F**king Cars.

Lights. Stereo. Flat Battery!

Well 've definitely left my lights on. So at 7.35 or so when i stepped out into the blue-skied, snow covered world that this morning was York, i discovered my car was not likely to be moving anywhere for a few hours. Not without waking Luke and asking him to get up and come and help me jumpstart my car. Which i really don't want to do. Therefore i am resigned to a day off work. Ho-hum, what a b**ger.

Rearranged the living room last night to accomodate the fact we will soon have broadband. Yay! So i'll be able to write this, download some films, use the phone and buy some things online, all at the same time. What wonderful, magical technology must this be? I've always wanted to do loads of things at once! Well, staying within my multi-tasking as a man boundaries, at least. Maybe thinking about sex, downloading some porn, watching some, listening to a dirty phoneline and cocking my shotgun of love. Who says men can't multi-task, eh?

I Waffle. Almost continuously. Broadband, Yay! Don't please i implore you if you plan to get it choose an Alcatel external modem, or certainly not the one that comes with Fre**erve broadband. The telephone connection to the modem is actually into the thick modem cable, but it's really clode to the usb end. Which means that unless you buy a long telephone cable then the computer has to be really close to the socket. (Now heres the really daft bit.) The modem itself has a really long cable, so you could put the modem itself as far away as you like. Hang it on the wall perhaps and show it off as the lovely aquamarine, rubbery 'alienspaceship'like abhorance it really is. If our computer baseunit was the same hideous turquoise, globular design then it'd fit right in. Question for Alcatel: How many of your (actually anybody's) customers have base units that match the design of your modems?

I'd bet 5 or 6 more than F**k all!

Sadly, because the majority of people wouldn't know how to open their computer, let alone actually get inside it and change things, all these companies supply you with external modems, which from my limited experience are pooh. What's wrong with an internal modem? Are they too expensive, or is it the reason i give above that prevents ISP's from giving the customer aesthetic satisfaction?

Who cares? Not me. I've got a day off.

I Zimbra

I sat and read some of my book at work today. for a whole three quarters of an hour, Reading My Book. In what was the projectionists room in the old Naval Base hall, i sat and happily read a few chapters whilst being paid for 'working'.

The 'Fact Rap' in Crosseyed and Painless by Talking Heads has just distracted me. Remain In Light for those who haven't heard it yet. (Although if you read this and you aren't Nick and James, who are you? Do i know you? Listen to Talking Heads, you'll like it.)

Yes, paid for doing nothing. I'm at a loss to make myself useful for eight hours a day so i figure i'll do some reading because i don't feel like doing that in my spare time (Doesn't spare make you think of 'What's left over'? Hmm, does anyone in this day and age have spare time? Time has never felt spare to me. Spaced Apart and Rare perhaps? A combination of those produces Spare. Free time then. Time left over from work = Spare or Free(dom). Repression through words my friends.) Man, do i use brackets/parentheses a lot. (By the by can anyone tell me what Americans call brackets? Do they use them? I use them like afterthoughts because i don't actually know how to construct sentences properly.)

Anyway i'm talking cack. Pancake Day! Which was yesterday, was f**king great. I excelled myself in the creation and gluttonous consumption of pancakes yesterday. Delia's recipe...

4oz of plain flour
2 large eggs
200ml of milk
75ml of water
A chunk of melted butter
And a pinch of salt

...worked a treat. I made the above recipe but twice the amount at about four o'clock. Twice the amount made about 14. Of which Luke, when he arrived, consumed five, before returning to work, and Ian, when he returned from a whole day standing and smiling, had 3. I then made a second batter of twice the amount. This time showing Ian how to do it, from raw ingredients to plate. (Why must my talent be teaching? I don't want to be a teacher. Why can't i be good with ferrets instead. Maybe i am good with ferrets, i've just never spoken to any. Worse still, i enjoy teaching people things, it's really easy.)

Anyway. I ate another six. All with sugar and lemon or maple syrup. I haven't eaten that much sugar in years. Since my lunch at about 12 i didn't eat anything else yesterday apart from the flour, eggs, milk and sugar. It was ace. I was in a really good mood. Sugar, sugar, sugar, Pancake Day. Sugar, sugar, sugar, Pancake Day! Mmmmm. Only another 364 days til Pancake Day again.

I had the last two before going to work this morning. Pancake Day!


Happy Pancake Day to you, dear readers. I hope in your own way, you had a Happy Pancake Day. Let's not forget the religious significance of Pancake Day either. It's when they stopped spending money on food for 40 days, in order to pay for their holidays to Minehead or Rhyll once a year. What a way to celebrate! Getting f**ked on sugar. Rock on Jesus!

(You've) A Nerve Ending

I've just read my good man in Japan's blog and it makes me miss him like a bugger-er, equally so with my prolific friend, Nick. I know you're both well and i hope you remain so.

I should really write angry things about the nature of the British Juvenile Criminal System of which i will soon be a much more important member. Particularly so, as i am currently a temp and not really bound by anything. But i don't think people would like to actually see how their tax money is spent. I know things that would make Newspaper Readers apopleptic (there's a word that does it for me, James) with rage and incredulity at the insane concepts which are in place to 'rehabilitate, educate and reform' our future criminals. Run by men with beards; Phil Wheatley, David Blunkett and others, who have absolutely no comprehension of the lives of every other person involved in the actual running of their precious, almost biblical, hierarchies. Like all bureaucrats they live the corporate life of smiling and sniffing. What i mean by sniffing is that they sample so little of the places they visit. Crap analogy i know but hey! i don't control the thoughts. F**kers the lot of em.

Yes. I'll soon be bound to a six month contract, where i'll be expected to input data about the Juvenile Criminals into a new computer system. It's a pilot project in that it is the first of it's kind (it's also a bit of a test, so on my head be it... Well not entirely.) I'm not expecting there to be a great deal to do, judging by the nature of everybody else's jobs in the Civil Service. And my what a 'Civil' service it is too. Tea all day long, chatting with everyone and anyone, interspersed with the eating of food, a nice meeting, plenty of bigoted (in so many ways) conjecture and some more tea. It's smashing.

What's even more smashing is it's PANCAKE DAY! Better even than my birthday nowadays. Oh Pancake Day, magical, mystical, Pancake Day. I've made the batter and am just waiting until i feel a few hunger pangs (that's another word i really like, but is it real? Or was it just invented by advert people? Answers on a postcard) which funnily enough now i'm thinking about; i'm having. Pancake Day!