boreders

I have a doubt. I have a doubt that inhabits a dream. I have every reason to believe that this doubt haunts my dreams out of some kind of guilt.

To build a tad of context for this doubt, I got a 2.2 degree in History and Political Studies at university. I have no regrets in this regard. Well, no – that isn’t true. I do have regrets, because a 1st Class degree would look far more impressive framed and hung from my wall. When I explained what a 2.2 was to my wife, she questioned why I would ever want to reveal such a qualification to anyone, never mind have it framed and hung on any visible wall within the house. Perhaps this certificate might better be displayed next to the planning permission for the demolition of Arthur Dent’s house.

Anyway, I have a recurring dream about not attending History lessons at school. In these dreams, I do all sorts of other things, but end up looking at a timetable and realising whatever it is I’ve been doing it has meant I’ve utterly failed to attend a History lesson. In most instances, I have missed history lessons at school rather than university.

However, I also have a recurring dream that I have failed to pay the rent on my digs at university – and left one or more personal items behind. Last night, this fact managed to slip into a dream that didn’t even seem to have anything to do with school or university – and involved all manner of other people and places ranging from my wife through current work colleagues to rooms in old places of work.

Anyone with theories about why either of these doubts should haunt me so can freely comment!

Went to see Bill Bailey at the Palace Theatre in Manchester last night. Great evening, thoroughly enjoyed. As we managed to secure seats in row BB, we had front row viewing – slightly off to the left of the stage.

It was sort of odd from this angle, as you could actually appreciate that Bill is basically blind on stage – as most performers are – because the theatre lights are pointing straight at him. At the front, my wife managed a few vocal responses to Bill’s questions.

He asked if anyone was from Australia – and Fil replied ‘Yes.’ And that she was from Melbourne. Bill was stumped at this response, no doubt without experience of the city, and announced that he’d gone down a ‘comedy cul-de-sac’ on that one.

Later, while asking what the audience knew about barnacles, a woman near us said they had a penis ten times the size of their body. Bill congratulated the woman on her keen knowledge of the subject and tried to clarify with the rest of the audience whether it really was ten times the size. At this moment Fil interjected that barnacles also lived on the bottom of pirate ships. Bill, at this point, noted that the information provided on barnacles had suddenly become very ‘Wikipediaesque’.

Fil’s highlight was being asked onstage. Bill asked for a woman to come up and help, and Fil jumped at the chance. When Bill asked the name of this mysterious woman coming to help him, she responded Fil – to which Bill responded with signs of confusion that the woman had a man’s name. My wife then assisted Bill creating a rhythm on a Tenori-on, followed by a Bjork-esque song. The lass done good – and got a laugh or two along the way.

So, apart from Fil grabbing her 15 minutes of fame, I was impressed that we got just under 2 hours of quality Bill Bailey. The event information said the show included elements from Tinselworm, which we saw last year at the MEN, but essentially there was so little as to be unnoticeable. Thoroughly recommended, from start to finish – and will certainly make every effort to see him again when next he alights in Manchester.

I’m sitting in the garden right now writing this blog entry, having already twittered, Boo’d and updated my Facebook status.

Despite approaching social networking with uncertainty from the outset, I now embrace Facebook, Twitter and similar outpourings like old friends. In many respects they are just that. I chat with more old school friends and ex-work colleagues than ever before. Yes, some of those “friends” are tenuous, but I do know them from Adam (something Facebook members with thousands of friends certainly can’t say!).

The business of social networking induces me to chat regularly, if only with myself. I should write more and I should write regularly… and this may be a reasonable route in to achieving that. A dozen Tweets in a day is more than I have likely set down to paper in the last week on any creative projects. It shouldn’t be that way, but small steps might make all the difference.

I now Tweet as @boreders, Facebook as myself, and Boo too! Boo is basically audio twittering or blogging, which allows for a little more spontaneous content generation. I allow my mouth to do all the talking (funnily enough).

I’d like to find any angle on this outpouring now to make more of it… So, if anyone has any clever ideas they’d care to share, I’d love to hear from you!

Yesterday, I started reading ‘Dreamsnake’ by Vonda N. McIntyre. My reading this book presents all sorts of personal firsts.

Firstly, despite her success and science fiction literary awards, this will be the first time I have ever read a book by McIntyre. I like the idea of coming to an author for the first time, with the hope that it won’t simply be a one night stand. Reading my first Kathy Reich book was much the same – and I have gone on to read more. I also read more Dan Brown after finishing ‘The Da Vinci Code’, almost entirely because the sheer readability of the book took me completely by surprise.

Secondly, in buying this book, this is my first 1p purchase from Amazon Marketplace. I have associates who wouldn’t consider spending more on a book these days, despite the fact – in truth – the standard postage associated with the purchase means you never pay less than £2.76… Nevertheless, I found the process painless and relatively cheap.

Finally, this will be the first time I have ever read a book because a calendar told me to. Yes, you read that right. The excellent Futurama Calendar not only serves up some superb spoof images of movies with a Futurama twist (like January’s ‘Clone Alone’, with Cubert Farnsworth filling the Macaulay Culkin role in the classic poster image with the hapless criminals in the background and Cubert wide mouthed in shock) and an incredible breadth of information (it includes International Talk Like A Pirate Day on September 19th – how complete is that?!), it also tells you what to read. Every few weeks, the little calendar square says ‘Read so-and-so book’, starting with ‘Dreamsnake’ on 9th January. I’m all for new experiences in reading, so I intend to do my level best keeping up with the recommendations and expanding my horizons.

I wonder how they make commission out of it?

I read a lot of fantasy literature. Now, to me… that means I read books with swords, sorcery and Orcs. I read about empires overthrown by the power of dragons and unbridled Chaos. Elves and trolls. You know the score. Anyway. If I told someone else I read fantasy books, would they think the same thing? I don’t know.

So, if I said I had a fantasy calendar hung in my house, what would you think then? More spell-wielding wizards and frightening wraiths? Or some soft porn? Is ‘fantasy literature’ the stuff that seems to appear most regularly in WH Smiths situated in motorway service stations? The reading matter with ladies in lingerie on the front cover, or a touch of leather?

Where am I going with this – except for skirting around the whole matter of perception and the degrees of understanding hampered my personal tastes and interests? Well, my wife does a lot of good works – helps with charities stores, supports animal welfare concerns, that sort of thing. And, she offloads the things we don’t need any more through the Freecycle Network. Well, she advertised a Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell fantasy calendar on Freecycle Stockport (suitable for cutting up into prints for the connoisseur of fantasy) – and one of the over-zealous moderators banned the offer on the basis that he (or she, I’m not sure!) thought fantasy meant soft porn – of the Page 3 variety.

That’s where I was going before.

And, what I have to ask is – where does the mind of this moderator dwell that his first reaction to the words ‘fantasy calendar’ leans immediately into the realms of soft porn?

I find myself befuddled at the power of crap advertising. I’m sure most companies spend dissimilar amounts on advertising – some, like car ads, no doubt involve massive sums of cash falling into the hands of marketing people you wouldn’t care to share a meal with (for fear they might cause it to come back up again mid-way through). On the other hand, you would hope that the confused.com Internet insurance broker paid a reletively small amount – and just happen to have got themselves a winning formula.

I mean, the ads stink. Seriously. All that odd nonsense with 2-dimensional props – I don’t even know what that means. Does it mean anything? Perhaps, it means – we spend all our money on caring for you, and get a bunch of crayon-hungry orphans working for toffees do all the scenery work for our adverts. Also, what’s with the ‘Charlie Higson-a-like’ they have grinning and gurning his way through the recent ads. I’d rather have a quiet drink down the pub with the elephant from elephant.co.uk than that guy. You’d probably end up wanting to punch him a lot if exposed for more than 30 seconds at a time.

What works is the tagline, for some reason. “Con-fused-dot-com” or however you might render it in type. Suddenly, I find myself engaged in (and listening to) conversations where people feel the need to end their sentences with a “dot com” rather than a full stop. “Did anyone see that internal memo… I’m confused.com.” … “Anyone planning on doing the washing up… dot com?” … “I’m just off for a Number Two dot com.”

I’m not certain it’s necessarily selling more insurance, but like Micheal Winner’s “calm down, dear”, it has that catchphrase quality about it that allow it to linger on long after the adverts that spawned it have passed into oblivion. I’d be interested in seeing any studies about the phenomenon that might exist, and whether these catchy soundbites have any particular impact on behaviour.

Relevant reading:

I was just gathering up the recycling this morning (around half an hour ago), on an otherwise ordinary day. I had sat down with a pile of unread newspapers and made sure I hadn’t missed anything obvious to keep for a more detailed read later. Then, I dropped the papers all in a plastic bag, grabbed a soup can for the metal recycling box, and stepped out into the cul-de-sac… to see a black car, with a very large roof ornament, making a turn and pulling away. On the back of the car, a small logo proclaimed ‘Google’. I had witnessed the passing of the Google Street View Car, continuing an extended roam around Britain (and Europe).

It would seem spotting this elusive vehicle has become a bit of a sport. In America, Street View has raised privacy fears, catching fleeting visions of our streets, homes, gardens – and just what might be happening through the window when the car passes. In the UK, despite some initial concerns, the Information Commissioner’s Office approved Street View back in July.

So, that leaves me wondering now whether I’ll make an appearance myself, a vague shape in the porch gathering up the newspaper recycling bag, or just opening the door to step out into my drive way. Thankfully, I wasn’t doing anything too embarrassing – something others cannot claim across the Internet, like the Aussie drunk.

Sometimes you have to wonder how the heck life gets quite as strange as it does. On Saturday, we had a tapas party with friends. Everyone brings round something appropriately nibbly (and some beer), and by early evening we have a table growning with goodies. Simple. Very little organisation or cooking involved, but enough to feed people and have spares for a week or three.

Anyway, with a couple of dozen people in and outside the house, conversation was the evening’s primary pursuit. We’d eaten and drank, the warm, relatively sunny, day fading into an equally pleasant evening. As we stood in the garden chatting, somewhere in the distance we heard sirens. Several of them. Living on the outskirts of Manchester in 2008, this isn’t so out of the usual. However, as we continued chatting there was a sound like something hitting a fence, or possibly someone being hit with a fence, rather closer to home. Curiousity rose somewhat, especially as the sirens continued to persist and get just a little louder and clearer. Falling back into conversation, a russle at the back of the garden drew attention to someone making an entrance. Staggering from the rear, amidst the trees and bushes, came a guy in dark trousers and a green top, with blood streaming down the side of his face. He muttered something along the lines of ‘Sorry… I’ve been in a fight.’, before heading off along the garden path, round the side of the house, and off up the street.

The evening rapidly descended into some bizarre co-mingling of ‘The Bill’ and ‘Scooby Doo’, as various members of the party went off to find the guy or see what that crash was, while others recounted the tale of ‘the man in the garden’. Police with dogs and police in helicopters followed, the latter particularly noisy, with searching beams flashing in the night sky. We were told later that the police caught the guy. He’d hit another driver, at considerable speed, and one or more of the cars had gone off the road – tearing up fences. ‘The man in the garden’ had exited his vehicle, leaving the other driver for dead, to make his escape across the back gardens – and the police had tried to follow him that way, explaining some more fence banging rather reminiscent of ‘Hot Fuzz’.

So… from simple tapas and friends, the evening turned into something very different. By the end of the evening, enough had happened to ensure the whole event would be discussed for weeks and months to come. Good food, however tasty, might not have made the event so memorable!

Relevant viewing:

Having gone through the newest batch of trailers and seen the likes of ‘Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer‘, I have to say even the campest bloodfest of a horror has nothing on this disturbing guide to turning your kids into a Halloween pirate over at YouTube:

Relevant reading:

Why, oh why did this make me giggle so much? What could it have been? Sour-faced old Paxman really does ask for this sort of thing… cheer up man, it’s not the end of the world.

(Amusing page layout provided courtesy of the TV Guide)