Annunciation

The Arch-Angel Gabriel is not on hand to help me with this, but I'm going to try predicting the future.

• The new "There's Nothing Like Australia" adverts will result in a fall in the number of tourists, as potential travellers decide that Butlin's looks more appetising.
  
• England will put in some great performances in Cricket World Cup, but will lose in the semi-finals after Captain Andrew Strauss loses his belly button in a freak fielding accident
• David Cameron will be privatised to help pay down the national debt. He will be sold at below market rate, and some of his suits will be immediately sold off to boost his share price.
  
• I will drink one bottle of Irn Bru too many and turn orange at a comically inconvenient moment
• George Osborne will have all his policies reversed by the competition commission, since "being a rapacious cunt" puts him in direct competition with 87% of the private sector.
• Lady GaGa will attend the VMAs in a dress made of frog spawn
• The British Summer will be the oddest since records began. The previous oddest was 1986 when Michael Parkinson kept pulling an enigmatic expression every time the sun came out.
• Currant Buns will, due to a slightly misreading, be re-designated as Retro Buns
• The Daily Mail will announce that tables give you cancer.
  
• Tottenham Hotspur will demolish the Houses of Parliament to build a new stadium, but will offer to build a small parliament in Crystal Palace to preserve the required democratic legacy.
• Mexico will declare war on Richard Hammond, unless he agrees to eat his own hair wrapped in a burrito.
  
• A record 3% of the British people will notice that Rhodri Morgan is no longer First Minister of Wales
• In a shock result, 13% of votes in the local Government elections will go to cheese sandwiches, giving cheddar lunches the balance of power in a number of key local authorities
• Speedy will stop typing this list in about 4 seco
  

Collagen

Nizorel have now removed animal collagen from their shampoo. I thought you might like to know that.

That made me wonder a little more about collagen, and its use in cosmetic procedures. One website informed me:

"Several types of Collagen fillers are on the market. For example, collagen fillers containing human collagen include CosmoDerm and Cosmoplast. Cow (bovine) collagen fillers include Zyderm and Zyplast. ArteFill is a hybrid gel filler consisting of millions of synthetic microspheres (polymethylmethacrylate or PMMA) suspended in purified bovine (cow) collagen."

Synthetic microspheres suspended in purified bovine collagen, eh? And who is donating the human collagen? Apparently there aren't lines of plump skinned toddlers being marched down to the Pfeizer HQ to alleviate their parents' poverty through skin juice removal; scientists can make their own human collagen. Though if they do that is it really human collagen? It's never been in a human. It might be the same stuff, but there's a sense of ownership implied here. It would be like calling an apple OS compatible computer a Mac. It isn't, even if it's identical in all serious respects? It's nothing more than a human-compatible rip-off.

Humans clearly need a patent. I'm human. Do I get any money every time someone makes some human collagen? Everytime someone spends £100 on getting some quorn-style human juice pumped into their forehead, a proportion of the fee ought to be hived off, dividing by 6,000,000,000 and shared out amongst everyone around the world. Except Rupert Murdoch, a man who clearly has no collagen, and is only just human.

Charlatanry

I'm quite a lucky fellow. Not in the sense that particularly marvellous things happen to me. More in the sense that not too many bad things happen - and I think I'd take that any day.

One particular way in which I've been fortunate is that I've never been seriously exploited by anyone I trusted. Of course, when it comes to it this could be down to the fact that I don't have any friends and don't trust anyone, but statistics are statistics and I've not been taken to the cleaners by a mate. Except that time that one of them showed me to the local launderette when I couldn't find it.

The fact that calling the absence of bad luck does not really equate with good luck has occured to me, but I'm in a positive mood so don't spoil it. And the other day I was out to dinner with some old compadres from my University Students Union, and was reminiscing about the particularly loathsome behaviour of a former Social Secretary, who went out with a mutual friend, borrowed her life savings for a "business idea" and promptly disappeared. Hopefully wherever he goes this story follows him around and fucks his life up - if Michael Henchard couldn't escape his past, neither should this little toad.

That was a bit serious. When I first got given charlatanry I nearly wrote about early 1990s music. But that would have been a terrible joke, and as you know I wouldn't dream of making one of those.

Substance (wayleave)

I am caught in the horrible situation of wondering whether any of these random words have ever cropped up before. It's not that easy. But as I start to type about "substance", I realise that I have! Back in the mists of time I've had this one before. So what do I do?

One swaps of course.

WAYLEAVE

This what happens when you counter your fear of getting another repeat word by selecting "uncommon" on the Random Word generator. Uncommon? I think that might be a little understating the case when it comes to "wayleave". Still wayleave is finding a way through this tricky situation and out into the clear, so I should be grateful. God knows what I'll get if I select "obscure", though. Oh well, got to take a look.

Unprayerfulness. Is that more obscure than wayleave? Don't answer that.

Rewriting

As you can probably tell from the listless prose and occasionally hideous spelling on Trampling, I'm not a big fan off rewriting. Hell, I'm not even a big fan of proof reading. This is because - incontrovertibly - I am not an artist, or a craftsman, or any other kind of romantic classification that suggests someone applying inspiration to the polishing of well-balanced phrases. No, I'm a whimsical stream of consciousness waffler, somehow blagging it and hoping no-one notices.

Rewriting, for me, evokes the following scenario:

Me: [saying something - it doesn't really matter what]
Other: That's spot on. Let me write that down. Now, say that again.
Me: Say what?
Other: What you just said.
Me: I have no idea what I just said.
Other: You must have! It was brilliant!
Me: Really? What did I say?

If it was at all good the first time round, I won't make it better by fiddling with it. And if it was shit the first time, it's probably best just to forget about it.

(by the way, I know all this is self-indulgent bollocks, and am fully aware of the art of killing one's baby. Metaphorical baby-killing, that is, before anyone calls the authorities.)

Intellectual

I'm not feeling very intellectual at the moment. I'm not feeling very anything at the moment, but intellectual is one things that I'm currently feeling more not than many other things. My absence from this blog/project/experiment/self-indulgence is linked to the same intellectual stupor, and is a source of massive - if slightly lethargic - irritation. I really wouldn't mind waking up one day and being able to pronounce the word chrysanthemum, but a blank mind just won't do.

Of course, I [don't] hear you ask, to suggest that I'm not currently feeling intellectual suggests that there's ever a time when I do. Arrogance! Conceit! Lettuce! And of course, you [i.e. no-one] is quite correct. I have about the same right to describe myself as an intellectual as Keira Knightly has to say "I'm really popular with women". But all of us, from time to time, is staggered by the sheer stupidity of people they encounter, and for a brief (and vaguely intoxicating) time get to think of themselves as intellectual by sheer contrast.

Not at the moment. Someone would have to be an actual shuffling zombie*, devoid of all thought except where the next piece of brain might be coming from before I would hold myself up for positive comparison. And even then, I'm thinking so slowly that I'd forget to run away from the zombie whilst comparing myself favourably to it, and get munched.

So I'll shuffle off now to the front room and stare with a perplexed expression at a BBC3 comedy. It's where I belong.

* or George Osborne

Roll

When I was a kid they were buns. I’m not sure who was responsible for this terminology, since to all the other children they were rolls. My Geordie Dad is suspect number one, though food was normally “named” by my Mum, if only because she did more with it. My Dad’s relationship with food was purely as an end user.

I don’t mean my Mum named food. We didn’t have a tin of tuna called Harold, or a loaf of bread called Gunhilda, though we almost certainly should have done. The world seems divided up into those things that you are allowed to name – pets, cars, pot plants, boats, stuffed animals, genitals*, bicycles, mystical swords etc – and things that you are not – trees, curtains, knees, staplers**, non-mystical swords, fog, socks etc. Who makes up these rules anyway? Can I fight back by naming the rule that stops you calling things by a human name something? Can I call it Mary?

Conventions are being undermined all the time. There’s a TV channel called Dave, and that’s also the name of a friend’s dog. Somewhere out there is a geranium called Simon. And a gerbil called Derek. That’s all well and good, but when are we going to get a human called Pipsqueak?

Possibly when Peaches Geldof becomes a mother.

* Honest to God I have no pet name for my penis. But having said that I’d be absolutely horrified if any of my friends admitted to having one (a name for it, that is), so you have no reason to trust me on this.

** Though I did once have a stapler called Maureen.