… while topical (or it was 4 minutes ago) is actually a whimsical, poetic heading that has absolutely NOTHING to do with what I was intending to write whatsoever. Sorry.

_______________________

I was listening to the radio this morning.

This is not unusual. Nor, in itself, a very good story, I must admit.

In fact, travelling - as you have - from the title of this post to the revelation that I, like millions of others, was listening to the radio this morning, you might feel disappointed. And justifiably so. I mean, if you click on a link, or perhaps log into your RSS feed, and are faced with a heading involving an apparent transmodic, poetic juxtoposition, and then confronted only seconds later by a post that declares itself to be doggedly, almost morbidly mundane, I would argue that you have every right to feel disappointed. Let down. Upset.

Some might even argue that you might arguably be in a position to demand your money back.

I, however, would argue that you haven’t paid any money. So. Right then.

__________________________________

I was listening to the radio this morning. In the mornings, I listen to BBC Radio Five. Or Five. Or Five live. Or whatever the hell it’s called. That one that does mainly sport, but in the mornings, after their apocolyptically bad breakfast show starring that man who used to be on Radio One and think he was hip and is now on Five Live and thinks he’s clever, they do phone-ins about topical subjects from the world of current affairs. And I listen to it.

This is my general practice, mainly because not to listen to that would mean retuning the three radios that are on simultaniously - and certainly not because I like to listen to the incredibly repetitive whiny phone-ins that are the standard fare at that time in the morning. I don’t. Well, I do, but only because listening to them means I get to shout at stupid people.

I will have a proper rant about these damnable phone-ins another time, with a better heading that won’t make you depressed and aggrieved at having to read it. But in the meantime I had one simple question.

This morning, whining about the NHS, a man kept using the word ‘tret‘. He used it once:

“But if that’s how people get tret, what do you expect?”

And I thought I’d misheard him.

Then he used it three times in quick succession.

“I couldn’t believe I was tret that way. I was tret with contempt, and if people are tret like that, they don’t like it”

Well frankly, I can well imagine they don’t like it. It’s completely ungrammatical.

Or is it me? Is ‘tret’ (as past tense of treat, used rather than ‘treated’) a word?

Seriously - is it? Am I missing a word?

Is tret a word?

It’s funny, isn’t it? You can wake up in the morning, and carry on almost all the way through the day without realising it’s a special day, and it’s only by chance (well, ‘it’s only by chance’ in this case meaning ‘it’s only because you’re desperately looking up interesting  facts about February 27th  in Wikipedia because you have to find some way of rounding up the television previews every day and sometimes there is NOTHING to say’) you realise that it’s International Polar Bear Day.

And you almost missed it.

Again.

So you do a search, and you discover that, as you expected, it’s something that you’ve never heard of, and, in fact, the only people who have are the kind of people who would own the contents of this cafe press shop (replace ‘pigs’ with ‘polar bears’) (You know, the repetition of that page just makes me laugh every time. And you can get so many different flavours! ‘I heart ‘ethnic’, anyone?) - and yet, AND YET, when you google ‘International Polar Bear Day’ and you discover that hundreds of e-greeting card outlets actually have cards for the occasion. Unbelievable.

Still, it gave me something to talk bollocks about for a while so I don’t really mind. And, as usual in these situations, I’m pointing it out only because I thought it was a bit little.red.boatish so you might like it.

Happy International Polar Bear Day, everyone.

I’d been wanting to see it since I first heard about it, so with nothing else to do on a freezing February Saturday, we went to the cinema and watched Good Night and Good Luck.

My learned friend (and best beloved) has said eminently sensible things about it, I don’t suppose there’s any point actually giving a review. Also, if you wanted a review, I imagine you’d go and read the review of a film reviewer. Maybe in a paper or something. I’m not doing myself down, I think - I just like to think of you as logical people. Call me crazy.

I will say only this - it was beautifully shot, very nicely put together, and the verbatim parts of the script - particularly the words of Ed Murrow himself, were incredibly potent, stirring even - as well as very relevant, topical in terms of modern media relationships with politics and yadda yadda dooby dooby doo etc.

Thing is, it was certainly more mission statement than movie - good for all that, and I’m really intrigued to see what Clooney will go on to produce, but even a mission statement can have a little life in it, can’t it? I also found myself unhappy that I probably needed a deeper understanding of the wider political and cultural context to appreciate the film properly.

Whatever. The main problem, I think, was that it needed more explosions. Or car chases. Or perhaps a large monster devouring the city in which the film was set, whichever city that was. They wouldn’t have improved the plot any, or, in fact, the film in general, but God DAMN if that wasn’t the worst popcorn movie I’ve ever seen in my life.

I ordered a very large bucket of popcorn. I love popcorn. Actually, the buying of the popcorn was a tiny scene of dramatised idiocy in itself.

popcorn lady: that’s £7.40 please. Don’t you want the large drink an popcorn combo? That’s only £6.50.
me: No, I can’t finish that, I just want the medium drink but the big popcorn. Can I pay for a large combo though?
popcorn lady: No, it’s £7.40 if you don’t have the combo. You only get the combo if you have the large drink.
me: But I don’t want a large drink. I want this one.
popcorn lady: Nah. They have to be the same size, otherwise it’s not a combo.
me: I can put it in a large cup, if you want - would it be a combo then? Because it would be a medium drink, it would just look like a large one.
popcorn lady: Um.
me: It works out better for you, I think. Because I’m only having a medium drink, but I’m willing to pay for a large. So I’m paying for large even though it’s a medium, and you guys get to keep the extra drink. Is that ok?
popcorn lady: Um. Yes. That’s £6.50 please thank you enjoy your film.

The problem was that the whole film was too quiet. Eating popcorn in such a hushed environment is wrong and bad and a general mistake. It would have made me exactly the kind of nasty antisocial type I would usually wish a painful death upon. It would be like farting in the Uffizi, or going to a wedding and licking the cake. And all the bridesmaids.

So with a square acre of cinema snack-food to eat and a short, terribly quiet movie to eat it in, the whole thing became about waiting for any vague suggestion of noise - lots of people talking at once, the flash of a dozen cameras at once, the clatter of a typewriter - so I could stuff my mouth with a handful of precious poppycorn. But then suddenly the noise would stop, and I’d be left with cheeks bulging, hamster-like, sucking away on the salty bumpy orbs until they were soft enough to chew.

Between those times, I was left with one piece at a time. Popcorn popped in the mouth and eaten quietly just isn’t the same at all. Pop. Suck. Swallow. Pop. Suck. Swallow. Gosh, that sounds worse than I intended. Ahem.

The only worse popcorn movie I’ve ever seen was Rabbit Proof Fence. I can’t find the link right now, but it was in Glasgow when, as a poor student, I got to the cinema and discovered I could afford either a drink, or some popcorn. I chose the large tub of salted popcorn. Twenty minutes into a movie set entirely in the burning hot, sun-scorched Australian desert, and with a mouth like desiccated badger arse, or a Rich Tea biscuit, I realised I may have made a mistake. Some movies are bad for popcorn. I think they should have to put that on the poster.

So in summary, Good Night and Good Luck: Very good, too quiet for large popcorn, possibly a small bucket might be fine, unless a surprise post-Oscars directors cut sudddenly includes in a car chase or a couple of Godzilla scenes. But if you like to walk out of a movie saying “Gosh, that was Informative, wasn’t it?” then this is completely, entirely, the film for you.

A random conversation, with a friend of a friend in the pub, about the fact that he had, quite recently, not been finding much success or happiness in speed dating, dating columns, or blind dating, dating through work, dating through friends, singles parties, singles bars, singles holidays, dating clubs, dating books.

He just couldn’t find himself a girlfriend, no matter what he tried, he said. It was impossible to find anyone he had things in common with.

“So the speed dating thing was fine, except I got really drunk, and none of them actually worked out that well. It’s just impossible - how does anyone meet anyone, nowadays?”

“Well,” I said ignoring the fact that my beloved was flashing his best ‘don’t even think about mentioning we met through blogging‘ look, over to my left - “the majority of couples I know met through the internet”

“HA!” Said Mr Friend of a Friend. “What A Bunch of LOSERS! What a bunch of Sad Pathetic LOSERS!”

My beloved held onto my hand, tightly - the way one might hold one to the collar of a normally tame terrier who’d started twitching, baring their teeth, and almost inaudibly growling - while I sat and tipped my head and wondered whether to carry on the conversation.

I’ve had this conversation before - a lot of times, in fact. And have discovered that, mainly, no matter how many stories you can produce of successful couples, marriages, happy relationships, house buying and babies you know that have come out of talkboards, comment boxes, blogmeets and random emails from fellow-bloggers, some people will not be convinced - the internet is simply full of geeks and nutters, after all - and will spend the rest of the night looking at you funny.

So I sat, in silence, and listened to him hold forth about how you can learn more about a person in a three minute conversation at a speed dating event than you could in a year of emails. About how he may not have had any luck in month following month of dating events and singles clubs, but he would never, ever be so desperate as to look to the internet. Ever.

I sipped my pint, nodded, and smiled at the poor little man, and thought about things we had to do around the flat in the morning, and the friends we’d be meeting for Sunday lunch, while my beloved traced circles on my palm.

Long, faffy, and complicated, technical things. And I’m not good at them. And I want things to be perfect. And everything takes a lot more time to be perfect than I have concentration span for.

And I don’t know if this writing is too big. I feel like I’m writing a large print book for the elderly, or idiots, or elderly idiots. And this won’t even post, I know it won’t, because I’ve written this three times already, and I don’t understand wordpress, and because for some reason the site still isn’t stable on this server, and do you know what? I may just cry.

Please don’t all go away. Please.

I just want to bloody write. I have things to say, guff to skit on, opera lovers to irritate, I only want to bloody well write, and everything’s all…

Arg.

Ok. Heavy backstage work going on. Site may Go down (in bad way). Watch out.

I think we may have an infestation of ladybirds.

According to my beloved, impolitely reading over my shoulder as I type, infestation may be a little strong, or dramatic, or something.

Revision: Though they may be deviously and misleadingly few in number, I think we may potentially be lethally overrun by deadly ninja ladybirds.

This poses a problem. See, I am not afraid of ladybirds, not like mice. Ladybirds don’t scuttle, or hide under your sofa, or nibble your belongings, and are only really terrifying if they fly at you while you are on the toilet.

The problem is, however, that we mainly seem to have the kind of ladybird who is particularly keen on flying at you while you are on the toilet. You know the type. There are probably dirty niche internet chatrooms full of them.

But I am still confused. How is an infestation of ladybirds possible? Surely the air at this altitude (third floor) is simply to thin for them to live? This is probably the reason you don’t see ladybirds climbing Everest very often, for example.

First there was just one, in the bathroom, perched on the geranium in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. Then there was another, in the living room, skipping sweetly across the window sill. Then there was another, curvy-side down on the rim of the bath, like a tiny tipped-up turtle. Except red. And dead. Then another on the windowsill, next to the first one, which was also dead.

And though they keep dying, they also seem to keep coming, and the problem I have is that I can’t stop the cycle, see, because I CAN’T KILL THEM.

It’s impossible. It’s like having an infestation of fairies. I spent a childhood surrounded by picture books with the little babybug emblazoned in the corner. There were songs about them, stuffed furry ones to cuddle at night and my GOD, they were ALL Over Christmas jumpers - and am I supposed to kill them now?

Spiders, I can happily kill, or at least throw out of a window without a parachute. Midges? Smoke the hell out of them. Kill all bluebottles. Fuck the cockroach community. Wasps? Dead faster than you can say . Mice? Snap their little necks. Ants - spray’em, bake’em, grill’em, fry’em, who cares, they’re ants.

But these? No.

No matter how hard I try to do it, I can’t drop a book on the ladybirds. It would feel like putting a bullet through a butterfly or kicking a kitten in the knees. I keep telling myself that they have poisonous wee, or secret sets of sharp and pointy teeth that in the dead of the night they’ll bite my nose off with, but no. I still can’t do it.

They’re cute. They’re red, and spotty. They flutter, sometimes. And unless they radically adjust the one-out/one-in policy, or, in fact, the de facto one-dead/one-in policy, I can’t see that they’re actually going to be able to bathroomarily overpower me and make me dead.

But damn them for being cute. And damn me for being a wuss about it. It’s this kind of policy of appeasment that started the second world war. It’s a terrifying thought. Today, I allow the ladybirds, tomorrow, Hitler invades.

My flat.

While I’m on the toilet.

They’re a worrying thing, ladybirds. You can see why I might be fretting.

It seems to be award season, and over at Fist of Euros, a site that seems to be something about European weblogs, there seems to be a competition about european weblogs, starring, I’m pleased to say, many of the residents of my sidebar over there ——–>

Hurrah! And Well done to all of them, the lovely lovely people that they are.

Now, I wouldn’t attempt to influence your voting in any way shape or form, but let me just say it’s lovely to see Mike in best personal rather than best gay lettuce bacon and tomato for once, that there’s good reason Petite has been nominated in almost every category, and if you don’t go and vote for Mr JonnyB for most humorous, which he clearly, clearly is, then I’ll come round and kick you in the knees. That is all.

My February the 14th illustrated entirely in pictures of red things:

Yes, yes, I know I said this yesterday, but I’m saying it again. I spent ALL DAY (when I wasn’t working, eating and otherwise havingalifing) Taking pictures of red things

And it was fun. It was all part of this group thing, set up by my lovely seeester. Now I keep seeing red things but it’s too late. Still. I’m very proud.

So, yes, I know I said it before, but I’m saying it again. I like taking pictures. And for some reason, having such a tangible THING to show for it made yesterday feel a bit perfect.

So there. Yay.

[Oh, and Thank you to the perfect Girl for the title. Though I have a feeling I may use it again as inspiration for a post...]

… Is a word I will use loudly and often when I one day get the call and rise to my inevitable position as Chief Commentator, Winter Olymics (Discipline Specialities: Fuckin’ all of’em).

I love the winter olympics.
Which is funny, because it’s the complete opposite to my usual reaction to sport-watching generally. I’m just not one of the world’s big sportettes. Sportees. Sportites. Whatever, I’m not one of You. In the slightest.
‘Sboring, sport.

But, the Winter Olympics? Well, it just doesn’t FEEL like sport, does it? It’s just fun. I mean, unlike football and basketball and rugby and such you don’t seem to need a Team to support.

Yes, I hear you, I could be supporting my country, but we don’t ever go very big in this particular competition, and won’t again, unless they’ve suddenly introduced a contest for “losing”.

No no no, the winter olympics is all about grace, sychronisity, individual human achievement, aesthetics, and about shouting punditry at the telly during WEIRD SPORTS about which we know VERY LITTLE, if anything at ALL. Anyone can do it. Anypne at all.

How to commentate on the Winter Olympics - a beginner’s guide

Luge

How you can tell it’s the Luge: Oh, there’s only one Luge. You’ll spot it no probs, it’s the people in the full-body condoms on the teatrays. You know the ones. The people going down ridiculous gradients of sheer ice tunnels on their back (and a tea tray) at 100mph.

How to commentate on the Luge
“Oooooh! He’s taking the right line, it’s very smooth, oh yes! Oooooh, that’s a good run”

You have to say at the start: “It’s a great start” although every few people you can vary this to “It’s not a great start”. As time passes you’ll learn when to say this with more authority. If they fall off and the teatray starts going down the run without them, that’s probably NOT a great start, for example.

Ski Jumping

How you can tell it’s ski-jumping: This is the one where a bloke sits on a pole on a near vertical wall of icy snow stuff, then someone shouts at him to get off (probably for his own good, because it is a silly thing to do) and he lets go of the pole, slides down the wall, off a ramp, and falls to the ground semi-horizonally. The one who manages to fall the furthest without dying is given a prize.

How to commentate on Ski Jumping
“Ooh, that looks like a good jump. Yes, great things are expected of this man, and he loks like he’s got a great amount of air under him, and speed behind him, and oh yes, oh yes, that’s a big jump. I’m not quite sure how far, but it’s a big old jump. And he’s landed without dying - he’ll get points for that, certainly - and lets wait for the results. OOH! That WAS a big jump, I was right. Shakalaka-ZAM! As my mother used to say”

Important note about Ski-jumping: What makes commentating for this discipline easier is the fact that that you never have to worry about gender (because, let’s face it, it’s hard to tell the difference between a man and a woman when they’re all wearing the same skin-tight all-over body-sheath). You never have to worry about gender in ski-jump because there IS no women’s ski-jump. Why not? I don’t know. Let’s imagine it’s because women aren’t stupid enough to want to fall off a big snow-wall attached to planks. Makes sense to me.

Speed-skating

How you can tell it’s speed-skating: Speed-skating involves a bunch of genderless clones who look like a cross between the Missing Link and Captain America. Their inconceivably long arms swinging like the pendulum on Big Ben, they whizz around an ice rink at speeds unknown to humanity (or at least unknown since my 8th birthday party, when someone tied Mandy to the back of the Zamboni with a piece of elastic and watched her try to get away).

If you find yourself trying to commentate on couples sitting at small tables and talking intensely until a bell rings and they all move, then you’re trying to commentate on speed-DATING. This is wrong. Change channel.

How to commentate on speed skating
It’s basically a case of shouting, a lot, and very fast. That’s it, really. Except in the-long-distance events, where it’s a case of shouting very fast every so often, when someone falls over, and spending the rest of the time desperately trying to find interesting things to say about speed-skating/speed-skaters without mentioning the size of their packages. It’s not easy, I tell you.

On a related note, I was watching some speedskating yesterday when the leader of the pack, a strapping thing by the name of Apollo Ono, was being hotly tipped to win:
“And Ono’s looking good for the finals” the commentator was saying “Ono’s on vey good form indeed“. But then he fell over. I realised this because the commentator started shouting “Ono! Ono’s in serious trouble now! Ono! O-NO!” Which made me laugh a disproportionate amount. Or maybe a proportionate amount, if you look at it in proportion to how much Winter Olympics I’d watched already that day and how many brain cells I had left.

Figure skating

How you can tell it’s figure skating: Figure skating is like speed-skating, except slower. And with less people. And funny hand movements. And musi… alright, figure skating is nothing like speed-skating, apart from the fact it’s on ice. And you can see the outline of quite a lot of people’s penises. It is in the form of dance - which makes it easily scoffed at by men who like their sport hard, fast, bloody and with Balls, but it is also extremely difficult, technically. Apparently.

Most of the time it is an unabashedly hetro pair thing, with one man and one woman flouncing about in skintight things. Sometimes hers has a little skirt, and cut away panels covered in nylon that make it look a lot more daring than it is.

They have to do lots of spins, jumps and things that look like a certain scene in ‘Dirty Dancing’. Occasionally the man part of the couple will have to stick his hands up the tiny skirt, carrying his partner in a way that looks not dissimilar to the way one might carry a ventriloquist’s dummy or a bit part actress in “Debbie does a series of Chinese Acrobatic Circuses”. This looks very daring, but isn’t. There is a good inch of nylon between the man and any real risk of his partner slipping onto his arm, sock-like, and while it is overfamiliar, it is not strictly rude. It is best not to mention this in commentary at all.

How to commentate on figure skating
“Oh lovely” is a phrase you will be able to use here, and it’s not often one gets to say that duing a sport commentary, is it? One rarely looks at a rugby player jumping on another rugby player’s head and says “Oh lovely”, unless you are odd. Or the Queen, who says it about everything.

This is perhaps one of the easiest of the easy sports to pundit about. If the two people spin round at exactly the same time, they are good. If they do not, they are bad. “Oooooh, definite lack of sychronisity between the Finnish couple there”, you can say, sounding like you have clue.

“Call that a triple toe loop?”, you can say. I mean, you don’t actually have to know whether it is one or not, you are merely asking your audience a retorical question. Who knows whether it IS a triple toe loop, shall we CALL it one? This is the important thing to remember about Winter Olympics commentary - no matter how little you know about it, 99.9% of your audience know even less. The rest probably have the sound turned down. And are drunk.

The cross-country skiing and shooting one

How you can tell if it’s the cross-country skiing and shooting one: Because there are a lot of people cross-country skiing and shooting. For about nine years at a time. Skiing, shooting, skiing, shooting, skiing, shooting, ad, literally, infinitum.

How to commentate on the cross-country skiing and shooting one:
Well, this is quite a toughie, really, because, should you get landed the ‘cross-country skiing and shooting one’ beat, you’ll have approximately nine whole years to fill with punditry. Or that’s how long it feels like, anyway. That’s how long it feels like watching it, anyway.

Luckily, no one except Norweigians can actually sit through the whole thing, so all you have to do is come up with twenty or so convincing sounding phrases, record them onto MP3, set them on random and then go on holiday.

Snowboarding

How you can tell it’s Snowboarding: Because it is the only sport in which you cannot see the outline of people’s penises. They do not wear all-over prophylactics like everyone else. They wear nice big pyjamas, like all other snowboarders.

And like all other snowboarders, although you may not be able to SEE their penises while they’re out there one the half-pipe being impressive, as soon as they step off the run and find the camera, they just start gurning, mugging and poseuring and simply turn into an enormous bunch of penises, so you don’t need to have seen their little boarders, ifyouknowwhatamsayin.

How to commentate on snowboarding
It’s the numbers that are important to remember here. Just throw in some numbers. High numbers. Pretend you’re calling bingo for Mensa. I’ll put these phonetically for the good of your crib notes.

7/20. That’s a good number. Also 900. And 10/80, and also 12/60. You shouldn’t need to remember much above that, as anyone able to do a 1500 or above is legally classified a spinning top and thus disqualified.

Now, use those numbers in combination with random cool sounding words. Flip. Fakey. Twist. Shakalaka-ZAM. Zip. Smoothie. Bongo. Fresh. Oop. Bonk. God, what a bunch of idiots.

Winningly, though, you are also to use phrases like : “He’s getting a lot of backside air, there”. For that sentence alone, snowboarding punditry is a very competitive field to get into. Backside Air. Hahahahahaha.

In general

Remember, people, there’s nothing wrong with admitting you haven’t really got a clue what’s going on. There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘you’ve never seen this particular discipline before, but you think they seem to be doing jolly well at it’.

There’s nothing wrong with comparing every aspect of Curling to competitive tennis because, let’s face it, that’s the only sport you actually know anything about.

And there’s nothing, NOTHING wrong with using the phrase; “I think he’ll get a place on the medal plinth with that performance, but let’s face it I’ve been wrong all day today so far ….”

Right. Congratulations, you’re now a fully qualified Winter Olympics commentator. Now lets all go and work for the BBC.

[Note to the weary reader: You must excuse me if I keep adding to this post, but they seem to keep making up sports.]

[Oh, and Thank you leonie for the inspiration. No crowbars were harmed in the making of this post...]

Yes, I know, I’m being quiet, and I have to admit it’s because I’m blogging in 2003 again. It’s the old, dull, dull tale of me going through my archives, adding headings, categories and finding things that I frankly have NO memory of whatsoever.

Such as this, for example, from October 2003 which seems to have been the collaborative result of a rather stupid conversation with my lovely seester.

For anyone too Sunday-ish to bother clicking on that link, here it is again:

DAIRY FILMS PRESENT: The FRIDGE-DOOR FESTIVAL
Just when you thought it was safe to open the cheesebox…

Clear and Present Grater: in which Harrison Ford plays a rugged FBI agent investigating whether the illegal smuggling of Monterrey Jack from South America is enough of a justification to bomb them all to smithereens.

The Silence of the Edams: a young FBI agent becomes the strange confidante of a psychotic cheesemaker, as she tries to solve her first major case.

Brie Willy: The frantic search of a small boy to find a fridge big enough for his cheese-sculpture killer whale before it goes all runny.

Or it could alternatively be a different film. A film a lot more icky.

Wensleydale Loves A Woman: a crumbly cheese addict confronts her inner demons and goes into rehab, while trying to make her family understand.

My Left Feta; Coming to terms with a life of being made out of cheese, Daniel Day Lewis discovers that - when cubed - his left leg, made out of pourous goat product, is simply delicious with olives and vine tomatoes.
With a sprinkling of olive oil.

Return of the Cheddar: After a large meal including cheese and fruit courses, several interstellar heros feel quite nauseous when their spaceship gets hit by the dark forces of indigestion.
or
Return of the Cheddar: In a distant corner of the fridge, far, far away, a long-forgotten cellophane-wrapped lump of hard Irish mature is planning a comeback.

The Unbearable Lightness of Boursin: Set in Prague, this film focuses on the existential struggle of a sexually confused dairy-lover and his various conquests.

The Edambusters: World War II epic following the fates of plucky Tommy fliers on dangerous sorties over germany, dropping specially designed round wax covered strong cheese, which bounced on water.

Whatever happened to Babybel? ; Trouble strikes a student house.

East of Edam: Lovers roll around in red wax.

The Brie over the River Kwai: Plucky soldiers struggle to construct a crossing over a dangerous river in the middle of a tropical rainforest. This proves difficult because it’s quite warm and their main building material keeps going runny.

The Roules of attraction; comedy in which a zany professor discovers the link between smearing soft cheese on body parts and sexual drive. With hilarious consequences

The Bridges of Parmesan County: Soppy grey-love flick in which Meryl Streep has an affair with a passing cheese peddlar.

Halloumiraiser; horror in which a man with soft, salty cheese for a head develops a career as a party entertainer by sticking kebab squewers in his bonce and slowly grilling his face over the barbeque.

Betty Danish Blue: Woman with impenetrable accent has sex a lot and smells fairly bad.

The Mozzarella Coast; A young River Phoenix and Family escape from baddies, but escape really really slowly, seeing as how their feet keep becoming attached to the ground with tasty elastic yellow strings.

Danish Blue Velvet: In a small sleepy town, a man finds an ear on the ground made of slightly mouldy curd.

Philadelphia; Oscar winning story of gay people and lawyers united by eating soft cheese in the face of those who would rather not allow them to do so.

[You can check out more of Oct 2003 if you like. It's incredible how much more productive a girl can be when she's and unemployed and reasonably unselfcensored. It's more fun in the past, anyway. All the cool kids hang out there. Well, the cool kids and old people with degenerative brain diseases. Whatever. Very similar...]

I’ve always wanted to drop something heavy and a bit wet off something high onto something hard and unforgiving.
I’ve always wanted to drop a melon out of the window and wait precious seconds before watching it make a pleasant noise as it ends its useful life below me.
I’ve always wanted to have five minutes with a baseball bat with a room full of porcelain figurines on glass shelves, but that’s beside the point right now, because, let’s face it, I can’t carry on this paragraph much longer without picking up quite the following in the online-psycho community.

Anyway. Those things are nice, but they don’t make quite the right kind of noise. The first makes a “PLOTH“, I would imagine. The second a “THRRLUPH!” And the third a kind of “TINKLE! TINK-YAY!WOO!-KLE! YEAH!” etc. None of which are quite as simple and pleasant a word as Thunk.

Thunk.

It sounds like something heavy being dropped off something not really that high onto something slightly forgiving and accepting of the concept. Which is a good enough description as any of me hitting the weekend, I suppose.

The weekend comes and I collapse again.

Oh, no, don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing. Oh that’s not a bad thing at all. Nonononono. Because much as the grown up part of me is kicking at my kidneys and trying to convince me that weekends are for long walks and healthy eating (it’s called a biological clock, I think - let’s talk about it another time), my teenage heart still tells me that weekends are for sleeping and hangovers and sleeping and telly and naps. And Sleeping.

Weekends are for going thunk. Head meets pillow - thunk. Head meets sofa arm - thunk. Glass hits ice, thunk. No, damnit, that’s more plink, isn’t it. Well, let’s imagine it’s really fucking big ice. Thunk. Anna meets bed.

Thunk.

Thunking is good.

Not *quite* as good as attacking a showroom full of pobsy little porcelain figures of children dressed up as farmers wearing HATS and with little porcelain pigs sleeping at their pobsy little feet, and the pigs are ALSO in fucking hats and women in pastel crinolines with touches of gold leaf just to make’em look that Little bit classy and collections of sweatshop-painted miniatures of stilettos and God they’re all just Vile, aren’t they? And… sorry, where was I? Hang on - “is good”, something something, ‘attacking showroom…” yadda, yadda, “porcelain”… Oh yes, that was it, ahem …

…. Not quite as good as attacking a showroom full of *twitch, twitch* with glee in your heart and a big fuckoff baseball bat, but you can’t have everything, now, can you?

(Thank you red for the inspiration…)

Another day off, another trip to IKEA.

It’s like there’s a siren call bouncing around those stacks of pine. We went for a coffee table. We came back with two extra shelves, some drinking vessels, a plant pot, funnels, a headache, tea lights and a picture frame.

I’m glad we got the picture frame. And the shelves. But that’s about all. The rest frankly confused me. I couldn’t work out the age at which I started being able to stand around and discuss the relative merits of occasional furniture, or realised my hidden desire to increase my stock of attractive storage solutions.

I couldn’t remember when lists started appearing in my Moleskine saying

‘Milk, dishwasher salt, shelves, frame, makeup mirror, seeds, words thing’

It leaves me confused. I certainly don’t feel old enough to hold a coherent position on matters of household sensibleness - so why in god’s name do I sound like I am?

But anyway. I’ve had a poster for a while, a poster that needed a frame, and so picture frames it had to be. No more evil blu-tac or nasty pins, but proper, grown up hooks, and frames. How mimsy. How me, it seems.

Yet all the picture frames I’ve bought recently have been plastic sheeting on the front rather than glass.
Yes, they were cheap.
Yes, they were from that Swedish den of pissedoffcrity.
And yes, I’ve been glad they weren’t glass when they’ve suddenly fallen off the wall and continued life cheerfully, comprehensively uncracked, but still something in me feels cheated, and cheap.
And unecological.
Or something.

They’re big, though. Huge expanses of wobbly clarity that seem to come in a remarkable number of sizes and shapes.

I have started thinking about alternative uses for this thin plastic glass substitute thing, whatever it’s called. Perplex, I think.

You see, I have a thin skin.

Things make me cry and hit me far out of proportion. Like spammers, for example. (Why do they spam me? Why? Because they hate me? Why do they hate me?).

Or people who comment on perfectly well-written blogs being viciously offensive to the writer because of sheer jealousy - not this site, obviously, and not me. We don’t inspire jealousy so much around here, but other sites I am very familiar with - why do people feel fine about doing that to another person? Why is that ok? Why is it alright to elbow someone in the ribs to ensure your place on the bus over theirs? Why is it ok to kick someone because you know they’re better at what you want to do than you are?

These kinds of stupid, ridiculous things, especially when I am feeling wobbly otherwise, lead me to weeping. I need a thicker skin. So perhaps I will be able to commission an IKEA one. An IKEA one made out of perplex.

It will be like an armour against mean spirited fools, and twunts and spammers, my perplex skin. It will make me strong, and confident and not scared anymore.

It will show them all. I will be thoroughly perplexed, head to toe. It is a fantastic idea.

___________________________________________

Oh hang on, it’s called perspex.

Tits.

(With thanks to The other other karen and The fool for their inspiration)

You know, in some ways I’m tempted just to leave the previous post as it is. It’s beautiful: An exercise in what happens when you ask a bunch of unknown people to give you just one word.

Does the word you chose say more about you, or more about me, or more about what you think about me? If so, in some cases, at least one of us should be worried, perhaps…

But it’s lovely - though far more than I was expecting. So I’ve written them all down on bits of paper, and folded them, and put them in a little purse shaped like a duck that I bought at some market in Bologna. So I’ll carry them around for a bit, and ruminate, and, you know, look some of them up in the dictionary, maybe (you bunch of smartarses). And then I’ll pick them out and write about them. It seems the nicest way. The most interesting way.

Although, I’m still not convinced. The most interesting thing really does seem to be the words you chose.

Weirdos.