Intellectual Property Crash

Some new character ideas:

The Obligeisha

Dr Leon Respect

Lady Mode

Vacillator Alligator

Seven-Storey Dame

Lunch P. Ritter

Senator Yoke

I haven't got any descriptions for them, but I think they speak for themselves.

***

I sieve too much. I never cook, but I can't stop sieving.

Some things are fine to sieve. Flour, polenta, lumpy dust and many more.

But it's not enough. I've started sieving..|. oh, I don't know. A bicycle or some shit.

***

I've indicated with a red line (|) the exact moment where I lost faith in that idea. I might go back through previous entries and try to identify similar|

Slaw Abiding

They've started advertising "slaw" in our work canteen. I had some the other day. Delicious slaw.

They've always had coleslaw, of course. That's old hat. That's par for the slawcourse. But simple slaw is a whole different animal.

It seems dryer.

Is slaw just an abbreviation? If so, I won't abide it. If you're going to abbreviate something, you should start at the beginning of the word. It's why I hate the abbreviation "baccy" for tobacco. I much prefer toby.

I suppose you couldn't really shorten coleslaw to "cole". Cole isn't appetising, no matter how it's spelled. Even Helmut Kohl. I wouldn't eat him if you paid me.

But I choose to believe that slaw isn't an abbreviation. there's no apostrophe for one thing. And if the sign-makers in our cafeteria are known for one thing, it's proper punctuation.

If we turn to the Online Etymology Dictionary, which is the first Google result for "coleslaw etymology" (and so must be the most trustworthy), we see that the word is a compound. It comes from the Dutch koolsla. "Kool" is cabbage. "Sla" is salad.

This tells us two important things.

Firstly, the band Kool & the Gang were formed on an allotment ("Gang" is Danish for carrots).

Secondly, "slaw" is not an abbreviation of coleslaw. It's just a term for general salad. Perhaps the canteen people couldn't come up with a specific name for their dry coleslaw, so decided to go vague. The dish has no name. It's just salad. It's just slaw.

No-one can complain if you stay general. They should have called it "food" or "matter". I'd love a bowl of delicious matter.

I'm a big fan of salad bar salad, which is why I've taken such a strong interest in this issue. I've written about it at length. Slaw is a big change. It's like having a new step dad. You want him to love you, but you feel guilty because you miss your old spicy orzo or whatever.

But education can allay any fear. I now know all about slaw. I know what it is, and I know what it was. And I know why there's no apostrophe.

From now on, I won't be eating salad bar salad.

I'll be eating slaw bar slaw.

I also know that slaw doesn't have anything to do with Gozer, no matter what Rick Moranis may try to tell me.



He does make me ponder the last of the Meketrex Supplicants though.

Daniel Day-Lewis was great in that film.

Cat and Mouse

I'm writing this near to a cat.

I'm writing this *this* near to a cat.

Our upstairs neighbour has gone away for two weeks, and we have to look after it. (We didn't have to -the neighbour asked us if we would, and we said yes.)

It's a she, not an it. But I can't view her that way. She's just a furry obligation.

(The cat, not the neighbour LOL!)

God, I hope she can't read this. She'd be really offended.

(Again: the cat.)

There's not much looking after to do. We have to make sure she has water, we have to fill a complicated automatic feeding bowl that won't co-operate, and we have to empty her litter tray. That's no fun.

But we're also supposed to keep her company sometimes. She likes human interaction, apparently. I haven't seen any sign of it.

I think - and this might be a sweeping statement - that all cat people have severe emotional problems.

By cat people, I don't mean people who are half-cat, like Panthro or my cousin Lianne. I mean cat people. People who describe themselves as cat people are cat people. You can tell because they call themselves that, and because they're mentally ill.

Not all cat people have to be cat owners. Likewise, there are cat owners who aren't really cat people.

But cat people have all been brainwashed by their pets. It's quite widespread. That's why so many internet memes are cat-based.

I like animals, that's the thing. I'm not anti-animal. I enjoy spending time with them. I even enjoy spending time with cats. But I don't get the fanatical devotion to them. It's a bit like Star Wars. Lightsaber battles are fun, but I wouldn't want to groom George Lucas. Comparison complete.

Cats don't seem to offer much more than most animals, and don't have the important element of being affectionate. People always talk about how intelligent cats are. But they're not as intelligent Tottenham supporters. And you don't see hilarious photos of them on Tumblr, struggling to get out of a box.

Anyway, I tend to value affection above intelligence. Cats are snooty and aloof. The bare minimum I want from a pet is slavish devotion, just as it is for a wife.

Cat people seem to spend all of their time catering to the whims of their pets. The cat dictates the schedule of the day, the places the owner can and can't be, the types of visitors allowed in the house.

I don't really get it. If I owned a lion, I'd probably let it boss me around. But I could totally beat up a cat. And I will, if the occasion requires it.

Don't get me wrong. The ideal owner/pet relationship is a reciprocal. It's an equal partnership, like Gargantua and Pantagruel. I don't know anything about Gargantua and Pantagruel, but they are two names joined by an "and". If that's not a partnership, I don't know what is.

But cats refuse to be in equal partnerships. They want to be top dog, and don't even realise how ridiculous that is.

Cat people remind me of poor downtrodden women, who are slavishly devoted to their oafish, disdainful husbands. They believe their cat can do no wrong, they buy presents for it, they post pictures of it on Facebook. They receive nothing in return, but convince themselves that they are loved.

"Oh, but my cat's lovely," I hear you say. But you would say that! That's how brainwashing works.

I think all cats should be killed.

There. I said it.

***

Here's a quick behind-the-scenes insight into that section:

Halfway through, I wasn't sure if I believed what I was writing. So I just became more and more emphatic in an attempt to power through. It worked.

Of course your cat is lovely. I was talking about those other cats.

There are some really loud and annoying children playing outside. I was loud and annoying when I was a child, so I should be sympathetic. But I'm old now, and am genetically programmed to hate children. I don't know how it helps natural selection. Perhaps the anger of the elderly releases aphrodisiac spores into the air.

I should probably go now. The cat doesn't find my keystrokes and clicking very comforting. I'd better buy it an expensive watch and let it have a few hours of "me" time.

Tolls For Thee

Only two things in life are lofty: ambitions and lofts.

And maybe an EastEnders character, but don't quote me on that.

***

I wouldn't say I'm a particularly morbid person, but I do sometimes visualise my own death.

I don't think that's a strange thing to do. At some point, surely everyone must wonder when, where, how or if they're going to die. Will you be old or young? Will it be fast or slow? Disease? Accident? Will you be ready for the end, or will it take you by surprise?

Who can tell?

I think I've worked out my most likely cause of death.

All of the evidence points to me dashing my brains out against the wall of a toilet cubicle at work.

I've considered the variables, I've factored in my health and lifestyle, my genetic inheritance, my hobbies, my behaviour, my environment and my generation, and it definitely seems the most likely outcome. I will hurl my own skull at the tiles until I'm battered into lifelessness.

Here's my thinking: I'm generally unhappy at work, but I don't own a gun. I'm much too considerate and too shy to make a big show of it, so I would have to be somewhere private.

The main thing that makes the toilet cubicle such a likely venue is that, on every journey from my desk to the toilet, I inevitably humiliate myself.

The humiliation always relates to my interaction with any colleagues that I might see on the way. I'll usually smile in a weird way, stare for a long time, get in their way, make a little stupid laugh, do a grin, fail to make eye contact, engage in an aborted "hello", trip over my own back, accidentally grope them, or walk into a noticeboard.

By the time I reach the toilet, I've accrued enough self-loathing to make dashing my brains out seem ideal.

The only thing that makes me doubt my conclusion is that dashing your own brains out must be quite difficult. You need to do it with enough force to kill yourself, but you don't want to knock yourself unconscious before the job is completed.

I reckon I could do it, though.

The benefit of dying in the toilet is that it would probably be easier to clean than if I was in a carpeted room.

The down side is that the men's toilet only has one cubicle, so any male colleagues in need of a sealed lavatorial environment would have to go to another floor.

On the other hand, it might be chicken pox.

***

Fact: more sandcastles are built each year than actual castles.

It's not fair. The terminology has got to change.

Sandcastles should be known simply as "castles" and castles should be "masonrycastles". It's only fair.

In Britain, hockey is hockey, and ice hockey is ice hockey. That's because we have more grass than we do pucks and such.

In North America, hockey is called "field hockey" and ice hockey is hockey. In North America, this makes sense. To anyone outside of North America, it is an abomination.

But sandcastles are more numerous than masonrycastles WORLDWIDE.

I have no statistics to support this claim, but it must be true. I've built more than five sandcastles in my life, but not a single masonrycastle.

It's all about economy of phrasing.

The English language is constantly evolving. This evolution is driven by usage.

For example, the coccyx is so named because it is less common than the number "six". It's also spelled differently, to make the distinction all the more sharp.

"Knuckledusters" are less common than regular dusters, and accordingly have an appropriate prefix.

So, the next time you're building a masonrycastle, refer to it as such. Otherwise I'll have to kick it over and risk losing a flip flop.

***

Every time I think about going back on Twitter again, I read Chortle's "Tweets of the week" and get thoroughly depressed.

All Twitter jokes are terrible.You can hear their clanking mechanics a mile away.

My jokes are great of course, but you don't want to dive into a pool of sharks just because you're dressed like a dolphin.

Scored

No. Stay awake. Keep talking.

Don't close your eyes. Hey!

You'll be OK, do you understand me?

Talk to me.

Who's your favourite Beatle Boy?

Yeah, I like him too.

The hair, I think.

***

I had the song Silver Bells in my head the other day. It came up on shuffle. I don't mind the song, but it wasn't very appropriate, because of the weather and inaccurate metallurgy. My bells are tin.

Did people get songs stuck in their heads in the old days? It seems like a new phenomenon, but that might just be because I'm around more these days than I was back then.

From our consumption of television, radio and film, we're used to having our experiences accompanied by continual noise. The modern mind cannot abide dead air.

That's why we get songs stuck in our heads. If our brain has no soundtrack, we think that something is wrong.

Or is song-in-head a problem that has plagued us forever? Perhaps since the dawn of our species?

We might have had that propensity even before songs were invented. We might have known we were missing something, but not known exactly what.

And then one day a cavewoman would have gone "do-dee-do-ruh" (in a tuneful way), and everyone else in the cave would have nodded, and pointed at her, and nodded again, and said "Yeah. She's got something."

And then when they were out gathering mammoths or whatever, they would have heard "do-dee-do-ruh" in their heads. Like a memory, but louder.

It's probably a universal thing. There are remote tribes in the wilderness, cut off from civilisation, who still find themselves singing a theme tune or orchid jingle.

I think song-in-head is what makes us human. It's certainly not our capacity for legs. Loads of animals have as many legs as us. Some have even more.

"Doo-dee-do-ruh" is my ringtone. Silver Bells is my alarm tone. I like to wake up early on Christmas morning.

***

I've been watching Mr Show with Bob and David lately. It's a sketch show from the nineties. I hadn't seen it before because I'm British.

It's a bit hit and miss. You know, like all sketch shows.

Here's a very funny hit:



***

I've also been doing some other things. Loads of them.

I've been designing my own T-shirts:

I've been doing a bit of DIM (that's DIY from your perspective).

I've dreamt about pushing Michael Stipe down the stairs.

I've got fingers in a lot of pies.

***

The Blogger spellcheck wants me to change "cavewoman" to "caveman".

Of course you do. Misogynists.

Women can't even be words in this disgusting cavepatriarchy.

Victim of Surstance

What You Don't Know
by
Maxwell Sudden

       Dull the pain

       Une boulangerie ennuyeux

       As is life

       As isn't art

       As is this

       And outside, a carpentress

       With a customised setsquare saw:

       A framing device

       Of her own design

       That we will leave her to

 

       Artlessly afterthought prepositions

       And Google Translate French

   

       Nothing left but title and author

       Nothing right at all

       The crux, the main body, the child, the object, the hope, the delivery, the delivered

       The placenta, off-centre

       The whole thing

       Seven spaces over

       Difficult to justify

***

CAPS LOCK; UNDERCUT THE ABOVE.

At this stage, I'm just typing so that I can pummel the keys. I want to teach them a lesson. But the harder I hit them, the more valued they feel. I need to try using reverse psychology. Ignore the keys you hate the most. Especially __

Stupid underscore.

I might start meditating. My default state of existence is wincing. That can't be right, can it? A wince should be fairly rare. You shouldn't wince at oxygen or wood or Nathan. But I wince at all of those things.

I need to recalibrate myself. When I'm at rest, I'd like to actually be at rest. I don't want to be stressed at rest, even if it rhymes.

Meditation would probably help me stop being such a wuss.

Apparently a wuss is a cross between a wimp and a pussy. Ditto pimp.

Enough of this, though. No-one wants to read or write about my personal problems. They want something of substance. Or, if not substance, the opposite: surstance.

I'm trying to be a better writer. I just choose the wrong things to write about, the wrong times to write and the wrong font to write about.

Calibri has been covered at great length by greater, longer minds than mine.

I just googled "which animal has the longest brain".

There are lots of results about which animal has the largest brain, or the biggest brain, but that's not what I asked.

I want to know which animal has the longest brain. So the search results are useless to me.

Some might say that the animal with the biggest brain would, also, therefore, necessarily, QED, have the longest brain.

But not necessarily.

It might just be really tall.

Height ≠ Length.

Which animal has the longest brain?

We may never know. It's not the most pressing zoological issue. I'm not pretending that it is. And I'm not arguing that it should be.

I'd just like to know, that's all.

Tapeworm?

Yanked horse?

It could be anything.

***

I came up with a really fun idea last night. Really fun. You can try it.

What you should do - and I can barely type this because I'm smiling so hard - is start using the word 'property' as an adjective.

It works especially well if you're talking to an estate agent.

"Yeah, it's a good size, but... I dunno... I think, ideally, I'd prefer something a little more property."

"I suppose it's quite property... I guess we're not going to get anything much more property under our budget?"

"Well, it's propertish..."

DO YOU SEE?!

Really fun. You can try it.

Sometimes, it's these little things that make life worth continuing for a time.

Iron Will

Tomorrow will be the sixth anniversary of Headscissors. That's my iron anniversary, according to Wikipedia. Next year is wool, which seems like a backwards step.

I'm feeling anxious this afternoon. I put it down to the chocolate and orange sponge pudding I had at lunchtime. It was warm, and came with chocolate custard.

I don't normally do warm desserts. I don't know what compelled me to have one today. Probably an external malevolent force, like a witch or some kind of pang.

All I know is I ate a warm sponge pudding, and now I feel anxious. I've been a fool. I'm going to reform. I believe I can be a better man. I believe a better man is a spongeless man.

Let me tell you a story about a spongeless man. I'm sure you'll find it...

absorbing.

;-)))))))))))))))))))))

The Ballad of a Spongeless Man

***

This isn't a ballad. This isn't even a hilarious meta-ballad where I claim not to be writing one. I wrote the above section yesterday. I fully intended to write a ballad then, for all I know. But I don't feel like it today.

Today, the chocolate and orange sponge pudding is but a memory. Also, I don't really know what the a "ballad" is. I think it's a type of duck.

It's not a palindrome, but it's better than a palindrome. It's almost symmetrical.

ballad

It's a lovely word to look at.

***

I wrote the above section on Tuesday. I wrote the section above that on Monday. Today is Thursday.

I refuse to abandon this post. I've put too much effort into it already.

It means that my iron anniversary was actually two days ago. My rosette is obsolete already. And rusty.

I didn't have a sponge today, and I still don't feel comfortable writing a ballad.

It's useful to be able to document my sponge consumption in increments. It's useful.

I used my new power drill yesterday (Wednesday). It was only for putting up a bathroom cabinet, but I already feel like more of a man than I did on Tuesday (ballad) or Monday (sponge).

I can't drive or fight or drink lots of alcohol, but I can drill holes in walls. I'm a real man.

It might seem sexist to suggest that there's something innately masculine about drilling, phallic symbolism notwithstanding. And it is. Women are allowed to drill. And, for all I know, it might make them feel like more of a woman. I think it's what that Shania Twain song is about.

But I felt more like a man, because I was already going down that path. I'm on the man track, so ended up further down the masculine continuum.

Not that you can't switch tracks. I would hate for anyone to think I was being transphobic. It's possible that drilling might make a girl feel more like a man, and a boy more like a woman. Drilling affects different people in different ways. We should be prescriptive when it comes to power tools, unless we're prescribing a certain drill-bit for a specific type of wall.

*sigh*

It's really hard trying to follow a thought through to its conclusion when I'm constantly concerned with political correctness.

Let's just say that drilling made me feel like less of a failure in life. There. Failure is gender-neutral.

I drilled holes and it made me feel better about my comic collection. That's it. I'm not trying to oppress anyone here.

Except for walls. I'm oppressing them. If you're a wall, my drilling adventure was a fucking bloodbath.

I'm not wallist, but I am willing to dismember them in order to mount cabinets. If that makes me a fascist, then you'd better lock me up and throw away the chuck key.

Six years...

Six years is a long time to have been doing this.

Has anyone done a joke about a palindrome being where people race Michael Palins?

Yes, they probably have.

I'm old.

That's the lesson here. It's the common thread.

Sponge puddings, ballads, drills, iron.

Only old people like these things.

Young people like Frubes, diss tracks, lasers, plastic.

It wasn't like this in 2007. What's happened to me?

I look down at my hands and they're all lined and withered there are four of them.

Hang on, that's a zebra carcass... I wondered why my hands had a mane.

I'd better post this, or I'll have to come back in a few days and judge past self. I'm young compared to that guy. He will be ancient.

Youth is wasted on the young. And oldness is wasted on the old. It falls on deaf ears.

Everything is wasted on everything else. It's a fundamental force, like gravity.

The only thing you can do is ignore it. Make something of yourself. Turn a safari exhumation into a profitable hoof depot.

Don't do what I did (or did not) do.

You don't want to wake up in six years' time, wondering "when was the last time I had a sponge pudding", and not even bothering with a question mark.