1 June 2010
Recently, I have needed a rocket up my arse on a Monday morning; or something similarly propulsive. I just can’t get going. I was half an hour late last Monday, 25 minutes late today. Admittedly if I plotted this on a graph I would be able to suggest that I was on an upward trend, but there’s no denying it’s a bit shit.
I’m trying to think of reasons why this may be. I’m not a morning person anyway. I think fellow non-morning people have a bit too much of their reptile brain at work and, despite having naturally warmed blood, stagger about in the expectation of needing a few hours sitting on a rock before they can do anything useful. My pesky mammalian competitors, on the other hand, are bounding about catching sluggish moths long before I’ve managed to open a bottle of Lucozade.
Come to think of it, I always am rather cold in the mornings. Maybe I should try catching things with my tongue, or shutting my eyes and seeing if I can detect mice through body heat alone. There might be something in this.
Monday 14 June 2010
Friday 11 June 2010
Victim
31 May 2010
Tonight I’m going to get stabbed in the balls. Six times. The person who will do the stabbing is going to enjoy it and will probably crow about it on Facebook. He usually does.
There is a debate in the media as to whether the state is on the side of the victim or the criminal. This is silly.
The state is on the side of monkeys.
Has a monkey ever been convicted of any crime in this country? Never! It’s a fix. And with an infinite number of them up a tree somewhere typing Shakespeare there must be some hanging about causing trouble. It’s a Government cover up and I for one have had enough of it.
Tonight I’m going to get stabbed in the balls. Six times. The person who will do the stabbing is going to enjoy it and will probably crow about it on Facebook. He usually does.
There is a debate in the media as to whether the state is on the side of the victim or the criminal. This is silly.
The state is on the side of monkeys.
Has a monkey ever been convicted of any crime in this country? Never! It’s a fix. And with an infinite number of them up a tree somewhere typing Shakespeare there must be some hanging about causing trouble. It’s a Government cover up and I for one have had enough of it.
Bating
30 May 2010
This is another word that people use because it exists in a clichéd sentence. In this case “I wait with bated breath”.
Apparently it means lessened, so the cliché means that the waiting person has levels of anticipation that means they can scarcely breathe. I can scarcely breathe at the moment, but there’s no bating going on, I’m just desperate to go to sleep.
Whatever is wrong with me, it is refusing to go away. If I become any more zombie-like I will actually start eating people. It was inevitable that I’d never get to be any thing cool like a vampire or werewolf.
Is there a Facebook quiz called “which classic supernatural beast are you? “ I bet there fucking is.
This is another word that people use because it exists in a clichéd sentence. In this case “I wait with bated breath”.
Apparently it means lessened, so the cliché means that the waiting person has levels of anticipation that means they can scarcely breathe. I can scarcely breathe at the moment, but there’s no bating going on, I’m just desperate to go to sleep.
Whatever is wrong with me, it is refusing to go away. If I become any more zombie-like I will actually start eating people. It was inevitable that I’d never get to be any thing cool like a vampire or werewolf.
Is there a Facebook quiz called “which classic supernatural beast are you? “ I bet there fucking is.
Thursday 10 June 2010
Goddamn
May 29 2010
Now there’s a word! But having been given wordy permission to rail against the world I find my aim diffuse and uncertain. At what do I launch my goddamn tirade? I surely have to keep my powder dry on the ConDem coalition, for they will do many evil things before the year is up. The England cricket team appear to be operating at a satisfactory level and my play is going quite well, despite the looming threat of Primark Chinos.
Work is OK, though difficult when I have all the energy of a stick of celery, the weather is disappointing but not actually dire…
Can it be that life is actually OK?
Of course not. For it contains gelatine! Goddamn, mother fucking gelatine. Always lurking away ready to piss me off. Today was a work birthday for someone who brought in an impressive selection of M and S chocolate snacks as a treat. A friend Facebooked that she had “fallen in love with rocky road mini bites”. I rushed to try them. They contain pork.
CHOCOLATE SNACKS CONTAINING PORK! What the fuck is wrong with the world? Do you really want ham centred Quality Streets and bacon flavour Celebrations? You goddamn fuckers.
See. There’s always something to annoy me. I feel better already.
Work is OK, though difficult when I have all the energy of a stick of celery, the weather is disappointing but not actually dire…
Can it be that life is actually OK?
Of course not. For it contains gelatine! Goddamn, mother fucking gelatine. Always lurking away ready to piss me off. Today was a work birthday for someone who brought in an impressive selection of M and S chocolate snacks as a treat. A friend Facebooked that she had “fallen in love with rocky road mini bites”. I rushed to try them. They contain pork.
CHOCOLATE SNACKS CONTAINING PORK! What the fuck is wrong with the world? Do you really want ham centred Quality Streets and bacon flavour Celebrations? You goddamn fuckers.
See. There’s always something to annoy me. I feel better already.
Kilohertz
27 May 2010
I don’t know the last time I listened to the radio. I’m not sure why I never do it. One of my favourite things in the entire world is a radio series – the 1981 BBC “Lord of the Rings” adaptation which remains (with apologies to Peter Jackson) the very best adaption of Tolkien’s works to date, and is indeed so good that there’s an argument to be had for it being better than the books (you’d lose the argument, but you could have it without looking like a complete arse).
Every now and again someone sends me a link for a radio show, particularly if it is in some way related to Charlie Brooker, and I listen, laugh and completely forget that I could tune in for myself without using iPlayer.
So I miss out on the today programme, on R4’s selection of experimental comedy shows, on new music and on really annoying bastards doing breakfast shows and being enormously smug. It’s deprivation, that’s what it is, and self-imposed.
I think my problem with the radio was summed up the first time I listened to Brooker’s show “So Good It’s Bad”. The iPlayer helpfully provides a graphic while you listen, in this case Charlie Brooker in a quilted smoking jacket looking fairly disgusted with everything. I stared at it for a full ten minutes before it occurred to me that I didn’t need to. I started doing something else and immediately lost track of what was going on in the show.
I lack radio skills. I am a failure.
I don’t know the last time I listened to the radio. I’m not sure why I never do it. One of my favourite things in the entire world is a radio series – the 1981 BBC “Lord of the Rings” adaptation which remains (with apologies to Peter Jackson) the very best adaption of Tolkien’s works to date, and is indeed so good that there’s an argument to be had for it being better than the books (you’d lose the argument, but you could have it without looking like a complete arse).
Every now and again someone sends me a link for a radio show, particularly if it is in some way related to Charlie Brooker, and I listen, laugh and completely forget that I could tune in for myself without using iPlayer.
So I miss out on the today programme, on R4’s selection of experimental comedy shows, on new music and on really annoying bastards doing breakfast shows and being enormously smug. It’s deprivation, that’s what it is, and self-imposed.
I think my problem with the radio was summed up the first time I listened to Brooker’s show “So Good It’s Bad”. The iPlayer helpfully provides a graphic while you listen, in this case Charlie Brooker in a quilted smoking jacket looking fairly disgusted with everything. I stared at it for a full ten minutes before it occurred to me that I didn’t need to. I started doing something else and immediately lost track of what was going on in the show.
I lack radio skills. I am a failure.
Storey
26 May 2010
I don’t like heights very much.
It’s not that I’m terrified of them, and it’s not that I don’t quite enjoy them in some regards, but too much exposure to loftiness and a I get a little nervous. Maybe it’s working for 15 years on the second storey. It’s mundane.
This has got worse as I’ve got older. Admittedly most things have got worse as I’ve got older, including my ability o handle alcohol, my skin tone and my ability to concentrate on one thing for more than two minutes, and all of these things have a greater day to day impact on my life. But it’s still a shame.
A few years ago I was holidaying in New Zealand, on only my second real trip away from the UK. I had fallen in with a group of people – who were mostly much younger than me – and as we got to Lake Taupo on the north island they were determined to Skydive.
Being a bit reticent about elevation, I decided I would give this a miss and await them on the ground.
I hadn’t reckoned, however, on that pesky desire not to be left out of the fun. As I watched them handing over their NZ$300 to the receptionist and get told when their tiny plane would leave I began to feel a little resentful of my own cowardice. I ummed. I’m sorry to say, fair reader, that I may even have aahed. I weighed up terror against being all bored and regretful, and (unusually for me) decided I would tweak the nose of the dreadful spindly killer fish and give Skydiving a go. And there was always the idea that I might tackle my mild fear of heights and emerge a stronger man for it.
Oh, it’s all find and games at first, as they give you a blue (literal) jump suit and poke a camcorder in your face. The terror still isn’t real as they buckle you up to the harness with which your tandem expert will eventually cleave himself unto you. But as they march you out of the preparatory hangar and you see the light aircraft – which has been quite clearly constructed out of used cigarette packets and a tube of Uhu glue – it all gets quite scary.
I was already having second thoughts as we took off. The cardboard plane was rickety enough, which just served to remind me that I was about to be surrounded by nothing but air. I felt sick. There are photos of me looking bleached of all colour. Still, I thought, if it comes to it I don’t have to jump. A waste of $300, yes, but no one is going to make me.
And then it dawned on me. I was right at the front of the plane.
It was a narrow plane. Perhaps they hadn’t found enough cigarette packets, but the design was such that if someone decided that they didn’t fancy this jumping lark it was going to be horribly awkward squeezing everyone else past him. As my tandemee (an insane Aussie whose name was something like Killer Bob) glee pointed out that we still had half the ascent to go, I started to realise that I was a bit stuck. I could jump, or I could do something even more unimaginable.
I could inconvenience everyone else.
I began to panic in earnest. Could I move before we reached the correct altitude and, in effect, multi-task my meekness? No, we were belted firmly and there was no room to manoeuvre. If I shrank to one side would they get passed me? Probably, with a lot of climbing and kneeing each other in the face. No, there was nothing for it.
I would have to skydive out of sheer Englishness.
No half paralysed with fear, I allowed myself to be dragged to the open door of the plane, was shown the infinitely terrifying blue of the endless sky (which scares me far more than the ground, so much for one-size-fits-all psychology) and was pushed off.
The really odd thing was that I was so terrified of the general falling through the air thing, that it didn’t occur to me to be afraid of dying. It wasn’t until long after the parachute had opened that I remembered that there is always a small but real risk of malfunction. I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. This says everything you need to know about fear. It’s basically shit.
The other odd things was that I recall that I absolutely fucking loved it. But I say “I recall” for a good reason. I can’t conjure up the feeling anymore. I have no physical memory of that adrenalin rush, I just recall that I once had it. The fear, on the other hand, was so intense that I can still feel it now.
The upshot is that these days I am even more scared of heights than I ever was. But I can watch the official video of my jump with a certain amount of pride, even if my technical contribution to the whole process was the screaming. But I’m not doing it again. Oh no. Fuck right off.
I don’t like heights very much.
It’s not that I’m terrified of them, and it’s not that I don’t quite enjoy them in some regards, but too much exposure to loftiness and a I get a little nervous. Maybe it’s working for 15 years on the second storey. It’s mundane.
This has got worse as I’ve got older. Admittedly most things have got worse as I’ve got older, including my ability o handle alcohol, my skin tone and my ability to concentrate on one thing for more than two minutes, and all of these things have a greater day to day impact on my life. But it’s still a shame.
A few years ago I was holidaying in New Zealand, on only my second real trip away from the UK. I had fallen in with a group of people – who were mostly much younger than me – and as we got to Lake Taupo on the north island they were determined to Skydive.
Being a bit reticent about elevation, I decided I would give this a miss and await them on the ground.
I hadn’t reckoned, however, on that pesky desire not to be left out of the fun. As I watched them handing over their NZ$300 to the receptionist and get told when their tiny plane would leave I began to feel a little resentful of my own cowardice. I ummed. I’m sorry to say, fair reader, that I may even have aahed. I weighed up terror against being all bored and regretful, and (unusually for me) decided I would tweak the nose of the dreadful spindly killer fish and give Skydiving a go. And there was always the idea that I might tackle my mild fear of heights and emerge a stronger man for it.
Oh, it’s all find and games at first, as they give you a blue (literal) jump suit and poke a camcorder in your face. The terror still isn’t real as they buckle you up to the harness with which your tandem expert will eventually cleave himself unto you. But as they march you out of the preparatory hangar and you see the light aircraft – which has been quite clearly constructed out of used cigarette packets and a tube of Uhu glue – it all gets quite scary.
I was already having second thoughts as we took off. The cardboard plane was rickety enough, which just served to remind me that I was about to be surrounded by nothing but air. I felt sick. There are photos of me looking bleached of all colour. Still, I thought, if it comes to it I don’t have to jump. A waste of $300, yes, but no one is going to make me.
And then it dawned on me. I was right at the front of the plane.
It was a narrow plane. Perhaps they hadn’t found enough cigarette packets, but the design was such that if someone decided that they didn’t fancy this jumping lark it was going to be horribly awkward squeezing everyone else past him. As my tandemee (an insane Aussie whose name was something like Killer Bob) glee pointed out that we still had half the ascent to go, I started to realise that I was a bit stuck. I could jump, or I could do something even more unimaginable.
I could inconvenience everyone else.
I began to panic in earnest. Could I move before we reached the correct altitude and, in effect, multi-task my meekness? No, we were belted firmly and there was no room to manoeuvre. If I shrank to one side would they get passed me? Probably, with a lot of climbing and kneeing each other in the face. No, there was nothing for it.
I would have to skydive out of sheer Englishness.
No half paralysed with fear, I allowed myself to be dragged to the open door of the plane, was shown the infinitely terrifying blue of the endless sky (which scares me far more than the ground, so much for one-size-fits-all psychology) and was pushed off.
The really odd thing was that I was so terrified of the general falling through the air thing, that it didn’t occur to me to be afraid of dying. It wasn’t until long after the parachute had opened that I remembered that there is always a small but real risk of malfunction. I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. This says everything you need to know about fear. It’s basically shit.
The other odd things was that I recall that I absolutely fucking loved it. But I say “I recall” for a good reason. I can’t conjure up the feeling anymore. I have no physical memory of that adrenalin rush, I just recall that I once had it. The fear, on the other hand, was so intense that I can still feel it now.
The upshot is that these days I am even more scared of heights than I ever was. But I can watch the official video of my jump with a certain amount of pride, even if my technical contribution to the whole process was the screaming. But I’m not doing it again. Oh no. Fuck right off.
Resource
25 May 2010
I don’t know if I count as resourceful. I’m certainly not very practical, but I do manage to find a way through life despite, essentially, being so grossly unprepared for it that I should be dead about 50,000 times over, probably through malnutrition or accidentally forgetting that standing in front of elephants is dangerous.
Life’s a big, scary complicated thing. I imagine that most people don’t spend an enormous amount of time considering their relationship to shifting tectonic plates, evolution, solar flares, wildebeest migrations, mud, isotopes, the orange harvest, Mount Kilimanjaro and Uncle Ben’s boil in a bag egg fried rice. You’d never get anything done. So I often like to remind myself that no-one – no matter that they might be successful game players in the competition of Life like Rupert Murdoch or Sir Terry Tesco or whatever his name is, actually knows very much in the big scheme of things. They might know more about high finance and the manipulation of ordinary human beings, but they’d be stuck if they were asked to extemporise for 30 seconds on what makes a toaster happy.
These things get me through the day.
I don’t know if I count as resourceful. I’m certainly not very practical, but I do manage to find a way through life despite, essentially, being so grossly unprepared for it that I should be dead about 50,000 times over, probably through malnutrition or accidentally forgetting that standing in front of elephants is dangerous.
Life’s a big, scary complicated thing. I imagine that most people don’t spend an enormous amount of time considering their relationship to shifting tectonic plates, evolution, solar flares, wildebeest migrations, mud, isotopes, the orange harvest, Mount Kilimanjaro and Uncle Ben’s boil in a bag egg fried rice. You’d never get anything done. So I often like to remind myself that no-one – no matter that they might be successful game players in the competition of Life like Rupert Murdoch or Sir Terry Tesco or whatever his name is, actually knows very much in the big scheme of things. They might know more about high finance and the manipulation of ordinary human beings, but they’d be stuck if they were asked to extemporise for 30 seconds on what makes a toaster happy.
These things get me through the day.
Sunday 6 June 2010
May
24 May 2010
It's a good job I'm running so far behind. Imagine if this had come up under a June heading! How embarrassing would that have been???
Last night I met an old friend who's girlfriend is expecting their first child. They want to call it May (if she's a girl). But she's going to be born in November. They're not letting that put them off though, especially since November is a bit of a handful and could confuse people (though I do know someone called October). I suppose most of the months make passable names, with the possible exception of February, which you wouldn't want to be associated with and which is a bit tricky to spell, especially if you're 6. Though it could give her an edge in spelling bees.
Do we have spelling bees here yet? It doesn't sound very difficult anyway. B.E.E.S. There, that wasn't so hard. If they hold a Spelling Chrysanthemum* let me know.
* this is the first time I've had to spell chrysanthemum since its correct spelling was ruthlessly drummed into my head 33 years ago. Just goes to show. I'm not sure what is goes to show, but it does, nevertheless. Which is a word a little like chrysanthemum. Nevertheless chrysanthemums. I want that on my tombstone.
It's a good job I'm running so far behind. Imagine if this had come up under a June heading! How embarrassing would that have been???
Last night I met an old friend who's girlfriend is expecting their first child. They want to call it May (if she's a girl). But she's going to be born in November. They're not letting that put them off though, especially since November is a bit of a handful and could confuse people (though I do know someone called October). I suppose most of the months make passable names, with the possible exception of February, which you wouldn't want to be associated with and which is a bit tricky to spell, especially if you're 6. Though it could give her an edge in spelling bees.
Do we have spelling bees here yet? It doesn't sound very difficult anyway. B.E.E.S. There, that wasn't so hard. If they hold a Spelling Chrysanthemum* let me know.
* this is the first time I've had to spell chrysanthemum since its correct spelling was ruthlessly drummed into my head 33 years ago. Just goes to show. I'm not sure what is goes to show, but it does, nevertheless. Which is a word a little like chrysanthemum. Nevertheless chrysanthemums. I want that on my tombstone.
Cozy
23 May 2010
I'm falling rapidly behind. I have to take little snatches of time available to me because I'm frankly so over-committed I'm probably breaking the working time directive (except, y'know, no-one's paying me for most of the activity).
And I wish I was cozy. I'm in my bedroom tapping away, and it ought to be cozy, because it's been warm outside for days, but it's hard to be cozy in a room with natural ambient temperature of 83%. Sleeping in here sometimes feels like taking a shallow bath. When I confronting my letting agents with the humidity issue they told me to sleep with the door open. When I tried it, not only did all the local wildlife wander in through the french doors, the humidity went up by 2%. Buggers.
Anyway, I'll catch up eventually. When I'm dead, possibly.
I'm falling rapidly behind. I have to take little snatches of time available to me because I'm frankly so over-committed I'm probably breaking the working time directive (except, y'know, no-one's paying me for most of the activity).
And I wish I was cozy. I'm in my bedroom tapping away, and it ought to be cozy, because it's been warm outside for days, but it's hard to be cozy in a room with natural ambient temperature of 83%. Sleeping in here sometimes feels like taking a shallow bath. When I confronting my letting agents with the humidity issue they told me to sleep with the door open. When I tried it, not only did all the local wildlife wander in through the french doors, the humidity went up by 2%. Buggers.
Anyway, I'll catch up eventually. When I'm dead, possibly.
Wednesday 2 June 2010
Hotcake
22 May 2010
Going like hotcakes. I had to sday that, because it's the only surviving instance where the term "hotcakes" can still be used. Would you walk into a bakery and ask about their range of hotcakes? Would you annouce to your friends that they should bring hotcakes to the dinner party?
There clearly *are* still hotcakes out there. It's not as though hotcakes died out after a giant scone crashed into the earth causing a billion tons of crumbs to be flung into the atmosphere and denied cakes the hotness necessary to survive as a popular confection. Or the incursion of cold cakes hasn't driven them north, so only a few remain scratching a living in cake shops in the Inner Hebrides. We just don't call them hotcakes. I suppose it's like birds and dinosaurs. Except, y'know, with flour as well as eggs.
All of which makes we wonder about the insistence of the British to cling to their little saying. There's just something nicely balanced about the phrase "going like hotcakes", something also inoffensive and pleasant. Even if we don't call anything a hotcake anymore, we can still imagine eating one and having a nice smile as we munch it. "Going like undervalued public ututily shares under Mrs Thatcher" just wouldn't have the same ring to it.
In so many ways.
Going like hotcakes. I had to sday that, because it's the only surviving instance where the term "hotcakes" can still be used. Would you walk into a bakery and ask about their range of hotcakes? Would you annouce to your friends that they should bring hotcakes to the dinner party?
There clearly *are* still hotcakes out there. It's not as though hotcakes died out after a giant scone crashed into the earth causing a billion tons of crumbs to be flung into the atmosphere and denied cakes the hotness necessary to survive as a popular confection. Or the incursion of cold cakes hasn't driven them north, so only a few remain scratching a living in cake shops in the Inner Hebrides. We just don't call them hotcakes. I suppose it's like birds and dinosaurs. Except, y'know, with flour as well as eggs.
All of which makes we wonder about the insistence of the British to cling to their little saying. There's just something nicely balanced about the phrase "going like hotcakes", something also inoffensive and pleasant. Even if we don't call anything a hotcake anymore, we can still imagine eating one and having a nice smile as we munch it. "Going like undervalued public ututily shares under Mrs Thatcher" just wouldn't have the same ring to it.
In so many ways.
Son
21 May 2010
Children freak me out. Not because they look a bit like aliens, with their big heads on little bodies and Roswell-esque eyes. Not because nothing that small and frail should be able to make that amount of noise. No, they freak me out because of the effect they have on other people.
To a non-parent like me, who has yet to be exposed to the toxins of the "parental bond" and paternal instinct, the change on new parents looks like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I'm sure to a parent it all feels terribly natural. To the cynical observer it's deeply creepy.
To me, the worst thing about your baby crying all night is that you can't sleep. To your actual parent, that's coupled with the anguish of the fact that your baby is crying in the first place. Are they in terrible anguish? Are you doing something wrong (if you read the Daily Mail you will be extra convinced that you are, but that's OK, because you will deserve to feel bad)? Will they hate you when they're 31 because you couldn't comfort them? You'll spend the next day, all shadow-eyed and narcoleptic, expressing your pain at watching their little face endure all that anguish.
They probably had an itchy bum.
This is why it's probably a good thing that I don't have a son or daughter, though if I did, I'm sure I'd be infected with the same brain-sucked-out-through-my-earholes devotion that everyone else seems to be. And that freaks me out more than anything else.
Children freak me out. Not because they look a bit like aliens, with their big heads on little bodies and Roswell-esque eyes. Not because nothing that small and frail should be able to make that amount of noise. No, they freak me out because of the effect they have on other people.
To a non-parent like me, who has yet to be exposed to the toxins of the "parental bond" and paternal instinct, the change on new parents looks like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I'm sure to a parent it all feels terribly natural. To the cynical observer it's deeply creepy.
To me, the worst thing about your baby crying all night is that you can't sleep. To your actual parent, that's coupled with the anguish of the fact that your baby is crying in the first place. Are they in terrible anguish? Are you doing something wrong (if you read the Daily Mail you will be extra convinced that you are, but that's OK, because you will deserve to feel bad)? Will they hate you when they're 31 because you couldn't comfort them? You'll spend the next day, all shadow-eyed and narcoleptic, expressing your pain at watching their little face endure all that anguish.
They probably had an itchy bum.
This is why it's probably a good thing that I don't have a son or daughter, though if I did, I'm sure I'd be infected with the same brain-sucked-out-through-my-earholes devotion that everyone else seems to be. And that freaks me out more than anything else.
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