In my boredom, I attempted to fold a CD in half. I think I was expecting it to bend and snap cleanly, like a credit card. Fortunately I turned my face away as a precaution, as it shattered into pieces, spreading shards of plastic and slivers of aluminium foil across my desk.
My boredom was not satiated though, so I decided now was the time to experience first hand the CD-in-microwave phenomenon.
Pioneer 10’s power source has finally decayed to the point that we probably won’t be receiving any more signals from it, so off it goes, spiralling into the black void (read all about it).
I wonder what will happen when it gets discovered by aliens, which we all know are real and exist somewhere and communicate by telepathy.
Maybe they will think that Pioneer 10 is an old crippled human warrior, lost on his way home from battle. And they will be able to trace its source, and will be surprised when they arrive on Earth to find that the dominant species (and I use this term very carefully, reserving the right to change it at a later date) are carbon-based.
Or maybe they will just say “Wow, how DO those Earthlings manage to pick up such a weak signal? Evidently they must know that we are here, and this craft is clearly a declaration of their technological superiority, and a prelude to war. Quick! Pre-emptive strike!”
And so the aliens will rush over to Earth, all tooled up and ready for a ruck, only to find that we have all been killed already, because some guy with a hard-on for fighting managed to get into power.
This is a game that Robert Palmer introduced me to when we used to buy petrol at the same garage. It’s very simple.
A cheque fell out of an envelope this morning. £70, from my grandmother. Attached was a letter, fully addressed, signed and dated. The words were to the effect of “Here’s the outstanding balance on your Christmas present – sorry it took so long.”
I paused, and attempted to figure out… well, anything. I suspect that she has heard from my sister that I have no money, and has taken it upon herself to send a donation. If this is the case, then I don’t really want to accept it (damn my foolish pride), but I feel that it would be rude to metaphorically throw it back in her face. What to do?
On another note, I had my first dream in ages last night. It involved a popular high street bookshop and a copy of a cartoon kama sutra starring a black man with a 24″ penis. And yet, surprisingly I am totally unconcerned about the state of my psyche.
“Hi, I’m in a bit of a peculiar situation. I’ve arranged to meet a group of total strangers at this pub tonight, and I don’t know what any of them look like. Seeing as you are a group of total strangers, I wonder if you are the group of total strangers that I am looking for?”
“No, sorry.”
“Ah, never mind.”
“Try downstairs.”
“Oh, there’s a downstairs? Splendid, I’ll give that a try.”
I remember the first series of 24. At the time I was totally hooked, but in retrospect I felt a lack of enthusiasm, and it plopped promptly from my mind. I attribute this to being totally daunted by the concept of ever watching it again.
After all, if I were to watch one episode again, I’d have to watch all 24, and that would be just too big a chunk of my life to lose on a repeat.
So I haven’t really been awfully excited by the arrival of the new series on these shores. The concept itself is no longer original, and the plot threatens to be a rehash. Yet I watched it last night, and unsurprisingly I didn’t feel the buzz of excitement which I did at the end of series one, episode one. However, I can be sure that I will be watching next week.
I wonder how many times Kim will get kidnapped. Oh, and I’m glad that Kiefer had a shave. After one hour of that fluffy golden West Country-stylee beard, my nerves were starting to wear raw.
And while I am being picky, what the hell is it with all those identikit-blondes? I can’t tell them apart, though maybe that is intentional on the part of the scriptwriters.
Two things made me stop dead in the street at lunchtime.
The first was walking past a mobile phone shop. My contract is nearly up for renewal, and I am going to attempt to talk my current provider into giving me a new phone and a better deal, by threatening to switch to a different network.
As I walked past this shop, I stopped quite abruptly. My sidekick kept walking, but turned around just in time to see some guy narrowly avoid walking into me. Needless to say, the sugar in our veins, coupled with the elation that arises from being out of the office, raised this simple event to the status of “funniest thing that has ever happened.”
The second thing that made me stop was a sudden recollection, of a toy I had when I was a kid. Does anybody remember these:
This was the Barcode Battler. It was fantastically bad.
The concept was that you would scan in a barcode and it would be converted into some mystical character or powerup or something. Some were provided with the set, but the real beauty came from scanning in your chocolate bar wrappers, upon which point you’d realise that you had, in your possession, the weakest and crappest warrior that ever existed.
The graphics were on a par with half a dozen digital clocks. Who am I kidding, there were no graphics. It was all just a bunch of numbers. All the trouble that the manufacturers went to when making up these characters was sadly wasted, as when it came to battle, all that mattered was the transitive nature of the field of integers.
It was a dreadful toy, and I probably only played on it for a couple of hours before chucking it to one side.
As a final note of interest, Barcode Battler was a lot more popular in Japan, where it led to Barcode World, which actually spawned Pokemon. So now we know who is to blame.
For some reason, my dad liked Tam. Tam wasn’t exactly a friend. Friend is the wrong word. We were never really friends, in that we didn’t actually talk an awful lot. But we used to stay over at the other’s place for a night, and play computer games.
This was back when I was about 12, I guess. I had an Amiga 500, and he had a Sega MegaDrive.
And for years after me and Tam stopped playing computer games together, my dad would sometimes ask “How’s Tam?”, and I’d reply “Haven’t spoken to him for years, dad.”
This morning, an envelope arrived on my mat, the address written on in my dad’s handwriting. I peeled it open.
Inside was just a scrap of newspaper, cut out of the local newspaper. No letter inside, nothing.
I haven’t spoken to Tam for about three years, maybe more. I think the last time we spoke was when we worked in a bar together for a short while. At the time he had been going out with this really nice girl for about a year. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, but she was pretty, and she smiled all the time, but not in a stupid way. In a nice way. And they made a good couple.
The scrap of newspaper showed a quarter of an advert for a fireplace showroom. “Interesting,” I thought, “but I don’t have a chimney.” I realised my idiocy and turned it over.
I saw two familiar faces. A recognisable nice smile, and the ever-so-slightly buck teeth that could only be Tam. She was wearing a white dress and holding a bouquet, and he was in a black tux.
I’m very happy for both of them, naturally, and I also think that they are both very lucky that they met eachother when they were so young.
For the rest of us? Maybe we’ll never meet the right person. But that doesn’t matter, because even if you end up unmarried forever, there will always be somebody else in the same situation to keep you company. The thing that you have to understand about life is that it has the advantage. Life makes the rules, and life breaks the rules. Sometimes you just have to be flexible.
> Dear Donkey,
> The new(ish) swearing function has finally destroyed my already fragile ego, thus sending me into a tragic spiral of self-loathing despair.
> While I’m lost in the depths of my own neurosis, do you have a map of the mind’s nether regions that I can borrow?
Donkey says:
You can borrow my brain map, if you like:
Now, at first it might look a bit complicated, but allow me to walk you through it.
Section 1 is called the Frontal Lobe. That’s used for thinking about womens’ breasts. It’s pretty big, as you can see. And, as Ms. Brook is demonstrating over there on the right hand side, it varies in size during the course of the day.
Section 2 is called the Temporal Lobe. That’s used for getting angry. Like, if some guy in a bar is hitting on your girlfriend, then BOOM! Your temporal lobe kicks in, and you lay the smack down on him.
Section 3 is called the Parietal Lobe. You use that for thinking about how attractive your friends’ parents are.
Section 4 is the Occipital Lobe. That’s the bit that the surgeons squeeze when they need to knock you unconscious for any reason. That’s how the Vulcan Death Grip works.
Section 5 is the Cerebellum. The cerebellum does everything that the other bits don’t do. For example, thinking about pies and watching films.
I hope that this answers your questions, you fucking idiot. I mean, you’re lovely and cute and great and we all love you.
(punctuated by pictures of a pretty lady, to make it more manageable)
I was wondering the other night what my contribution to the war effort is going to be.
I don’t think I’m going to be the shouting general in the room with the guys with headsets. That’s a thankless job really, and I don’t think I could see me in a moustache. And besides, they all suffer from hormone imbalances and want to nuke everything, until the geeky bespectacled scientist in the white coat suggests a far more constructive and pacifistic course of action. And then the general has to eat humble pie. And I prefer chicken.
I don’t want to be the cannon fodder on the front line either. I’m useless with a bayonet, and I’ve never liked the look of dismembered corpses. That said, one of my ambitions before I die is to have sex with a prostitute, so I imagine that there will be plenty of opportunity for that out abroad. Long time, five dollar?
I don’t think I could be a spy either. I think I’d just fall over too often. And I haven’t got the right sort of verbal delivery either. When the bad guy is interrogating me, I think I would be less likely to say “Do you exchpect me to talk, Goldfinger?” and more likely to say “Wanker.” Mind you, the women would be throwing yourself (whoops, I meant, themselves) at my feet. It’s not the same if you aren’t paying for it though.
Working in intelligence probably wouldn’t be wise either. I don’t really have the anticipative mentality when it comes to foreigners. The less said about this, the better.
I could do a George Bailey, and stay at home and organise rubber drives and such like. Be a bit of a local hero, just do odd jobs around the community and be a good guy. However, that would require me to take some sort of initiative, which would probably mean that I would lose my job, as that kind of thing is not allowed around here.
I think I’ll be a pilot. I’ll be like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, and I’ll get to utter the immortal line: “He’s too close for missiles – I’m switching to guns.”
Nothing would give me greater joy.
Apart from not having to go to war, of course.