Keeping yourself in suspense

Once you click "Poke" on facebook, you can leave up the pop-up saying "You are about to poke..." for as long as you like

The kitchen and Why I don't fit in

I just don't understand that when a person goes into a kitchen, they automatically go and nibble whatever's there.

They don't care what it is because it could equally be a pile of chopped vegetables, some raw cookie dough, nuts or grated cheese. They don't care how much it is, because they just pick up/tear off around a finger-full (or 10% of the remainder, whichever is less) and eat it. The only rules are not to finish what is there, and not to eat anything poisonous like raw meat.

If they stay in the kitchen for more than five or ten minutes, they will repeat the process. Why?

It could be straight after a meal so it's not because they are hungry
It could be straight before a meal, so it's not because they are worried that it's a long time before they will get the chance to eat again.
It could be a carrot, so it's not because they wonder what it tastes like.

Why do they do it? It drives me nuts, not because we will run out of food (although if we will, I'll be angry), but because I will have to think through whether losing this amount of food is likely to make us run out. It also drives me nuts because I don't understand them and feel left out of this communion-like event. I'm not at one with the food and to imitate would be wrong.

Yes I'm sorry, I am crazy, and I'm not a chef so I'm probably wrong. But maybe someone out there will read this and think "yes, me too!"

Profound statement

I don't wanna invent no revolutionary sandwich, I just want better bread
- courtesy of Mr X

Slightly disturbing

... how long the hairdresser spent shaving the back of my neck when I had a haircut. Urgh!

Cycling less

I didn't actually cycle the morning after my last post on this topic, but I did cycle on Wednesday and Thursday, so I'm making progress. Don't tell ANYONE that I am this sad, but I have been keeping track of my morals and here's one in graphical form:



There are so many good excuses for not cycling... being tired, wind, having a broken bike, snow, being late, need to drive around during work hours, not remembering whether I'm going to need to drive around during work hours, rain, need to drive after work. And the list gets bigger the longer I have the car. I can have excuses every day!! This didn't happen before I had a car!

You are unique and special

You are unique, you are an individual. That’s what we are told from very early in our lives. I had a book about how amazing the world was. It was a fun cartoon book and at the end was the most memorable page. It said that the most amazing thing in the world was... YOU! And there was a big mirror in the middle of the page so you could see yourself and feel special and unique. I always found that the concept that I was special and unique was a slightly odd concept. After all, there are lots of people and they are special by being unique, but how many special people can there be? If one person is special, every person is, but if everyone is special then it devalues the concept of “special”. But I was young and my parents told me it was true and I didn’t like disagreeing with them because they were big and clever.

Nowadays I feel like a mushy average of people I know, a product of my surroundings and situation, and of the people who I know. If I’m unique, it’s not in a very satisfying way! I change depending on my circumstances at any given moment. I’m possibly still unique at any given moment, but every moment is a unique point and by the definitions of my childhood, I was special and unique ten minutes ago, but I’m differently special and unique now. Now everyone is unique and special at every moment and there are an infinite number of different special people stretching round the world and back in time. The concept of “special” is getting less and less comforting.

As a child I was also told that as a person, I have a soul that lasts forever, and that is the essence of who I am that never changes. But I know I do change. The only solution is to change a small enough amount that I am still recognisable as myself. Even over a very long period, you have to stay constant because otherwise you get confused about your identity. If I remember back to what I did in the past and cannot understand the thought process behind making a decision then I have changed too much.

With all of these thoughts in mind, and being a product of my upbringing, I always aspire to be unique and constant. In the same way as an English student could read a book and tell you it’s a parable of women’s liberation or something, you could look at large chunks of my life and describe them as a conflict between trying to be unique and trying to be constant. To be unique you have to stay ahead of the game. You can’t be predictable, you have to build enough experiences and explore enough alleys that when you meet a new person, they will find you interesting, unique and special. But that doesn’t lend itself to constancy. Why do people give you such contradictions to live your life by?!

I am often told that I am fairly constant but when I was told before Christmas that I had turned into a different person, I saved the text message and it stuck in my head. It’s one of the most disturbing text messages I have ever received. I’m sure the sender had no idea how much it would affect me. To change enough to be a different person is a scary thought indeed.

Why do I desire these things so strongly? Is it a desire found only in me, in other people with the same class background and things, is it a social construct, or is it a natural instinct that has evolved for a purpose?

I want to be constant and I want to be an individual. Does anyone else, or am I unique in that?

Grumpy

I am grumpy because I have spent 45 minutes defrosting dinner in the microwave and it's not defrosted. And I am doing a sudoku and I'm stuck. It's funny what gets you down sometimes. I guess I'm just tired, but it's soooo annoying!!

My soul resides in your watery fiords fyords fiiords Inlets

-Adrian Mole

Whenever I am typing and get stuck spelling a difficult word like 'recommend', I always go to googlefight.com. Not only do you get to watch stick men fighting, but it also tells you which way of spelling it is more accepted, by which version is on the internet the most times. After all, the way that most people spell it is probably right (unless it's a horrible american spelling - being British I'd prefer to spell things the British way). My most recent one was queuing/queueing. I prefer queueing. Many words have the magic e that I learned about in primary school. An e turns bit into bite, because it is magic and lengthens the sound of the i. Likewise with cap/cape, pet/pete, sit/site, rot/rote, crud/crude, (one example for every vowel). The magic e gets dropped when you add -ing onto a verb. Although not magic, the same happens for words like meddle and paddle - the e disappears to produce meddling and paddling.

I think ue is a sound in itself and is different to other words that end in e, so it should be allowed a different spelling rule for adding an -ing. The group include words like glue, sue and queue. If you type them into Google, gluing is suggested as a better alternative to glueing, suing is suggested for sueing, but both queuing and queueing seem to be acceptable. The same is true on the Blogger spell-check On finding that out, I turned to googlefight! The results are in:

gluing = 434,000 search results
glueing = 70,100

suing = 1,300,000
sueing = 48,600

queuing = 790,000
queueing = 386,000

I hate to say it, but the versions without the e seem to win. Those with the e seem to be widely accepted, as both appear in most dictionaries, but they are not as common. A cause or a consequence of this is that Microsoft Word tries to correct the versions with an e.

I like to think I am right, and the world is being skewed by Microsoft pushing its weight around. And I will therefore continue to add my e to these interesting words as I have always done. After all, as this website points out, queueing is the only word in the English language with five vowels in a row. Awesome. We need to keep that!

UPDATE:
I have some more words for you to consider: value, subdue, pursue, imbue, ensue, construe, continue, cue
There are lots of them! If the rule is inconsistent, I'll be frustrated

Being overly interested in dictionaries

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a dictionary with me at all times, and I don't read a dictionary as bedtime reading. We consulted one today after an odd discussion regarding what comes after bed in the dictionary. Sensible thoughts such as bede and bedazzle quickly gave way to assessments of words like bedangle and bedbath. I am worried that I might wake up tomorrow morning to find myself being bedangled from my bedroom window by a bedaardvark. Which would be horrific and a stunt that you should not try at home.

Incidentally, the words after bed in the dictionary we were looking at were bedabble, bedad and bedaggle. None of which are words in my book (I only have a small dictionary). And now it is time for my bed!

Days of Christmas

It's the thirteenth day of Christmas, or rather, the first day of 2009 that is not a day of Christmas. Hooray!

The song about the twelve days of Christmas chases me round the country every year. It sticks in my head incessantly and won't go away for around a fortnight. Every year I find myself wondering which day of Christmas we are on. I suppose I am slightly fascinated by the possibility of having a song that develops over the course of almost two weeks.

Also, I am always curious about the song and the gifts themselves. Why did my true love stop at twelve days? Was that the plan from the start, or did it just seem like a good place to finish once everyone is having a nice dance at the end? It annoys me that there is one more Lord than Lady. Surely the Lord is a little annoyed that he doesn't have anyone to leap for. Perhaps the recipient of the gifts is intended to be the missing Lady? In that case, is the giver one of the Lords as well?

At which point did the recipient realise that they were going to receive a partridge in a pear tree so many times? And how was the giver so sure that the partridge would stay in the tree long enough to give it? He must have ordered these things a fair while in advance for them to arrive on time. He was lucky that it all went to plan, because it sounds like a logistical nightmare. Perhaps the song is just badly phrased and my true love only actually gives the pear tree on the first day. It could be that in later verses the previous presents are mentioned simply as a reminder of what has been given already. Who knows?

All of the gifts are a bit silly though. Swans seem fairly normal, but they belong to the Queen so unless my true love is the Queen, they are not my true love's to give. Maids-a-milking are also crazy. To have eight of them for the last five days means forty maids, which must be most of the professional milking maids in the county.

The "proper" meanings of the song you can read here

Anyway, these thoughts keep me occupied through the coldest, darkest days of the year, but that is over now, and I will have to find something else to occupy me

The fact that the coldest night of the year is TONIGHT (it's supposed to get down to minus 10 in some parts of the country later) makes the loss of the song a little harder to bear than normal. So forgive me if I shed a tear as I head to bed

More evidence of long-term damage caused by living with girls

I was in the toilet when I noticed that the colours of my tie and pants clashed. My thought process was like this:
-Oh no, the colours and even the patterns clash
-Should I be making an effort to avoid that when I get dressed in the morning?
-Who for?
-Well, I suppose the only one to see my pants is me... do I care if they clash?
-YES [this worried me, I'm not supposed to care, I'm a man!]
-Do I care enough to spend time selecting pants in the morning instead of picking up the one at the top of the drawer?
-No
-- Breathes a sigh of relief, masculinity is at least partly maintained

More about me and the environment

I am fiercely independent. If someone tells me to do something I get defensive; I don't automatically do the opposite, but I certainly have a good look at the options to see whether it would work to do something else. I want to be absolutely sure that I am my own person. And I do it obsessively. When someone says they can predict how I'll react to something or what I'll say, it throws me into a kind of panic and I don't know what to do. I cast about for new ways of being unpredictable. I don't want to be weird, but I certainly do want to decide things myself and I pride myself on having original ideas and new ways of doing things.

It's perhaps because of this that I am a man of short term obsessions. I have had my hatred of umbrellas, my love of cheese, my love of the cardigans, my love of tea, my obsession with cacti, and many more. When someone finds me out, or, worse, is more obsessed than me, it shocks me and I flee in panic!

But slightly contradictorily, I like to take up the same opinions as my Dad. You could probably say that the time when I was gaining all my background of opinions and way of thinking was a time when I listened a lot to my Dad. He was a Quaker, he was slightly anti-establishment, he was an environmentalist and a scientist. Everyone has beliefs and values that are unquestioned, and these are some things that are firmly ingrained in me.

A wonderful thing about university is that there are a lot of people with carefully considered opinions. I don't discuss life, the universe and everything too often, but certainly over a few years you get through most things. So you start to question your ingrained values. That's important to me, because then I get to be that little bit more independent in my thoughts.

I realised only recently that environmentalism was something that I should question too. My Dad died before everyone believed in global warming, so I can't just steal his ideas on that. It brings up lots of problems that he probably thought through but I just accepted.
What kind of world are we trying to save?
Do we want to stop seas from being filled with fertilisers that kill off local fish populations?
Do we mind that a land filled with people, our houses, infrastructure and agriculture is unnatural?
Is the destruction of sea habitat somehow more important or more avoidable than the destruction of habitats on land?
Is biodiversity very very important? It's not so natural either. After all, if you leave land to do its own thing, nettles could cover it and squeeze out anything else. Or bracken in the highlands.
If we will be able to survive the problems of global warming, is that enough?
In terms of importance, if you give a human life a value of 10, what's the value of a frog?
If there is a huge swarm of insects is it more justified to kill them rather than a lone bug?
Can we even define the state of the Earth environmentally?

I'm not planning on abandoning my environmental views, because I think they are important. But it's something to think about, because unquestioned views are dangerous no matter who you are.

The new British coin designs

Most people don't seem to have heard the terrible news. The reverse (tails) is changing on all British coins except the £2 coin later this year. This does not mean that the size, shape or material of the coins will change, and the old designs are not being taken out of circulation. However, new coins are produced every year to replace those that are lost or drop out of circulation for some other reason, and these will all carry a new design.

The new design for every coin features a part of the Royal Shield, with the effect that if you line them up in the right way you can see most of the shield (see the Wikipedia article for a picture of this and more information on everything I write here)
But this seems like a novelty, and seems like a poor replacement for the coins that we already have.

The penny has the symbol of parliament, a portcullis
The twopence has the symbol for the prince of wales: ostrich feathers, a crown and the motto "ich dien" (I have a feeling it means "I serve" but I'm too lazy to look it up)
The five pence has a scottish thistle
The ten pence has an english lion
The twenty pence has the rose (used after the war of the roses; you know, the one combining the white rose and the red rose of the opposing sides in the war...)
The fifty pence has Britannia, who has been on our coins for at least 3 or 4 centuries, and after whom songs are still sung
The pound has a big variety of designs, with different ones each year. It works like this: the countries take it in turns to have a design for them i.e. the UK then Scotland then Wales then Northern Ireland then England then back to the UK. Something I have only noticed today is that the designs are themed for each cycle of designs. So the first two cycles had national plants, the third and fourth cycles had symbols like the welsh dragon and the northern irish celtic cross, and the fifth cycle (ending in 2008) had bridges.

So we are exchanging around twenty symbols for a single one. And the one we get to keep is the £2 coin, which is some kind of abstract pattern that's meant to represent innovation or something equally modern and meaningless.

If this only lasts one cycle (five years) then I won't mind, and the gimmick will have run its course, but I really hope we go back to the old ones at some point. However, the royal mint has given no indication that it will go back.

Is my inner numismatist (coin collector) coming out in this indignation? I find myself checking my coins for rare dates and good condition so I can hide them away, as I used to when I took my coin collecting more seriously. Do you care? Even if you don't, have a think now and fill out my poll on the left - which coin design will you miss the most?

At last

Since the HMV e-mail telling me that my CD, Best of the Cardigans, is on the way, I have been sick for 3 days out of 7. Maybe there's a link, maybe there isn't, who can say? But it arrived a few minutes ago, and it has certainly cheered me up! Being sick is very stressful as well as being boring. I'm only half-way through listening through CD 1, but it's pretty good! Yay

Update on "Best of the Cardigans"

Everything is now prepared and ready for the highly anticipated greatest hits album by the Cardigans. However, the record label (Universal) seems to be messing up quite spectacularly, because while the release date according to the band is 28th Jan, Virgin quotes it as 4th Feb and HMV as 3rd March. Indeed, the more you look, the more different dates are quoted. In Belgium, iTunes got hold of the album and included it in their listings, without anyone being able to buy it, and in some parts of Europe people already have the album, even though release in most of Europe is 30th Jan. So yeah, I'm confused.

The tracklisting is:
DISC ONE

1. Rise & Shine 3.29
2. Sick & Tired 3.24
3. After All... 2.56
4. Carnival 3.37
5. Daddy’S Car 3.35
6. Lovefool 3.13
7. Been It 3.41
8. Losers 3.17
9. War 3:56
10. My Favourite Game 3.36
11. Erase/Rewind 3.38
12. Hanging Around 3.44
13. Higher 4:32
14. For What It’s Worth 4.16
15. You’Re The Storm 3.53
16. Live And Learn 4.16
17. Communication 4.28
18. I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer 3.33
19. Don’t Blame Your Daughter (Diamonds) 3.36
20. Godspell 3.29
21. Bonus Track 0:21
22. Burning Down The House (Feat. Tom Jones) 3:38

DISC TWO

1. Pooh Song 03:15
2. After All... [Demo '93] 02:37
3. I Figured Out [Demo '93] 02:05
4. Laika 01:20
5. Plain Parade 03:31
6. Emmerdale 02:25
7. Carnival [Puck Version] 02:52
8. Happy Meal I 2:36
9. Nasty Sunny Beam 2:54
10. Blah Blah Blah 3:00
11. Losers [First Try] 3:16
12. Country Hell 2:47
13. Lovefool [Puck Version] 3:14
14. War [First Try] 4:07
15. Deuce 3:32
16. The Road 6:52
17. Hold Me (Mini Version] 0:36
18. Hold Me 3:40
19. If There Is A Chance 4:15
20. For The Boys 3:37
21. (If You Were) Less Like Me 4:04
22. Slowdown Town 4:08
23. Give Me Your Eyes 3:23
24. Slow 4:01

giving me 10 songs or versions of songs that I do not yet own. It's therefore certainly well worth buying! There's also a 1CD version with the first CD's tracklisting - including all of the singles, for those fans who don't yet own all of the singles. The cover art is a bit odd, but apparently the liner notes have comments from the band on every single song, so they'll be good to read as well. Can't wait

I could do it in my sleep

This phrase could apply to a lot of things it seems. The latest thing is that I read a text message from Lee and replied to it in a coherent way, all in my sleep, only to know nothing of it the next day. Freaky.

In the past, I have also stopped my alarm clock, and instead of simply pressing off or snooze, as would be easiest (particularly when asleep), I set it for three hours later. Freaky.

If I could teach myself to work in my sleep or do something useful, that would be good, but at the moment I'm more afraid of what I'll do next!

Tick tick tick tick tick tick BOOM!

Time scares me. Losing time scares me, and losing time without being in control scares me the most. This manifests itself in many ways.

1) Unless I really have to, I don't embark on anything that I can't duck out of after 10 minutes and decide to use my time differently.
2) I don't use my time well. I sit for hours doing nothing and often get to the end of the day and realise that my whole day has been unfulfilling in every way, and been boring to boot. I'd prefer to waste time, watching the sand flow through the hourglass than use it properly and take my eye off the ball.
3) I don't plan my time well, use a calender or diary only sporadically and frequently miss things and make mistakes as a consequence.

I'm not sure how to beat it though, but I need to if I'm gonna get a degree and a job and not end up as a pauper (thanks to verticalblue for telling me about the pauper part of this terrible scenario)

The two people left when everyone else is already in pairs

Do you ever look round a group of people and mentally pair them all off with each other, and then see who you're left with? Maybe it's just me. It's probably just me. For example: there are six people, two of whom are already going out, and another two are flirting, so obviously you are left with the one remaining person. The problem is that I always seem to end up with people I'd rather not be paired up with... I suppose it is sometimes men, so that reduces the chance of a happy pairing!

Anyway, I'll stop this discussion, I'm probably sounding more and more peculiar in the head.

Learn to love your nose

Your nose is cool. Not unreservedly, but it is pretty cool. I know nothing about the physiology of noses, so I can't comment on that. I also don't know if your one is a little fatter than you would like, or maybe too big, or maybe a bit crooked.

These things are beside the point, things which people say and others repeat in order to give noses a bad name. Think of all the things you can do with your nose. You can blow it, wrinkle it and even flare your nostrils. I learned yesterday what that means (I had only read it in books before), and you can do it if you are angry, but you can also do it for fun, just to make your nostrils look that little bit bigger!

And your nose does so much in return. It allows you to smell and taste, for one thing. A life without smelling or tasting would not only be boring, it would stop you from realising when someone has put something weird in your sandwich, or your milk is just starting to go bad. But this is not the main gift which your nose so unselfishly gives you: it allows you to
B R E A T H E
Now that's pretty cool. You can even breathe and keep your mouth closed, so you don't have to open your mouth when you are eating - because that's rude. Your nose is a very selfless protuberance. So often, you get ill, and your nose takes all the flak. You don't feel bad, you just have a blocked nose. Let me explain: If I was to tell you that I cared about you so much that I would fill myself to the brim with snot to prevent you getting ill, you would think (a) that I was weird, no, very very weird; AND, more importantly (b) that it would be a pretty amazing sacrifice for you.

So yes, noses are weird, but they are also amazing.

Get to know your nose.

Give it a squeeze, first in the direction that closes the nostrils, then in the other direction, so your fingers are above and below the tip of your nose. Give it a stroke, along its length, feeling how it blends into your face. Wash it, exfoliate it, powder it too, they like that.

Then you will really LOVE your nose

A drinking schedule

You probably realised this a long time ago, so I apologise for boring you; but if you didn't know this, maybe you'll be interested as I was.

English people (maybe others too) have a very precise timetable for drinking their daily caffeine. Many people who I have asked have told me that the follwing is their daily routine, so if anyone says "do you want a cup of tea or coffee?", then they will always know the answer without thinking.

When you wake up: tea
The rest of the morning: coffee
Immediately after lunch: coffee
The rest of the afternoon: tea
After dinner: coffee
The rest of the evening: varies I think, it's unusual to have coffee late at night, so maybe a tea or even a fruit tea, though I may be wrong

Having found this from many people, I remembered that in the materials department, they sell coffee in the morning (unless you ask for tea, as I do) and tea in the afternoon, which backs up my findings.

Is the system I have described accurate or complete? Please send you comments and corrections, as I am not sure

I am weird on this score... I only drink tea anyway, so I never have to choose!