Archive for December, 2003
Well Christmas went rather well, I thought. Cant be arsed writing about it though. I’m feeling very very lazy today. I think it’s the effects of being off work. It makes you all lethargic.
I was off yesterday with a small bout of food poisoning though. I hate being off ill at a time like this, not least because it’s incredibly suspicious. I am only supposed to be in yesterday and today and then off until the 12th so what are the chances of me being ill yesterday? Hmm.. yes. Food poisoning. We all believe you.
All I can say is that if you make soup with ham in it on Christmas eve - don’t try to eat it five days later. That’s another thing about this time of year - your perception of time gets completely defenestrated.
I did rather well for presents too, though I think I pulled a duffer on the old Secret Santa thing. I sent off my gift to the randomly chosen recipient , and I receieved a very nice email in return thanking me and inviting me to a party. Unfortunately it’s in London which is a bit far (Four-hundred miles) but it was a nice thought nonetheless.
My Secret Santa seemed to have problems with the ol’ sleigh this year though since nothing at all came down my chimney in an Amazon package. I sent a nice email to them politely inquiring about the possibility that perhaps there was a problem or they had simply forgotten, but it seems that Santa is having problems reading his email too. So would I, mind you, if I’d just spent a month reading over six billion letters asking for toys.
The Secret Santa idea is a good one, but I don’t think I’ll bother next year somehow.
December 30th, 2003
The Metro is a fine newspaper. It’s exactly the length of a train journey and rarely becomes taxing enough to use up all your brainpower before you reach work.
Yesterday it had an article on antibubbles. Apparently antibubbles are just like regular bubbles except they sink instead of floating to the surface like regular bubbles do.
An antibubble is a bubble of liquid inside the same liquid, separated by a thin film of air. The Metro outlined a method for creating antibubbles at home. All you need is a bowl of water and some washing up liquid.
Create a bowl of soapy water using this equipment and scoop some out with a jug. Slowly pour the liquid back into the bowl. Increase the pouring speed until you read that magic speed (Roughly 88 miles per hour) when antibubbles form.
You should see bubbles forming below the surface and sinking to the bottom where they burst and look like a jellyfish.
Did they heck.
Someone at the Metro is laughing at me today. “Ho ho ho, I wonder how many people actually tried that antibubble thing. Ha ha ha - twats.”
At least the paper redeemed itself slightly this morning by dedicating a quantity of its letters page to the debate ‘What is better? Ninjas or Pirates’
Rightly, pirates were winning the debate.
December 23rd, 2003
The past few days summarised…
Thursday night was the office Christmas party. Got drunk but not overly so. Danced a lot, took many, many photographs but none of lesbian encounters as was set out as the annual photography mission. Previous very successful yearly missions included ’snogging girls with wax lips from a Christmas cracker’ and ‘Pictures of girls arses’.
The failed lesbian photo mission was probably too ambitious to be honest and a replacement ‘Girls calves’ mission was apparently successful, but I have yet to see the evidence. Mmm, girls calves. Not my idea, but I can see the attraction. I wonder if this is how fetishes start?
Next night, I had tickets to see Plaid but ended up pulling out at the last minute. It was down to a slow-developing hangover from the night before thanks to staying up until 3am at a colleagues flat drinking whiskey.
Met the missus for a Chinese meal before Plaid and felt sick by the end of it so decided to go home. The meal was pretty crap (Jade Garden on Sauchiehall Street) - a sub-standard chicken satay which came with beef by mistake. It took so long to get that that we didn’t bother sending it back. And it was undercooked. And they took ages bringing the bill, which is one of my pet hates.
Anyway, during the meal we had a serious discussion about our dwindling social life, pondering wether giving the dog away would help any. We decided that it would but we couldn’t get rid of her. Kinda ironic then that I decided to go home instead of staying out for what was apparently a really good night.
Note to self: drink more.
Saturday was a write-off, but we did at least completely gut-out the house in preparation for Christmas visitors. In my eyes, that’s a write-off.
Last night was spent at my parents for dinner with my Aunt, Uncle and two cousins. Presents were exchanged from grown-ups to kids but since I’m now 27 it felt odd not giving the grown-ups something back. But who am I to break with tradition?
Dad’s off work and actually asked to look after the dog for a week because he enjoys going for walks. We hastily agreed and scarpered before he realised just how cold it was outside. We’ll see if our social life changes any but what with it being Christmas I don’t think it’s a fair test.
Think that’s me up to date now.
December 22nd, 2003
There are two things I really hate doing. One is buying shoes, and one is getting a haircut. The feelings of dread are similar in both activities, but I’m not really sure why I hate them. I can’t remember any child trauma relating hair and shoes, but since not remembering a trauma is the first sign of a suppressed memory, I’m pretty sure something bad happened to me as a child when buying shoes and getting my hair cut.
I’m just about over the haircut thing though. I went for a haircut at lunchtime because it’s the work’s Christmas night out tonight and I looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. I’m getting quite casual about it in fact - I just walked in, waited my turn and sat in the chair as if it was the easiest thing in the world. I’m so proud of me.
The City Barbers in Glasgow is great though because they have the most amazing artwork on the walls. Huge, beautiful charicatures of famous people. Apparently they are prints from a book called ‘Stars’ and if I could find that book then I’d have the Tom Waits one blown up and hung on my wall. It’s fantastic.
I get a different barber each time, but always have the same conversation.
“Are you on your lunchbreak?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, you work nearby then?”
“Yes - down by the Clyde”
“Oh, ok”
And that’s it. Today took an unexpected tangent though once my haircut was completed.
“Would you like me to trim down your eyebrows a bit?”
What. The. Fuck??
I’ve never even been aware of my eyebrows before, let-alone considered that they needed a trim. Jesus Christ, I mean who the fuck trims their eyebrows? People who trim their eyebrows are the people who have unusual facial hair-growth qualities - people with handlebar moustaches - people with mighty beards for status and warmth.
Anyway, don’t I need my eyebrows? Don’t they digest cellulose or something? Or is that the appendix?
I’m traumatised again. I’m gonna grow my hair and go all shaggy. It’ll be great.
December 18th, 2003
For the second year running, I decided not to enter the Guardian Best British blog contest. I thought that it would only be fair to stay out of the proceedings in the spirit of fairness to the other competitors.
This year it was split up along the lines of ‘best written’, ‘best design’ and so on and it would have looked strange and greedy for ybiia to be the winner in more than one category.
Despite ybiia’s absence however, the winners are all fantastic. Congratulations to them all. Read who won on the Guardian’s site.
December 18th, 2003
I like the tail end of having a cold. Your nose goes all crusty and the bogeys and phlegm congeal slightly. The end effect is that of large bogeys that eject solidly and satisfyingly into your hanky, allowing you moments of clear, sniff-free beathing in the most pleasing manner.
But anyway - Saddam’s been captured, in case you weren’t aware (Which you were). It’s weird, but all the talk of what to do with him reminded me of an Eddie Izzard routine.
I remember a routine in which he was talking about the number of Russians who died in the second world war. He said if someone kills someone, then you go, “Oh you murderous bastard, straight to jail with you!” If someone kills two people, you go, “Two people?? You evil murderer! Get straight to jail, and never come back!” If a serial killer kills ten people, then you’re shocked and appalled, “Hang the bastard! No, hanging’s too good for ‘im!”
But if you hear that someone has murdered ten thousand people, then the number is all of a sudden too big. Your brain just can’t deal with the idea that someone has killed ten thousand people.
“You’ve killed ten thousand people?? Er… well done! Er… my word that’s a lot of people. You must get up very early in the morning indeed!”
Saddam murdered over ten thousand of his own people in his own country by deliberately deploying chemical weapons on civilians. And that’s just for starters. The palace of the end - his torture chambers were places of horrendous crimes.
Politicians, militiary commanders, civilians or anyone else who had stood in Saddams way, (Or looked like they might) ended up meeting very grisly fates indeed in a place where mutilation, rape and worse were used as a method of extracting confessions.
He has murdered unimaginable numbers of people including large numbers of his own friends and family. And it’s not only on his orders - Saddam has killed many people by his own hand. I haven’t even mentioned war.
So when you hear stories on the news asking, “What is the possibility of Saddam getting the death penalty?” it seems ridiculous. There is no punishment in the world that could ever meet the need for revenge that must be felt by the numerous families of his victims. Lock him up, give him the chair - it amounts to getting rid of him. It’s wonderful news to hear, but what happens to him next seems like discussing what kind of cherry to put on the cake. And talks of him having a fair trial, (which he should of course have,) seem ironically ill-fitting.
December 16th, 2003
Clyde Auditorium? Where did I get that from? Eddie Izzard was in fact at the SECC. Fortunately the entrace to the SECC is a fifteen second walk from the entrance to the Clyde Auditorium, otherwise I would have felt quite the fool.
Eddie Izzard is a remarkably funny man. If only I could look that good in a skirt, boots and tits.
Forget I wrote that…
Anyway, my cold didn’t quite materialise (yet - sniffs starting to take hold) so I managed to get through the show without sneezing onto the backs of the heads in front of me.
He manages to be wonderfully absurd yet still have the audience following his every word. There’s no train of thought as much as a hovercraft of thought which moves around anywhere it damn well pleases.
It was a huge hall with billions of people in it, but he still managed to make it feel small; like a friendly chat with mates.
December 14th, 2003
Eddie Izzard tomorrow night 
Boo and Nay…
I can feel a belter of a cold coming on just in time for the weekend. Why do colds only start on Fridays?
At least I’ll be in the Clyde Auditorium with hundreds of other people and the largest air conditioning system known to man. Just me and my germs.
Fly my pretties, fly!
December 12th, 2003
There’s been a dearth of dreams lately to report on, which is a bit disappointing. Too many sensible bedtimes and not enough early awakenings methinks.
At least I had a sort of bad dream two nights ago involving chain-saws, Harley-Davidsons and flatulent dinosaurs. As it turns out the missus was having an unstoppable snoring fit that couldn’t be halted with even the most extreme of tried and tested methods (Pushing, prodding and suffocating).
For the second time in four years (Which isn’t that bad really when you think about it) I was forced into the next room with a sleeping bag at 3am.
It still took me about half-an-hour to get back to sleep though. Ever get that thing where there’s a tune playing over and over in your head really loudly and it won’t go away? Well that’s what happened to me.
December 11th, 2003
If you ever decide to visit me at my place of work, I’ve decided to prepare some guidelines for you concerning certain aspects of the building.
The gents toilet on our floor are not the worst example of gents toilets in the world, but certain unwritten rules regarding their use are in force and unwary visitors would be wise to arrive prepared.
The toilet cubicles themselves are affectionately known, from nearest to farthest, as traps one through four. No one trap is preferred over any of the others though the time of day may govern your selection of the most appropriate trap to use.
Regardless of which trap you choose, you should note that the doors are ‘push’ and not ‘pull’ despite the fact that there is a large ‘pull-style’ handle on the door. Many a visitor to the building has been found standing patiently by the sinks waiting for a non-existant occupant to emerge from one of the four already empty cubicles.
Trap one, like all of the traps, is a mixed bag of pros and cons. On the pro side someone usually leaves a copy of the Metro on the floor next to the toilet. If your are an ‘early evacuator’ in the mornings then trap one may provide some valuable reading material while you freshen yourself in preparation for the new working day. The excessively hygene conscious may wish to avoid this however for the simple fact that it has been sitting on the floor of a gents toilet cubicle. Be assured however, that trap one is probably the most consistently clean of the four traps and that the cleaners do a good job. At that time in the morning, your concerns are unnecessary.
One occupant of trap one does however have a rather odd habit. Occasionally toilet paper can be found tied into a bow around the spring-loaded hinge that keeps the door closed. The purpose of this has never really been investigated nor has it been openly discussed at adequate length. One time I tried to work out what was going on by attempting to communicate with the mysterious bow-tier. I tied an excessively large bow of toilet paper to the coat-hook on the wall. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this act ‘freaked out’ some colleagues and my experiment was never repeated, nor did it yield any return communication from the bow-tier.
In hindsight, trying to communicate with other men through the medium of toilet paper art in a gents toilet is not to be attempted nor is it to be encouraged. I assure you that my act had only the purest of motives.
Trap two is the standard workhorse cubicle. It does not start off as the cleanest of the four traps, but it does at least deteriorate in a linear and predictable way throughout the day. You know where you are with trap two.
Recently, trap two has developed a fault in the spring-loaded door mechanism. This leaves the door slightly open and gives it the appearance of being occupied, even when it isn’t. It may be that this will result in a lower level of useage than the other traps. You might want to give trap two a go, though bear in mind that if you forget to lock the door, you may be more likely to be walked in on due to the same fault.
Trap three should be treated with care. Trap three can be a very useful trap, but timing is of high importance. Never attempt to use trap three first thing in the morning. Someone in the office has a bit of a fibre problem and the flush mechanism on trap three simply cannot cope with the daily assault. It is usually clear by late-morning and the ultimate effect is one of a cubible with a very low useage - a fact that you can use to your advantage.
Be careful though since either the same person with a new problem, or a different person altogether returns some time mid-afternoon to render the trap effectively closed to the public until the next morning. Timing, as I said, is important.
Finally, trap four. You would expect trap four to have a low useage due to it being farthest from the door. This is not so since everyone else has the same idea. Each of the traps is identical and completely enclosed with its own overhead light. Somehow though, trap four always seems slightly darker than the others. I cannot explain this though perhaps the dulled reflective qualities of the floor surrounding the toilet can go some small way towards explaining the phenomenon. Trap four is also the last to get cleaned. Although the cleaners do do a good job, it does mean that this trap recieves the least attention. Personally, I tend not to use trap four, so the information may be out of date. It might be worth a gamble and if you do give it a whizz be sure to let me know how you got on.
Enjoy your visit.
December 10th, 2003
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