Things I’d like to know
There are many things I’d like to know.
Is there life out there in the big wide universe? Where did the energy come from to create the Big Bang? What ever happened to Cuddly Bear, my constant childhood companion?
Here are some more – maybe someone out there in Interweb Land can help me.
- Why is it that, no matter the size of the bag you’re carrying and how much is in it, the thing you want is the last thing you drag out of it? A small and potentially embarrassing pile of personal items forms as you delve into the entrance of what appears to be a gateway to another, infinitely large dimension, in which somewhere is the item you seek.
- At what stage in the process to produce instant coffee do they remove all the flavour, and how do they achieve this? And more to the point, why? You pay a huge amount of money and all you get is hot brown water.
- What’s the point of Thursdays? Thursday is a nothing day. Let’s break it down.
- Monday: the weekend is over, we’re recharged, let’s get some work done!
- Tuesday: doesn’t have a lot going for it, but at least it’s not Monday. The week has properly started.
- Wednesday: we’re halfway through the week!
- Thursday: we’re pretty worn out now. The weekend seems miles away. Tomorrow is still not the weekend, nor is it nearly the weekend. The promise of “halfway through the week” Wednesday seems so long ago.
- Friday: it’s the weekend tomorrow! One last push and we’re there!
- Saturday: party time!
- Sunday: and… relax.
Nope, Thursdays are no good to anyone, neither man nor beast.
- Why do I get really tired when I shouldn’t (at work, driving) but when I get home and try to sleep, I lie there for hours and nothing happens.
- How do they get away with these lying deodorant adverts where the bloke sprays it on and women come running for miles to throw themselves at him? I’ve been using the same brand for years. Nothing.
- What’s with these cosmetics adverts with all the mad science? Is the brand new anti-aging cream really so good because it contains the breakthrough “nourishplumpigeninoxTM” formula, or did someone make that up?
There’s no prize on offer, but if anyone can help me with these questions, you will have earned my heart-felt thanks. More precious than gold.
Club 130
This has been quite a couple of months, money-wise. And weirdly, all my “extras” have come to around the same amount (£130) – hence “Club 130”. What are the odds of that? (Well, one in one, though calculating the odds of something after it’s happened could be counted as “cheating”.) I’ve even created a logo using my mad design skills. Though I suspect that “brokus” isn’t actually Latin for “broke”.
The new, professionally created, Club 130 logo.
First off I loaned, yes, you guessed it, £130 to a friend.
Then, out of the blue, my car tax reminder arrived. Technically speaking, it wasn’t really out of the blue. It’s been due at the end of June for years. There’s a disk in my windscreen with a big “6” for June on it. So I guess I should really have known ahead of time, but time seems to be fairly zipping along at the moment and it just crept up on me. How much for the year, I hear you ask? £130 (ish).
Now, the third member of Club 130 really was a surprise.
Thinking that the beginning of July would be OK weather-wise, I booked the first two weeks for my annual leave. I wasn’t planning on going away, but there are plenty of places in Cornwall to visit for day trips – everything from beaches to cliff walks to moorland.
Then the Jet Stream got lost. This particular Jet Stream is supposed to bring warm, dry weather to the UK. Instead, it wasn’t where it was supposed to be and it rained. And rained. And rained.
Every day.
I think I left the house maybe 4 times during my holiday, and all were necessary trips (shopping and so on). Ultimately, I didn’t use my car from the second Tuesday until the following Monday when I went to work. After work I went shopping and parked on a hill, and returning to the car I saw the street lights glinting off something in the rear foot well. The last thing I expected it to be was a puddle!
So, look on the bright side. Surely everybody wants a swimming pool in their car? How cool is that! Well, it turns out that it makes the car smell damp and I’m sure water sloshing around didn’t do my fuel economy any favours. So off to the garage I went. They were great – ferried me to and from work two days in a row, fixed the door seal, dried out the car and helpfully pointed out that the air-con was no longer working.
Apparently if you don’t use the air-con for a few minutes every couple of weeks, the seals dry out and all the gas escapes! Who knew? Maybe if I’d read the owner’s manual when I bought the car. But I’m a bloke – I don’t read instructions.
I told them to fix the air-con as well, so they did that and chopped some money off the total, which spookily brought the total back to… £130!
So now I’m hoping that I don’t get any more eligible bills for Club 130 (not until my next pay cheque anyway), and I’m counting myself lucky that I’m not writing about “Club 250”, because that would have been no good all, money-wise.
So if anyone wants to join the club, just send me a receipt for around £130 and in return you’ll receive a laminated membership card* and exclusive secret decoder ring**.
*Membership cards not available
**No secret decoder ring will actually be sent
Taste tests, calories and statistics
Taste tests – seen regularly on TV adverts, “randomly” selected “members of the public” choose between two or three unmarked brands and decide which they prefer.
I imagine that the various manufacturers perform their taste tests and if they find that their brand is not the preferred one, they keep it quiet. Otherwise they hire some actors and make an advert. Which is fine.
However, from my own personal experience in switching brands, I’m not at all sure we can actually infer any usual information about which brand is best from a taste test. I see things falling into three main categories:
- Brand A really does taste better than Brand B (a statistically significant sample is required!)
- The taste tester has been buying Brand A for years and it tastes “normal” – and Brand B just tastes a bit “off” – these people don’t like change in their food
- The taste tester has been buying Brand A for years and is ready for a change and so chooses Brand B
I recently changed my brand of “spreadable butter” – those are the ones which taste butter-like but aren’t really butter. I bought a new brand but had some of the old left, so I tried them both side by side and decided the new one tasted more butter-like. To my taste buds, that constituted a proper, successful taste test.
By the way – spreadable butter? Butter and margarine both have pluses and minuses – butter is natural but high in fat, margarine is lower in fat but full of chemicals (to make it spreadable). Is spreadable butter not the worst of both worlds?
But I digress.
Here’s a personal example of case (2) above. I used to drink regular cola. I didn’t like the taste of diet. Then I looked at the calories in regular cola and how much I drank a day, and discovered I was absorbing several hundred calories just through what I was drinking. People tend to discount drinks as being “mainly water” but try adding all the calories up and you might be surprised. So I switched to diet. Ugh! After a couple of weeks it tasted fine and now I hate regular drinks instead – far too sweet!
If I’d taste-tested regular versus diet a few years ago I would have preferred regular, now I would prefer diet – because I’ve become used to diet, not because it actually tastes any better.
It’s all very well getting a statistically significant sample for a taste test, but if more people already use Brand A, will they tend to prefer Brand A because they’re used to it?
And that’s statistics in a nutshell. Useful at face value, but think about what they’re not telling you and take them with a pinch of salt. Now, is that a pinch of Brand A – table salt, Brand B – rock salt, or Brand C – low-salt salt…?
Take me to your leader
An alien, like the ones who could be visiting our resource-rich planet in the near future – or have they been here ALREADY?
“Independence Day”, “War of the Worlds”, “Battle: Los Angeles” – Hollywood is chock full of alien invasion stories and it’s safe to say that generally, it doesn’t go well for the human race.
I was reading a post on the origin of UFOs on The Matrix Times blog recently, and that got me thinking – what would happen if a bunch of extra-terrestrials actually landed here?
First of all, I’m hoping that they’ll be friendly. Okay, our planet has vast amounts of (moderately polluted) water – a resource which is undoubtedly scarce on the aliens’ home world (according to many Sci-Fi stories). They may wish to take this by force! But more than likely anyone with the technical skills to reach another planet will be willing to at least talk before crushing us like bugs.
My hypothetical aliens might bring a variety of special skills with them – technical know-how, telepathy, may even the ability to alter the very nature of matter, effortlessly changing one substance into another (like turning lead into gold, for example)!
Don’t even get me started on the popular alchemical pursuit of attempting to change a common metal into a rarer metal, thus making the rarer lovely shiny metal so common that the world’s economy collapses (again).
We humans have our own special skill – fearing and hating anything different. So, what would happen when these happy friendly aliens land, eager to be our friends and share their enlightened views of the universe? I’m assuming at this point that the aliens
- Contact us first and over a number of years build up a relationship with us so that our fear is somewhat decreased prior to face-to-face contact, or
- Have the necessary technology to protect them against the best missiles money can buy during their approach and entry into our atmosphere
Here’s my breakdown on what I think will happen.
- 10% of the population won’t notice
- 10% of the population will believe it to be a government conspiracy
- 50% of the population will panic
- 5% of the population won’t care
- 5% of the population will embrace the newcomers, eager for cultural exchange
- 10% of the population will attempt to exploit the aliens for personal gain
- 10% of the population will immediately form the “Children of the Sky” cult, worshipping them as gods
Okay, so maybe I’m being a bit down on the human race, but somehow those numbers look about right to me. Probably more than 50% of the population will panic but they fall into the other groups too.
And the funniest thing of all? After all this panic and cult-forming has taken place, it turns out that our new alien friends are actually just a group of student aliens from the Sirius Major College of Fine Arts, backpacking around the galaxy during their summer holidays.
Ah, Shopping
The joys of food shopping. It has to be done. Otherwise, I’ll starve to death.
Okay, I could do my shopping online and get it delivered, but I really don’t fancy that at all. I want to choose my own bananas. I’m very particular about my bananas. I need them in various states of ripeness so I get a nice-to-eat banana every day for my lunch at work.
If a product is out of stock, I want to make the decision whether or not to “substitute it for a similar product”.
I don’t want to hang around at home as it gets later and later wondering if my food is going to arrive, getting more and more stressed (it doesn’t take much to get me stressed).
This all means that I need to go shopping.
With a few exceptions, I choose the shop and the timing with care. I choose half past nine in the evening – the roads are quiet and the shop is quiet.
I choose a supermarket which is neither too small (little choice) or too big (can’t find anything).
These choices reduce my stress level. Average time for my weekly shop – less than 15 minutes in and out.
So what does annoy me the most about shopping?
- The “What, pay?” crowd – these are the people who pack all their shopping away and then look surprised when the cashier says “That’ll be 21 pounds 30, please.” After rooting around for what seems a lifetime they finally find a card and shove it in the slot. This is a financial transaction, people. Please be prepared to pay.
- The “pay by cash” crowd – not the people who pay using actual money, but the people who extract all manner of small change from their wallet/purse/pockets, count it and start piling it up neatly on the counter. The cashier then has to count it again. To be honest, I feel a little guilty hating this, they’re just being careful/sensible, but Boy! it takes a while!
- Products which magically move shelves overnight – I hear this is done to (a) make people look around so they see other products to spend their hard-earned on, and (b) deter shoplifters who tend to know exactly where the product is they wish to steal and don’t want to spend time searching in case security get suspicious. I understand the reasons, but I need to be in and out in 15 minutes! I don’t have time to spend on a hunt for my favourite snacks.
- The “conveyor gap” crowd – these individuals start stacking their shopping at the far end of the conveyor belt, leaving a huge gap in the middle so that people behind them can’t start to unpack. Are they afraid their shopping’s going to get mixed up with he person’s in front? That’s what those plastic separators are for.
- The “roughly 10 items or less” crowd – when I’m in the “10 items or less” queue, it means I just popped in for a couple of things and I could even be in a hurry! I can’t help counting the items in the baskets of people ahead of me. And man, do I get (quietly and internally) mad when I spot more than 10. Bastards.
Ah, shopping.
Oh deer
“Oh deer” – no, not an embarrassing typo. We’re talking Bambi’s here (I understand that “Bambi” is a name and has no plural, and neither “Bambis” nor “Bambies” look right, so I hope you’ll excuse the use of the apostrophe in the plural).
From personal observation there has been a recent spate of attempted animal suicides in my area. Over the last couple of months every kind of furry mammal has flung itself at my car in an apparent attempt to end it all.
A Bambi, much like the suicide Bambi recently spotted on a main road in Cornwall.
Here’s a list of the most recent attempts:
2 cats (Truro and Redruth)
1 fox (A30 dual carriageway)
1 squirrel (Falmouth)
1 deer (A30 dual carriageway)
1 drunken youth (Truro)
All of these incidents took place after 10pm except for the squirrel – he only required a quick braking manoeuvre. The others elicited a last minute swerve.
Now, the fox and the squirrel I can understand – they’ve never traditionally balked at running into the road.
I always thought cats had more sense.
I’ve included “drunken youth” in the list because he was behaving like an animal. He jumped out into he road and stuck his finger up at me. Maybe he was trying to thumb a lift but mistakenly used “the finger” instead. As I passed him I saw him in the rear view mirror move further out into the road, finger still held high as I drove away. I was quite annoyed at such a random incident and briefly considered slamming the car into reverse and backing over him. Of course that would have been “wrong”, although, to be honest, prison food could only improve my diet.
That brings me to the Bambi. A deer in Cornwall? What? I saw it in the headlights at the last second as it calmly made its way down the verge and straight out into the slow lane. I performed a rather impressive 70mph swerve and saw it in the rear view mirror stare at me for a second before, again very calmly, it made its way back up the verge.
My Dad later told me that apparently there’s a “deer farm” in the vicinity (deer don’t generally roam free in Cornwall which is why I was so surprised to see one at all, let alone on the main road).
I’m not sure why one would “farm deer”, but I guess it must have been “deer harvest” time and one of them made a break for freedom.
Apparently hitting a deer at 70mph does serious damage to a car (and it probably doesn’t do the deer much good either) so it’s lucky I had an empty lane to swerve into.
Are these incidents all part of the rich tapestry of nature, or is there a multi-species suicide pact going on? Hopefully the former, otherwise it’s all just a bit depressing.
The Great Green Missile
Today my attention was brought to a story in the news about a Brazilian chappie who decided he wanted to spend the day looking like the Incredible Hulk.
Mr Paint Job.
Having decided on this course of action he covered himself in green paint. Did he use specialist body paint? No. He used specialist submarine and missile paint.
Apparently it took all his friends an entire day to scrape it off.
Now, while this is a vaguely amusing story, it brings to mind an obvious question.
“Specialist missile paint”?
Specialist submarine paint, well, maybe. After all, it gives all the little fishes something nice to look at. But why develop special paint for missiles? Is it considered bad form to blow people up with missiles with the paint peeling off? Do the intended victims care? Do they casually remark “Oh, will you look at that, they obviously used ordinary exterior wall paint on that missile, it’s all peeling off” in the micro second before their violent incineration? Is it a point of national pride to only use the most beautifully painted high explosives? Or is it so they look good when certain countries drive them through the streets during parades?
Hello people. They’re ugly inventions that do an ugly job. There ain’t no amount of paint gonna cover that up.
The taxman cometh
On arriving home from work the other evening I saw a dreaded brown envelope on the mat. Upon closer inspection all I needed to see was the return address – “HM Revenue and Customs” – to send butterflies swooping through my stomach.
I’ll just briefly explain the tax system in the UK. We use PAYE (Pay As You Earn) – HMRC takes tax from your pay every month and the rest (minus National Insurance) goes into your bank account. We trust HMRC to take the correct amount – we have to. You need to be a genius to be ale to work it out for yourself. If you get paid more one month (bonus, overtime and so on) the tax is recalculated for the next month (you might pay more), but it all evens out in the end.
A letter could easily mean that they haven’t taken enough money and they want more!
I settled myself on the sofa and opened the letter. The first page was very generic – “you may owe us money, or we may have taken too much and we owe you”. Pages went flying in all directions as I tried to find the final reckoning. I should mention that this is for the tax year 2005-2006, back in the distant mists of time.
Joy of joys – apparently they didn’t take into account an increase in my personal allowance (the amount you can earn before you pay any tax) and I paid too much (i.e. they took too much)!
Rich, I’m rich! They’re sending me a cheque! What should I buy?
I’ve always wanted a little Audi. That would be nice. Or I could move to a bigger place. One with a spare room to put all my junk in. Or maybe a cool 3D TV with a massive screen.
Audi, big house, 3D TV – all denied
Well, they owe me a grand total of £34.50. So I won’t be getting any of those things. But it’s nice that the government thought of me and are sending me some money.
I can’t help thinking that it would be nice if HMRC always took a little too much and then gave it back – it would be like a little savings scheme. But then I suppose we’d come to expect it and then the one year we didn’t get it we’d find we’d already spent it in anticipation.
Maybe next year I’ll owe them money instead. Perhaps I’ll just take my £34.50 and store it away against that eventuality.
No, screw it. Amazon.co.uk here I come!
Collect collect collect!
Collectibles. Things sold in sets.
I must admit to a bit of a weakness to such things. Once upon a long ago I collected a full set of plates with cat pictures on them. “Why?” I hear you ask. Because they were there. I think they’re currently in my parents’ attic.
The local supermarket is currently doing a promotion on knives. You get vouchers when you spend a certain amount of money, and then 5 vouchers saves you around 70% per knife. I don’t collect by mail order any more – you can get trapped into those things and never get out. But picking stuff up in a supermarket and handing over vouchers, that’s nice and safe and under my control.
Well, vaguely under my control.
Now, it’s pretty much impossible for me to walk around with a wallet full of money-saving vouchers in my pocket and not use them. It doesn’t really matter whether or not I particularly need the items. Don’t get me wrong, I no longer buy stuff I’ll never use, but take these knives. It’s pretty much a case of “Well they’re sure to come in handy one day”.
I don’t really cook, you see. I’m thinking that maybe now’s the time to start, now that I can get hold of some really cool knives. Up until now I’ve only needed two sharp knives – a little one to cut the cheese to put on top of my pizza and a bigger one to cut the pizza. Now I’ve got knives capable of cutting all sorts of food!
All six knives present and correct, officer!
I now own a total of six, yes SIX steak knives! I haven’t had steak at home for years. So why six steak knives? Obviously I had to get two (they come in sets of two) as they’re part of the collection. There’s also one of those wooden blocks for putting the knives in. And it holds six. So six I had to have. Not only would gaps in the block annoy the hell out of me every time I looked at it, but I’ve seen a bunch of crime shows. If there’s a stabbing and I’ve got a knife missing I’d be well in the frame. Are the police really going to believe that I ran out of vouchers?
I’m currently thinking of buying a massive cabbage, just so I can take my recently acquired cleaver-style knife and hack the living hell out of it.
I guess if nothing else, they’ll look good on the kitchen worktop.
I’ve won a prize!
Don’t you just love those “You’ve won a prize!” letters that come through the letterbox? You know the ones – they make it very clear you’ve won a massive stereo or a games console (until you read the very small print). One of these arrived on the doorstep the other day. I thought I’d analyse it for a bit of fun.
Wow, I’ve won a TV!
It's ready to be shipped out to me!
Hooray! Let’s ignore the words “if applicable” for now. They’re probably not important. I’ve won a TV!
I am such an idiot!
I only had one thing to do, and I didn't do it!
Surely I forgot to send back my prize claim – only a mad fool wouldn’t want to claim this fantastic prize. I’m so stupid – I only had to remember to do one thing, and I couldn’t even do that! This is worded so aggressively, they must be quite anxious to give me my prize.
Everyone’s human
Phew - I still have a few days left to claim my TV.
Well, apparently this is just a reminder. It’s OK – it’s not too late! Everyone forgets to do things and I’ve still got time to claim my prize! But I can’t delay, I’d better post it off now.
It’s ready to ship!
LCD parcel? Is that an actual TV or what?
It’s there in the warehouse ready for me – as soon as I respond they’ll send me my LCD screen parcel! Hang on though – is there a difference between “LCD Screen” and “LCD Screen parcel”? I think I’d better take a quick look at the terms and conditions. (I couldn’t take a decent picture of the small print. It was too, well, small.)
“Upon receipt of the documents, the addressees cannot make any conclusion about the exact nature of the prize they awarded.”
But didn’t it say I’d won a TV?
If I don’t reply, it gets serious
The General Manager himself is dealing with me!
Yes, the General Manager himself is going to have to deal with me!
Another win!
I can't believe my luck!
I’ve also won thousands of pounds – this is indeed my lucky day!
Hang on, they’ve worded this as a statement of fact, but what’s that question mark doing at the end? And what does that asterisk refer to?
I haven’t actually won anything, have I?
Click for a random post!
Woohoo!
I totally didn't win!
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