To gain the upper hand in a game of squash, let go of a really good fart in one corner of the court. Then, try to hit the ball so that it lands in that corner. Your opponent will be unable to get close enough to the ball to return it.
Owls also have very good night vision. Scientists would say that this is because their eyes are very large in proportion to the size of their heads, but I believe it’s that they are munching on lots of carrots on the quiet.
In fact, according to the 1998 Junior Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Lies, owls eat twelve times their own bodyweight of carrots EVERY SINGLE MINUTE! How incredible is that? For the purposes of demonstration, below is Beck the Owl pictured next to twelve times his own bodyweight of carrots.
If you listen to scientists, you’d be forgiven for thinking that carrots are high in beta-carotene, which is converted into vitamin A by the body, and this is why it is good for your night vision. This is clearly refuted in the 1998 Junior Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Lies, which points out that the truth of the matter is that its all to do with THE SHAPE OF THE VEGETABLE!
So here’s a handy cut-out-and-discard guide to improving your night vision through means of ingestion.
BREAKFAST
Two hundred bowls of carrot soup
LUNCH
Eight hundred bananas
SNACK
One cucumber
EVENING MEAL
Fifty eight sweet pointed peppers, stuffed with feta cheese and olives
MIDNIGHT SNACK
Garlic baguette
HTH!
Another important distinguishing feature of owls is their ability to fly. If I am also going to be able to fly, then the obvious method is to obtain some wings and some feathers, and attach them to my body. However, I suspect that this will be a little difficult, so I am going to explore an alternative method.
What if there was a limited version of flying, available to humans without any additional modifications or training required? Though not as flexible as the method which owls use, it does at least allow you to fly in one direction pretty quickly.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: falling.
I’ve been practicing this quite a bit. I’m getting rather good at it. Though these funny marks are appearing on my head and I seem to be losing control of the right hand sde f bd
My grandfather died the night before last. My son will now never have a great-grandfather. I suppose this isn’t really a particularly rare occurrence.
I guess we all measure things from our own experience. When I was born, one of my great-grandmothers was still alive. I have this expectation that the same will be true of my child, when it comes into existence. Given that my father’s mother died very shortly after her husband, presumably as a result of “pining away”, I wonder what the future holds for my mother’s mother.
But then, if we’re measuring from our own experience, we can extrapolate this information to deduce that my grandmother will be tough as old boots (there is evidence to suggest this already) and will live to an incredibly ripe 90 years or so. This, too, is backed up by the evidence – she’s in impeccable health, and though she used to smoke when she was younger, something about her is incredibly revitalising.
I look up to her in many ways, the most significant being the fact that she’s still working, even though she should have retired years and years ago. I find the prospect of retirement to be infathomable.
Indeed, looking at the current state of the whole pension crisis, I expect that by the time my hair goes grey, retirement age will be 107, and so I wouldn’t be able to exercise that option even if I wanted to.
And what of my recently deceased great grandfather? Well, he was a very kind man, though he sometimes didn’t know his own strength, and would pummel us runts about a little stronger than today’s parents would find appropriate. Still, perhaps it did us some good. And he smiled a lot. He smiled a fucking lot. That smile is etched on my memory.
I really should smile more. When I croak, I’d like people to be able to say the same thing about me.
> 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.
A week or so after the miscarriage, we told all our respective family members about it. I guess they would have been upset if they’d found out later. Sometimes we exclude them from our lives enough as it is.
Anyway, so they all know that we’re going to be trying again in a few months’ time, I suppose. Might serve as a useful excuse to get mum off the phone when she’s yapping on, actually.
“Must dash, mum – Karen is ovulating RIGHT NOW!”
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.
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.
I was stood in the back garden with my woman nestled deep into my chest. The sun was setting, and glistening off of her hair in a beautiful fashion. I had to fetch the camera.