I watched two boxing matches before I went to sleep last night. I really enjoyed them both. This is a surprise; I've enjoyed big-name boxing in the past, but this was just some workaday journeymen beating each other up for kicks.
Am I some kind of pervert?
More generally, I have been really getting into sport on late night TV. It started years ago, when I discovered Channel 5's summertime baseball shows helped me through a very sad and difficult period. They soothed me in a way only a loving partner, or the little animation sequence of Seattle's skyline at the beginning of "Frasier", seem able to do.
It seems the interminability of the game of baseball is just what I need to let me mind unwind - I know I don't have to worry about what to watch after it finishes, because it never does. I'm sad to have missed the football (US stylee) season, as I think that'd have the same soporific effect. But I don't love it like I love baseball - I am learning what all the stats and abbreviations mean, and actively anticipating the new season with glee. Maybe even lust.
Anyway, I'm off to play football (UK chapter) in a short while, then to watch another AFC Wimbledon game tonight. Sport rocks, y'know. Toodle pip!
I know "amusing" spam is a lazy and tedious blog topic, but I was really taken by an item in my bulk mail this morning.
From: It's me Gina
Topic: I've fallen and I can't get up
So sweet! So vulnerable! It's almost worth getting on their mailing list for!
So it's the middle of the night and I wake myself up grinding my teeth. I know, I think - if i poke my tongue between my front teeth then I won't be able to grind them any more!
5 minutes later - woken up because of grinding teeth and extremely sore bitten tongue.
Went to my first away football match last night (unless you count seeing England play San Marino in Italy, but I don't, as that's where I was living at the time). It was less interesting than I expected, but still well worth the effort. Not sure why being part of a much smaller, quieter group of fans should feel more special, but...
Otherwise, yesterday just meandered on. I got to compile two sets of questions for Sky News online chat, which is double the cash (or rather I'm definitely going to invoice them for double, ha). And that's the highlight of my day! Oh, and I got to speak to my other half ([swoon] [flutter] [sigh]). God bless the person who invented the dodgy phonecard bought from some crappy newsagent in Walthamstow...
Word for the day: ne'er-do-well.
...and then The Smiths were proved fundamentally wrong, as I can't find one. Waaaaa! [bawls unattractively]
However, I have discovered that the British economy is centred on a corporate structure so unstable that it'll make the Albanian pyramid disaster look like a picnic, with cake.
The only companies who advertise for staff are recruitment companies. Yes, recuritment companies recruiting for other recruitment companies is the only damn recruitin' that ever happens! At some point, all it'll take is for one sharp executive to think "hmm, we can save money by not advertising for more recruiting staff and not paying more recruiting staff to recruit other recruiters", and the economy will turn itself inside out, shudder, and fall in the sea.
I am therefore applying to be a recruitment consultant. Think of the power!!
A bad week for blogging, the last one. I'm not sure if that's because I am pathologically dull, or that anything of interesting that's worth writing about immediately leaves my head 5 seconds after it enters. I think I should try remembering stuff for a change...
Aha! Bar Billiards! I played this for the first time ever on saturday night, and oh my hokey it's fantastic! It's a game of speed - there's a timer which limits play to about 10 minutes in total, but it's easily more satisfying than a game of pool, and it takes roughly 2 hours less than a game of snooker.
The idea is essentially to knock balls into the holes in the table (not on the sides, but spread around the baize itself) and score points depending on which hole they fall down. But there's danger lurking in the form of skittles! If you knock them down, you lose points and even the game! It's a living, breathing nightmare!
I think I shall travel round ancient hostelries searching for other archaic forms of entertainment. Next week: an in-depth dissertation on the traditional and noble art of the lap-dance.
I have been finding ideas extremely hard to come by lately for this bloody thing, but this morning I was gazing out of my window (hey, I work from home, I do these things) and I had a brainwave. Not necessarily a very morally justifiable brainwave, but still.
Most days, I see vehicles pulling into or parked in the Le Bons' front drive. Usually, they have some kind of writing on the side - decorators, caterers, landscape gardeners etc. I reckon that with the aid of my trusty (and currently non-functioning, gah!) digital camera, I could build up a pretty accurate picture of their lifestyle. It's just a shame that anything sordid would probably not come in a van marked "coke-addled dwarfs" or similar. Or would it?
There's no AFC Wimbledon match this afternoon - undersoil heating has saldy not reach the Combined Counties League, and the frozen pitch means the game had to be cancelled. All part of the experience of supporting a non-league team.
But it didn't have to be this way. This article in today's Guardian talks about the heartbreaking fall of the most wonderful, inspirational club in the league.
A day of absolute nothingness today. On the plus side, no unhealthy foods, no alcohol. On the down side, no socialising (apart from online and Stevie for 15 minutes before falling into a coma), no chores and no exercise (can't move from yesterday's football - there would be a macho boy photo of injury if my digital camera worked, but my computer refuses to recognise it any more. Which means no more Stevie's shelf episodes unless it gets sorted out...). You'd think doing so little would give me time to think, to create lush vistas of inspirational prolix for me to write about. But you'd be wrong.
Friday sees a potentially very interesting meeting regarding my current job. The best case scenario is really quite appealing, though I'm unlikely to know for a while what my role will be in any developments. Still, it's nice to even be involved. Watch this space!
And now, a picture of a kitten.
Ha. I bet you're still waiting for the cute ickle kitty to load, aran't ya? Bloody felines. Revenge *will* be mine, oh yes, it will be mine...
I'm watching a great new reality documentary in which two couples swap partners for 10 days. It's great because one of the new couples is so desperately unsuited to each other, but also because they get to swap kids, homes and routines too.
One couple is black, the other white. The white man and the black woman are decent people, different but respectively genial and motivated (though they're far from perfect, as we learn). The other two, however...
The white lady, while giving her new hubbie a dressing down for over-disciplining his children, came out with the best comment ever:
"I'm sorry, you're being Hitler. You're being Hitler.
(pause)
And Hitler died."
The white couple's daughter is possibly even worse than the rest of them! When her (rather over-eager) temporary mum gives her room a makeover and tries to lay down the rules, she gets an immediate "the rules are I hate your guts!" before having a Tourette's style rant-cum-speech-impediment.
You have to have a little bit of sympathy for her, though, as the black woman can only speak a sentence if it has the word "respect" in it 5 times or more.
This is fucking amazing television.
I'm never one to hesitate in ripping off my idol Laura, so here's my take on a little something she found...
Which Edward Gorey Book Are You?
Sadly, I've never even heard of this one. Is it like Dancing with Cats, I wonder?
(p.s. I am *desperate* to find a UK supplier of Goreyana. I require with the utmost haste a Gashlycrumb Tinies poster to loving frame and exhibit in my chill, oak-panelled drawing-room)
"Sodium palm kernelate" just can't be a proper chemical - can it?
As some of you know, I work as the moderator on an interactive TV chatroom peopled by teenagers. It's part-time, badly paid and a bit tedious, but there are occasional pluses (my chat name is dario, btw):
"dario when he does come in, tell him nat is on o life-support machine and she loves him lots. Her last words where say hello to dario when he is on. Xx xx
I'm a dying girl's last words! How cool is that?
(NB in case this seems very cruel and callous, the odds of her even being unwell are 1000 to one. They are all pathological liars and say this kind of thing to get attention. Either that or their lives are like a particularly doom-filled version of every soap opera rolled into one)
Ooh! My block of flats is in the local paper!
We got together and bought the freehold to the block I live in a couple of months ago. Turns out we were the first people in the borough to take advantage of a new housing Act. My neighbour Sue was in charge of the process:
"I am a get up and go person and was determined to see [my face in the paper]", she said.
Actually, it's really cool. I owe her a lot of thanks - it's worth a bloody fortune now :)
575,330,214 files being shared and not a single one is Don Henley??
[on the advice of my lawyer I have deleted the rest of this post. I don't much want to go to prison]
My girlfriend and I were talking last night about this weblog, and the style in which I write it. We came to the conclusion that the way I write isn't really the most satisfactory, about how I write for a kind of vague "other" who is more an acquaintance than a dear friend, a disinterested passer-by who needs to be entertained with bite-size quips and anecdotes. It's not really me.
So where should I go from here? I really can't see the warts-and-all confessional being appropriate in this case. I like the thought of being entertaining, at least sparingly! We discussed the idea of writing as if to a best friend, but one of the main reasons best friends are best friends is because you *can* tell them things that others would be bored, shocked or embarrassed by.
Ideas please. You're the people who read it, after all.