From pollution to evolution

Today, we're going on an adventure. One of the little adventures that make up my daily life. Hopefully this'll be amusing, because now that I think on it, it is sort of funny.
My toilet broke last week. Wouldn't fill at all, I was chucking buckets into the cistern. Awward. However, some nice men came to fix it on Friday morning, which was good, but when I asked how they told me that they had, and I quote, the magic touch. Fine, I approve of magic and... touching... um...
What?
But I did kind of want to know what they did, fearing this might happen again. Sure enough, Friday evening I notice that while my toilet was full, it was also filling constantly at a very slow pace.
At around about this point, I get a phonecall asking if I'd like to come to dinner, which was a very kind offer that I did little justice to by having a small drink and seriously believing I'd become the living embodiment of rock.
Saturday morning tried to freeze me as I wandered to my lonely little car, but I fought back and made it home. The fog was rather pretty on the way back. Stumbling in at 9 in the morning and preparing for a shower, I notice the slight hissing from the toilet.
Well, being a modern man, I'm going to have to learn to fend for myself, aren't I? And I'm a university graduate, after all, so I'm at least a little intelligent, surely something like highly skilled, highly paid labour in which I have no training shouldn't be difficult?
I discovered, that day, that I am no plumber. I should never, ever plumb. I should not, in fact, ever attempt anything more complicated than applying Toilet Duck to my porcelain throne.
Once I'd gone downstairs and turned the water off, stopping the gushing torrent that was spewing forth, I decided it was time to drive home, have a bit of a shout at the motorway and feel thoroughly embarassed.

But now the water's back, I have tea and I can attend to the giant pile of... washing up...
Damn it.

If you're in the mood for something a little more in the style of the normal blog, I seem to have scrawled this while sitting in the Parish last Wednesday. That's a good place for writing in, I think.
-
You get a unique view of the world from behind a desk. Everything's so much more... ordered. More structured. It makes me think about people a little, I suppose.
Animals. Animals had a pretty good plan. Carry on beneficial traits through selective breeding, carry on living a pretty relaxed existence. They build themselves up to be good at eating plants or animals or people or whatever, then they just roll with it. They know what they're going to be doing from birth, there's the plan right there, there's no thought about what their career aspirations are, what their long term goals are. No. There's the next meal and avoiding predators.
But not people.
In many, many ways, civilisation is the best thing that could have happened to us. We've got medicine and writing and Vodaphone. Thing is, it's made us all completely insane. You're an animal and you're hungry. If you're wild, you hunt or forage. Domesticated, you shout at your owner. People, though, we question it:
And I really that hungry?
What am I in the mood to eat?
Can I be bothered to cook?
Do I have enough calories left today?
We question our most base instincts. I don't think we're too far off of managing to get rid of (or at least suppress) instinct altogether. I mean, it's actually sort of doable with a little mental effort. People go on diets, take vows of celibacy, all sorts of stuff and they actually feel stronger for it. They feel more powerful, morally superior, more... alive for having made that effort. It's like humanity lends itself toward masochism.
We've got all this technology and all these little habits that block out those little signals that come from your head. I don't know how good that is, really. I mean, I'm all for self control and maturity, but maybe it's actually good for you to cut loose every once in a while and just... live life in the way your body was built for. Maybe overindulge every once in a while, laugh a little too hard at something that wasn't really that funny, lounge around and stare at the ceiling for the sheer, unadultered hell of it.
I've stopped listening to a lot of my old inhibitions from back in my college days. It's been terribly liberating.

On a side note:

I just realised that I've written 100 of these things, counting the myspace days. I never knew I had that much to say to the world. And it still sort of confuses me that people read it.

But thanks. All of you. Or two of you, I don't exactly know how my reader base is distributed. I mean that.

The thanks bit, not the distribution bit. Although that's accurate enough.

On curds, but not so much whey

I'm fond of experimentation. I'm becoming more bold about it, now that I've moved out, but I was always kind of into trying new things. Ever since I hit the age of 20, really.
Now I think of "university experimentation" and I'll be honest, I think of ambiguity in gender preference and drugs. TV seems to have conditioned me that way. However, I've never felt the need to make out with guys and I've never inhaled anything more ambitious than a lungfull of exhaust fumes or a cup of tea, if I was too vigourously quaffing.
And you have to sometimes. If it's a good cuppa.

But nothing entertaining, no. Up until now. For my previous experimentation has formed itself into a noble and wonderful quest. A misguided, potentially dangerous but thoroughly wonderful quest.
I'm going to eat my way through the entire Monty Python cheese shop sketch.

See, I had 2 highlights to my week during my work placement year. I would have had 3, but I didn't think I had time for visiting HUGS (turns out that really, I probably would have with better organisation). I had Friday's bacon and cartoons night and I had shopping night. Shopping night involved going to the supermarket, picking up a few bits and pieces and a trip to the cheese counter.
The cheese counter at your local Morrison's is a magical place. A place where every race, colour and creed can proudly present its dairy goods without fear of discrimination, where every nation proudly represents itself. Except Scotland, because they are stupid and never provided a regional cheese. I mean I've nothing against Scotland, but they need to represent themselves a bit more in the world of cheeses.
Every week, I'd get a new cheese just to see what it was like. Some days brought great and unexpected joy, like the pickled onion cheddar cheese and other days, like the unforgettable mint chocolate chip cheese day, left me with a lingering sense of horror and utter confusion. I mean seriously, what the crap? But no matter what, there was always new cheese day and every week, some new and interesting experience was had until I realised that I perhaps wasn't in the mood for that much cheese and inevitably just threw it on some pasta and tried some noodle experiments instead.
I've noticed something about Tesco cheeses, though. For one thing, for the really exotic stuff you have to brave the Cheese Man. He's a nice enough bloke, for sure, but he's very slightly unusual in a way I can't quite pinpoint. Never seems to look directly at you. He is the first peril of Neo-cheese night. The second comes in the pronounciation, because trying to say Gruyere with the kind of accent I've got makes you sound like a pretentious git. The third comes in ignoring how I just paid £2.50 for a block of cheese...
But I take these home and eat them and they are good. Splendid. But then I look back at some of the names...

Jarlsberg
Gruyere
Wensleydale
Roquefort (this week's offering)

And so a plan is forming...
I reckon I can eat my way through the entire sketch, you see. Not the bouzouki, but the rest of it for sure. Perhaps along the way I will catalogue any interesting experiences, but for now I'm laying down my plans.
I hope to emerge from this a little more cultured, a little wiser, but overall thoroughly satisfied.

And Hanna, if you're reading this (and I'm sort of sure you are), I just realised as I was buying the Roquefort that it is indeed sheep cheese. Goddamn it. I should have known you'd win in the end, even the supermarket is being converted to your way of thinking...

Innocence lost

I don't think people ever stop being children, deep down. I think perhaps the extent to which we're socially allowed to act like children changes, but you can get around that. The more you get comfortable with folk, the more you start to realise that you don't always need intellectual conversation. Sometimes all you need is to sit in a corner giggling at nothing much in particular.
I think alcohol helps. The way it knocks your inhibitions out of whack a little is sort of interesting at times. What's odd is that I find that caffeine works the same way, that it cranks your mental age down about a decade.
'cept that you're not as likely to wake up in the morning with a headache, a traffic cone and someone naked next to you after downing a relentless. Or at least I hope not, because I'd like to remember, should anyone appear in my apartment naked, how I ended up in that situation if only so that I could blog about it.
What was I saying?

We still play with toys, now we're adults. It's just that the toys change. When you're younger, you play with army men, dolls, toy cars, footballs and tranformers. When you're older, you play with guns, outfits, autotrader.com, footballs and transformers. And golf. I'm not sure that's something that has an analog in children's activities.
We still play games, too. They just involve less running around and chasing each other. Although I suppose you could argue that the whole idea of dating is one REALLY involved game of kiss chase or... whatever it's called. We never played that one, really. It's odd to me that we stop running so much when we get older, since our bodies have fully developed and running is both faster and easier, but I suppose you get a lot less energy as you get older. I'd like to know where that goes, y'know. It seems like as soon as half the people I know hit puberty, it was like a magic button with "lazy git" written on it was pushed.
I like that button.

It's a shame that we lose so many abilities that we have as children. They'd serve us so well as adults. Like the ability to learn things REALLY QUICKLY that people around you really would rather you didn't (things like annoying TV theme tunes, how to make rulers make that twanging noise on desks and the names of reproductive organs). We lose the ability to get away with anything because it's cute. We lose the ability to hold long, rambling conversations with complete strangers in the queue at supermarkets.
I don't want to grow up. I want to be mature, in that I know how to manage finances, cook, handle my time and still do a good job at work, but I never want to lose that childish mentality. Life is far, far more... ugh, I know it's a cliché, but life's far more magical if you can still see it as a kid would. If you can still get excited about mundane things, still appreciate stuff that other people become jaded to...

It occurs to me that in the future, if I ever have kids of my own, I'm either going to make a very entertaining kind of father or a horrifically embarassing one. And given that one of my life goals is to live long enough to become a senile old coot, I don't hold out much hope for little Andys. Or Andreas. Or whatever.

ABCB

As I sit here in my darkened flat,
My mind turns to the past.
Memories of journeys,
Of the day that I left Cas.

Though oft I've acted foolish,
I seldom bore regrets.
Even through embarassment
And things I ate on bets.

For truly are we blessed,
Those of us who know no fear.
Although, I must suspect
That future tales may start with beer. (Alright, that was a bit crappy. Run with it)


But perhaps the most mundane,
And yet, the most exciting,
Occur within these Internets
'pon which I am now writing.

An information superhighway.
A name no longer known.
Land of quite peculiar folk,
My home away from home.

I've travelled these dark waters,
This metaphoric sea.
I've braved the lolcats, trolls and lulz
And modern piracy.

And while I soldier cautiously,
Through nausea, fear and pain.
I know that in my hearts of hearts,
I'll Google once again.

For punishment is truly
That for which I am a glutton.
And even now I'm wonder what
Will spring from that search button.

It's strange, to me, that after all
The trash through which I've hiked,
That still I hold a special fear
Of stories told by Mike.

08/11/08
Well, back on the Internet again. Reunited and it feels so good.
So let's talk about time.

See, I've studied time. I mean REALLY studied time, I did a dissertation on it, read up on the subject of managing it for a solid 3 or 4 months, but I've also been paying attention to it. I'm coming to believe that time is a little like money or, to a lesser extent, tea bags. IT's a resource that you get a finite amount of. You need to manage it, ditribute it properly.
But I've found that the best thing to do is bend it to your will.
You can control time. It's rather easily done, too, depending on how prone you are to getting bored. Not control as in reverse the flow, as such, but I do genuinely believe that you can at least alter your own perception of it, to a limited extent. This might be better with an example.
So I'm at work. I start the day with a list of jobs to do, carried over from yesterday. I like to split them into two types: mindless busywork and difficult, large tasks. Busywork is things like replying to emails, doing 5 minute tasks, tidying my desk and such. Things I don't have to think about, that aren't urgent, but do kinda need doing. The big tasks are ones that I have to sit and think about, that require a lot of concentration and attention.
I'm going somewhere with this. It'll sort of skirt that time point I made, too.
So I've got this list of two kinds of tasks. Now time in the morning is different from time in the afternoon, in that I'm still sort of alert from having just woken up and that the morning is a 3 hour stretch, but the afternoon is 4.5 hours. I know I'm going to do better work in the morning, since I'm still quite fresh, so I get the tricky stuff done then, if I can. Plus, when people start having problems, they usually don't tell us as much until the afternoon. Perhaps it's to do with staggered starts to working days across departments, or to do with international folks waking up. I don't know.
But yeah, hard stuff in the morning. Then comes 10:30 and buying lunch, then 12 and eating it. Nice, pleasant tasks with immediate personal gain. Then the afternoon comes. Now 13:00 to 15:00 is far enough away from quitting time that it seems quite a distance. It's demoralising. So getting the mindless stuff done then is a good idea because I don't think so much about it and the act of just doing work takes my mind off the time. 15:00 to 16:30 is alright, and 16:30 to 17:30 doesn't count because it's the last hour and that never counts.
So the point...
If you're engrossed in a difficult task but not making much progress, you're becoming frustrated and you're tired, time slows down. Time, in a sense, feeds off of negativity. If you're feeling down, time can slow to a crawl, if you're not able to sleep and getting frustrated at that, I swear that time runs backwards. But if you're content, entertained and occupied, time whips past.
I reckon the way to control time is through milestones and tasks. If you have a list of nice things to be working on during times of the day you've identified as not being productive, they'll suddenly become productive as you're using that period of being unable to think much to do something useful anyway. And one productive hour of hard work is a lot better than an afternoon of staring at a problem and racking your brains for a solution that won't come. Milestones are important, too. I don't think that humans are equipped to cope with days as a whole. We have to split our time up to be able to manage it. At the highest level, you have years. Then months, weeks, days, AM/PM, morning/noon/evening/night, hours... we split it up so very much. We say a quarter to 12, half an hour to lunch, whatever. It's those little milestones that keep us going. Try it. When you next go to work or lectures or whatever, think of how much time you have until lunch, then compare it to how much time there's left in the entire working day. If you think of the time until lunch, half the day just doesn't count because you're not there yet and it's not important.
I reckon it's one of those little safety mechanisms in the human brain. Helps give us a little perspective, y'know?
Or keeps us from getting a true sense of perspective and realising exactly how long life actually is. Or short. Maybe that'd drive us all nuts or something.
But yeah, time slows down if you've a long day ahead of you with nothing to look forward to or if you're sad, scared, bored... yet it speeds up when you've things to keep you busy and content, or when you're just in a good mood.
It's like that Einstein quote. The one about being on a hot stove for a minute feeling like an hour and being with a pretty girl for an hour feeling like a minute. The relativity thing.

Eh, I dunno. Maybe writing a blog last thing on a Friday night isn't the best idea. It's not great for writing down my thoughts, but it's much better for having a really open, inquisitive sort of mind. It's like finding out how to harness my muse, but then finding out that once she's here, I can't string two words together. I feel there must be a happy medium somewhere.

Elevation

Just as a side note, this was orignally going to have a stairway to Devon pun somewhere near the mention of the staircase, but it didn't feel right.
---
26/10/08
I'm not one for writing down my dreams, but I rather loved this idea.
A Morrisons supermarket. The location's not terribly important, but it may be in Wakefield's Ridings shopping centre. Towards the back, behind the checkouts is a single elevator. Nothing unusual about that, it takes shoppers to various levels of a multi storey car park.
All perfectly fine and good.
On a day like any other, a young boy (about 7 or so) decides to wander in and play with the buttons in the lift, being one of those kids that'll press every button in a lift in a skyscraper to see what happens. However, today the buttons are a little unusual. He's a short lad, so he can't normally reach any higher than floor three, but today the lift only has three buttons:
G
1
2
Which would be fine were it not for the fact that there isn't a basement level to the supermarket. Peculiar. He happily prods the button marked 1 and the lift slowly descends in that ponderous way that lifts do, as if they realise you're maybe in a hurry but they'll be damned if they're going to make any kind of effort on YOUR behalf.
20 seconds or so later, the doors open and the kid looks out to a small room, a little more than 2.5 metres on any side. The walls are painted dark brown and the floor is covered in a thin, dark brown carpet. A small, brown sofa sits in the centre and a fish tank is set in one wall, casting a slight blue glow over the sea of dreary brown. It's the only light source in the room and the only thing that's remotely entertaining. A man sat on the sofa looks up at the kid.
"Hey, you're not supposed to be here. You're far too young! I thought you skipped this part of the selection process if you were younger than 13? And where's your escort, anyway?"
The kid watches him for a while. The guy's not making any effort to get up or talk any more than he already has, but he has this wasted, hopeless look about him that suggests he's been here for a long, long time. He also looks like the kind of guy that the kid's mother warned him about talking to, so he goes back in the lift and presses number two.
The lift rumbles slowly down. The kid would be scared or at least nervous, but as a modern child he simply doesn't have the imagination to think of things that aren't highly marketable cartoons so the best he can manage is a vague sense of curiosity (which'll last about 5 minutes, thanks to his attention span). The lift eases to a halt, the doors swing open.
"Good afternoon applicant number 7431296472b. If you'll just hand me your two copies of form 27c, we'll have you on your way to... wait."
A man sat behind a fairly impressive leather topped mahogany desk looks at the kid over the top of a pair of half moon spectacles. His skin is bright red and he's sporting a short goatee beard and a business suit.
"How did you get down here, alone and at your age?"
"Played with the lift."
The man in the suit looks at the open lift doors, thinks for a moment then buries his face in his hands.
"The lift? Did Malice leave the safety catch off of the control panel again?! I told them, I TOLD them this is what would happen if they got cheap outsourced labour from Dis, but no, they wouldn't listen to me. No, only been doing this job for 15 blessed, sodding eons, haven't I..."
The kid isn't listening. He's stepped out of the lift and looking around at the small office, with its impressive desk, plush burgundy carpeting and blood red walls. A small hole next to the desk, about the size of a sheet of A4, flickers as if a fire's burning in it. A digital display on one wall shows a map of the world with a winking light over Denmark and a panel below reading "Now serving 7431296472b, Denmark, natural causes".
"... but you get what you pay for, that's what I always say.
Oh, are you still here? And now the doors have closed. Lovely. Look, just sit down, I'll get the service guys to come over, we'll have you back home shortly."
"What's this place, then?"
"Straight to the point, aren't you boy? This is the final step of the road for departed souls before they reach their eternal rest. You guys die and get escorted by... I think it's Gabriel doing collections this century, but they take you to the heavenly admin facility way upstairs. They check your files, run you through the system and tell you if you're eligible for access to heaven. Nice little place, too, I used to work the call centre next door, taking prayers back when I did my training."
The kid looks around. He sees no computer, he sees no telephones.
"But yeah, this place? This is where you drop off the last of your paperwork if you're found unworthy. 75000 forms signed in triplicate detailing the specific events of your life. They say that if anyone fills it all in correctly then they're deemed to have completed their required allowance of torture, but nobody ever does. Most people go insane and eat the forms at around 2300. So we drop the finished ones into the hole here for processing, then send them through a little door in the back for an eternity of fire, poking, rape and muzak. I think this place used to sell yoghurt and drinks until social services were invented a few years back. The higher ups thought it'd be more appropriate."
"Drinks?"
"Ha, yes. That was a joke, you see. You know how people say that you can't take it with you when you die? It's true. Give people a stand selling iced lemonade at the mouth of Hell, then watch them when they realise that they're wearing tattered robes with no money in their pockets. I wish we'd have had a camera, I really do."
The kid takes all this in. Last time he'd had a conversation like this was when he'd eaten 12 packets of Space Raiders before bed.
"What's on 1?"
"1? Oh, upstairs. That's Limbo. There's countless other rooms like that, but they're where you go when you're filling out your forms or when there's a bug in the heavenly system and they can't process you. I think there's a handful of people who they forgot about after fixing the servers, though. They do a quick check of the system every couple of millenia for stragglers..."
A door behind the kid opens up and the lift returns, only now there's a red skinned man stood inside with blue janitor overalls, a mop and a knowing grin.
"Come on lad, let's 'ave you out of 'ere."
The kid wanders back in. This place isn't too interesting, anyway.
The service demon hits the button for Limbo, waves at the infernal administrator (now talking heatedly ino his desk phone) and they ascend. As the doors are about to open, he hits a button with a horned finger and they stay jammed shut.
"'ey, lad. Want to see something fun?"
The kid nods. At least this guy seems more entertaining.
The janitor reaches out and holds down button 1, then presses 2. A third button, outlined in fire appears at the bottom of the row.
"Ever wondered if there's owt below Hell? That's the dark lord's pers'nal recreation room. Always wondered what 'e does to get 'is kicks, but he's got some fancy 'lectronic security locks or summat. I swear I can 'ear disco music from in there."
He lets go of the buttons and the door opens up at Limbo. With a cheery "'ey up Dave, just passin' through" to the figure on the sofa, he hits G on the panel then gives it a couple of thumps with some unidentifiable tool on his belt. The buttons melt into the panel and return to their normal, every day positions above G.
As they reach the floor where Morrisons is, he jams the doors shut again.
"Right lad, this is your floor. Don't ever tell nobody about this place, though, or we'll have the lift filled with satanist weirdos. 'tis the only lift downstairs that we've got, an' all, so there's a fair bit of traffic comes through 'ere, the only other option's the staircase in Moscow and the less said about the state of THAT bloody thing the better."
The kid looks at the lift for a moment.
"So if this is afterlife stuff, can't you just magic them down? Me RE teacher said God does stuff like that all the time. Or, like, shove 'em in a hole or something?"
"HA, magic? 'ere, lad, if you could only see how much paperwork needs to be done before you can pull off a miracle, you'd pee yer pants right 'ere. That's why they 'appen so much in t' old testament. We didn't 'ave auditors back then. We can't just build an 'ole, either, we need to get people back up 'ere sometimes. Like... reality TV, ever see that? That's one of ours, that is. Now go on you little bugger, I'll be seein' you soon."
The door opens, the kid steps out. A pot noodle and 4 hours of TV later, he remembers nothing.

From farewell to a new beginning

17/10/08
One hour before the world as I knew it was due to end, things were astonishingly quiet in Batley. All my worldly possessions filled a room you can walk across in 15 paces and all the most important, life enhancing elements of my furniture lay half assembled and arranged in a haphazard manner. With my dad fetching the last few items from home and my mum stocking the wardrobe, things were curiously subdued. I don't suppose there was very much to say, or
rather there was plenty to say, but it wasn't the time to be saying it.
Saying goodbye never gets any easier. Or maybe it does and I just don't do it too often. It's a really strange thing, leaving behind everyone that you've seen on a daily basis for 21 years, but as I sit here, despite having no TV and no Internet connection, I'm experiencing a feeling of contentment that I haven't felt in a good long while. It is peculiar, though. As my parents went down the stairs for the last time and I shut the door, it was kind of like someone flipped a switch from "student" to "adulthood".
'course, there's little evidence for that having happened, considering I've built a small bunker out of bookcases for my computer area, I've filled a 7ft tall bookcase with video games and especially considering that, as I type this, St Barnabus of Lagentium and Gizmo the Mogwai are sizing each other up from opposite ends of the room.
I think it's a territory thing. Gizmo used to look after my room in Cleckheaton, he made sure my alarm clock kept working and generally kept watch at night. Barnabus, however, has experience in protection. He looked after my car for a good 12 months. The room's in 4 quadrants: bed, living, sentimental and the computer warren. Barnabus currently occupies the computer warren while Gizmo is the lord and master of bed. This fight could easily go either way, I reckon. Barnabus isn't very fast, but he does have a knife, while Gizo is much faster but will have to improvise to get a weapon (which he has shown he can do (see Gremlins 2)). However, Gizmo is close to the kitchen and the knife block. I figure that Barnabus can gain a tactical advantage by securing sentimental, but then Gizmo will retaliate with superior firepower.
Alls I know is that if Barnabus ultimately wins, he's going back in the car, because I'm not going to let Cap'n Stabby stand over me all night.

On the road again

It's a strange time ahead. I mean, I've left home before, but never permanently, so when I do eventually pack my bags and leave here it's going to be a wrench. I really hate goodbyes, more than anything else, for sure. I mean, deaths, people leaving, whatever.
But, with this comes a new life. No longer in education after having done nothing but go through our education system for... all of my life, I'm free to do almost anything. There's a temptation to get a bit dramatic here, to prattle on about new responsibilities and a new chance to better myself, but in all honesty, I know that what I really want more than anything else is the right to never have to get dressed in more than a bathrobe and to sing tunelessly to my poor, abused mp3 player.
It's interesting to think back on how much people have changed over the years. I mean, I remember a lot about when I was a kid. From nursery school through to high school, I was apparently a genius, from high school to college I played a lot of bad music and had to sit through 5 years of penis jokes, college I... did absolutely NOTHING and got a qualification and now I'm here. 22 years and I've met more people than I would ever have dreamed of, learned more than I would ever have wanted to, forgotten even more than that and I've seen more of this world now than I ever dreamed existed. It's a little disturbing to think that after all that, if I were to talk to myself from 6 years ago I wouldn't even recognise myself, but it's true.
And so, with my childhood well and truly behind me, I may as well dispense some advice from my 22 years of experience with this whole 'life' thing. Plus, I really do like lists, even if they're harder than normal blog posts because I have to think about more points and can't just fill out a few paragraphs with lovely, mindless prattle.

You can ignore a lot of signs. I mean, if they're that important, you'll really know. Things like high voltage, those are important, but largely signs... apply more to other people.
Bad dietary choices are only bad dietary choices if someone sees you making them. I'm my own judge, now, and unfortunately I'm quite lenient on doling out guilt when I'm full of bacon.
If anyone ever tells you you're wasting your time (or even your life), I'd like to offer that if you're enjoying what you're doing at the time and not making yourself miss out on something that might be potentially more amusing, it's time fairly well spent. Maybe I shouldn't comment, now that I've come to realise that life's purpose is to entertain me, but I think that's still valid.
There are two solutions to every problem. Fire, or a complete lack of fire. And since those are so closely related, they're kind of one answer. You might have to get a bit abstract, but it will solve any problem.
Don't try to live without regrets. You'll spend so much time analysing your life to try to identify things you should have done or should be doing that you'll just feel worse. People make mistakes, it's getting over them that's the trick.
Don't trust anyone who looks really pleased to see you when they've never met you. They want your money. ALL of it.
There is such a thing as a free lunch. It's just a bit rare.
If you keep track of your finances, either do it properly or don't do it at all. If you half ass it and screw up the totals, you're worse off than before you started.
If you're alone, make the most of it. It's not something that happens an awful lot and you will rarely be in company that excuses you for playing air guitar at 2 in the morning.
Don't live every day as if it were your last, because that's a really depressing, desperate way to live. Coasting through a lazy Sunday every once in a while isn't a bad thing.
Learn your limits, then break them from time to time just to see if you can.
Work time is work time. If you must work from home, set a specific time to get things done, because there's very little that's worse than knowing that you're supposed to be off enjoying yourself, but you're actually doing some inane task or other. It's jarring.
Never do housework without music. Either sing, hum or just get a CD player or something.

And finally, if I've learned nothing else in life, don't be afraid to make mistakes. If you're scared of that, you'll never try anything new. I think that's hit home harder this year more than any other.

So, with that, a heavy heart and a head full of somewhat peculiar memories, it's time to bid farewell to Castleford and return to the city of my birth, sunny, unfriendly Leeds. G'bye, folks. I'll not be around for quite some time until my Internet comes back, although for the few of you that read this, you probably know that already.
Now that I'm going so close to the city, I may have to do something pretentious like buy an iPhone with a bluetooth earpiece. I think I could get away with that more if I didn't have a Yorkshire accent. Maybe I need to go down south for a while. See if I can't stop sounding a bit like a farmer who's trying to be sophisticated.

Given that it's a new life, I think I can be forgiven for breaking my convention with the blog tags, for once. It seems right, somehow.

Tomorrow's yesterday

Get a pot of coffee. From an uninspired evening came a single idea that evolved into a reasonable saga.
Also, it's still Tuesday somewhere, right?

I like notalgia. It's a strong thing. You see something on TV, you hear something, a sound, an overheard conversation, whatever. Something gets implanted in your head which sparks a powerful memory, usually something from your childhood, and before you know it you're wallowing in the murky waters of the past.
I tend to find that cartoons do it. It's amazing, but ever since college I haven't been able to find a better conversation starter, one that works with more kinds of people and that people can instantly relate to than 80s cartoons. Dungeons and dragons, Raggy dolls, Ulysses 31, Transformers, Thundercats... people particularly susceptible to the siren call of nostalgia will either start relating fond memories or singing the theme tune, those more resistant will still normally crack a smile or respond with an "Oh!".
I love it. I love how we're all united under the same banner, this meaningless pop culture cloud that links us all. It's a little sad that the majority of people identify so well with cartoons as opposed to, say, a really good book, but I think it's important that we all have something in common like that. It makes the world a little friendlier for a while.
However, there's a recent trend coming up. Well, I say coming, it's been here for the better part of the decade, I suppose. People are trying to rerelease all the best of the oldies, what with movies based on comic books, movies based on old cartoons (I'm looking at you, Tranformers and Alvin and the chipmunks) and such. Now this is alright, I can deal with that, but I can't get two things out of my head:

1. It feels like people are trying to sell us our memories, but with high definition and CG.
2. We don't have anything to pass to our children.

We had great stuff in our day. Decent music (arguably. I'm an 80s fan, though), good TV, some interesting books. It's a time of life that I'm downright proud to have come from and I'm not one for being patriotic toward any one place or concept. However, you get all these remakes released as new movies, what are the kids of the next generation going to think? Or kids raised in the 2050s? Say Transformers to a kid in the middle of this century (if we haven't blown ourselves up yet) and you'll either get a blank look or something along the lines of "I remember that movie. Didn't it have a Mountain Dew machine that turned into a robot?".
And then, despite our frail 70 year old bodies, we will have to beat them to death. While singing the Transformers theme.

I don't know what we will really leave behind. I'm not too fond of the things we've offered the world of entertainment this past 10 years. Movie sequels, teen comedies, at least 4 Scary Movies, endless club anthems (not including remixes of said club anthems and "Ft." singles), video game sequels, video game movie tie ins, video games about movie spin offs of games...
I wonder, with a world population of perhaps 6.7 billion (thanks wikipedia!) how long it'll take for all the original ideas in this world to end. As technology develops, we'll find new ways to use it, it's just that the arts, things like books and movies, I don't know if there isn't a finite amount of that. You can only tell so may stories. Music's tricky, you can listen to one song a few different ways and there's an infinite combination of notes out there (I'm not saying that they're all something you'd want to listen to, mind), but I worry that the movies of the next century will be remakes of old flicks, but changed to suit our new environment. Books can perhaps handle themselves. I've seen authors attempt the same story, but give it a completely different spin.
Or maybe the movie industry will end. There must be more material out there now than one person can reasonably view in a lifetime. Maybe the future will be an endless stream of reruns. Maybe cinema tickets will stop costing a fiver.
Nah...

Ha, that's a thought. Anyone ever published a book that was a number of authors telling the same short story but in a number of different styles and ways? I'm trying to think of how Little Red Riding Hood would read if written by Quentin Tarantino, Douglas Adams and Wilbur Smith.
Tell me that's not a good idea.

So yeah, in conclusion folks, in times of great social awkwardness, when nobody in the room can think of anything to say, when one of those awkward silences comes up, you need remember only one thing.

When little Eric eats a banana an amazing transformation occurs. Eric becomes Bananaman!
Da da-DAAAA! Da-DA da da da da da-DAAAA!
Oh mercy...

Surging forward

Busy days ahead. Had a lovely phonecall on Friday, now I have a job, but the few weeks I have before the start date will now be dedicated to making a very concentrated effort to get myself the hell out of Castleford once and for all.
Not that I don't like Cas, don't get me wrong. It's a lovely place if you go to the right areas, same as most other areas, but if you took out Xscape and Junction 32, I'm not honestly sure that there'd be any reason to come here. I... suppose we have a Burberry factory, if you're into that kind of thing.
Actually, they might just sell white trainers... no! No, I need to save money.

Ambition. It's a powerful force for something without any physical form. I think it might be one of those things that I can safely categorise under "emotions" and then kind of ignore, because while I can understand my computer, understanding people is sometimes next to impossible.
Seriously, humanity needs a manual. Or a... personual, for the PC generation.

*bu-dum psssch*

Ambition (and its good personal friend inspiration) is a funny thing. It drives people to conquer nations, build terrifying weapons and incite riots, but also to cure diseases, advance the total sum of human knowledge and invent new pasta sauces. I'd like to know if it's a product of your environment, though, or more something you're born with.
I mean, you get some people who are born into families who've built a huge personal fortune around hard work and good ideas, they've got masses of ambition around them all day, but some decide to live off of the success of everyone else. You get others that drag themselves up by their bootstraps from nothing to really do rather well for themselves. It seems like one of the few things where a positive environment has a negative effect (everything's fine, why should I bother to make an effort?) and a negative environment has a positive effect (I'm going to make some changes, here, I know it can be better). Well, kinda. It's hard to put into words, I suppose. That's why I favour wild, meaningless gestures; the confusion sort of conveys what I'm actually thinking at the time.
Ooh, a semicolon! I don't think I've ever used one of those before.
I like to think that really, people are born with a drive to do things. You can try to influence their development, yeah, make them keen on learning or sports or something and hope they'll make a solid career, but if being a student has taught me anything, it's that once people stop forcing you to learn, once you start having to make a career and a life for yourself, motivation starts to come a little easier.

It's a fickle thing, ambition. It's there when you need it sometimes, other times it goes away when you're desperate, or makes you really, really keen to get mundane things done. I know my own personal muse likes to operate through the medium of MMORPGs and 90s console games. I'm not surprised. I'd have been upset if my entire brain wasn't fairly dedicated to this whole geek lifestyle I've got going on.
I mean, I'd hate to think I'm repressing a large portion of my mind. It might get angry and rebel. There's already enough going through my head, I don't need any part of it to get angry and start shouting.
Metaphorically, at least.

Wordsmithery

I quite enjoy this writing lark. I really do. I think it's maybe because I like stories, really. I mean, the world's far too large to see and do everything, makes me sad to think of it sometimes, but there's just not enough space in a human life to try everything, so the best you have to go on sometimes is the accounts of other people.
Now, there's TV. TV is fine, you can see some heavily edited footage that shows you a perfect visual representation of something, but it's lousy at conveying feelings. Get a person who's been there and is REALLY passionate about having done it, sit them down and get them to talk about it for 10 minutes. There's a lot more... eh, I don't like to use such a nebulous term as saying there's more soul to it, but honestly, I rather think there is.
However, through the loss of storytelling, the selling of it to major Hollywood motion picture companies and TV studios, we've also lost the art of something much more noble. The art of exaggeration and outright lies.
When the fisherman comes home to his grandkids and they ask about what he caught, does he say "well, 3 trout. Not much, really" or does he say "3 fish, but the one that got away? It was the size of a B52 bomber! Did I ever tell you about my time in the RAF...". Lies and exaggeration, they're far more exciting, especially when you're a kid. There's an art to it, I think, giving people just enough bull that they don't think it's too far fetched, that they don't ask difficult questions that you can't answer but enough that the story is still fairly fantastic. And honestly, so long as its nothing malicious, so long as the stories aren't going to put any dangerous or hurtful ideas in people's heads, I'm all for it. I know my childhood was a lot more magical for having thought that there was a Santa and that my dad stood one Christmas morning at the front door, saying goodbye to him.
Life's difficult, sometimes. We go through things on a daily basis that test us on so many physical, mental and emotional levels, so sometimes it's important to just have a little outlet, to have this world where the magical, impossible things still happen. It's a shame that my grandparents aren't around, my grandad was always game for a laugh, but my dad's a fair source of some pretty wild stories. I just hope that, in years to come and if I ever have kids, I can be as genuinely interesting to my kids. Maybe I'll inspire as many dreams as my folks did for me when I was little.

I guess that's why I'll never stop being a kid. It's so much more fulfilling than growing up. Nothing's changed, really, except now I can drink booze and coffee and nobody can tell me that I can't have any sweets.
It might also be why all my favourite jokes take about 5 minutes to tell (by which point I think most people have forgotten what I was talking about). Most of it's in the telling, for me. Or why I laugh a lot harder in person than I do online.

22/M/UK

Oh yeah, on time, baby!
Well, if I ever called anyone baby. Maybe my car, but my relationship with that is rather complex.

Interviewing is a funny thing. I can't think of a single person that would ever tell you "just go in there and be completely honest about everything. BRUTALLY honest", because I've been there. I've been to maybe a dozen of the things, now, and they're mostly an exercise in relating your own personal experience to the job and little else. Not that you omit things, but you certainly never say more than anyone asks unless it's relevant.
That must sound rather sinister.
I mean, I've never told an interviewer about the time I was dumb enough to get my doughy ass dropped out of the loft, unless they ask about any periods of absence.

It occured to me today, what'd happen if we took that interview mentality to other situations? Situations where we're still trying to prove ourselves, we're still a bit nervous, but where they're still slightly different? I mean, interviews sort of confer a kind of style of thinking that you really don't find anywhere else, being that you're trying to make yourself appear as awesome as possible in under an hour.
Examples:
"Y'know, I really think we should go out. We share a mutual interest in jazz bands from the 80s and I've got some really unique skills that I, personally, believe would be of great value to this relationship. I'll keep this brief, I know you must have other applicants to see, today."
"Why do I think I should be allowed to live in your country? Well, I'm a proactive team player with a keen eye for detail. I'm very punctual and have great presentation skills, too, so I feel I'd make a great ambassador to other countries.
What? Well, I don't know your laws and foreign policies precisely, no, but it's a development opportunity that I'll address at the earliest possible time. Tell you what, think it over, call my people, we'll maybe get a contract arranged if you feel I'm the right candidate."

Y'know, I think maybe I'll make one of those online dating profiles, some day, but just post my CV up there and see what happens. If nothing else, it's a conversation starter. Although I'm not sure I'd want to really get too close to someone who was actively excited about the prospect of a partner with a keen knowledge of time management principles and methodologies, with a solid grounding on their implementation on a mobile device for a specific target demographic.
Unless... y'know, there actually IS anyone like that. Message me, I've some wonderful theories on the concept of personal effectiveness stratgies. That'll while away the long winter nights, for sure.

On the subject of dairy bucaneers

I should apologise. I would have done this on time, I really would have. I had plans and everything. Then I had three job interviews on two consecutive days.

Problematic!

So, by request (which is a new and interesting concept), I'm providing an update on the saga of myself and ice cream pirate.
I've given my prey some thought. My dad's returned, sure, and we're eating and such, I know I've mentioned that before, but the fact remains that ice cream pirate still invades our street on occasion. I don't think it's the same one. The old one hasn't been on our street so much since I went out there and started stalking it with kitchen knives, but it was his own damned fault for being delicious in my (and my family's) time of great personal need.
But yes, there are more pirates. A band of ice cream corsairs, occasionally driving up and down our street. They seem to have advanced technologies, since as I tried to pursue one in my car, it appeared to turn a corner and completely vanish.
It is, however, coming up to early autumn. Children are not frequently out playing in the street now, so an ice cream van is not the most advised of business ventures.

This begs the question: why are they here?

Do they seek to sell frozen delights to children who aren't there?
Is it out of habit? Have they nothing more to do all day?
Have I, as a result of CERN's physics tomfoolery, fallen into a groundhog day-esque parallel dimension?

Or maybe, just maybe, it's the only possibly and rational explanation. Maybe it's that the ice cream pirates function as a small pack. A band of dairy dispensing brigands driving up and down in front of my home in a mocking parade! Thumbing their nose at my authority, at my right and duty as a man and at my very existence.
If you can read this, and I feel very much that you can (and do), know this. Your creamy reign of terror is coming to an abrupt end. I will, one day, return to the field of honour with my own band of freedom fighters. We will bring your maniacal tyranny to a close and claim your vehicle for the greater good.
For the children.
For the free spirit of man.

For BioCorp.




Actually, I think I'd rather that groundhog day thing would happen. That'd be awesome. Only I've a feeling that if I knew I could live without any consequences whatsoever, I wouldn't end up doing anything interesting. Certainly nothing you'd actually film and show to people. I mean, there would be dark and terrible things involved, but mostly I'd spend my days seeing how many speed cameras I could trigger in half an hour.

A brand new day

BioCorp. Tirelessly working to ensure that you, the consumer, have nothing short of the highest standard of tyranny in your unquestioned global ruler.
Although I think I'd prefer to be a baron, when all's said and done, because that sounds much classier.
And y'know, maybe someday I'll finally get around to specifying what it is that BioCorp does. There's an evening's entertainment right there.

Might as well tackle a large issue for the start of something new, here. Might as well tackle the world. Everything. I mean, it's a peculiar thing. Go back 200 years or so, which really isn't a huge length of time, and people were still trying to drill holes in people's heads to let autism escape or selling snake oil. The world as we know it, nothing seems to stay the same from one decade to the next. Personally, I blame the Internet. Again. There's an old quote out there, something along the lines of how computers haven't made us smarter, they've just made us wrong but a lot faster. The Internet's just accelerated that even more. Now everyone can share everything they know in an instant, so everyone has to race to be the first to discover something and even if you are wrong, someone's going to hit the nail on the head eventually. I mean, alright, information sharing doesn't really work like that unless you're in open source software, but technology is spiralling out of control. Everything's moving at such a rate now that I honestly can't keep up.
And so, let's return fondly to the past:

In the old days, medicine might have actually killed you. Now, waiting for your medicine might actually kill you. I'm not sure what's preferable.
In the old days, we had stocks or tarring and feathering to humiliate people. Now we have reality TV. Except tarring and feathering probably doesn't destroy any chance you have of landing a normal job ever again because you decided to get naked one night and sing the national anthem.
In the old days, all people wanted was the technology to improve their lives. Now, a surprising amount of people seem to want to go back to the past. Medieval re-enactments, Victorian murder mystery weekend, ren fairs and such.
In the old days, little would have made a musician happier than for the world to hear their music. Now, they try to sue you into submission for using download services.

Maybe things really don't change that much. Maybe we're all just crazy, but in a different setting and with more inventive ways to blow ourselves up.

I do sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be interesting to at least see the past world, if only for a while. There's so much we're losing by progressing as far as we have. The art of conversation, the ability to actually relax. I mean, the fact that people have to actually schedule time out of their lives to properly relax, that you have to book your quiet time, that's terrifying. But I think what I'll miss most of all is the names. People in the past got all the cool ones. They had planets named after gods, things like excalibur, triremes and such. And what do we have now? Phones4u, a town named half.com and football stadiums named after beer.
But the future. I really don't know what to say, there. We've gone from being very British (granted, we were making a good go of conquering the known world), slightly posh and uptight to being fairly American with industry, business and a general fast paced nature to things. It's exciting, if exhausting, but I'd like to know where we go from here. I hope it involves flying cars. I mean, everything the Jetsons taught me so far has been a lie.

Well, here's to the future, anyway, whatever it brings.


A new blog needs a new gimmick, I think. I can't do emotions, here, so let's go for alliterative blog tags.

And for reference, 80 posts worth of previous blogs are stored over at myspace.com/biospark8000. Some are good, some are bad, one is about Jesus' personal truck. It was quite astonishing to see.