Frivolous Purchase

I've just bought a copy of PaRappa the Rapper 2. It's the everyday story of a small dog in a hat who has to rap in order to win the heart of a daisy in a dress, which is what floats the boats of small rapping dogs, according to the game's manufacturers. It is, as anyone who's played it will know, an inordinate amount of fun. The gameplay is based around trying to copy the rap another character does by pressing the correct button at the right time:

Altogether now: "Kick, punch, it's all in the mind/If you want to test me you're gonna find/The things I teach ya are sure to beat ya/So listen up and get a lesson from teacher now."

This will be my evening, and sad to say, I'll probably have a whale of a time.

Friday Jealousy

An unfortunate aspect of being a greased cog in the bureaucratic engine is that sometimes we have to send out hundreds of letters, and we lack a robotic envelope-stuffer or work experience drone to do it for us. However, I've hit upon the cunning plan of taking all the envelopes and letters down to the pub, and doing the operation with pint in hand. Please do not tell my boss.

On the Reason For My Latest Lateness

Right. Let the trumpets blare and the tickertape drift down, for I was over two hours late today, making me the latest ever. I was actually so late that I passed a pub that was open on my journey in. I did consider popping in for a quick pre-work pint, but dismissed it as I was already carrying a cup of coffee, and because of the fearsome pricing of Upper Street pints (you need a drink after you've ordered a drink, if you see what I mean).

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The bank manager turned down my loan request for my planned fair-trade kitchen appliances shop For the Grater Good, because apparently my business plan wasn't up to scratch. Given that my business plan was an A3 sheet with the name of the shop and an exclamation mark at the end, I fail to see his point. Anyway, having seen from Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares how easy it is to run a restaurant, I've decided to realise my lifelong dreams and set up a restaurant. I've got a nice little place on the outskirts of Bodmin in Cornwall in mind. I'll invite you all to the opening of The Bistro of Bodmin Moor just as soon as the ink is dry on the contract.

Deadpan Conversations, Vol. 13

Scene: Highbury fields. I'm on my lunch, relaxing away from the stresses of paper-shuffling. A schoolkid approaches.

Schoolkid: I've been dared by my friends; can I touch your bald head?
Me: No, I don't think so.

I felt like a killjoy, refusing such a childlike request, and letting the kid down in her important attempt to prove herself to her peer group, but then I thought, bollocks, I'm not having strangers come up and touch my bald head; it might set a precedent, and people would begin to attribute superstitious beliefs of good fortune that comes from touching my bald head. I'd be a bit like an inadvertant Jesus, curing lepers without really wanting to. And that's one of the last things I want to happen.

Defiant and Unbowed

In line with the Met's insistence on business as normal, I feel it my duty to continue to waste the time of both my employers and readers by continuing to ramble inconsequentially about matters of little import.

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I was struck down with worry today that Fatman Scoop might actually be incapable of normal speech, and might conduct all his exchanges in the abrasive guttural bellow that has produced such hit records as 'Be Faithful' and 'Lose Control'. Singing his infant children to sleep with a gentle lullaby would be an experience likely to result in perforated eardrums and visits from social workers. Unable to hold down steady employment or a lasting relationship becuase of his inability to communicate at an appropriate volume, Scoop drifts, haunted by dreams of a normal life. Driven near-insane by such thoughts, he carries out a savage laryngectomy on Bob Harris, in the belief that this will give him the quiet he seeks. Sentenced to life imprisonment by an uncaring judge, Scoop fears that he will become the target of brutal prison bullying with his attention-drawing holler. Fortunately though, Scoop hides in the prison library and learns about the Trappist order of monks, and lives out the rest of his life in silent observance of the spirit of Jesus Christ and his teachings.

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Today I received an exciting parcel in the post. It is a USB 2.0 PCI Host Controller Card. As if this were not incentive to dance about like a loon in joy enough, the manufacturers plaster the promise 'Extreme IO Experience' over the box. That's IO as in 'Input/Output'. I've yet to install the product, but should the experience fail to live up to the extremity promised, well, I'll just have to live with it, I suppose.

Yesterday in London

Well, it's been a pretty strange time in London recently. Fortunately, no-one I know has been hurt in any of the bombings yesterday, and everyone's pretty shocked and disbelieving of what happened yesterday.

Looking back today it all seems slightly unreal as I'm sat here. I felt a palpable level of fear which after the realisation that what was happening was bombing. Not really a fear for my own safety, but a kind of collective fear, which I've never felt before. As the afternoon wore on, and it brightened up, I was walking into town to meet up with L, and people released from their offices seemed pretty cheerful. Everyone was walking, following the bus routes, all walking on the left-hand side of the road, and the scene resembled the aftermath of some kind of giant office carnival. A couple men were propped up on the railings at Highbury Corner, watching events, and as I passed, one turned to the other and remarked, "Look, there goes Moby". I think the capital's ability to face its aversity in the only way it knows how (directing snide comments at me) is heartwarming. Actually, people did seem to be coping, knowing that the whole situation was out of everyone's control, and that there was little point in belly-aching about it, which is genuinely quite moving. Except for one guy who ran out of a building on Upper Street, dressed in a blue work-issue polo shirt, kicked a lamp-post with a cry of 'fucking cunts', and then ran off to kick another lamp-post with a similar outburst.

I've been overhearing a fair amount of wild pronouncements offered with great shows of authority from people about the events, using intelligence buzzwords, the most prevalant is 'chatter' or the lack of it. I'd cleverly refer to the dinner-party speculators as 'the chattering classes' if that didn't make a pun so dizzyingly brilliant as to be indistinuishable from the phrase itself that it makes your eyes water, that is.

Anyway, this hardly seems like the place to dwell on the issue, save to say that it's pretty sobering as the death toll continues to rise and people are still unaccounted for, and I hope that everyone you know is OK.

Olympics

Ooh, look who's got the olympics! Us!

Some Magazines That I Found

Hi there. To make up for the near total lack of me posting on the blog for a long time, I've gone html-crazy, and put up this new mini-mini-site:

Yes, it's the title-says-it-all Some Magazines That I Found (ardent students of the future will note that I have also used the alternative title Some Magazines I Found and will no doubt wish to discuss the significance of this at great length in chat rooms). I'd advise you to go and check it out before SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENS. Yes, live each moment as if it's your last and visit me discussing some old magazines I found. You'll die happy and your family will be proud.