The Boiled Egg of Infinity

The TV is on behind me as I sit here and mess about on the web. An episode of Voyager has just finished and Fear Factor has started. Here is how two of the contestants introduced themselves as they walked onto the show for the first time:

“I need to remind people that I’m a Mexi-can, not a Mexi-can’t.”

“I think I’ll win this. I can see into the future because I’m a pisces.”

I don’t know about you, or the show, but those two sure as hell put the fear of all that’s good and holy into me. They get to apply to be on TV shows, they get to vote and they live in a country where you can buy guns.

Today I got hit by a van.

The guy driving it was parked where he shouldn’t have been, and when the person he was waiting for hopped in, he launched the thing into reverse (not thinking for a moment that he had…oh, I dunno…PARKED ON A PEDESTRIAN CROSSING) and managed to bump into me as I made my way across the road. Being what could be charitably described as built along “robust” lines I was able to keep my feet and loosed a torrent of angry shouts at the driver, as did a colleague of mine who happened to be with me at the time.

Surprisingly the driver seemed angry at me – I don’t know why, perhaps he thought my arm would dent his bumper – and off he went on his merry way. I know it sounds stupid but by that point I was so angry and had gotten such a fright that I forgot to take his registration number and report the daft bastard to the coppers. I’m fine – a little tender around the right wrist but otherwise undamaged.

Actually now I think about it there must have been something in the air today when it comes to new experiences to do with motor vehicles. Today I changed a lightbulb in my car and was damn proud to have done it, too. Okay, laugh away. I know MCF is probably calling his dad through to come look at the guy on the web who is so proud of himself for having changed one single lightbulb. All I will say in my defence is that it was a first for me and that I have an arts degree, so doing anything involving hardware is a big step for me.

So there we go. Talk about the school of hard knocks.

Okay, I gotta ask because it’s killing me: what is it with thongs? Or, more accurately, what is it with showing thongs? Over the past few days I’ve been doing Christmas shopping with my better half and, as you might imagine, we’ve ducked into a few coffee shops for a drink and a rest along the way. And almost everywhere you turn, there is at least one girl pitched waaaay forward in a chair, hipster trousers down low and shirt pulling up high, with half her thong-clad arse on display like a blancmange being slowly cut in two by some cheesewire!

I don’t know what’s worse: the sight of someone sitting like that, looking like they have two bald-headed men trying to burst out of the back of their trousers, or the strange double take it makes me do whenever I see it. I’m not a prude, and if it makes them feel good then I suppose that’s fine, but it jars you a little when you’re in Starbucks picking up a coffee and daydreaming. The internal monologue goes something like this: god I need this drink hurry up and serve me this music is horrible what do I still have to buy oh look there’s someone’s bare arse I still need to pick up that book damn that was her coffee not mine hang on was that a bare arse did I remember to order that biscotti I hope it snows this year ye gods the material in that thong looks like it could go at any moment oh good here’s my drink bare arse bare arse BARE ARSE IN THE ROOM!

I suppose I’ll just have to embrace the spirit of the season and turn the other cheek. No pun intended, of course.

Today my better half found her wedding dress. I don’t mean a nice dress, a good looking dress or a possible frontrunner. I mean she found the dress. The dress she’s going to be married in. She sent me away for a walk for a half hour as she went into the bridal shop and half an hour later, she stood in front of me grinning, shaking and crying all at the same time as she told me she had found her wedding dress. Not only had she found it, the staff let her try it on, she liked it and the staff thought she looked fantastic in it.

I wanted to talk about something else tonight. For once I have a lot of things I want to talk about, but I’m bumping all of them for this. Today I stood in a Glasgow street in the rain, with Christmas music playing, people passing by, and I held my wife to be in my arms as she cried with sheer happiness. Time enough for everything else later: sometimes it’s just good to be alive.

Yesterday demonstrated to me that sometimes what seems like a good idea is really just a idea in disguise. Over the past few months my office has got increasingly messy and with recent staff moves and other stuff happening, it needed to be reorganised and tidied up. Fair enough, I thought, I’ll do it. See where the “bad idea” thing comes in? Six hours later the office was tidier, better organised and now had enough room to allow us to do our thing in comfort, and the only price I had to pay was muscles screaming out in agony and eyes like angry red tomatoes because an officeload of dust had gotten into them. Cheap at half the price.

On one of my frequent runs to the bin with rubbish (we had a lot of crap stored away that we were never going to use again) I ran into two colleagues, one of whom was talking about the new fur coat she had bought herself. Somewhat shocked that anyone today would buy fur I mentioned that I was surprised that it was still in fashion. “Oh yeah,” said the other colleague, “It’s just fox fur.”

This moved me from “shocked” to “outraged” in less time than it takes to say it. “Foxes?” I cried. “They killed foxes to make your coat? Is that even legal?”

Long story short, after a bit of coming and going, turns out she meant faux fur, not fox fur. She just thought you pronounced it “fox”. I thought it best to advise her on the correct pronunciation because that’s really one that you want to get right first time when you’re talking to people.

Strangely enough what I did right after that was to download the newest version of FireFox…and now I think about it, I hope I’ve been pronouncing that right all this time.

I was fascinated (though slightly dismayed) by this story at the BBC – seems some Italian scientists have worked out that romantic love lasts a year at the very most. Apparently it’s all down to chemical levels in the brain, and over time the levels of chemicals drop to the point where they’re the same in married or single people. It’s a weird thing – I know we need to know how we work and I can understand that the frontiers of knowledge need to be pushed back, but I also like to think that we are something nobler than just a watery bag of chemicals reacting with one another. Love shouldn’t be rendered down into its component parts: call me silly, but I think it has to be more than that.

One amusing thing though – the scientists apparently published their findings in the psychoneuroendocrinology journal. With a catchy title like that, you just know it’s the journal where all the cool psychoneuroendocrinologists hang out. I had a look at their site, looked along some of the article titles, and amused myself with the big words and my utter, utter inability even to put together a vague idea in my head of what the article was actually about. Have a go yourself: I swear if you understand any of them I’ll pin a gold medal to your chest.

Note: before you start reading this one, you should know I am in full-on, maximum power, all-speed-ahead “whining teenage blogger” mode. I make no apologies for any self pity, railing against parents, spontaneous “I’m in pain” poetry or general tantrums that you might find as you read on. You have been warned.

For two nights running now I have been woken up by bad dreams which leave me rattled, on edge and unable to get back into a proper sleep. Consequently I’m probably more than a little cranky today, which is why I am grateful that staff holidays mean I have the office to myself for most of today. This allows me to stamp about, slam cupboards, aim the occasional slap in the direction of the printer and generally be in a foul mood without hurting anyone’s feelings or running the risk of getting fired for mistaking a member of staff for the printer.

Why do bad dreams possess such an ability to get under our skins and rattle us? Even now, hours after I got up, my mind is still wandering. I’m distracted, and I know it as I sit here and look through my list of things to do. I made that up on Friday, and right now I feel as if the organised person who made it up and left it on my desk can’t have been me.

There’s a guy outside my office right now, cleaning the windows. Quite an accomplishment when you consider I am two floors up, and even more impressive when you see he’s in a little basket, attached to a telescopic arm, which is itself attached to a truck, which has a guy driving it slowly round the building so he can clean all the windows. Truly I have struck my lowest ebb – as I sit here, I’m now coming to realise that the window cleaner is having more fun than I am.

Note – this is, obviously, just a minor setback. A brief bleak mood produced by a couple of nights of interrupted sleep by bad dreams. Normal service will be resumed from now on. I’m not going to be any more cheerful – fuck, whose blog have you been reading? – but I will at least try to restrain my inner pasty-faced teenager from getting out too much. Thank you.

Why do poker players in the tournaments on TV wear dark glasses? They’re indoors, in a dark room, and they’re wearing dark glasses. Is that why they lose hands? Can they actually see the cards they’re being dealt? Or are they just sitting there, a single bead of sweat making its way down their foreheads, giving themselves a headache as they try to make out if that’s a 3 or an 8?

When I turned my PC volume up at work the other day to watch the Children in Need Doctor Who special on my lunchbreak, why did I forget to turn the damn thing back down again? I mean it’s no real problem, but when hovering my mouse over a single link makes the TARDIS sound (which is a very distinctive sound) peal across the office while other people are on the phone it gets a little embarassing. And if you want to check that noise out, go here, scroll down and move your mouse pointer over the big blue police box. Just make sure you aren’t in a busy office when you do it.

Is it a mark of how productive my day was that I counted among its high points the fact that I found out (after much confusion) just what a Hollaback Girl is? Ever since I heard that damn song it’s been annoying me, but does it say more for or against me that I was so pleased finally to answer the question?

Should I cave in to temptation and pick up the first seasons of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm on DVD? They’re now getting pretty damn cheap, and I never watched them…are they any good? Will I laugh? Or do I watch enough TV as it is? And while I’m about it how about Arrested Development?

Could I possibly have used more links tonight?

Someone told me today that there are only 31 shopping days left till Christmas, and I have to admit I was shocked. When the hell did it get so late in the year? You would think having a blog would help with the whole “keeping track of time” thing, but apparently not: I’m as hopelessly lost and ill-organised as ever, only now I have documentary evidence to show people. Actually, much as I am tempted to write some piece filled with sarcastic bile about the excesses of the festive period, I have to be honest and tell you that I really enjoy this time of year. In fact in many ways I think I enjoy the run-up to Christmas more than I enjoy the day itself…I wonder why that is?

Anyway, Christmas approaches and the usual list of plans and things to be worked out has presented itself: time to get down to work. So tell all – are your plans for Christmas underway? Have you even started preparing? Are you one of those scary people who have it all finished and done with by now?

Someone pass me a pen – I need to make a list and check it twice…

Tonight as I pottered about the flat tidying up I finally yielded to an urge that has been building for a few weeks and stuck Transformers: The Movie into the DVD player. I fully intended to keep working as the film played, but to be perfectly honest it was barely into the second chapter before I had planted my ass firmly on the couch and ditched the tidying up.

It’s been a while since I had so much fun just sitting back and watching a movie. The dialogue is cheesy in the extreme and the rock tracks are as eighties as they come, but the animation is great and it took me right back to the first time I saw the film at Christmas in 1986. Also, Leonard Nimoy did one of the voices and it made me smile to think that I have still to tell the story of how I almost knocked Galvatron flat to the ground one day.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I seriously urge you to check it out. If you have seen it, either rent it out or dig out your copy and give it another viewing. There aren’t enough chances in the world today to see giant robots knocking seven shades of hell out of one another. The rock tracks, dodgy lines and air-guitar worthy riffs are just gravy. Go have fun.