I fixed my digital camera! Or rather, I fixed my PC's USB ports, which I was fretting about for 2 months. I am a geek! Maybe this time I'll get respect from Brix0r and Pigx0r for my 1337 5k332!

For what it's worth, all I had to do was enable the USB controller in the BIOS. But I did it all by myself! Hmm. Why do I feel like a child who's just used the big toilet for the first time?

Anyway, the result is I'm likely to go photo-mad over the next few weeks. So I want YOU to suggest to me things I can photograph and post in this here blog. I shall make all efforts to do whatever you ask me to, obscenity and privacy laws etc notwithstanding...

You've all been clamouring for it, so here it is:

A disappointing entry today. There's little sign of exotic booze, though quite a lot of soup and tuna. It seems a normal, healthy young male with a fairly balanced diet lives here. Which is no fun for anyone.

So, I was advised to take this test and compare it to the results I got in the Jung-Myers-Briggs test I took a few days ago (I'm an ENFJ, as it happens). I think we can safely say I'm a great big show-off who fancies himself. This may not be a surprise to everyone.

Feel free to discuss the accuracy of these results in the comments section below :)

This morning I discovered both a new word and something that makes scientists seem less a group of cold boffins and more a bunch of pragmatists with a sense of humour.

The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics

Which states "if two systems are separately in thermal equilibrium with a third, then they must also be in thermal equilibrium with each other". But really I just thought it was funny. Zeroth! Haha!

The froth on an early-morning orange juice. Mixed with cranberry - the dark yellow bubbles languish on the vermillion liquid, imperceptible popping noises as I sip. The smoothness of the opaque flow interrupted by little pockets of zest, a very different tactility.

Tomorrow, the Congestion Charge starts in London. Several square miles of the West End and City will become fare zones, with each vehicle driving into them having to pay £5 per day for the privilege.

Traffic in London is appalling. I'm so glad I have a moped (also exempt from the charge, ha), because on a normal day, outside the rush hour, it's still completely impossible to actually predict how long it'll take you to get anywhere. And god forbid you take the bus...

So is the charge going to work? I imagine that the perimiter roads are going to be the most deeply unpleasant, snarled-up frustration nurseries, as anyone who needs to get anywhere NOT in the centre will on principle refuse to pay £5 to get there. But will the centre be any better? It's hard to see how - who on earth would drive into town if they didn't need to anyway? And the thought of substantially more people on public transport is hardly appealing.

So we'll see. At least it's a step to sort out this crappy town.

I am starting to wonder if I made a mistake putting academia behind me. Not because I feel I lack a vocation (that’s true, but a far more complex situation which I need to sort out even slightly in my head before I start banging on about it here), or because I have anything I want to study , or even that I have a strong desire to learn.

Rather, I feel there are so few things in my life about which I can have a proper intellectual argument . I know quite a lot; I’m fairly bright, I have a good memory for pointless stuff, and a passion for reading historical and scientific books. I love How Stuff Works, where I have recently been learning about what atoms, like, do, and how laser, erm, lase. (but why laser? WHY?)

But as soon as something that requires empirical, logical, profound thought comes along, I back out. Or more likely, I make a few vague comments, maybe try to back them up with half-known pronouncements, risking discovery and embarrassment, then back out by either changing the subject, sulking or chucking out a few crude, belligerent insults, aimed at either my fellow litigant or the subject in question.

So what can I do about it? Do I start studying again, and learn about how to both actually know stuff and how to argue it properly. I re-read an essay from the age of 22 about Pirandello’s Enrico Quarto, and God, I was, like, erudite! Learned, even! I’d rather not go back to any kind of school, and as far as I can tell there’s no area of learning that particularly appeals.

So, advice please. What can I do to make my thought processes grind back into action?

I cried today, at a Cancer Research advert. The one where loved ones fade out of the picture as their husband, son or parent looks on with baffled sadness on their face. Blast these emotionally manipulative messages!

I also steamed today. Playing football in the cold + my lack of top-end coverage + my proclivity to sweat through my head made me look like a rounder version of the summit of Canary Wharf. I also noticed the seat of my moped steaming as I got off on my return home. I am HOTT, evidently, and have a HOTT BUTT. And I'm STEAMY. Rowr.

NOT steamy, however, is Christina Aguilera. I saw her "Dirrty" video on MTV today in a section called "Sexy Celebrities". Justin? Yeah, why not. He's better than Robbie Williams, anyway. Kylie? I think the concensus is positive, though I can never forget the teeth. But is it really sexy to practically see someone's kidneys??

(answer = not always no, obviously, but when the object in question is a crack-whore tranny who got lucky, then ick ick ick!)

A quick entry for today so that you don't feel conned/forget about me when, as is inevitable, you come daily to my site only to be fobbed off with some nonsense that's, like, so last week. Entries written on a Sunday should no doubt be filled with tales of crazy antics, drunken derring-do and hilarious tableaux. If that's what you're after, go to Laura's blog which is so much better than this one it's not funny.

Karaoke on Friday helped me get in touch with my inner motherfuckin' gangsta, yo. Sounding, apparently, like Tim from Pet Shop Boys rip-offs (and I mean that in the best way possible) Baxendale, I performed two classic hip hop hits, and my RIGHTEOUS BLACK ANGER is all too evident in this picture. Check out the teeth! You can tell I'm British...

Saturday saw my eighth attendance of the season at an AFC Wimbledon game. After coveting (and I mean seriously - buying shinpads this week has obviously made me into some kind of athletic hero wannabe) about three-quarters of the available merchandise, and settling for a £1 car-window sticker due to precarious finances, I watched a completely comprehensive and happy-making 5-0 thrashing of minnows Westfield FC. I was intending to find out where Westfield actually is, but that might get in the way of my smug, victory-addled complacency.

And then today. Well, I have been pottering about the interweb in my dressing gown, occasionally being mistaken for an escaped Old Person. I am now going over to my parents to have a bath and some free lunch. Who says this blog isn't as unmissable as Laura's? Huh? Huh?

Today's one of those days when I just shouldn't be here. Not just because I do altogether too much sitting around, interspersed with occasional usefulness (though my kitchen and hall floors are no doubt hoping that this usefulness extends their way at some point), but because it's muh honey's 25th birthday and I can't be with her to celebrate it!

Or rather, I can't be with her to hold her hand and make her hot toddies cos she's illin'. Hopefully her 26th year can only improve, and I fully intend to make it do so in only 31 days! Yes, not long at all until my trip across the ocean, for my next dose of Sarah [swoon] and oodles of Americana... I am so excited...

Although... I watched Hal Hartley's Trust last night, and it didn't reprazent all that appealingly the reality of going-nowhere American life. But I know that it's not true, and the streets are paved with gold! And twinkies! Word!

I know this shouldn't make me so angry (or even angry at all) but they're back: Goths are stalking Simon Le Bon, it's been TWO days, and I hate them so much!

Three emotionally stunted young women of European extraction are lurking at my bus stop, crappy suede shoulder bags and pointy boots and fucking stupid braided hair the lot of them. They sidle - well, not sidle, but rather whatever the hunchback of Notre Dame did when he wanted to go somewhere, slowly - up to the driveway of the Le Bons' house, then, casually like, stop and stare. And stare. Then return to the bus stop. To report their findings? Aargh!

They know they're shameful and sordid and that their weak, masturbatory pleasures are out in the open and their heads droop under the weight of their own inadequacy. But still they persist, faking to themselves they're on some kind of mission. To do what? See what kind of trellis the Le Bons use? Which model of SUV (spit) they drive?

I hate them so much! My lip is turning up in anger and disgust while I write. It can't be good for my blood pressure. My digital camera is out of action, so no pics, but they're always the same, anyway - troll-like, pathetic fux0rs with even less of a life than me.

God, what a lazy week I've had. It's been a kind on self-enforced relaxation drive - I've been stressing much too much lately , albeit in such a vague way it's hard to know how to put things right. However, the last few days I seem to have picked up, and rediscovered how to enjoy relaxation, and I'm approaching the coming week with something like optimism and confidence.

One downside of my self-pampering is that it has involved comfort eating. I am hoping the wellbeing engendered by putting a stop to all this porking out will be a kind of comfort fasting in itself. I've emptied the fridge of fattening things and vowed to rediscover my swimming membership card (I have honestly mislaid it, which is a guilt factor in itself).

I have also been *practising* one particular song for the next time I go to karaoke. I'm not saying which one (though feel free to guess!) I shall be the beau of the pub with my hott vocal stylings and new slimline figure! Word!

(now playing: Young Hearts Run Free - Candi Staton)