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A curious phenomenon

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A curious phenomenon

I was sitting on the bus today and the woman next to me was reading, well, porn.  I mean, not a copy of Razzle or anything, but it was – I think – the Belle Du Jour book.  So I’m sitting there listening to my mp3 player and every so often my gaze is caught by descriptions of spanking and blowjobs.  On the bus!

What’s going on here?  When did it become acceptable to read this stuff in public?  I’m pretty sure that if I sat there browsing Playboy… well, I might get away with that, actually, because it’s all articles and only about three naked women a month.  Plus Playboy has a bit of respectability to it, it’s sort of just a slightly more naked Esquire or GQ.  But if I was unfolding the centrefold on the bus?  No that would not fly, my friend.  But a woman reading a book full of graphic descriptions of anal sex and fisting?  Sure, go ahead!

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Excelling

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Excelling

Excel is really hard!  Did you know that?  I know that, because I am currently looking at a worksheet and going "But there MUST be a way to do that!".

Often there is.  There really is.  I Google the sort of thing I want to do and helpful people in the Internets tell me what to do.  But right now I think I’m asking for the moon on a stick (wait, is moon capitalised?  I suppose if we’re talking about our moon… it’s name is kind of The Moon.  Like the Sun.  Sorry).  i can’t even Google it because I don’t know exactly what I want to do!  It’s sort of like a pivot chart… only not.  Oh, wait, maybe I have some stuff about that in…

Not much of a post this, is it?  Christ.  I’ll have something good to say soon.  I told my neighbour not to call Down’s Syndrome kids "Mongols" this morning.  But that’s not really a story.  Oh, yeah, unlike my kickin’ Excel tale.

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Gloomy

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Gloomy

The clocks go back soon.  I keep waking up to darkness, soon I shall be leaving work to the same.  Once again we, as a nation, plunge into the darkness.  It’d be depressing if we didn’t have warm coats, scarves and real fires.  We must be cheerful, above all, when the nights are cold and dark.  And so we bring on Hallowe’en and Bonfire night and Christmas and all the jolly festivals which really make us feel good about standng around in dimly-lit areas watching our breath condense out of our bodies.

I am in a corner re Hallowe’en.  I can’t not do a window display involving pumpkins this year, no matter how much I won’t want to bother come Friday afternoon on the 31st.  I’ll want to sit down on the sofa and play videogames, not carve squash into amusing shapes and hand out individually-wrapped sweets hastily bought from Woolworth’s.  But I will do it, because it’s fun, the sort of fun we as adults can have on nights which are no longer intended to amuse us as once they were.

Reclaim the night, indeed.

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Oh, lor’

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Oh, lor’

I got back from lunch about 10 minutes ago.  There were five of us, and it took them forever to get our order out, about which they were very apologetic, and gave us bread and oil.  Then another bottle of wine.  Well, I mean, we could hardly refuse.  So now I’m finding it a little hard to concentrate on work.  And staying awake.  Still, Friday afternoon.

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A great start.

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A great start.

So I called Vodafone in a desperate attempt to stop them activating my account – and consequently de-activating my T-Mobile account – until I get my phone (it’s a Samsung Omnia, just like I wanted.  Vodafone had it for less than anyone else ever… even the woman at T-Mobile confessed that there was no way they could offer it that cheap and that she couldn’t believe they were doing it).

No chance.  "We can’t actually cancel that.  You’ll have to pick up the phone from the Royal Mail.  They’re usually good at having it at the sorting office."  Yes, but I’m at work.  "After work." (that wasn’t a suggestion, by the way.  It was just a statement of how things will be)  The sorting office closes at HALF PAST ONE!  I AM AT WORK! There followed the audible equivalent of a shrug.  I want to reach into the phone and smack the surly scouse fuck on the end of the line.  So I’m going to be without any kind of service at all for two days.  "You need to pick the phone up from the sorting office."  AS IF I AM ABLE!  I’m screaming this in my head as I don’t like shouting at call centre people because I have been there.  But, with hindsight, I kind of wish I did scream at him.  He sounded like he deserved it.

So that’s it.  I can’t collect the phone tomorrow morning because the buses are on strike and I can’t walk up to the sorting office and get to work at any reasonable time.  Well.  Hmm.  If I get out of bed at half-six, maybe…  But jeeeesus!  This is VODAFONE’S FAULT!  They didn’t ask me what delivery address I wanted, sent it to the billing address… now this.  They’d better be solid freakin’ gold for the rest of my contract.

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I’m in the market for a new phone

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I’m in the market for a new phone

Yes I am.  I get a bit obsessed when this happens.  Last time I went with a Sony Ericsson W850i on T-Mobile and, while I was happy to have a nice, up-to-date phone with Walkman and fast web-browsing, it was somehow a bit of a disappointment.  The buttons aren’t very well spaced and the navigation pad cracked within weeks of opening the box.  And it crashes all the time when I’m using Opera Mini.  I think I made my mind up too quickly based on looks – although its competitor for my affections, the Nokia 6300 was prettier but less well-featured so it wasn’t entirely a shallow decision.

This time, I’m trying not to make the same mistake.  Although, to be fair, my main criteria are "touchscreen and 3G".  Now, I know what you’re going to say but I HATE APPLE so forget it.  After that the main dfficulty is finding a touchscreen phone which isn’t a bit, you know, girly.  The Nokia N95/96s are fugly and expensive.  The Samsung Tocco is small and rather lovely but again pricey and might well be for ladies.  The LG Viewty seems ok, but not very exciting.  The LG Secret even *sounds* feminine, though it seems quite kick-ass, features-wise.  The Samsung Omnia is red-hot awesomeness, but it costs a billion pounds.

I don’t know.  I’m going to research a bit more, then get the prettiest one.

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I’m too busy

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I’m too busy

Sorry.  I shall fling my hands around to demonstrate this ABSOLUTE MAELSTROM OF BUSY IN WHICH I FIND MYSELF.

Now I shall go home and open some packets of food and call it cooking.

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More random brain things.

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More random brain things.

I just looked at the copy of New Scientist what I bought a week or so ago because of CERN.  It’s issue number 2671!  I make this approximately 51.4 years of New Scientist, meaning it started in about June 1956, which means it is SO NOT NEW anymore.  It’s really OLD Scientist.

If we can’t trust it on something as basic as its own name, how can we expect to trust it on important things like us all being sucked into a black hole and dying – OR NOT?