Archive for October, 2003
I came into work this hallowe’en morning to find everyone replaced by freaks. Well, dressed funny at least.
I’m sitting next to Cruella De’Ville with what appears to be a Jedi master behind me and a lady-pirate with Fred Flintstone in front of me. Johnny Bravo sits where my project manager usually sits and I haven’t been brave enough to wander through the rest of the office yet.
Me? I’m dressed as er… a serial killer (Who look like normal people). As usual I left things too late, you see and ended up last night with a box of hats and a skull-on-a-stick wondering what possible combination would yield a credible disguise.
I do have a trenchcoat and considered briefly the possibility of coming to work as a dirty old man in a trenchcoat, but quickly dismissed it as a crap idea.
I’m not the only serial killer though, so it’s not too bad, and at least it means I’ll probabaly get to skive off for cakes (Friday is cake day here at work) since no-one else will be brave enough to venture outside.
October 31st, 2003
A bunch of links, unasthetically regurgitated onto the page for you to digest; like a seagull feeding its young…
Sources for these links have been forgotten. Sorry.
A big list of samples used in music. Might be handy one day.
A celebration of all things ickle.
The most useful colour scheme generator in the world… ever.
Online confessionals at grouphug.
Distressingly pretentious, pointlessly over-the-top flash animations by Larry Carlson.
October 29th, 2003
AD bloody S flippin’ L. Apparently my order was fulfilled and the line is good enough for ADSL. Unfortunately I disagree - every ten minutes it reverts to ‘no signal’ and you have to wait for it to find the signal again.
Looks like cable is the way forward.
October 29th, 2003
With only three days till payday, things were looking grim in the ol’ wallet. Suddenly, this morning we got a refund from Powergen and some rental income that we’d given up as lost. Suddenly the next three days look set to be filled with fine eating and wine instead of the 9p cans of beans that we were expecting.
Oh, and some new headphones today I think. I’m getting a bit fed up with listening to music in mono unless I wrap the wire of my old headphones around my head and tuck it behind my ear to fix the loose connection. I just look silly.
On Saturday I was at my parents house with my Dad’s aunt, who will be one hundred years old in December. I’ve never met someone who was a hundred years old before. Suffice to say I can appreciate what the Who were singing about.
On the way home, some youths had barricaded the road off with sandbags. When we stopped and tried to drive around them, they started throwing stones at the cars. I shit you not. A phone with a dead battery was useless for phoning the police with.
And to conclude this random, disconnected series of events - a weird dream update…
I am driving home from my parents old house. It’s a big thing because it’s the first time I’ve driven since a huge crash that left me traumatised. To help me, I have a trauma playback machine, which is like a glowing, spiky helmet that you wear which plays back your traumatic experience to you.
It doesn’t seem to matter that the playback means that you can’t see the road. Psychiatrists have proven that playing back your trauma helps you to get over it.
Since I can’t see the road, I’m driving very cautiously, trying to guess where the junction is by the loudness of the cars driving past. Eventually, I take off the helmet and see my parents on the other side of the road walking home, smiling and waving at me.
October 28th, 2003
Well today is the day that the missus starts her new job, so good luck to the missus. It’s a bit of a change from her last job (Driving ambulances) so she’s a bit nervous, though excited.
One thing I’ll miss though is the occasional tales from the 999 control room, my favourite one being…
“What service do you require?”
“I need an ambulance. I’m in a coma.”
“You’re in a coma?”
“Yes. I am in a coma, and I need an ambulance.”
“Are you conscious?”
“No.”
He got his ambulance, bless ‘im. Anyway, the missus starts selling houses in a legal capacity at 12 today. Quite why she has to get up before me when I start at 9 I’m still not quite clear, though I suspect it has something to do with requiring me to walk the dog and it being cold outside.
Speaking of which, the field in front of my house which regular readers may recall is Earie Indiana in microcosm, has developed what can only be described as a half-dug, four-foot long, shallow, empty grave accompanied by two abandoned shovels and a plank of wood this morning. Most bizarre.
Speaking of bizarre, here’s a weird dream update.
Using a golden key stolen from the crown jewels, I unlocked a VCR’s secret ability to suck people into movies. Once inside the movie, which was a King Arthur-type epic, I learned that the VCR knew the entire history of the world having watched all those videos that were played in it.
The VCR could mix up the history of the world to suit the movie, and proved it by changing the horse that I was riding into a giant, wild boar and replacing my medieval sword with a sub-machine gun.
I then pulled a long silver broadsword out of the ground and charged towards a castle, dicing up the shocked looking nuns who lined the driveway.
Of all the weird dreams documented in this blog, this one concerns me the most.
October 27th, 2003
How to piss off someone in an amusing way.
Visit their home and then, when leaving, tell them that you’ve hidden a spoon somewhere in the flat and they have to find it. You could mention that there is a five pound note wrapped around it too.
Mention it again five months later and ask them if they’ve found the spoon. Wait for one more week.
The missus’ pal then phoned up sounding rather angry and demanding to know where we’d hidden the spoon. Apparently she’d broken three nails and killed a plant which was uprooted from its pot in the quest to find the missing spoon.
“It’s in my bag” was my wife’s reply.
Then we all pissed ourselves laughing, except for the poor victim who’s threats of retaliation sounded empty thanks to her living safely four-hundred miles away in London.
Play the spoon game with one of your mates today - you won’t regret it.
October 24th, 2003
I had four shelves to put up in the spare room. Being lazy, I decided to do it very slowly.
On Monday, I put up shelf number one. On Tuesday, I put up number two. Last night, I put up shelf number three, which promptly fell off the wall taking shelf number two with it.
Join me again next week for DIY lesson #2 - plastering over unsightly drill-holes in walls, and how to most efficiently pack unwanted shelves into your car when taking them to the dump.
Feckin shelves.
October 23rd, 2003
It’s the annual Google Zeitgeist, a roundup of what Google’s been searching for over the past year. Biggest disappointment? Not one single mention of the search term “Galactic Toss Monkeys”.
Maybe next year, eh? While we’re here, have more Google fun with the random digital camera image finder which apparently gives you glimpses into the lives of random people.
And speaking of Google, this post didn’t get posted for ages because the Google API server seemed to die, killing Movable Type. Bah. A little ‘disable Google API calls’ button would be nice, I think.
October 22nd, 2003
What a lovely weekend. Took a trip up to the Highlands to collect an unwanted futon. Rain and even hail pissed down on us from the heavens, but the north of Scotland can look beautiful in all weathers. Driving back at sunset through the hills,storm-clouds and rainbows as the trees were starting to turn autumnal was just beautiful. Jesus Christ, I should be a fuckin’ poet or something.
Back to reality now. Early alarm clock, waiting in ice for the train. Urgent meetings trying to fit 200% of the work into 100% of the time. Meeting the missus for lunch and spending it discussing our first ever maxed-out credit card. I’ve never had a maxed-out credit card before. It’s only halfway through Monday and I need another weekend already. No dinner tonight - have to rush to the next town for more van-driving and furniture shifting. I feel stressed. My neck is sore.
Time to delve into my ‘loud, fast’ mp3 folder. That stuff usually makes me type faster.
October 20th, 2003
Outside my house there’s about four or five fields of grass all joined together. We’ve come into the habit of walking the dog across these fields because it’s dead handy.
Yesterday the missus was doing exactly that, when a strange man walked up with a labrador, a nerdy anorak and a suspicious nature.
“Hello, what’s your name?” he asked, creepily.
The dogs were barking at each other, so my missus didn’t reply - she was trying to control the dog, so she said “Quiet Sadie!”
The weird man must have misunderstood this as my wife’s name and ominously replied “Hello Sadie. My name is Mr. What”
At that point, my wife made a hasty exit and took a detour away from the field before waiting for him to leave. It was all a bit creepy and left my wife feeling rather uneasy.
I know he didn’t really do anything wrong - on the face of it he was just trying to say hello to a fellow dog-owner, as dog-owners are wont to do. I’m also aware that his name may well have been spelled ‘Mr Watt’ and that I deliberately spelled it ‘What’ because it seemed to fit his creepiness better, but it hasn’t stopped me feeling nervous about the fact that he was being creepy in a field with my wife where shouts for help would have been hard to hear.
Maybe Mr What is a nice man with an unfortunate way of introducing himself. Maybe he just calls himself Mr What because he’s a Dr Who fan or something. It would certainly explain the anorak.
In any case, that field is beginning to give off unsettling vibes whenever I walk through it alone. A couple of nights ago a young woman walked up to the entrance of the feild (It’s just a road next to it - no other features, no bus stops or anything whatsoever). She didn’t see me. She entered the field, walked over to a grassy mound, stood on top of it at put her backpack onto the ground. She stood waiting for a minute, then picked up her backpack and left.
It was very strange. Maybe she was looking for Mr What.
Oh, and I saw Waiting for Godot last night at the Arches in Glasgow. Very good it was, and rather well acted. Just thought I’d mention that there.
October 17th, 2003
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