It's probably just jealousy

Edinburgh's nice and quiet now and I've simmered down. I suspect at least some of the rage comes from envy and an inability to deal with the fact it's not me presenting at the Book Festival.

In the meantime, it appears that while I have not sold enough copies of the novel for Amazon to pay me anything, I nonetheless as a self publisher on Amazon have to register for tax in the US. This is my idea of hell.

Another festival over*

And I'm slowly emerging from the annual three week rage fiesta. What rage?

• Rage at all the crowds.
• Rage that I spent £££ on events and a lot of them were absolute mince.
• Rage that despite spending a lot of £££ on events I still missed the don't miss.
• Rage that the don't miss turned out to be Bridget Christie who I saw a few years ago in her Charles II phase and thought remarkably unfunny but who now apparently has the funniest feminist set (even though some of it sounds a lot like certain Amazon reviews**).I even thought I'd bought a ticket for her in a gala but instead the person in the gala was a Canadian who looked and clearly thinks like Mel Gibson if his stream of misogynist and racist jokes were anything to go by. I was especially ragey about staying up till after midnight for him.
• Rage at all the happy couples having a lovely timewhen I'm still single.
• Rage at the ugly bloke in shorts who took time out of his fun packed evening to tell me how pathetic I was at being out by myself on a Saturday night at an event and reading while I waited in the queue.
• Rage at myself for having entirely lost my funny so I no longer enjoy anything.

I did however get to live the dream. The dream that one day a comedian would pick on me in the audience, insult me, and then ask me what I do and I'd tell him I'm a journalist and then watch him tie himself in knots out of fear that I'm there to review the show. OK, strictly speaking that was a lie because I'm not a journalist any more but it was still satisfying. I think I may be a horrible person.

*OK, technically there are still International Festival things on but they are sold out. Which enrages me.
** Her act has a lot about Bic for Her. Check out the Amazon reviews of Bic for Her. Of course it's entirely possible she wrote them.

Premonition of a death foretold

I know how I am going to die.

It will be from blunt force trauma to the head.

When I crack my head on the sanitary bin in the loos at Kings Cross after I fall off the bog in shock at a blast of cold water to the privates when the auto flush misfires when I'm checking my email in the loo. Again.

I ought to be used to it by now but it comes as a surprise every damn time I move even a fraction on the pedestal.

That's why they moved platform 9 3/4. So the happy shrieks of the kiddies young and old enough to know better drown the screams from the ladies.

Security questions

My bastarding bank has just 'upgraded' its online banking security.

Now I get a one time code delivered to my mobile to enter when I logon. Thanks a fucking bunch. I wasn't planning on taking my mobile on holiday, now I have to, just in case I need to get on the bank site.

I also have to answer three out of 8 security questions. Most of these questions are irrelevant to me. Does anyone over ten have a favourite food or place that doesn't change regularly? Of course, the end result is that I'll have to write all this down, which you aren't supposed to, because it's hard to remember an answer you've just made up.

#twittersilence

The most remarkable thing about #twittersilence as far as I'm concerned is that discovering that there are people for whom not going on Twitter for a whole day is a big fucking deal.

Suspicious

In an attempt to get over the previous disappointment and egged on by someone at work I signed up for Match again. And then I immediately realised that I wasn't going to have time during July to meet anyone (and I certainly wasn't willing to use the site from my work PC) so I decided to delay paying till August. Now, what happens on Match if you are a non-paying member is that you can look at all the 'pretty' pictures but can do precious little else. In particular, you can't read emails, reply to emails or even see who wrote them. During July I received lots of emails. Since I paid up a couple of days ago I have received none and none of the people who look interesting who emailed in July have bothered replying to me. In fact one of them has blocked me.

I'm not sure if this is just sod's law or evidence of something more dodgy.