Hangover - the diary

Good afternoon all. I'm feeling much better than I was about 5 hours ago. For those who haven't had a hangover for a while, I've kept a diary for this morning, so you too can understand why we should never drink to excess and expect no consequences.

9:10 coffee
9:15 nausea
9:35 ate mcCoys cheddar and onion crisps
9:40 sweating
9:47 starting eating chewing gum
9:59 headache
10:15 felt tired, put kettle on
10:20 worried about coffee tasting like mint, so got a glass of water.
10:32 tried to hold work-based conversation. Struggled.
10:56 weird cramp in legs
11:02 sweating
11:20 recollections of last night and oversleeping this morning is making me feel very guilty and remorseful.
11:48 realised my hand can't write properly.
12:03 stomach making lots of noise.
12:20 ate food. Feeling better
13:11 moved from coffee to tea
13:12 eating Jammie dodgers, feeling the sugar working.

The story of the sun and the wind

The sun and the wind were watching a man in a long coat when the wind said to the sun "Hey, I bet you that I get his jacket off". The sun, un-phased by the apparent brag replied "No you couldn't, but I bet I can!". And so the challenge was on. Firstly the wind tried. He huffed and puffed as much as he could at the man, but the man simply pulled his jacket around him as much as possible and clung on tightly to it.

"Ha!" said the sun, "now it is my turn", and the sun shone down on to the man. The man, now sweltering in heat, removed his jacket. The sun had won.

This is a dangerous children's story. I was told it in primary school and it has stuck with me. What I realise now, that I didn't at the time, was that it wasn't just suggesting that to get what you want, you need to bribe rather than blackmail, instead what it actually was saying to me and my 5 year old brain, was that to be able to get someone to let go of something, you should not try and pull it from them. To do this only demonstrates your desire to own it rather than them. Instead, by destroying the reason for them to have it, you are devaluing the item. Once they have little regard for it, they will be quicker to part with it. The sun also improved his chances by letting the wind go first, thus his change to warmth would have clashed with the man's body's ability to regulate temperature and caused him to make rasher decisions regarding his apparel.

So remember children, if you want something from someone else, first highlight a reason for them to have it, and then destroy the reason, finally giving them the chance to take it off their hands for a lower than reasonable price because of its now less worthwhile use.

I love children's stories

28 isn't cool

Reaching 27? Want to die whilst you're still cool? Then hurry up!
Just look at those who knew that popping your clogs at 27 was the right thing to do:

Kurt Cobain
Jimi Hendrix
Brian Jones (guitarist of The Rolling Stones)
Janis Joplin
Kristen Pfaff (basist for Hole)
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (Founding member of the Grateful Dead)
Peter Ham (Keyboardist/Guitarist, leader of Badfinger.)
Jim Morrison

So what are you waiting for?!

Drunken Angel Syndrome

When most people have moral questions, they often perceive the right and wrong answers as coming from an angel and a devil respectively. They sit on peoples' shoulders and whisper their advice in to the poor person's ear.

Unfortunately I suffer from a rare condition known as drunken angel syndrome (DAS). I say rare, I actually mean that I am the only one I know of. Despite trying to make my condition known, I usually end up writing abusive emails to people I don't like. The reason for this is as follows:

Say that I want to help someone up who fell down by grabbing their hand and picking them up. The devil will immediately appear on my left shoulder and whisper "Pssst....you should let go of him half way up so they fall again!". A perfectly normal thought, as having someone fall over repeatedly is undeniably funny. Normally there is then the counter argument by the holy one on my right shoulder. Something along the lines of "but that's your grandfather! You could injure him!". Instead when I wait for the response, I get "h..hey. Hey. ...Hey. You-you know what we should do? We should totally go the Threshers! Yeah! Its just down the road from here. Lets get some special brew. Could you, could you lend me a fiver. I'm going to throw up again." Out of the two options, its actually the devil's, and not the collapsed angel sounding like he's currently choking on his own vomit, that makes the better argument.

A look into shapes

A football. Spherical in its nature and appearance. Hexagonal to its smaller inhabitants that roam its seemingly flat tectonics. And to the inner beings; those who float the spherical gap between its leather walls?

Insperical? Unspherical? Perhaps an imploded sphere with all its walls turned out. A shape that encompasses everything that is all around you. An omni shape. But in the perfect darkness, it is not even that. A boundary to all movement but the space it occupies can be anywhere, though the air inside is always the same. The small pieces of dust and flaked leather that in-orbit the unsphere travel through the world that they can not see, sudden indentation a prophecy to travelling. A half a million eyes watch the ball leave a shoe and travel into white string and the contents know nothing except the noise that can travel through leather of their actions.

Autosnackorientation syndrome.

I've just realised that I always eat my Tesco's chicken and mushroom slices the same way up, so that the chevrons are pointing towards me. This way I get a great feeling of each time I reach a new "v" i bite the tip off and then devour the weakened lines.

Next time you eat a cake or savoury snack with a patterned top, see if it affects you. I will endeavour to try eating the next chicken and mushroom slice in the wrong way and see if aligning the v's with the shape of my mouth is more satisfying.

The Clapper

The clapper (the device where a clapping noise can be made to switch something on or off, not to be confused with some kind of evil bad guy...hmmm maybe more later), is a classic case of an invention to help save us time to do those all important things. I had a conversation the other day regarding some less-than-useful applications of the device. A classic would be a hands free method to turn off your computer, perhaps because your hands have been used for other things and to touch the keyboard now might be slightly...disadvantageous. Especially the next time you have to use the keyboard. So of course you could use the clapper! Great. Only when you start thinking about it, the last thing that you want to be doing with your hands after that is to bang them sharply together just inches from your person. Maybe no clapper there then.

Other bad places to use them to turn things on and off are:

1- Life support machines. Except for the joy of having a doctor wield wizard like power by saying "I'm so sorry..." then clapping loudly twice, like the Gods of old and ending the veggie’s life (human vegetable, not vegetarian. I know vegetarians are weak, but I don't think their that weak).

2- The epileptics' comedy stand-up event. A fundraiser for epileptics where a room full of epileptics are treated to a spot lit comedian. Just wire up the spot light to a clapper and wait for a great joke. Not very time saving methinks.

3- The burns ward wired to the emergency nurse alarm next to patients' beds. Just smack those hands together if you're in pain!

4- The gear change in a car. Now you don't have the distraction of reaching down to the gear stick. Of course you would have to have a way of both changing up and down gears. Perhaps a click sensor to go with it. Now every journey is a musical! Just don't change gears when going around a corner, or have over excited kids in the car (a general piece of advice for everyone who doesn't have kids anyway), or be eating that space dust stuff with your mouth open, or have "hey Mickey you're so fine" playing on the car radio.

So what an evil person the Clapper is. Attaching clappers to various devices around the world. This week the Clapper attaches his deadly device to a nuclear launch button and leaves a tape of "If you're happy and you know it" on the desk....mwaaahaahaa!