Skyfall

Lists are good. Here's a list.

TV Series Where Something Significant Falls From The Sky In Series One, Episode One:

1. Smallville (Superman)
2. Dead Like Me (a toilet seat)
3. 24 (a girl terrorist)

I never said it would be a good list.

When professions clash

When attempting to describe what an actuary is, people have often described us as "financial bookmakers" or similar. ie, we make bets on uncertain future financial events. Well, it looks like the bookies are starting to move into our territory.

I just heard a story on the radio that a 95 year old man has made a bet with William Hill that he will die before Christmas, with odds of 6-1. If he "wins", he'll get £3000 to cover his funeral costs. This is traditional life assurer territory - the difference is that we don't normally sell policies with a six month term, and we normally wouldn't touch a 95 year old with the proverbial barge pole.

But the bookies clearly work by different rules. Now I have to say, that if an old man came to me and bet that he was going to die, I would be hugely tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt. He knows things about himself. He has the option of going to bed one night and playing the Hold My Breath Until I Die game. He's gonna cark it soon.

I think I'm happy to stay out of this particular market.

Unfair

They say that you're only as good as your last post. I think that's really unfair.

I don't even own a bugle to practice on.

It's strange what you miss

Later tonight, the final results of the most recent actuarial exams are released into the world. Since I am no longer taking the exams, this isn't the big worry that it used to be. I have no chance of failing anything. But also no chance of passing anything either.

It's actually three years now since I qualified. I hadn't realised that until just then. The time has gone both quickly and slowly, and a lot of things have happened since, both good and bad, but I think it's fair to say that life is on the whole more enjoyable without the continual threat of exams hanging over my head.

But tonight is also a first for me. Every results night since I qualified, I've still been out drinking with my friends who were still taking the exams, helping them build up the Dutch courage needed to face the internet at 10pm to check the results page. I have tended to find that I would still get really nervous as the time approached, even though I wasn't getting any results myself. It was a strange feeling. Empathatic nerves.

Tonight for the first time, I'm alone at home with no firm plans to go out. All my friends who were also taking the exams have now either qualified, left York or just don't fancy going out in the same way we used to. It feels like I've finally had to grow up and leave that exam-results part of my life behind, no longer even able to live it second hand. And it's made me a little sad.

Sure, tomorrow no doubt there'll be drinks bought by those who have passed and/or qualified, and we'll all have a good time and fall over, that's cool. But I miss the tonight - the feeling the future is uncertain and you don't know which way the tree is going to fall. A combination of fear and excitement that makes you feel alive.

If you'd asked me three years ago, on the night I qualified, whether or not I'd miss that feeling, my answer would have been no. I'd have said that I felt sick and just wanted the whole thing to be over with. But we change. I'm not the same person I was then. In another three years I'll probably be someone else again.

So good luck to anyone expecting results tonight. You have my sympathy. But maybe a little bit of envy too because for you, the best times are still to come.

You'll catch your death, dressed like that

I'd be surprised if anyone reading this was naked at the moment. I'm certainly not naked whilst writing this post (though just occasionally it feels that way). I'm wearing trousers (pants, to Americans and Chip) and a Tindersticks t-shirt. These are the sorts of things I often wear whilst writing. Sometimes I may wear a jumper if it's cold. Or a dressing gown if it's first thing in the morning and I've yet to shower.

But reading blogs naked? No, that's not right. And to be naked when all you're doing is reading, well that's just foolhardy. Imagine what could happen if you read something so good that you got all excited and stood up and shut your laptop's lid and trapped something. Or maybe you might snag something on a CD tray that you'd stupidly left open. It's just not safe. Not to mention all the hazards of the accidentally spilt hot drink.

So I guess all I'm saying here is that if you're naked right now, reading this, then go away and put some clothes on. You won't regret it.

Actually hang on. If you're naked right now, reading this and you're a sexy girl, then stay a while. Maybe take a photo and send it to me. Preferably a photo of you, but if you want to go out and take a photo of some beautiful countryside then that's fine too. If you're naked right now and you're a fat hairy man, then you probably should head back to the previous paragraph.

A confession: I am naked at the moment - I lied earlier.

Another one: Nah I'm not. But I had you going, eh?!

What I did at the weekend

I was up in Edinburgh at the weekend for a party. It was cowboys and indians fancy dress - I changed my mind about my costume at the last minute and arranged for me and a friend to dress as cool wild west cats:



It was a complete bastard to get inside the costumes though - so tight! I think some people that were there may have thought that instead I was the person dressed as me wearing a cowboy hat - but they were wrong! I fooled everyone. I was inside the cat costume all the time! Mind you, the chap dressed as me looked like he'd possibly had a couple too many tequilas (ie about half of one). I, as a cat, was fine though. Cheers for the party Jaq!

It was a lovely warm sunny day on the Sunday, and so perfect for a walk along the beach. You may not think of Edinburgh as a typical seaside town, and you'd be right not to. That doesn't mean you can't walk along the beach though!

So here I am doing just that. You can't tell what I'm thinking in this photo and neither can I, but I imagine it's something like "Ow, I'm going to have a stinking headache later" or possibly just "Where am I?". Or maybe it was more upbeat: "What a lovely day!" or even simply "Fantastic!". Photos just don't give you that level of mental detail. You can think of it as a caption competition if you want, but since it's not actually a very funny photo that might not be a brilliant idea.



Later on, I went home.

How to be a better person

I'm going to make a claim. And you may not agree with me. I don't have a problem with that as long as you are happy to live in acceptance of your wrongness. But here's the claim:

Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward is one one of the best songs ever recorded.

No, really it is! It's perfect in every way. For casual listening I'd recommend the version of it from the War Of The Worlds highlights CD rather than the full length version (and I'm talking Jeff Wayne, not Tom Cruise here) since it doesn't have any talky Richard Burton bits on it, or other bits of narrative.

Put it in your life.

They glue horses, don't they?

We all know that glue is made from horses. So in the same way that you can take some oranges and make orange juice because oranges are orangey, there must be something inherently gluey about horses. But what is that glueiness? Why do we use horses to make glue, but not cows? And how come if you boil a horse you get glue whilst if you boil a pig you get boiled ham?

It all seems a bit wrong to me. Though probably not as wrong as it appears to the horses. Poor little blighters. One minute they're galloping through fields thinking happy horse thoughts and the next minute they're a prit-stick. I don't even like horses much, but it does seem unfair.

I wonder what made early man first convert all his horses into glue? Perhaps it was just boredom. Or maybe he was hungry and wanted to make cooked horse and when inserting said cooked horse into his mouth he found that his jaws became inexplicably stuck together and he put two and two together? Not a mistake that one would make over and over I expect.

It's actually quite lucky that horses aren't overly sticky in their natural pre-cooked state. Horse racing would never have evolved into its current form - the horses would just stick to the floor. I suppose as a plus point it would be much harder for the little jockies to fall off.

Now I'm wondering whether you can get high by sniffing horses?

If we put our heads together...

I've been done a bit of that old thinking thing over the weekend and decided that it was about time I did something I'd been talking about for a while, namely attempt to patch the holes in a friendship that I might have let go a bit stale (though with bloomin' good reason!). But, I think it's fair to say that both of us are open to at least attempting to start again, and it was maybe just down to me to make the first move when I was ready.

Which I am.

So that's good, isn't it? Don't really know if it'll all work out or not, but at least I won't have to look back and regret not making an attempt.

It's entirely coincidental that this happened on the same day that Countdown host Richard Whiteley died. There is not a hint of suggestion that it was his continuing life that was holding me back. And that now he's gone I can feel able to sort stuff out. No. That's not how things went.

Edinburgh Programmes

I'm going up to Edinburgh later to see some friends. They don't know each other but they do live conveniently in flats that are about five minutes walk apart. Makes my life easy. Tonight is a cowboys and indians party - I have a fantastic costume. It's a cowboy hat. And nothing else unless I have time and inspiration within the next hour.

In a fit of coincidence, I received some post this morning. I've managed to get my name printed in a programme for one of the shows at this year's Edinburgh Festival. The yoghurty comedian, Richard Herring, had asked for people to donote money to produce his programme which sounded like a good idea to me at the time. I think somehow this ultimately enabled some money to go to the charity, Scope, but I'm not quite sure how that works if the money was used to produce the progammes.

As part of this deal, I was to be sent a numbered signed, copy of said programme, and this is what arrived today. And as a special bonus, he's also sent me signed copies of the programmes from his previous two shows. I am so lucky!

Try not to be too jealous of me and my brush with celebrity.

Not getting any...

I've had no caffeine for over a week. No tea, no coffee, no coke, no pro-plus. Is this wrong?

Wow! I didn't expect That!

I bought some new trousers earlier in the week - sort of halfway between normal trousers and combat trousers ish. I'm wearing them now and I just opened one of the side pockets. There'e a bloomin' compass attached inside on a little cord. How cool??

I wonder if it's washable? What is the impact of water and soap on magnetism?

This has led to me having a good evening today, even if nothing else good happens later on.

Challenge #6: SKILL - Complete!

So I think it's time to declare another one of my 2005 challenges complete. Challenge #6 was to "learn a new skill to a minimum level of competence". The skill was not specified, but I was on the lookout for potential ones.

So what did I do? I have learnt to dance!

For the last five (ish) months I have been going to dancing lessons on a Monday night at a local country club - that makes the place sound a little grander than it is. Maybe "odd little bar and dance floor next to a driving range" would be a better description... But anyway. The dancing I have been learning has been a mixture of ballroom and Latin-American style dances. We normally do a dance for between 1 and 3 weeks. So far I have tackled, in alphabetical order:

Cha-Cha-Cha
Foxtrot
Mamba
Quickstep
Samba
Salsa
Argentine Tango
Waltz

And possibly another one that I've forgotten. So far I've had a whonking 16 lessons - that's equivalent to one a minute for just over a quarter of an hour. But that equivalence doesn't give you the true level of my new skill, since the lessons actually last for an hour and a half.

The strange thing is that I've been really enjoying it. Despite dancing of this type having been popularised recently through various celebrity and non-celebrity dancing programmes on the television, I think it's fair to say that Dancing isn't really cool. Well, sod that. Babylon 5 isn't cool, but it's still great!

I'm quite looking forward to attending some kind of social occasion where I might be able to use the new-found foot-moving ability. Something like a wedding. The last wedding I went to was last year and I was dancing with a girl there but neither of us I think really knew what we were doing. Moving our feet without tripping each other up was the order of the day, with the odd twirl thrown in. But no longer. Next time I'll say: "Girl, would you like to dance?". She'll say "yes!". I'll dance my half of a Cha-Cha-Cha opposite her and she'll get all confused and fall over. So that might not be considered much of a progression.

Is it better to be two people where one is ignorant and the other has knowledge and hence is aware of the ignorance of the other, or to be both together in the blissful ignorance?

So what, you might ask, makes today the time to declare this challenge complete? Why do 16 lessons give me a "minimal level of competence"? What did I lack after 15 lessons? What might I have found after 17? Good questions all.

The reason I declare this complete is that today I attended a Social Dance (organised by the Monday night people and at the same location). An event whose main purpose was for people to turn up and dance a variety of dances to a variety of songs. I was able to dance the Quickstep, the Waltz, the Tango and the Cha-Cha-Cha not-too-badly. And the Samba very badly. So best to ignore that one.

As ever with something like this, it can take a while for people to pluck up the courage to start dancing, especially if the dance floor is quite empty. Today I wasn't quite allowed this "while". The dancing teacher lady came over to our corner and made me dance with her. Which was quite embarassing to be honest. But after that, it was easy! I'm just a little worried now that she might start picking on me at the actual dancing lessons to demonstrate things. And she now knows our names...

One of the best things about tonight is that there was plenty of room on the dancefloor, and so we were able to move about without being bumped into by amateurs. That really makes it much easier to get a good practice in. On a less good side, due to the current weather it was bloody hot!

But it's all good!

So the challenge is done! And the lessons will continue. Who knows where this one will end up.

Three things to finish up:

1. Many thanks to my dancing partner of these last few months for putting up with my occasional lapses of memory, balance and pure style. You've been great.

2. Whilst waiting outside for our taxi home this evening, the dancing teacher lady came out and said hello to us and then said that I "had fantastic alignment in my waltz". There were three witnesses to this. I was actually complimented on my dancing. She said that she'd been watching me on Monday and it was also the Waltz I did with her at the start of the evening. It's possible that this may have been faint praise of the style "Your alignment was great, but your feet were all over the place and you smell of chips", but I'm going to take it as a compliment. Actually, the second set of kind words in as many days!

3. Don't tell my mum about any of this. I'll never live it down.

As the band Hal said: "What a lovely dance..."

Posting direct to your mind

Close your eyes. Imagine this is a really intelligent, witty and informative post. Exactly the sort of post you wanted to see here today. Imagine the words on the screen against the pink background. Imagine the fantastic pun in the title of the post. Imagine scrolling down for page after page being amazed at how one guy has written so many great words in one day. It's a good post. Perhaps the best you've seen this month, perhaps this year. Perhaps it's the best thing you've seen on the internet ever. Have you got the image of the post fixed in your mind? Have you absorbed the super content?

Good. Because I haven't got time to write what you're imagining today. But I don't need to because you've imagined it good and proper. Well done.

I wonder what I wrote about?

My new friend

I've not had chance to set the giraffe free today. This has been because:
(a) I have a job that doesn't give me regular access to woodland
(b) I kinda like having him around the flat
(c) I forgot

But because he's still here I figured I should let him have something to eat. I only have two plants and one of them doesn't have huge amounts of leaves so I let him loose on plant #2:



I think he's happy now. I'll set him free another day. Maybe.

What a strange place for an animal to live!

Sometimes after I've been on holiday it can take me a few days to fully unpack and empty my rucksack. Often when I do a final search round the bottom of the rucksack I'll find an odd lost sock that's been there since the previous time I was away. This is irritating, but not life threatening.

Today, whilst finishing emptying my camping rucksack, I found something else:



Yes, a small, yet quite cute giraffe had been living in there - probably since Christmas. Or maybe even Christmas 2003, since I think I may have used my suitcase when I went home last year. It must be one of the Christmases though - Yule is the only sensible time that I could have obtained a giraffe.

I wonder what he's been eating all that time? There certainly wasn't a lot of normal giraffe food in the rucksack ie leaves from tall trees. Perhaps he was hibernating like a hedgehog. And because it's always dark at the bottom of a rucksack, he simply hadn't realised that summer had arrived - possibly more than once. So whilst there was ongoing continual darkness, the giraffe continued to sleep.

But now he's awake. Maybe I should set him free back into the wild. Then Bill Oddie could study him and make more television programmes. I'd love to see the confusion on his face as a giraffe cantered past him through a British oak forest.

I have stomach ache

I was reading New Scientist earlier and there was an article about Quantum Physics. It raised a question in my mind. So I was going to ask the question here to see if anyone could help me. But then I just decided to Google it instead. I answered my question and saved you all lots of boredom. I'm great!

If I could talk to the animals, I'd say "Shush"

I've been out camping for a couple of nights this weekend at Glaisdale, North Yorkshire. My tent is the blue one, on the right.



It has been very very hot all weekend, and completely dry too. This is good for camping but there seemed to be inordinate amounts of midges and flies about, especially as night falls. It made sitting out at that time fairly unpleasant unless you covered exposed parts with some kind of cloth. Sitting inside in a pub on the second night, however, eliminated this problem entirely. Nice pub actually. Decent food at lunchtime and then in the evening they seemed happy to let us stay as long as we liked after closing time to finish up our drinks.

Shortly after I got home this evening there was a massive thunderstorm with some really loud thunder. I'm glad the weather held out this long. Camping in the rain is never much fun.

I haven't been camping for maybe ten years or so. I think the last time was in Spain after my A-levels. Four of us went out for a month and had planned to do half camping and half staying in a friend's villa. It ended up being more like just 2 nights camping due to a combination of laziness and us missing the swimming pool back at the house. Even if it was full of cockroaches (the house, not the pool. Imagine swimming in cockroaches!).

Thankfully, my tent seemed to have suffered no significant deterioration apart from feeling more cramped than I remember. This might be sign of me being older, or might just reflect that I'm not used to sharing it with other people.

Glaisdale is a funny village in several respects. The first thing that struck me was that along the side of the roads, and outside many of the houses (and in some cases up telegraph poles) are scarecrows. Loads of them. They are dressed in all sorts of costumes and some of the more memorable ones were, in no particular order:

1. Dorothy and her three companions from The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy looked very scary)
2. Little Miss Muffet and her Spider
3. A steeplejack up a pole
4. Various gardeners and tool users
5. And this one. Obviously it's my favourite



Not a great photo, but we were driving past in a car at the time of taking. The reason for these scarecrows appears to be related to their Open Gardens weekend when many of the villagers allow the world and his wife to wonder around their expansive, well maintained and very attractive gardens. The scarecrow thing appears to be a concurrent thing. It all appears to be quite good natured but due to the level of effort that had obviously gone into many of the creations, there must be a lot of local rivalry. Like when you have old women with cake-baking compeitions.

Anyway, it's nice to be back home again with all amenities and a proper bed.

And blimey, sheep in fields make a hell of a lot of noise at night. They're up loudly baaaaing until almost dawn. And then the bloody birds start!

Another one...

They're everywhere...

Answer me, if you will!

Some questions:

1. If I accidentally took some very funny photos of a friend asleep on my sofa, is it wrong to post them on the internet?

2. What is the maximum sensible time to believe in an illusion?

3. Should I be in bed?

4. Sleep. Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is?

That's all.

I'm an ac-tor, I am

Yesterday I took part in a production of The Taming Of The Shrew, based on William Shakespeare's play 10 Things I Hate About You. The version we were using had taken some liberties with the original work and had set all the action in Verona, Italy. Or somewhere similar. It was hard to tell because it looked more like a friend's living room to me. I guess this is a danger of home-based shakespeare.

My main role was to play Hortensio, a tall handsome Italian in his late twenties who's looking for a wife. Part of his wife finding tactics is to disguise himself as a music tutor and then try teach the flute to the girl he likes:



Sadly this ploy doesn't work, and some other people get together and do things and it all ends happily I think, the shrew is tamed and we all do a little dance. It was hard to tell what was going on - the standard of acting was low. The other actors couldn't emote if they'd lost a leg. I, on the other had was so convincing that I had a second part: Lusty Widow:



Now potentially this could have been confusing because Lusty Widow ends up marrying Hortensio. Although I do have the talent to pull that off, it would have been hard without preparation and rehersal, two words which I lacked. Luckily we had an abridged script which, although it did require me to appear in the same scene as myself, did not need me to to ever actually speak to myself.

We'll be touring the country soon. Look out for us.

Things I've seen and not seen

Today marks the start of Royal Ascot here in York.

So far I have seen:

2 top hats
3 ladies in dresses
0 horses

The town centre didn't seem as busy in the early evening as I expected.

Also:

0 Rabbits in waistcoats
0 Tornadoes
0 Naked ladies without dresses
0 Cornish pasties
0 Monster trucks driven by dwarf clowns
0 Danny DeVito lookalikes
0 Chinese balloons
0 Dead dogs rotting by the roadside, flowers at their side
0 Spoons bent by the actual Uri Gellar
0 Queens of England
0 Drunks lying in gutters singing the songs of The Spice Girls

Or perhaps in fact I saw all of the above and mistook them for a sunbeam. Who can tell?

An Old Man and his Money

At lunchtime today I approached an old man in the street. I use the word
"approach" here to solely indicate that I was walking towards him, rather than to indicate I had some intention of talking or interacting with him. I am very used to the idea that one should never talk to strangers and for me to have started a social interaction with this gentleman (or possibly paedophile, you can't tell by looking!) would have therefore been a wrong thing.

The man was stood still, doddering slightly, and he had his hand open. He was looking at the contents of this hand which was full of loose coinage. Perhaps he was trying to identify some suitable coins to place into the parking meter that he was standing beside. Perhaps he had merely placed his old man's hand into his pocket and been surprised by the burnished pieces of metal within. What were these odd demonic coins? How had they got there? And where were all the sixpences?

I was about three metres away at this point.

Whether what happened next was a result of his surprise at the contents of his pockets or whether it was merely a result of his advance age and dementia, I will never know. But the man's hand shook slightly causing one of the coins to fall to the floor (in slow motion, like an old man's bad dream), and roll away from him. It rolled towards where I was standing, and then curved off to come to rest in front of a parked car.

The old man hadn't seen how far the coin had rolled. The only person who knew where it had ended up was me. So like a flash, I knelt in front of the car to inspect the prize. It was a 20p! Fresh and shiny. I picked it up and stood up and then... he hadn't noticed I'd got it! His addled old man brain had been incapable of seeing as far as me and he was still gazing forlornly around his own feet.

I had an opportunity to keep the 20p! Greed dazzled my thought, dollar signs span around my eyeballs like slot machine wheels - this was slightly odd since my greed was entirely sterling denominated, but bear with me - and I decided what I must do. I'd steal the money and walk past like nothing had happened. I'd whistle innocently and stride away into the sunset. I would be a winner! For once in my life, I'd have got one up on The Man (even if it was just an old one). I'd finally, finally be happy.

And the thoughts of what I could buy with the money, the cars I could drive, the cigars I could smoke, the girls I could impress, they were all good thoughts. I was made. I was money.

But then my veneer cracked. I realised that to me, this 20p was a passport to wealth and bounty. But to the old man, it was more than that. It was enough to buy part of a cup of tea. Or a pipe cleaner to clean his old man's pipe and later bend into amusing shapes. For me it was a lot, but to him... it was everything.

So I didn't steal the money in the end. As I walked past him I handed the coin across. He said "I didn't realise it had rolled that far". I said, "It did" and then continued on my way.

And what did I get for my amazing act of kindness and generosity? Nothing, that's what. Stingy old git didn't give me any kind of reward at all. Not even one of the Werther's Originals that he must have had in one of his old pockets.

Bah. Old people today...

You're a mess. Yes, you.

I think most people are messed up in one way or another. This is not in itself a bad thing - a world where everyone was happy would be so horrifying. Like in those Jehova's Witnesses' pamphlets that show smiley humans living in peace and harmony with lions and tigers and the bad wolf. It would be vomit inducing. Thankfully, that isn't our world and isn't ever likely to be.

So we all have issues. We all have problems. But luckily we have ways to deal with them. We can bitch in pubs, we can write blogs, we can write songs, we can hold things inside until they burst, we can write letters to newspapers, we can keep a private diary, we can phone helplines or we can turn to a sinister mentor and embrace the dark-side. If things get really bad, we can even write poetry.

That's all nice then, there are outlets.

Anyway, what got me thinking about this was that I was at an open-mic night at a local bar, in a purely observational capacity. I had no intentions of playing anything despite one of my compositions having earlier in the day been compared to Coldplay - a comparison that was wrong in pretty much every way. If my life was a sitcom, then shortly after me saying "I had no intentions of playing anything" the screen would have faded out then in again to me on a stage with a guitar singing a song about how shit life is. Since my life is not a sitcom (honestly) then this did not happen.

I could go on for a while here, but instead I've thought of a quick summary that will allow me to take an early bed: Most songwriters are quite fucked up. Same as most people then, just more obviously so.

Succinct! Bye!

Extermi-cake!

There's a shop in town that sells cakes. They've made a fantastic cake:



It's a dalek!

Were I to get married, this is the cake I'd like.

Cheese on Friday

It's Friday: Smile everybody! Say Cheese!

Actually, cheese reminds me. I finally remembered the name of the cheese that had left my head the other day. This is good because it means that I wasn't losing my mind after all. Or at least I wasn't losing my mind at any faster rate than normal.

For your reference, the cheese in question was Port Salut.

Whisky and near-loss

Some days I really like my job.

I got in this morning to find on my desk: 1 bottle of Glenmorangie! Yum! It was a present for the help I'd given to a project over the last few weeks.

So I thought for a couple of seconds about whether I could accept it or not, then realised that since it was an internal gift there were no professional conflicts of interest or anything like that and so it was all fine. And also, I like whisky.

I did feel slightly guilty since I hadn't really been doing anything other than my actual job, but clearly the work had been appreciated by the project manager.

I like whisky.

Later on I lost my ID card (not because I was drunk on the whisky - it just fell off. Honest). But it got handed in so I got it back.

And even later on, I went home. With my whisky.

Bad Me

There is a very strong possibility that if you have changed your phone number in the last eighteen months then I have lost it. All I can say is... whoops. So if I don't phone you, it's not that I don't like you, it's more that I'm confused.

Actually, I probably don't phone you much in any case.

Debt

There’s a story on the BBC website about the upcoming G8 summit. I’ll quote a few paragraphs from it:

“… Mr Blair recognises that he will not get support (from the US) for crucial parts of his three-pronged attack on poverty in Africa - a package of debt relief, increased aid and fairer trade.

“In an interview for the Financial Times newspaper on Tuesday, Mr Blair acknowledged: "There are certain things we know they are not going to do, that we are not asking them to do."

“Mr Bush has already opposed UK treasury chief Gordon Brown's plan to use an international finance facility (IFF) to fund vaccinations, funded by borrowing on the bond market, saying he cannot commit the US to future debt repayments.”

Yes, the US don’t want to commit to debt repayments. Does anyone else find this darkly amusing?

Public Service Announcement

Next month sees the G8 summit up at Gleneagles (North of Edinburgh). Timed to correspond with this is yer man Geldof's Live 8 concert in Hyde Park. They're expecting this to be quite popular and tickets are being allocated on a lottery basis, via ansewering a tricky question with a text message. Now I know that everyone reading this is stupid** and so I will provide you with a little help.

Here's the question:

Which of the following cities is nearest to the G8 summit in July?
a) Berlin
b) Moscow
c) Edinburgh

As normal with these sorts of things, the questions is actually quite straightforward. The answer is a) Berlin. So to win, just text A to 84599. And you might win tickets to this fantastic concert. There are too many bands playing at Live 8 for me to list them all here but the highlights are undoubtedly:

- Del Amitri
- A Flock of Seagulls
- Jesus Jones
- Samantha Fox
- One of New Kids on the Block (I forget which).

There have also been rumours that Hootie and the Blowfish may be making a guest appearance, but I think this is unlikely. They'll probably stick to doing just the American show.

Oh, I probably should add that each text costs £20, plus your normal network cost, plus 10p for a confirmation text, plus the life of your next-born child. The children won't be killed, but will instead be taken from you and used to form the beginnings of a slave race that will be used to benefit mankind as a whole. Though I haven't as yet seen details of exactly how this will work. They're probably on the Live 8 website somewhere.

Good luck!

**Apart from you

Upgrade time

Here is a list of all the mobile phones I have ever owned:

1. Ericsson T18
2. Sony Z5
3. Sony Ericsson T68i
4. Sony Ericsson Z600

You may spot a theme in the phone makers - I'm not a Nokia fan. I've really liked the Z600 - it had a nice clamshell design (with a satisfying snap-shut action) and I've delayed upgrading from it because there wasn't anything around that seemed to have sufficient extra goodness to make it worthwhile. It wasn't perfect, mind - the address book was always very cumbersome, the camera only had a resolution of 250x150 (ish) and the memory was pretty small (only 1Mb).

Today I have upgraded once more. I've stuck with Sony Ericsson and now have a rather nice D750i. Essentially the same phone as the K750, but slightly redesigned for T-Mobile. I reckon it does have sufficient extra goodness. Specifically:

- a 2 megapixel camera. That's decent enough resolution to mean I don't have to carry my actual camera around with me as much.
- It comes with about 100Mb of memory, but that's expandable up to 2Gb - it uses Sony memory sticks (annoyingly though it uses the physically smaller Duo kind rather than the normal ones that I already have some of).
- Radio and MP3 player. Not sure how much I'll actually bother to use these - but the radio may come in handy. The MP3 player also plays AACs which is handy given that that's how most of my music is encoded. Good to see Sony thinking a bit more sensibly about compression formats - there was a time when Sony digital music players would only work with Sony's ATRAC format.
- All the music files can be set as ringtones. See if you can guess what I'm using at the moment. Clue: It's not that fucking frog. Now I know that's a hard guessing game since I'm basically saying "Guess, out of all the songs in the world, which particular one I have chosen to use for now". Tough.
- It's got a torch! Really!
- All the address book problems of the Z600 have been fixed - it works much more simply and easily now.
- It transforms into a robot.
- You can phone people on it. Apparently.
- Other misc features.

Nicest thing was that the little man in the shop didn't make any attempt whatsoever to sell me insurance!

Yes, I'm back!

The haircutter says to me: "So are you back on Monday?". Back where? Back here in the haircutters? Is he going to do such a bad job that I have to return in 2 days time? What's he on about? I'm confused so I answer with a generic "Yes". He must have noticed my slight confusion since he then says "You are a teacher aren't you?". Now I see what's gone wrong. I look like a frickin' teacher!?!

This doesn't normally happen.

I tell him that I'm not a teacher, but don't then elaborate on what I actually am. Explaining actuaries to haircutters is not my idea of fun on a Saturday morning.

Neither is having a headache, which is really annoying given that I only had three pints and a couple of glasses of wine last night (over a period of about 5 hours!).

And I'm really tense and on edge today. Poke me and I'll jump.

Weather Forecast

Looks like there's a storm coming.

Surprise! And squirrels too

I know I should be ready for this, but I looked outside just now and it was still daylight. It's half past nine in the evening and it's still light. So it happens every year in June? No shit. It still took me by surprise.

Ideally I'd be making the most of this by sitting out in some nice warm beer garden drinking some nice cool lager (Or more realistically, some not-so-nice warm lager, but hey, beer's beer, right?) but I'm not. I'm inside working on some work and having a hurting lower lip because I burnt it with some very hot pizza cheese earlier tonight.

Pizza cheese. What a pathetic thing to burn oneself with. I expect it'll scar. If I get arrested they'll write in my report under Distinguishing Marks: "Big ears and a pizza cheese shaped scar on lower lip". I'll be the laughing stock of the Lower Poppleton police department - in my head, it's Lower Poppleton that I've been arrested in, possibly for Cheating At Games or even Treason**. I'll never be able to show my face there again.

I think I've lost my thread.

So to move on to other utterly unrelated things, it was very pleasing to hear that the Nut Room scene in the new Willy Wonka film will feature many many actual, real squirrels. Trained squirrels! I had been uncertain about the necessity of this film - I like the first version and didn't feel it needed a remake. But if they have gone to the trouble to train 96 squirrels from birth to act in a relatively short scene in a movie, then I for one will go and see it.

Just in case you missed that last paragraph, they have trained real squirrels to work a nut-cracking production line! How cool??

And it's then a small step to think: If they can train squirrels to crack nuts on a production line in a film, then why not train squirrels to crack nuts on a production line in a real chocolate factory in real life? Squirrels have to be cheaper to employ than people, cheaper even than immigrants. As long as you have a ready supply of acorns to feed them with and are happy to let them take all their holiday in the coldest darkest months of winter, you're away.

Perhaps this could be the answer to York's chocolate problems. York used to have several big chocolate factories but over the last few years costs have become too great and production has slowed leading to several of them shutting down. But if they reopened them with a staff entirely comprised of squirrels, all their problems would be solved!

The squirrels would be a ready source of cheap labour, easily able to compete with the cheap panda-staffed factories of China. And in addition, you could gain valuable extra revenue by letting visitors in to see the squirrels at work. After all, people pay a load of pounds to go round Cadbury World in Birmingham and they don't have a single squirrel! Not one!

There are totally no problems with this plan at all. Chocolate lords - I hope you're reading and taking this in. I don't ask for royalties, just a free ticket to come and see the squirrels once a year. Thank you.

This has felt like two posts in one. You lucky people, you.

** Note to the police (especially the fine members of the Lower Poppleton Constabulary) - these crimes are only in my head. I have not Cheated At Games and Treason is like a foreign country to me. Really. Let me go. Ow, that hurts. Oh hang on, that's just my lower lip.

It's not over until it's over

Sometimes if I'm playing a song on my guitar I'll get near the end without having made a single mistake, without having strummed a single wrong chord. And then I tend to get all excited and in my excitement I miss the guitar entirely or drop it or go "blaaannnnnggggg". This rather spoils things.

So I start again. Maybe on the same song, maybe on a different song.

Well cut off my feet and call me Footloose

I watched the film Saw last night. A fantastic film, reminiscent of Seven in many ways, but by no means just a cheap copy.

Two strangers wake up in a big old abandoned bathroom, each chained to the walls by one foot with some rather heavy duty chains. It quickly becomes apparent that they won't be able to get their legs out of the manacle around their ankles. They find two hack saws along with messages saying that they have until six o'clock to either kill the other person or they'll both die. Unfortunately the saws aren't sharp or strong enough to cut the chains. They are however sharp enough to cut through their legs...

It sounds like the set up to some bizarre lateral thinking puzzle. But in fact they're just the victims of a Serial Killer who puts his victims in strange and deadly situations that always contain a way to survive. And it's a great film. Lots of tension, some twists and turns and a healthy dose of sicko.

But the point of this post was to point out a remarkable coincidence. The film I had seen prior to Saw was The Princess Bride. The theme of TPB is slightly different - it's more concerned with True Love and High Adventure. But the two films do have one thing in common. Both star... Cary Elwes!

Inconceivable!

Losing my mind through the medium of cheese

Last night I was in a little village out in Yorkshire and I went into a corner shop to buy some cheese. I wanted some of my favourite cheese - a hardish white coloured one. The problem came when I tried to order it and found that I couldn't actually remember what the cheese was called. I knew it wasn't Wensleydale, that's much crumblier than my favourite cheese. But other than that I was drawing a blank. The information had just been completely removed from my mind.

Even looking at the cheeses on display didn't help. I couldn't spot my cheese, even though I had a certainty that it was there somewhere, possibly hiding behind the Brie. The shop assistant was trying to be helpful. "Is it White Leicester that's your favourite cheese sir?". "No!". "Then is it White Stilton that's your favourite cheese sir?". "No!". And so on.

Eventually I had to leave the store slightly embarassed and go back to what I was doing, cheeseless.

Later in the evening I predictably remembered what the cheese was called, but sadly the shop was shut and so I could not go back there.

Now I have again forgotten what the cheese was called.

--------------------------------------------

Now the above story is blatantly not true. It is in fact part of a dream I had last night. And I definitely did remember the name of the cheese and I definitely now can't.

But then it gets strange: Whilst writing the above, "White Stilton" wasn't the cheese I wanted to use, I wanted to use another cheese. But I couldn't (and can't!) remember what the bloody thing is called. I tried www.cheese.com, a very good cheese site, and was unable to spot the cheese I wanted in its alphabetical list of cheeses.

Weirdly, it has gone from my head, and now I'm not even sure if it's a real cheese I was thinking of. I have a feeling that the dream cheese wasn't a real cheese and had the name "Anne" in it. But I could be wrong.

So now I'm thinking: Is this what it feels like to lose your mind? Do you have dreams that foreshadow reality? Dreams that purely by the fact that they were dreamt, then cause a reflection of that dream to actually happen? You dream of forgetting cheese and then in real life a part of your mind that used to have a cheese name in it has now become blanked? Am I going mad?

And of all my dreams that could come true, why does it have to be the one about forgetting cheese names!!! Not fair!

A missed opportunity

I got home from work and sat down to watch last night's Big Brother. There's a chap in there called Derek who's rather posh and very camp. He's a Tory and used to write speeches for Margaret Thatcher. He has a bizarre habit of talking to himself when alone (hard to tell whether this is just an affectation for the cameras, or if he really is like that) and today he made the following comments on fellow housemate Lesley (aka The Fat Slapper):

"That Lesley. What do you make of that Lesley? She's rather frightening. She's the authentic fishwife - tits hanging out, effing and blinding, knickers up her arse. Gosh. Hard to believe that in this day and age that they still produce people like that."

Hard for him to belive, possibly. Not so hard for me to believe since I see tons of girls just like her around York on any Friday or Saturday night. Often vomiting on street corners, or possibly just shrieking. But then Derek gets to the heart of the matter and identifies the real problem with Britain's chavs:

"She said she'd never eaten a parsnip before!"

Yes, the most offensive thing to him about the girl is that she's never taken parsnip. I can't believe the Conservatives missed that on their posters at the last election:

People in the UK aren't eating enough parnsips: Are you thinking what we're thinking?

That would have changed things.

Someone likes yoghurt!

I went to see Richard Herring last night at a local comedy club. To describe him as a personal hero of mine would be pushing things a little, but I have been following most of what he's been doing for the last ten years or so. Or back as far as Fist of Fun, whichever was earlier.

I therefore had a pretty good idea that a large part of the show would be about yoghurt (though I didn't have the details). Despite having this knowledge myself, I'd decided not to share it with the person I was going with - "Hey, do you wanna go and see a slightly chubby man do a show about yoghurt?" is not often going to meet with a favourable response. Luckily the yoghurt routine was actually pretty funny. And really wouldn't work well with any attempt to explain it more here.

It was funny watching him deliberately try to wind up the reviewer from the local paper by making absurdly obscene suggestions to his girlfriend. I assume it was deliberate, or else it was a spectacularly bad choice of audience member to offer his single trout sized sperm to. Which again doesn't really make much sense here without a lot of explanation.

The club is in the basement of the local arts cinema and takes place on some Sundays. I haven't been for a couple of years since it normally sells out in advance and a lot of the names playing aren't immediately familiar unless you know about these things - though that obviously doesn't mean that they aren't funny. Sunday's normally a school night too :-)

The bar can be a little slow but only because most people going up seem to be ordering four pint pitchers of beer - normally between two or three people, but I did see one person having one on their own. It seems slightly wrong to me to order four pints for your own consumption all at once, if only because the lager will have gone warm and flat by the time you get to the end. Not nice.

--------------------------------

Note: If you want to go and see a slightly chubby man do a show about yoghurt, then why not go and see Rich at the Edinburgh Festival this year? I'm sponsoring the programme!

Here we go again

And Big Brother returns to the telly. It must be summer.

Seems like they've done well at finding some new freaks for us to stare at for the next few months. It's quite early to have a view on who is the most freakish, so I think I'll stick with "all of them" for now.

For the first time, I have access to 24 hrs a day (ish) streaming TV from the house, since E4 has now become available on Freeview. I've got it on now. It's kind of dull. The most irritating thing is the regular advert breaks because they only seem to be advertising two seperate things - Ringtones (mainly that frog thing) and debt consolidation services.

I thought at first that these adverts were aimed at quite different audiences. But having seen how much the ringtones cost, I suspect that people could end up with quite hefty debts if they subscribed to them for a few weeks.

Actually, I think I'm going to have to turn it off. The ringtone adverts are starting to drive me mental.

Where are they?

One thing I noticed today is that there are much less swamps in the world than you might think there were if all your knowledge came from films. In films, charaacters enter dangerous swamps at least once a day. In real life, I can't recall ever even seeing a sign pointing to one. Or more likely, warning me not to enter because of the dangers.

There aren't many bogs around either.

Farewell to arms

I used to have a sword at work. It lived on top of my small drawers and was useful for poking the air conditioning when it broke.

As of yesterday, I no longer have a sword.

We were on a fancy dress pub treasure hunt and I was dressed as Angel. This didn't look too weird because I look exactly like him most of the time anyway. My sword was an addition that I figured would be handy for demon slaying should we find any.

There were no obvious demons and somehow I got away with taking the sword around with me all night. It's amazing what you can get past bouncers if you have a long coat. But when it came to going to a nightclub later I figured that enough was enough - the sword would have to go. Although it would have been interesting to find out what charge would have been made for sword cloakroom storage. 20 pence?

So I dumped the sword. I stabbed it into a dumpster outside a record shop. It was sticking out like in King Arthur stories. I like to think that later on some kid came along, retrieved the sword and has now become King of York. All hail the new king.

Shock News

Occasionally you hear some news that just seems so strange, so outlandish so wrong that for a moment you just freeze. News that is quite simply, unbelievable. For the bit of news to be true, you'll have to rearrange your entire worldview, change expectations and live your life in a slightly different way.

I had some news like that recently. I'll share it with you.

Take a deep breath: Fibbers (York's finest gig venue) is having air-condtioning installed!! Yes, actual air conditioning that makes the place cooler when it's hot. When I was in there the other day there was evidence that they'd begun the installation process. By now it may all be ready and functioning.

I've been going there for many years now, and the heat is something that you get used to. It's part of what makes Fibbers the place that it undoubtedly is.

This could be the end of huge sweatage when it's busy. Or when it's hot. Or when I've taken a big coat and a jumper along and am too lazy to take them off and too tight to put them in the cloakroom (Cloakroom! That alone was a radical enough change when they installed it last year). But I'm slightly worried that a cool Fibbers won't be a cool Fibbers any more (see what I did there?). That it'll lose some of it's charm.

Or maybe it'll just make it much nicer and more pleasant for everyone.

I'll let you know.

----------------------------

Update, 1927 25/05/05

The Fibbs website confirms that the A/C is now live. And they've used the same "cool" "joke". Great minds and all that...

----------------------------

Update to the update, 2341 25/05/05

I've just got back from Fibbers. The A/C is definitely installed. But it ain't turned on yet. It was hot.

Hanky Warnings

I've just finished watching series 4 of 24. Like Revenge Of The Sith before it, it should have come with a warning about viewers needing to have hankies to hand.

Kleenex could have got a good Star Wars sponsorship thing going - selling little boxes of big tissues ("Wookie Size"?) in cinema foyers before the film. And they'd sell if they put a Hanky Warning up. Let's face it, us Star Wars fans will buy anything with a lightsabre on it. Twice.

Buy! Don't Buy! Buy!

Belle and Sebastian put out a compilation album (Push Barman To Open Old Wounds) today featuring all the songs from their first 10 or so EPs. An utterly fantastic collection and most of the songs aren't on any of the albums. I wanted to buy it, especially as it looked to have nice packaging.

It wasn't even that expensive - £10 would have been more than sufficient.

The only problem was that I already own all the tracks (more than once in a couple of cases - there were a couple of the eaaly EPs that I liked so much I bought them twice!) so I really don't need to buy them again. Having a song on one CD should normally be sufficient. But I wanted to buy it anyway. I held it and fondled it in the shop for a while.

See, I could actually justify buying it - I could keep it in my bedroom and listen to the CDs in bed, whilst still keeping the originals in the living room (as well as on the laptop. And the iPod). So it wouldn't be just like I was completely wasting money. And it does have nice packaging.

Somehow I managed to restrain myself. But I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that for long. I had to buy two other CDs today instead, just to distract me. There's a certain sense of inevitability here. And B&S are the best band in the world. Ever.

Yes, they are.

Fi-Lo who?

Back at the real Fibbers last night, rather than the fake one in the centre of town. It looked like they hadn't had chance to put the black backdrop back up on the stage yet though.

Fi-Lo-Beddow were playing. Not a particularly well known band, but it's actually just Mark Morriss from The Bluetones with an acoustic guitar. He was quite apologetic at times: "I'm not the best guitarist in The Bluetones. I'm not even the third best.". Well, he sounded alright to me.

Quite a mix of songs "Some old, some new, some borrowed and some... Blue". A reference to his band there rather than implying that he was going to start playing some dirty rugby songs. So what did we have? Starting with Keep The Home Fires Burning, he moved onto a new song which was followed by an old Teenage Fanclub track and Gouge Away by The Pixies. And then more songs.

The new solo songs actually sounded pretty good to me. Better than some of the more recent Bluetones material. He played a couple of tracks from his as yet unreleased and unfinished CD (ie using a CD player) towards the end and they're recorded with a band rather than just solo so they could easily actually be Bluetones Material if you weren't paying attention. Which I think I mean as a compliment.

So a pretty good gig. Finally, it should also be mentioned that Mark is currently sporting much shorter hair than usual. This confused me a little at first, but once he started speaking it was clear that he wasn't an imposter.

There's Good Music And There's Less Good Music

Yesterday was quite a musical day.

In the afternoon, there was a free gig in the city centre as part of York Live 2005. York Live is described as a "music festival" though to be honest that description is pushing it a little bit. I'd really only gone down to see Four Day Hombre, but it was a sunny day, I had a couple of tinnys and I wasn't on my own for once so it was all good.

It's the first time I've seen the band since they finished recording the album (out later this year) and thankfully they were still great. Shame the set wasn't longer but since I'll be seeing them again on Wednesday I shan't complain too much.

Here they are on "The Big Stage":



As far as I'm aware, there wasn't a second "Small Stage" anywhere about. Although given the size it would have had to be, it would have been easy to miss had it existed.

The evening held further musical delights since it was the annual Eurovision Song Contest. 24 slicings of Euro-pop live from The Ukraine. Since last year's winner, Ruslana, had gone for a tribal drum feel, this year everyone seemed to have gone for a tribal drum feel (with 2 or 3 notable exceptions) which made a lot of the songs feel even more samey than normal. But overall the contest was perhaps a little unexciting this year. Which is why we have wine.

The Moldovian entry was my favourite mainly because it was utterly bizarre. A man kind of sang a shouty song about how his grandma likes to bang a drum. Then his grandma got out of a rocking chair and banged a big drum. Really. It's possible that the song may have a had a subtle meaning that I just didn't pick up. But I don't think it did. I'm not even sure if the Moldovan people go in for subtle meanings. I'm not even sure where Moldova is. Or what it's for.

But at least the Grandma Drum was a different drum to the jungle drums that everyone else had.

The UK entry didn't do so well. Not last place, but not far off. I don't think anybody likes us.

Taxi

I'm waiting for a taxi to take me to Eurovision. It'll be here soon. Bye!

Have you cried today?

Yesterday, I had a great idea for a post. Then today, today happpened, and it slipped my mind. But I have remembered it now, so will maybe ressurect the idea one day.

Excellent, the film is

Just got back from SW3, and... it's great! Really, it is! I'm happy :-)

I shan't say more now, since I don't wish to spoil anything for those of you going over the next few days. But...

Yay!

Beware the hooded top, my son

I heard this morning that Bluewater shopping centre in Kent has reported a noticeable increase in customer numbers since it banned people wearing hooded tops. The reason for the ban was that hooded tops apparently turn young people from sweet angels to despicable troublemakers. And gangs of these troublemakers had been hanging round the shops making trouble – shoplifting, swearing at old people and spitting gum on the floor. The usual.

I'm not quite sure of the mechanism by which the hooded top is supposed to alter the behaviour pattern of youngsters in this way – a mind control device in the hood is the obvious one but I have no evidence to prove this. Clearly it's inconceivable that these could just be "kids gone bad" who would still hang around and cause trouble regardless of whether or not they are wearing a hood?. No, it must be the hood controlling them (or maybe it's The Hood from Thunderbirds?).

But this is only the start.

Hooded tops are not the only item of clothing that have the power to control minds and alter behaviour. There is another.

I'm referring to the cult of the armband. Everywhere I look I see people wearing tiny little coloured rubber armbands. If you look closely at these armbands you can see that some of them have writing on them. They say things like "Make poverty history", "Stop bullying", "Cancer is really bad" and "Bring back Busted".

These are thoughts that are so radical and so outlandish that they would never have even crossed the minds of most sane, rational people. Who ever knew that poverty was a problem?

And this is where the armbands come in. Simply by being worn, they emit signals which make people aware that there are poor people, that strange kids will get bullied (possibly by people wearing hooded tops) and that cancer is really, really dangerous. Things that they just hadn't thought of before. And then because people are aware of these things, they'll go out and change the world. The poor will be fed. Fat kids will be able to eat lunch in peace. Cancer cures will be cooked up in kitchens around the land. And Busted will reform in time for Christmas.

That must be how it works. Armbands – signals – mind control – better world.

Yeah, right.

In reality, the armband does absolutely nothing. All it does is salve the conscience of those people who wear them, fooling them into thinking that they're making a difference. Or at least fooling them into thinking that they'll fool the world that they're making a difference. They're a fashion statement. No more, no less. And the people who wear them are idiots.

I however am not an idiot. I am actively making the world better. I recently went for a whole week without bullying my staff at work. And last year I bought a book from Oxfam.

Stick that, armband freaks.

Babies vs Star Wars

There's a chap I sit with at work whose wife is currently heavily
pregnant. The baby is due tomorrow. He mentioned that with a bit of luck, he'd be seeing his new child tomorrow for the first time and that this was quite exciting.

I tried to get one up on him by saying that I'd be seeing Star Wars 3 tomorrow for the first time and that this was even more exciting. I was obviously a clear winner in the "seeing something exciting for the first time tomorrow" stakes.

He however, wasn't convinced.

Faster, faster!

I've had my broadband speed doubled today. It has made some things faster:
- Internet
- Downloading stuff
- Looking at pictures

Unfortunately, it hasn't improved some other areas of performance:
- Cooking times
- Creative ability
- Feelings of wakefulness

You can't have everything, I suppose.

Third time's the charm?

I've just booked my ticket to go and see Star Wars on Thursday. I've managed to go on the day of release for the last two, so figured I may as well do the same this time. If anyone wants to join me, it's the 1645 showing at The Odeon. You can book online and stuff and so avoid having to deal directly with the freaky people that staff the place.

I hope it's good...

Things to do.

I'm intending to spend a large part of today marking exams, which means that I am constantly simultaneously seeking displacement activities. Or indeed any other activities at all. I'm already building up a list of (Really Important!) things that I can do rather than marking. But then I have to ration them. Mark script, do a thing. Mark another script, do another thing. This way I break up my day into nice manageable chunks. Activities I have done so far include:

- Fill in the home energy survey
- Try my new blackberry teabags

Activities for later in the day include

- Pay my credit card bill
- Put some washing on
- Have some more tea
- Throw away some old newspapers
- Ironing
- Have some more tea
- Learn Mind Control

See how exciting it all is!

Incentives

The council sent me a survey about Home Energy. I'd be tempted to ignore it but there are prizes ("for example, a washing machine" (got one) "or fridge freezer" (got one)):

"There will also be 10 runner up prizes of a new kettle"

That is the sentence that has drawn me in. A new kettle.

A poor excuse

This is a shite post.

I'm not gay

Me: "Right, I'm going home to mark."
Colleague: "Who's Mark?"

Race me!

I've been to the races today. And thence to the post-races curry. On pure racing, I think I'm £11 up. But I spent money on a ticket, a race card, some beer during and some beer after. And a curry. So overall, way down. Darn.

On more of a plus point, I did manage to blaspheme in front of a monk!

Modern Life? Rubbish!

It's been sunny for the last few days, which means: Sunglasses out!

But this brings yet another difficulty into my life. I have to remember to take them off when I enter a building. It's bad enough arriving at work and having to remember that it's my ID card and not my house-keys that I need to take out of my pocket to enter the building. Now I also have to do this whilst attempting to remove glasses. Or forgetting to do this and looking like a pillock for wearing them inside. If I try to remove earphones at the same time I'm likely to utterly run out of limbs and just fall over.

Crabstick Tales

In the sandwich shop at lunchtime there was a woman in the queue in front of me. Initially she queued normally. Then when it was her turn she asked "Do you have crabsticks?". As far as I'm aware, this particular sandwich shop has never sold crabsticks. It's not even sold crabstick sandwiches. I'm not even sure if anywhere sells crabstick sandwiches. And she didn't want crabstick sandwiches. She just asked for plain crabsticks.

The answer she received was a resounding, yet polite, No. There were no crabsticks available for purchase. So the crab-woman paused for a long while appearing to consider her non-crabstick options. I half expected her to leave in disgust without buying a sandwich. But she didn't. She instead chose Coronation Chicken. Then she left.

Now, as anecdotes go, this hasn't been a great one - it was neither particularly funny nor particularly interesting. It wasn't even particularly well related. In the slightly smaller field of crabstick-related anecdotes, it doesn't do much better. And for this I can only apologise: Sorry.

I think I have learnt an important lesson from this.

Exterminate!

Say what you like about the new series of Dr Who, I don't think these new Daleks are as scary as the old ones...

Black is the Colour

I've been in Sheffield this weekend to visit the olds, and also see my little nephew who is now a whopping eight months old. Soon he'll reach that juncture where he'll have spent more time outside of a lady than inside one. He's grown a bit since I last saw him in January but he's still easily liftable.

It's also my mum's birthday in a few days (she is well past the juncture mentioned above) so we went out for Sunday lunch at a local country house/hotel. I hadn't been warned that we were going out for a smartish lunch so I had nothing really appropriate to wear. Me and the brother-in-law therefore resolved to visit the local shopping centre and purchase a couple of shirts (maybe with a kind of buy one get one free, matching vibe). As shopping centres go, it's not a great one, since it lacks any good shops. In particular it lacks men's clothes shops. All it had was a Burtons. The main style of shirt sold in Burtons at the moment appears to be "Gay Frilly" which wasn't really what I had in mind.

We had one option left to us. Just over the road there's a retail park with a TK Maxx. It's not a shop I've ever really used in the past so I was willing to give it a go and see what they had.

If you've never visited a TK Maxx before then I will describe it for you. Pikey Jumble Sale. It just seems to have rails and rails of random mixed up clothes. Most of which could rival anything Burtons had for sheer crapness. But in amongst the jumble I was able to find a simple black shirt. I figured it would go well with my black trousers, black shoes, black socks, black underwear and black coat. The good guys dress in black, remember that.

Behind the payment counter it's almost like they freely admit that a lot of the stuff they sell is crap. They have bins to put different types of clothes hanger in. These are labelled "Trouser Hangers" for hangers that hold trousers; "Small Hangers" and "Large Hangers" for hangers that hold small and large things respectively; and "Rubbish Hangers" presumably for hangars that held trash. I was interested to see which bin the little man would put my hangar into. Would I be deemed to have bought a Large Shirt or a Rubbish Shirt? If he classed it as rubbish would it be too late for me to change my mind and go and find a different, less rubbish one?

Well, I was worrying without reason. The hanger went in the "Large Hangars" bin. My shirt was officially not rubbish (well it's about time I bought one that wasn't).

I also bought a new belt. My old one was beyond tatty and should have been replaced years ago but it's been one of those things that I never quite get around to doing. I bought one that was as similar to the old one as I could find to ensure that my life was not confused with over-the-top amounts of change.

And that was that.

Green?

I wonder how much of the world's resources the Green Party use up by standing for election when they haven't got a cat in hell's chance of being elected. All that printed material, space on ballot papers and so on. Someone should do a study.

Prospective Politician Spotting

I stayed up to watch the election results for a while last night (Labour won again). I find the programme to be a strange combination of Very Dull and Quite Compulsive. There was also a strong sense of inevitability about the whole thing. Pretty much nobody appeared to think anybody else had ever had a real chance of winning.

The best telly bits are when they announce the results of each constituency. Get all the little men up on stage and then humiliate most of them by reading out the pathetically low number of votes they have received. After watching a few of these, I started to spot a pattern in the appearances of the various MPs and wannabe-MPs of the main parties.

It's easy to stereotype, so here we go:

Conservatives: Generally the best dressed, but they manage to look like stuck-up, up-tight, tight-assed assholes. A bit smug, with public school hair, they also tend to look somewhat younger than their rivals (possibly because they bathe every morning in the blood of virgins?).

Labour: This lot are well past 40 years old, slightly overweight and look like they are constantly fighting against breaking into a heavy sweat. They look uncomfortable in the suits they've put on for the night. Style is an alien word. The exceptions are the ones who want to be like that Mr Blair fella - for their description see "Conservative" above.

Liberal Democrat: There is more of a variety within the Lib Dems, but there is one unifying characteristic - they all look like school teachers. I'm sure I spotted one of them throw a piece of chalk at another candidate at one point.

Green: They look like hippies. Because they are hippies.

BNP: Mean looking skinheads. Not too surprising since that's one of the entry requirements.

After a while it became a fun game to try and work out what party people work for, just by seeing what they looked like. Unfortunately most of them wear coloured rosettes which makes the game easier.

City of York (I found out what it's really called!) remained Labour, with a rather large majority of ten and a half thousand (20%).

I have an Election

It's been votey-day today, where we all sit around and elect the same government again (best of a bad bunch and all that). No results have been called yet. I have three, very dull, predictions:

1. Labour will win.
2. Labour will also keep York (or York Central, or whatever it's called. How am I supposed to remember the name of my own constituency??!)
3. It will rain here tomorrow.

I can barely contain my excitement.

Good Advice

A quote from the paper today that struck me as spectacularly good advice:

"Never assume that data exists unless you have at least two copies."

Right on. I'm off to do a backup.

See what a discount can get you?

So I'm cooking frozen pizza for tea (yeah, I know, but I can't afford to order Domino's every night) and there's a 50p coupon to get a discount off my next purchase. This would be a good thing - like finding a coin down the side of the sofa, or winning a small and slightly rubbish lottery - but there's a catch. A normal coupon would be printed on the box (inside or outside) ready to be cut out using scissors. Don't run, adult supervision recommended.

But not this pizza box. Not this coupon.

Inside the box is a frozen pizza, wrapped in shrink-plastic. Stuck quite loosely to the side of this is a sticker. On the sticky side of the sticker is the coupon! Complete with barcodes and instructions to the retailer. This coupon will stick to any paper or substance it comes into contact with except for the plastic it was originally stuck to. I can't put it in my wallet, I can't put it in my pocket, I can't put it in a bag. I could stick it to my trouser leg if I wanted to.

So what the f**k am I supposed to do with this thing? Walk up to the checkout, peel it off my leg and slam it on to the checkout assistant's forehead? That might work.

But really, it's ridiculous - they've given me a coupon I can't possibly use. Even if I were to get it to the supermarket without it becoming covered in fluff, then any attempt to put it in the checkout drawer would be farcial. It'd just stick to things.

But it might prove fun. I'd pretend to be all "Oh I'm sorry, look it's all sticky!" and the foxy checkout assistant would be like "That's ok sir, oh! Look! It's got stuck to my leg!" and I'd be like "Oh, let me help" and I'd peel it off her and accidentally let my hand linger too long and then she'd say "I've never had a coupon peeled off me like that before" and I'd make a witty remark about peeling and we'd end up married with kids and every night I'd peel coupons off her and she'd say "Peel me again" and I'd say "Ok - let me go and grab another pizza from the freezer first".

Sometimes these posts don't end up where I intended.

Flower Snow

I just looked out of the window and for a second, I thought it was snowing.

But it was simply blossoms, falling and being thrown around by the wind.

Haggis

This weekend I travelled up to Scotland to join Chip for his 30th birthday celebrations. He'd got hold of a house, a very big house, in the country, somwhere west of Dumfries. I visited Dumfries briefly on the way home and found it to be a very wet place. Constant heavy rain. I'm told that it's like that the whole time. I pity the poor inhabitants of that sorry town.

The place we stayed in was named Shennaton House and it was a fantastic building. Huge living rooms, massive bedrooms, a snooker room, a cellar and plenty of places to hang out with the others or just to go and find a bit of peace and quiet. Big gardens too, and I'm sure I saw a red squirrel at one point.



The main feeling I had at the house (on the first night at least) was that someone was going to die. This is because it was the type of house where murders always happen on televsion. This feeling was not allayed when after I'd set 20 places for dinner, only 19 people made it to the table. Had the 20th been mysteriously strangled? Poisoned? Lead piped? Or had I just laid an extra place "just in case"? It was indeed a mystery. I think they probably died and the body was quickly buried somewhere in the grounds. I'm sure I also saw footprints in the rose garden.

On the Sunday it was misty. And windy. A fine time to go walking in the hills then! Climb a big huge hill and what can you see at the top? Mist! Cloud! Wind! A brief glimpse of a loch as the wind briefly blows the mist and cloud away. Not much of a view then, but it was at least better than the "Wells O' The Rees" that we encountered later. Just go left at the sign to get there.



The wells themselves are less interesting than the sign. Small mounds of stones with a mossy puddle at one end. A promise of instant death were one to sup from them. It wasn't too surprising that we were the only people visiting them, what with it being so misty windy and with the wells themselves being rubbish. I tried searching for them on Google to see if I was missing something. I only found one reference. At least we found them!

But even though the landmarks were a bit on the rubbish side it was a fun little walk. And it was great to see some real Scottish haggis in their natural habitat (though they seem quite shy!).

I've got a mild cold now though. It had been coming on for a few days, and then got a bit worse. Bit sniffy. I'll live :-)

Bedtime

Just got back from Scotland - will write about that properly tomorrow. But since I'm starting the new job tomorrow it'd be a good idea for me to go to bed at not too late a timeslot. Possibly after having a nice soothing cup of tea.

Up to Scotland

I'm off up to Scotland later. I think I have everything I need - I've got my passport, travel insurance and E111, and I also got some money exchanged in town yesterday lunchtime. So I'm set to go.

I've also packed some teabags since there's nothing worse than arriving somewhere and finding that you can't have a nice hot cup of tea. Being me, they are fruiy teabags rather than tea-based teabags but I think the principle is the same. A hot drink is just what's needed when you go to a country where they only have two hours of daylight at this time of year.

Anyway, I suppose I should go and pack some things other than tea. Clothes and etc.

Popcorn

Sweet or salted?

CARVE 'ARTHUR DENT' ON TOMBSTONE

Since today was my last day but one in my current job, I was out after work for some drinks with the (old) team. Since everyone that was able to come out was old and married and sprogged, they couldn't stay long which left me at a loose end at around seven o'clock. But all was not lost.

ENJOY POETRY

We were drinking at a bar by the cinema. And today... H2G2 was out! So I grabbed a ticket and (after a slight stochastic diversion - best not to ask) I sat in my allotted seat and awaited the film.

EAT ANALGESIC

First thing: There were no adverts! And there were no trailers! This confused me a little. Is it because it was a preview? Plus points of this: I get to go to bed an hour earlier.

LOOK. SMELL. LISTEN. TOUCH.

Second thing: The film is great! If I can use an oft used analogy: It was like meeting up with an ex-girlfriend that I'd not seen for years. Not sure whether we'd still get on or whether I'd even still like her. But it turns out that we do get on, and she's got some new stories to tell me and she's brought a friend along who's really quite fanciable (Trillian: she's great).

PUT MAIL ON SATCHEL

Having grown up with the thing (that my aunt gave me) in all it's incarnations, there was a lot that was familiar. Much was word for word from other versions. Some was a mite altered. Other was brand spanking new. All felt right. I could nitpick (Arthur's too short!!!!!) but it's not worth it - what they've done works brilliantly. And I don't want to go into detail, so's to avoid spoiling it, but:

EXAMINE FLUFF

1. Music by The Divine Comedy!
2. Marvin - great! From the photos, I'd thought he was CGI, but no, it's just Warwick Davies in a silly suit! There's even a cameo from old Marvin!
3. Trillian: Mmmmmmmm. And all memories of Sandra Dickinson are safely wiped.
4. The book graphics are fantastic (though Peter Jones is missed).
5. The bit after one of the improbability drive jumps...
6. Much other. Even a bit that made me cry (a little bit).

GIVE AWL TO MARVIN

Overall, it's hard to find fault. Maybe it might be a bit different for those without the familiarity, maybe it wouldn't - I'm not in a position to tell.

DRINK BEER. EAT PEANUTS.

The only thing that now worries me is that now I've failed to be disappointed by H2G2 and I've failed to be disappointed by the new Dr Who, I'm becoming convinced that Star Wars 3 is gonna stink. I hope, hope it doesn't, but...

QUIT

Umbrella Dilemma (Or: How I learnt to stop worrying and love the rain)

It rained yesterday and today. Not all day, just at some times. Big thick heavy rain, the kind that gets you wet rather than just damp. Today I avoided it all. Yesterday I was caught in it a bit. My umbrella is sitting here beside me, but I don't want to take it with me since I may lose it in the pub. Yesterday I didn't take it with me since I was going to a gig. One day, I will have to take it - an umbrella that just sits there and doesn't open, protect, close, is a useless umbrella indeed.

Look at all the lonely people

Walking through town at lunchtime, I saw several people that I know, just walking around on their own. Poor things, I thought. They have nobody to talk to and walk with - I hope they're ok.

Then I realised that I too was alone.

Then I decided that when the people that I had seen saw me, they probably weren't worried about me being on my own and whether I was ok. They had no time to put me in their thoughts and worry about how I felt. They were selfish horrible people. In fact, that's probably why they were on their own. Serves them right.

And no, this doesn't go circular and hence prove that I also am selfish and horrible. So don't start.

Un-Americanising Gmail

In a fit of boredom recently I decided to change the language of my Gmail interface. Nothing fancy, mind. I changed it from English to English (UK). Mainly on the basis that American English should be shunned at all times. Actually the main thing that annoys me is the incezzant uze of z's in words that shouldn't have a z in. Like realize. And don't get me started on "color". Or... No, stop. I'm not hear to yank-rant tonight. So what happened after I changed the language? Nothing!

Or at least I thought it was nothing. A few days later I wanted to delete a message. Normally this is easy. Go to the drop down menu, select "Move to Trash" and Bob's your uncle. Message gone. But when I tried to do this, the option wasn't there! Arggghhhh! It took me nearly a minute to work out that there was now a new option instead - "Move to Deleted Items". This (not too suprisingly) had the desired effect. But for a while I just couldn't see this choice. I was so hard-wired to look for "trash" that I was blind to everything else.

It perhaps sounds like there should be a life lesson at this point. Something like "When you are always looking for what you want, you may not see what it is you actually need.". Something like that. But there isn't. All there is is the following warning:

If you switch Gmail to English (UK), Trash becomes deleted items. I have so far not spotted any other changes at all... Maybe the spellcheck is UK'ised? Anyone know?

Tasty Easter Treats

For the last few weeks I have been happily buying half price (and less) Easter sweets from the supermarket each week. Mainly Mini Eggs, Smarties Mini Eggs and Fruity Smarties Mini Eggs (which are fantastic and should be made available on the NHS). Today they looked to have started to run out of stocks. This saddens me.

A Brief History of Prostitution in York - Part IX

In the early 1980s, the Conservative government of that time, under Margaret Thatcher, passed a law which made it possible for local councils to choose to legalise prostitution in their towns and cities. Only three places ever actually took up the option to do this - Brentford, Canterbury and York. This low take-up made it easy for John Major's puritan government to repeal the law when he became Prime Minister ten years later.

During the period when it was possible to do so, several legal brothels opened within the centre of York. One of the more successful was The Bonking Whorehouse, situated at the end of Skeldergate, by the river. Although it no longer sells lady-favours, the building still stands, albeit with an incomplete sign:



The brothel would open at five o'clock every afternoon, Monday to Saturday, and would see a succession of local dignitaries and businessmen, as well as ordinary Joes, pass through its big wooden doors every night. Some may just have come along for a chat and a smoke with one of the many beautiful girls. Others may have come for some full on monkey-nookey. Either way, the 'House (as it was known colloquially) would welcome you with open arms (and legs), as long as you were polite and paid in advance.

Although the brothel closed it's doors for the last time to the public in 1995, it reopened as a sex-themed bar/club two years later and operated very profitably until repeated flooding caused permanent closure in 2001. Now the building stands sadly neglected, its glory days many years in the past.

Election Problems

There's a general election coming up at the start of next month, where for only the third time in my life I will have the opportunity to contribute to the selection of the group that will govern our country for the next few years. I can't actually remember how I voted (or even if I did!) the last two times. Maybe I should have written it down.

Because I'm far too lazy to actually attend a polling station, I will be using a postal vote - a fantastic innovation where I get several days, or even weeks to ponder the selection of boxes that I'll tick. I honestly haven't yet decided which way I'm going to go this time - I am a Floating Voter. Currently my views of the main parties are as follows:

Labour: Scum. No moral principles, but they haven't cocked too much up too badly over the last eight years (with the possible exception of the odd war here and there). And they do have an MP who punched a member of the public at the last election which should definitely earn them extra points on any sane scale.

Conservatives: Scum. They did ok for a long time, or possibly I was just too young to notice and understand the things that weren't so good. Then Labour came along and nothing much changed except that the Tories seemed to go a bit bonkers, and started to elect truly awful leaders, something which they still keep on doing.

Lib Dem: Scum. The main purpose of the Lib Dems is that they are a party which isn't Labour or The Conservatives. I don't think they, or their supporters, have any other point.

Other Parties: A mixture of scum, racist scum, totally deluded scum and madmen.

But I'm open to have my mind altered on any of these points, so feel free to try. And maybe I'll try and make a decision. Ah, democracy.

In an effort to have my mind made up for me, I took an online quiz. I don't normally paste the results of those things on here, but it seems relevant to this discussion so here are the results:

--------------------------------------------------------------

Your actual outcome:

	Labour 9
Conservative -14
	Liberal Democrat 14
UK Independence Party -8
	Green 4

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

--------------------------------------------------------------

Bloody typical. But online tests never lie!

Smiles

We had a bit of a work do last night at Orgasmic (with some free drinks! and some free food!) and I ended up staying out much later than I'd intended, mainly because it was lots of fun.

I claimed that the tokens we were using to get free drinks were smaller than stamps. But they turned out to be slightly bigger.

Not for the first time, somebody I was talking to began to heavily slag off somebody I don't much get on with, without them realising that I even knew the person in question, which was kinda funny - always nice to be reassured that my opinion of people is not entirely isolated. Other conversations ranged from very silly ("Right first time!"), to very funny (and not repeatable), to hilarious but slightly embarassing ("Yes, I've met her before...").

Today I had a nine o'clock meeting which I had a slight hangover for. But I was at least able to pass on the Big Responsibility of minute-writing to a colleague as part of the handover caused by my imminent job move. Actually, writing minutes isn't too bad - it's typing them up afterwards and trying to remember why I've written the things that I've written that can be annoying. But since someone else was doing the whole thing, this wasn't an issue.

Anyway, since I've finished all the marking I wanted to get done this evening, I think I shall head out to a pub quiz and try and make it three wins within five days. And maybe have another beer.

More Popary

Listening to the news on the radio a couple of minutes ago, I heard a lady give the following partial quote (near enough) in relation to the new pope: "Right now, the church needs a shepherd, and it's now got a German shepherd...". And at that point I changed channels. I found this funny because there is also a kind of woof-dog called a German Shepherd! But they probably wouldn't elect one of those to the top job - the hat would fall off and it would be hard to understand proclamations.

Stealing from blogs of other people

In my ongoing quest for Meaning in hidden places, I have decided to see what might emerge if I take random English language blogs (using the Next Blog button) and take the first complete sentence from the first blog, the second from the second blog and so on. I'll skip blogs that are clearly written in Foreign, and those stupid ones that just comprise long lists of adverts for things, with slightly different words in each post

Let's see what emerges:

"Are you feeling guilty about your love for coffee? I've just come to the realization that I am a complete and total asshole. so dann made quesadillas and they were indeed great...we are DEFINITELY going to do that again sometime. He used to write the most insane poems and literary "masterpieces" and we will give our last rites to it. I don't know if I'm making sense. He's worried about gasoline prices. I am the Lord your God. At least I have had time to work on the house, if not much money to pay for it! Credit goes to Dad, who reportedly received a score of “good”. But systems cost so much more than that."

Wow. That's... blogtastic.

The Name of the Pope

The Pope conclave began today so that in a short while there will be a new pope. One of the first tasks that the new pope will have to do is to choose a new name for himself. Pope John-Paul II's real name was Carol Wojtyla, but he didn't stick with it because a) nobody could pronounce the surname and b) people might have thought he was a girl and it would have been unacceptable for people to mistakenly think that a girl had any power in the Catholic church. Clearly it was much more sensible to name himself after the talented half of The Beatles. If he'd been elected a few years later, maybe we'd have had a Pope Morten-Mags-Pal I.

I'm not sure what process is used to actually choose the name so I went down to my local bookmakers (repository of all knowledge!) at lunchtime to see what odds they were offering on various different names. Here's the list they had pinned up on the wall:

150-1 Pope Tart
125-1 Pope Goesthe-Weasel
125-1 Pope Upandseeme-Makemesmile
80-1 Pope Music
50-1 Pope Isdead
50-1 Pope Tastic
20-1 Pope Eyethesailor
15-1 Pope Myride
10-1 Popette
5-1 Pope Daddy
2-1 Pope Lint

Yes, the name taking most of the money is Pope Lint, which was a very pleasant surprise indeed! I put a fiver on it so now I'm eagerly waiting the black puffs of smoke.

If the pope (whoever he may be) does go with Pope Lint, then I will return the compliment and change my name to whatever the pope's old name was, even if it's something stupid like Carol, Bungle or JjJjJjJ. That way the total number of each name in use in the world will be conserved.

Craft and Pizza

In the Museum Gardens today there was something described as a "Craft Fair of Quality". I assumed that this was to differentiate it from other, lesser craft fairs where the carpentry has bent nails and the homemade soap smells like socks. Or perhaps it was a craft fair where only Gentlemen of Quality would be admitted. Men in top hats and morning suits, sipping tea from china cups discussing the fortunes of the East India Company.

I didn't actually go inside the fair. Had I wanted to do so, it would have cost 75 English Pence which might sound bit on the steep side but since that included a free cup of tea, I think it's actually quite reasonable.

On a completely unrelated note, we went round to Bert's last night to say farewell to his old York house and drink up his beer. He very kindly cooked a pizza for us to eat. It looked so tasty that I took a photograph:



The flavour of the pizza was I think "roast vegetable".

The Final Day

Monday, January 24th 2050. That's when I'm going to die. It's my appointment with the Reaper. And there can be no doubt because the internet told me it was true. Here.

You can buy me a card closer to the time.

A distinct lack...

I wish that I was able to think of something interesting to write.

Maybe tomorrow.

BTW, xxxxxxxxxxxxxx!!!!!!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I seem to have become 29 when I wasn't looking. Darn.

Why bid early?

I suspect I'm either missing something or haven't thought this through properly, but...

Why on earth would anyone bid on an item on eBay at a time other than the closing minutes of an auction? Surely bidding days in advance is just likely to lead to a higher final price since people have more time to outbid your offer?

I'm aware that people don't always act rationally on eBay, but still, I'm confused.