Category: About Me

Stuff that will give you a real insight into the enigma that is Pete Dot Nu.

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About Me

Run for your lives! A mem!

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:

  • Barman
  • Website designer (but then who hasn’t?)
  • Desktop publisher (hey, that doesn’t mean that I was actually any good at it though)
  • Computer programmer

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Over and over, eh? Well, here are four movies that I like quite a lot. Not sure about “over and over” though.

Four places you’ve lived:

  • Lincolnshire
  • Warwickshire
  • Surrey
  • Berkshire

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Oh stop it with the unnecessarily passionate language. No-one really “loves” to watch TV shows, do they?

Four places you’ve been on vacation:

  • New York
  • Prague
  • Budapest
  • Dublin

Four websites you visit daily:

Four of your favorite foods:

  • Chilli con carne
  • Pistachio nuts
  • Opal fruits
  • Pizza

Four places you’d rather be:

  • The pub down the road
  • The pub across the road
  • The pub up the road
  • The pub on the other side of the roundabout

Four albums you can’t live without:
You’re doing it again. Stop it. I like these four, but I would find a way to soldier on if for some reason they were taken from me, never to return. Get some perspective.

Four magazines you read:
I can’t tell whether this is “read” in the present tense or past tense. So I’m opting for the latter, otherwise my answer would be a bit short. I’m also assuming that it is specifically asking about paper-based periodicals.

  • NME (up until quite recently)
  • Bassist (a few years ago)
  • Look-in (a few decades ago)
  • Dandy (a few decades ago)

Four cars you’ve owned:
This survey seems to be aimed at people who have either been driving for a long time, or are quite bad at it. I’ve taken a liberty with number four.

  • Ford Sierra
  • VW Golf
  • Vauxhall Astra
  • A small square of car-pet

Four people to do this meme:
What do you think I am? Some sort of clairvoyant? Stuff off.

Categories
About Me Food

Memes beat whinging any day

Snaffled from [Pix][]:

[pix]: http://www.pixeldiva.co.uk/memes-beat-whinging-any-day.html

> Welcome to the 2005 edition of getting to know your friends. What you are supposed to do is copy this entire blog entry and paste it onto a new blog entry that you’ll post. Change all the answers so they apply to you, and then publish! Leave a comment if you do this.The theory is that you will learn a lot of little (random) things about your friends, if you did not know them already.

1. **What time did you get up this morning?**
8:25am
1. **Diamonds or pearls?**
Diamonds, I guess, but I’m not particularly enthusiastic about either
1. **What was the last film you saw at the cinema?**
Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
1. **What is your favourite TV show?**
I don’t really watch anything religiously. I quite like CSI and Frasier.
1. **What do you usually have for breakfast?**
Honey nut corn flakes
1. **Favourite cuisine?**
Pizza
1. **What food do you dislike?**
I don’t like the texture of broad beans.
1. **What is your favourite CD at the moment?**
I’m pretty big into [Funeral][] by Arcade Fire, but generally I’ll listen to lots of stuff in rotation rather than one album a few hundred times over.
1. **Morning or night person?**
Night
1. **Favourite sandwich?**
Cheese and pickle – it’s highly practical.
1. **What characteristic do you despise?**
Hypocrisy.
1. **Favourite item of clothing?**
I wear Levi 501s most days, but I’m very attached to this particular pair of brown shoes that I own.
1. **If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would it be?**
I’m not a big holiday person, but I’d like to go back to New York sometime.
1. **What colour is your bathroom?**
Pale green
1. **Favourite brand of clothing?**
I prefer my clothes to have as little branding as possible.
1. **Where would you retire to?**
Not planning on doing so. My mum’s mum is still working, and she’s the only one of my grandparents who is still alive.
1. **What was your most memorable birthday?**
I think birthdays should be low-key and sophisticated.
1. **Favourite sport to watch?**
Hahahahahahahah! Oh, the joys of generic questionnaires.
1. **Who do you least expect to complete this?**
Me.
1. **Person you expect to complete it first?**
Pix. She’s already done it.
1. **Person who is least busy?**
Okay, this is getting stupid.
1. **When is your birthday?**
August.
1. **What is your shoe size?**
11 or 12
1. **Pets?**
Just the girlfriend.
1. **Any new and exciting news you’d like to share with us?**
Yes, but you’ll have to wait.
1. **What did you want to be when you were little?**
Cool.
1. **What is your favourite flower?**
Paeonia Lactiflora.
1. **What date on the calendar are you looking forward to?**
20th June 2006.
1. **One word to describe the person who you snaffled this from?**
Female.

[funeral]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006ZRX86/

Categories
About Me Gaming

Community Spirit

> Doing the play has really opened my eyes to just how much free time we have in the course of our everyday lives. With our/my free time roughly halved, all of a sudden I haven’t wanted to play Grand Theft Auto all that much, and a strange new wave of Wanting To Do Something Constructive has befallen.

I know this feeling very well. While Karen was away I did a pretty good job of suppressing it, and just getting on with beating up those whores, but this was an isolated fortnight in a sea of otherwise.

I live in a bit of a bubble at the moment: get up, get in the car, go to work, drive home, potter about the house. The real world is being squeezed down a telephone line for my consumption. And though it is a fat pipe, it’s not representative. It doesn’t tell me much about what’s going on in my town, and what I can do to be a part of it.

So I guess that’s my challenge.

Heh, a fat woman on a bicycle just rode past the window. She was huge, and clearly struggling.

*Originally posted here*

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About Me

Get a grip

I hold pens in a slightly peculiar way. I’m not about to go into detail about the exact way that I hold pens when writing, but suffice to say that it is a little peculiar. Not as peculiar as if I held them between my buttocks or if I bit the blunt end off and held them back to front between my middle and ring fingers, but it’s slightly peculiar regardless.

I’m not sure when it started. I guess I must have pretty much always held pens in a slightly peculiar way, though over the course of my life I’ve gradually used a computer more and a pen less, so it’s less of an issue.

Just now, I was innocently writing something in a notebook, and was suddenly hit full in the face with repulsion at myself. I looked at my hand in disgust, as if it were a slipper full of dog vomit and banana skins. I manipulated my grip to look more human, and tried to write, but it just came out all messy.

And so I’m stuck with this offensive grip and I don’t think that it will ever go away. I’m cursed. Cursed, I tells ya.

I’m going to go and Google a bit and see if there are any support groups in existence for people with my affliction.

*Originally posted here*

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About Me

Oddness

While Karen is away, I’m kinda pottering around the house, a bit of mooching, a bit of moping, a bit of mehing.

It’s more than two years since I last did this. Please excuse me if I act a little oddly.

This afternoon I’ve re-read my diaries from my youth – there’s a 1988 volume and then a void until 1992. Since then, there are no gaps. And let me tell you, it’s heartbreaking. Falling in love with a different girl every day, and being destroyed when the feelings weren’t mutual. Then, when my luck changes, I am completely indifferent and treat them all like shit.

I’ve started reading the diaries from my university years, but it’s much less horrifying. The pace of life picks up a lot, and it’s clear from the style of writing that I mature a lot in just the first term. I know from memory that in the second year I starting using the diary solely for appointments and reminders, and I used a separate notebook for more thoughtful writing.

This is a bit of a shame, as it makes it harder to correlate what’s going on with what I’m feeling, but it was necessary as I started going into much more depth, and it wouldn’t always fit in the limited space available.

***

It’s later in the day, and I’ve now read all the diaries up to the end of 2002 – ie, just before I met Karen. As predicted, the latter few were very factual and to-the-point. Actually, the second half of 2001 and all of 2002 were very sparse indeed. As memory serves, I was keeping myself busy.

The result of all this reading is that I’m reverting to how I was before I met Karen, though the knowledge that it is only temporary means that I’m watching it from the outside rather than the inside. Even so, it’s horrid.

For one thing, I’m spending a lot of time thinking. Which sounds like a good thing, but really it’s not. I spent most of my formative years doing nothing but thinking, and I was consumed with foolish, unhelpful and paranoid thoughts. And oh looky, here they are again.

Re-reading the diaries has also reminded me of the trail of devastation that I’ve left behind me. I feel the need to write a pile of letters to all the girls who I’ve treated badly over the years, to expunge this guilt that’s preventing me from going to sleep. But what would be the point? They’ve probably completely forgotten about me by now, and if I were to reopen old wounds then I’d be just making it all worse.

I really thought that I’d be able to deal with all this a little bit better than I have.

*Originally posted here*

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About Me Peril

Thoughts

*This was originally written in my diary, and copied over sometime in 2008*

I still have thoughts, you’ll be pleased to discover. They just come to me at a different time. Instead of materialising when I am sat in front of a computer, they come at night and haunt me in the darkness, terrorising the very core of my being.

Just thought I’d share the good news.

Categories
About Me

Emailing my mother

My mother sends me emails quite regularly. She clearly expects regular responses. I do my best to respond to the vast majority of her emails, pretty promptly.

And that’s okay, but the problem I have is one of content. Once I’ve answered any questions that she may have posed, I will start writing a little bit about what I’ve been doing lately. Which is generally a good thing, because it makes an email much more interesting to read.

But then I realise that one of the things that I’ve written could be misconstrued, as she does have very delicate feelings, and will take offence at the drop of a hat. So, to remove the risk of upsetting her, I will edit out the paragraph about the computer speakers that I’ve bought in the post-Christmas sales, because she may read it and think that I am implying that she failed as a mother by not buying me the computer speakers for Christmas.

And then I’ll edit out the paragraph about the nice Maglite torch that someone else bought for me for Christmas, as she may read it and think that I am implying that she has again failed me as a mother, for not buying me the torch herself.

And before you know it, I’ve edited my message down to the bare bones, facts and figures, no subjectivity, as if I were writing an email to a client at work. No risk. Because it wouldn’t be worth it.

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About Me

FEEA

I invented a new **system** for evaluating pastimes and distractions today, called FEEA (pronounced “fear”, but with a soul-piercing screech).

The letters stand for Fun, Edification, Ease and Availability. What you do is rate all the things that you could do out of five, tally the four scores up, and the winner is the one with the most points. Here’s what I found.

**Playing Computer Games**

Fun: 4
Edification: 2 (there’s always that feeling that you haven’t really achieved anything)
Ease: 5 (can be done whilst drunk, that’s how easy it is)
Availability: 4 (waiting for it to load)

TOTAL: 15 (a most respectable score)

**Making Music**

Fun: 2 (a temporary state of affairs, I’m sure)
Edification: 4
Ease: 2 (takes a lot of hard work and dedication)
Availability: 2 (bandmates won’t come out of London at the drop of a hat, you know)

TOTAL: 10 (shocking. Must do something about this)

**Going To The Gym**

Fun: 1 (I get bored of looking at the same sweaty people and the same white walls over and over again)
Edification: 5 (…but I do feel better about myself for it)
Ease: 2 (takes a lot of hard work and dedication)
Availability: 5 (it’s part of the routine. Availability is not a problem)

TOTAL: 13 (blame it on the edification score)

**Housework**

Fun: 2 (varies depending on the task)
Edification: 4
Ease: 5 (can be done whilst drunk, that’s how easy it is)
Availability: 5 (assuming you’re actually at home)

TOTAL: 16 (wow. I should do more housework)

**Blogging**

Fun: 3 (it would be 5, but I have ensured that the score takes into account “reading other peoples’ blogs”. I joke, of course)
Edification: 2 (it would be 5, but I have ensured that the score takes into account “reading other peoples’ blogs”. I joke, of course)
Ease: 4 (type nonsense. Not exactly rocket science)
Availability: 2 (not enough hours in the evening)

TOTAL: 11 (second to last place. Not going to do **that** again then)

So, with that, I hereby announce my resignation from blogging.

I joke, of course.

*Originally posted here*

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About Me

A letter

For this theme, I decided that I would dig out my old love letter archive and find something reasonably suitable to be extracted and posted.

However, when I looked in my super secret private folder where I keep them, they all seemed to be gone, except for one. I expect that Karen has discovered them, and thrown them all away. Except for this one.

> Dear Peter,
> I know I agreed to meet you at 8:00 but I totally forgot that I go to my Grandparents house on Thursdays, every single week!!! Sorry again but I didn’t really like the thought of you waiting for hours outside your house like a total lemon.
> I’ll speak to you tomorrow.
> Love Emma

Then again, perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps that’s the full extent of my love letters collection.

Ho hum.

*Originally posted here*

Categories
About Me

Advice from a friend

I asked this question:

Do you periodically find yourself being haunted by memories of embarrassing things from years past? Even if you know that you are never again going to meet the other parties in question, you still find yourself biting your fist and disbelieving how you could be so stupid?

Well, I do. Most of them don’t bother me that much, but there’s one that still worries me to this day, possibly because it only happened a couple of years ago. I’m wondering whether I should go out seeking closure, or if it will just makes things worse, and I am better off just getting on with my life until one day it doesn’t bother me because it happened five or ten years ago. What do you think?

Friend says:

We-ell, it depends on how serious a faux pas it was? I often find myself thinking back to things I’ve done that make me feel queasy with embarrassment but swiftly put it down to experience, safe in the knowledge that it’s all helped to shape me into the thoroughly nice bloke I am today.

I can’t believe for a second that the man who ran through the sprinklers in the park in just his pants finds anything embarrassing anymore.

*chuckles to himself inanely*

*for some time…*

Well done, sir.