sister already. I admitted it to my partner, SL as soon as I did to myself. It was the idea of telling anyone else that was a big step. If I told my mother, sister and SL that I wanted to be a pink elephant, they'd support me all the way. Though the operations and the gene therapy and what ever else it took. It's telling others that's well, not so, er, easy.

Now, well, as it's out in the open, no more am-dram-closets to hide in, I better get on with it.

So, how exactly do you become an actor?

...I also write

Well, I say write:
http://intellectualzoom.blogspot.com

But I also make art, well I say make:
http://distography.blogspot.com

But then I do drive, a lot...
http://drivingkolo.blogspot.com

...introducing Milly. The cat that gets photo'd when she sleeps

...loving Milly. She is a cat.

On Wednesday, SL and I went to collect a little kitten called, well at that point she had no name. She is a little silver tabby cat, green-blue eyes and had 4 feet plus a tail.
What else to say about her?
Oh, she fits onto one hand.

Since then, she has taken up all of our time. But that's because we let her.

...saddened by accurences in motorsport this week

Normally I wouldn't think this was the right place to comment on motorsport. This is a blog about, er, pointless trivial things but...

...as F1 pilot, Felipe Massa's lying in a doctor induced coma, Formula motorsport is in shock.

A freak accident in which a F2 car crashed lightly into a barrier forcing one of it's wheels free claimed the life of Henry Surtees. The wheel bounced back onto the track in to the path of the oncoming Surtees driven car, striking him on the head with force enough to prove his helmet wearing near useless. An accident like this hasn't happened in open top racing for a large number of years, and to claim a life in this way is so rare, not seen since Markus Höttinger's death in 1980. Then, within a space of 6 days, a spring from the rear suspension of Rubens Barrichello's Brawn GP F1 car worked itself loose, to hit Felipe Massa's passing Ferrari, impacting him on the front left of his crash helmet. Compared to the Surtees incident, Massa was lucky as the weight and angle of the impact was lighter and less direct to the spine. Felipe had this happen to him in the end of 2nd practice in qualifying at the Hungaroring, near Budapest, Hungary. Then next day in the race there, another freak incident in a pitstop caused Fernando Alonso's Renault to lose a front right wheel, resulting in it working free, to bounce in this case, harmlessly into a barrier before coming to a rest off track. Also in the race, Sebastien Vettel's RedBull Renault F1 car breaks it's suspension in a way reminiscent of Barrichello's car the day before. However only shards of carbon fibre broke off, lying flat off the racing line, with no other driver being affected. RedBull claim a front suspension fault, completely unrelated to the Brawn GP incident.

It is strange in motorsport for freak breakages and accident to be mirrored so closely. It hasn't happened since the dreadful weekend at Imola for the F1 San Marino GP of 1994. That weekend, three similar accidents claimed the lives of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna, with Rubens Barrichello hospitalised. Although Senna's death was caused by a steering and suspension failure and the other two by driver error, death and serious injury was becoming a distant memory in the top levels of motorsport at the time. Which is very much how Henry Surtees' death is met by today's motorsport community.

Where we can take heart is in how Massa survived the impact his Ferrari sustained after he was rendered unconscious by the suspension debris. As yet, the speed in which he hit the tyre crash wall has not been made public, however, from onboard footage, it is clear that it was at a significant speed. Yet apart from the head injury caused by the spring to his head, Felipe suffered no other injuries. The car behaved extremely well under force. As driver's safety cell stayed intact; Massa's legs did not break, unlike Michael Schumacher's in a similar impact at Silverstone for the British GP in 1999. Plus, there is no direct neck injury caused by stopping into the crash wall. This is, in part, thanks to the innovative HANS device worn by all top level drivers to eliminate neck breakage in such a high speed impact.

Hopefully motorsport has endured the last of these freakish accuracies of the past week. There is always a risk involved in all kinds of motor racing but drivers are more vulnerable in open top Formula races. Yet the resulting crash suffered but Massa after the head injury proves that technology and Jackie Stewart's safety revolution has helped in significant ways to to make it many times safer than it was in Henry Surtees' father; John and in Jackie's time at the wheel. For which all racing car driver's take a small piece of reassurance from.

...still cleaning, still!

It's been quite awhile since I last remember a day starting without the prospect of cleaning the house.

I'm not complaining. Well, OK I am. Like I may have mentioned in a post a couple of posts ago, the house is a little (very, very) dusty. To try and illustrate how dusty we're talking about; it's like your favourite fat auntie was completely made of purple fluff, hair, crumbs and other things dusty. She comes to visit your small flat. Standing in a place in your home where she can see into all your rooms, she then explodes; atomizes. The windows are ajar. A breeze blows through the house, spreading the vast amount of er, hmm, pollen laden, gritty, purple fluffy, hairy crumbly dust cloud into every hole and onto every surface. It's like that, but more depressing and less exciting sounding.

Cleaning it is like chasing a naughty child made of, yes of course, dust. So you hoover one place, (s)he moves into another place, leaving a trail as he goes. And as it's also airborne, my lungs now contain an amount of both dust monsters; nan and child.

I'm wheezing as I type.

Well, complaining is now out of the way, the flat is nearly complete, including a reorganisation of er, the storage of er, our precious(?) belongings.

One day soon, I'll get on with living in the living room. dining in the dining room, kitch in the kitchen, etc. But until then, it'll still be cleaning in every room.

Bonjour for now my reader(s)

...trying out igoogle

It's not as straight forward as I thought it would be...

S L's mother had it as her home page on her desktop PC and it looked quite useful.

As a bit of a twitterer, I thought I'll add the twitter tool onto it, simple ask surely...
...as it turned out, I had to then download googledesktop, which in turn, did it's best Vista impression with it's clock face and by rearranging all my bloody icons and window sizes. Thanks for that!

Anyway, after the constant logging in and faff, I managed to find a blogger tool, which is what I'm using now. Lets hope the font and the size and all that are correct as I can't control it with the tool.

It's all just a bit too cool looking but completely devoid of any real usefulness