draliman on life

Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your World.

Can you bake a cake?
Pretty much anyone can bake a simple cake if they have a decent enough oven and a bowl. The one I make basically involves bunging equal amounts of everything in all at once and mixing them together. Very simple! Here’s a photo of one I baked last year.

What’s one thing that can instantly make your day better?
An unexpected and massive injection of cash suddenly turning up in my bank account. That’s never happened though, so I’ll have to settle for the laugh of a small child, the blooming of the flowers, the trilling of the birdies and so on and so forth.

When you were a kid, did you eat the crusts on your sandwich or not?
I can’t remember back that far 😦 I expect I would have been told to eat them whether I wanted to or not.

What’s something your family would be surprised to learn about you?
That I’m actually a highly sophisticated android, though I prefer the term “synthetic person”. My positronic brain is currently operating at 0.01% capacity – any higher and I might accidentally solve the mysteries of the universe thus giving myself away.

None of that is true. Just in case you were wondering.

Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your World.

Oh boy and lawks a-lordy. When I read a couple of other SYW posts earlier this week and saw the questions I knew I’d have to be on my game vis-a-vis avoidance tactics this week. There’s no way I’m answering a couple of these – far too personal for this bloggie 🙂

What do you think of best friends of the opposite sex? Or to put it another way “Can men and women ever be platonic friends? Doesn’t sex always get in the way?”
I’ve had several platonic female friends. How could they ever resist me, you ask? It’s a strange old world, and no mistake.

What is the greatest struggle you’ve overcome?
It was back in               and I was in the               and the               said               and it was pretty              . Lucky to have               that one, as you can imagine.

I hope the redaction didn’t spoil your understanding of my struggle 🙂

What is the darkest thought you’ve ever had? What about the darkest thing you’ve done that you’ve never told anybody about?
There was that terrifying time I was thinking about a coal mine. That was pretty dark.

What is your least favourite food?
I’m not a big fan of seafood. Shrimp, prawns and so on. I’m okay with fish, though. As long as it’s not one of those posh restaurants where they’ve left the head on 😦

Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your World.

How can someone win a gold star (i.e. win your approval and/or admiration) with you?
They could give me loads of money. Money is good. I like money. I’m shallow like that. And it wouldn’t be a gold star from me, that sounds expensive. I would cut a star out of an old newspaper. Which someone else bought. Newspapers are expensive.

If you didn’t have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time?
I would spend the time trying to get people to give me money. Money is good. I like money. I would also be cutting stars out of old newspaper to give to the people who give me money.

Do you have a favourite type of exercise?
I don’t have any type of exercise. Another SYW participant had a great idea – a private pool would be great. I don’t feel confident enough to go to a public pool but I’d love to do a few laps in my own pool in the morning.

Do you sleep with a top sheet? Why or why not?
No. I’m sure it would keep slipping off the duvet. And my duvet is a high enough tog rating that it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your World.

Do you snore? How do you know it, if you do?
I don’t know. I had a girlfriend once who said I did. But I don’t have any proof.

What do you find funny?
The usual stuff. Just thinking of some of the films I’ve seen… fictional people getting gorily killed in a funny way. Fictional people’s heads exploding in a funny way. Zombie hordes getting shredded by helicopter blades. All in good fun 🙂

What was the last furry thing you touched?
The removable inner lining of my North Face coat yesterday. I went to the village market in the storm, safe in the knowledge that it would keep me dry. So I ended up warm and dry from the waist up and soaked through from the waist down. Didn’t really think that through.

How do you handcuff a one-armed man?
I suppose you could cuff his arm to his leg. Though that might be considered “cruel and unusual”.

Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your World.

When was the last time you tried something new?
Though it’s a bit of a reach as it’s not entirely new. I tried slow cooking for the first time in October. Generally I prefer to avoid new things.

If you were forced to eliminate every physical possession from your life with the exception of what could fit into a single backpack, what would you put in it?
Oh boy. Is this going to be long term? First of all I’d make sure the backpack was super huge. Then I’d make sure it had stuff like phone, money, laptop and Kindle in it. Actually, it doesn’t need to be that big, does it? Once those things are in you don’t really need much else nowadays.

What simple fact do you wish more people understood?
I wish people understood that their lives are not their own. They’re being lived for the greater glory of the Grand Regis of Nexis Four, capital planet of the Glorg Imperium. The Glorgians took over hundreds of years ago, but every time I try to tell people I get locked up “for my own safety”.

Wise up, people. (All praise Emperor Gliffn, the Wise and Mighty.)

What food item do you go through fastest in your house?
Cheese goes pretty fast. So does Tabasco sauce. And chocolate, when I have any in. I tend not to buy any as I immediately scoff it down. It’s like it has some sort of power over me. Much like the Glorgians (All praise Emperor Gliffn, the Wise and Mighty).

Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your World.

What age would you like to live to?
749. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. 749? Are you mad? Why not 750? That’s a nice round number. But that would be pushing the realms of possibility, don’t you think? Let’s not go nuts.

What mystery do you wish you knew the answer to?
The greatest mystery of all time. A mystery which has plagued people the world over ever since they started doing laundry.

Where do all the socks go?

Does absolute power corrupt absolutely?
It must be hard not to go a bit nuts when in possession of absolute power. Start with good intentions and before you know it you’re ruling with an iron fist. No transgressions will be tolerated!

That said, I think the majority of rulers/governments who are the hardest on their citizens/minions are those who are the most scared and insecure. Or they’re just fundamentally assholes.

What outdoor activity haven’t you tried, but would like to?
I’ve always fancied skiing. And after I’ve broken both my legs I could always work from home!

Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your World.

Where do you get your news?
While I’m making my packed lunch for work I get Alexa to play the BBC headlines. Then at lunchtime while I’m eating my lunch at work I read the BBC news website. Sometimes for a laugh I read one of the commercial news websites as well.

What ‘old person’ thing do you do?
I’m already getting on a bit so the stuff I do isn’t “old person” stuff, it’s “normal stuff” 🙂

When was the coldest you’ve ever been? The warmest?
I really can’t remember. Possibly back when I lived in Germany. Being mid-continent and away from the sea the temperature varied between -15 and 30-odd, which you don’t get in Cornwall. We get more like -2 to mid-twenties. Currently being mid-winter it’s hovering between around 4 and 9 degrees, so not too cold.

Do you eat food that’s past its expiry date if it still smells and looks fine?
Yes, of course. One of the biggest reasons for wasted food is people chucking food away the moment it hits its expiry date. Hard cheese? Doesn’t go off. Eggs? Float test (and a sniff when you crack them). One of the biggest is “eat within 3 days of opening”. What a massive lie. I’ve eaten perfectly good stuff 2 weeks after opening.

Then there’s people who mix up “best before”, “sell by” and “use by”. “Sell buy” is an instruction for the shop, and food is fine after “best before”, it’s just not necessarily at its best.

Juts know what to watch out for. Any mould anywhere on bread? Throw the loaf away, the spores will be everywhere. Soft cheese – mould permeates inside, so you can’t just cut if off. Stuff like that. You can tell by sniffing something and a tiny taste if something’s gone off, usually.

Use your common sense, people! And obviously, if you’re feeding small children, be a lot more careful – best not to take chances with the little ones!

Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your World.

What’s something your brain tries to make you do, which you have to will yourself NOT to do? (could be a bad habit, a physical response to something…your interpretation is as good as mine!)
Much as I hate going the same way as many others, eating! Specifically chocolate. I still have a big bar of chocolate from Christmas I’m a bit scared to open, as technically it should be eaten over an entire week but I might not be able to stop myself eating it all in one go. It my absolute favourite, too.

Here’s the chocolate bar in question.

I love how it says “More to Share”. Like, get your own chocolate bar. This is my chocolate bar. You can’t have any.

When someone finds out what you do, or where you are from, what question do they always ask you?
They don’t. Their eyes just glaze over as all interest fades. IT does that to people. Either that or they describe some problem they have with their computer and ask me to fix it. Yeah, sure mate. £20 per hour.

What’s something terrifying that we’ve all come to accept as a fact of life?
This is not exactly terrifying, but…

I was walking into town yesterday around 0845 and I walked down a street with a lot of jewellers. Their windows were full of people putting out the displays – rings, necklaces and the like. And it was all totally normal.

Then I thought, why? The only reason they have to remove the displays overnight is because of the risk of theft. We buy insurance which covers theft. We lock our houses, cars, bikes. We buy security cameras and alarms. We password protect everything. It costs us a fortune. All because of the risk some bastard who’s too lazy to get a job is going to help themselves to our stuff. And we accept it as normal.

Should governments make laws to protect people from harming themselves? Could that even work?
In general, no. Not once they’re adults. And it doesn’t always work. If someone really wants to do something they’ll find a way. One big exception that really did work was making it law to wear a seat belt in a car. Saved a lot of lives, that did. Also spared a lot of emergency workers the trauma of having to scrape splattered body parts up off the pavement.

Tiny poll: I’m curious what type of questions YOU, the reader, would like to see more of? Less of? Has SYW gotten too philosophical and less fun in nature?
I’m happy with the questions 🙂

Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your World.

Is “hello” enough for you these days?
Sounds a bit much. It almost implies there’s something more to come. And I really hope there isn’t. A little wave of the hand, a little nod of the head, a little grunt which somehow manages to combine “Hi, alright?” into one poorly-enunciated syllable is my choice.

Do you believe in Murphy? (Anything that can go wrong will go wrong)
Of course. Believing in the Great Law of Murphy is a form of disaster preparedness.

And for anyone who reckons “that could never happen, what are the odds?” here’s some ridiculous odd for you. I was doing my laundry yesterday. There were five pairs of socks in the machine and when I pulled out the first five socks there wasn’t a single match. What are the odds of that?

Does evil come from within? If so, why?
Evil does come from within. And also for without. And from the in-between too. Keep your eyes peeled.

Are intelligent people more or less happy than others? What defines intelligence?
Yes. Both. Either. Neither. I’m not sure what intelligence has to do with happiness, though living in blissful ignorance sounds quite nice these days.

“Ignorance” doesn’t necessarily correlate with “intelligence”, mind. You could be extremely intelligent yet know very little. The definition of intelligence is the “ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills”. It doesn’t mean you actually know anything about anything.

Here’s my post for Melanie’s Share Your World. This week is a reflection of last year.

Advance warning – my answers are very boring. I see time passing as a continuous thing rather than packaging everything into “years” and having a fresh new start, so I wasn’t really paying much attention to last year.

What was the single best thing that happened in your life this past year?
Hmm. I can’t think of one single best thing. It’s not like I won the lottery or anything. And that would count as miraculous anyway since I don’t buy a ticket.

The most challenging?
I have nothing really challenging to report. It was just a normal year.

One thing you learned in 2019?
On boy, these questions! It was just another year.

Given all your experiences, insights, and lessons learned in 2019, what’s the best advice you could give yourself for 2020?
Sorry to be boring but life just goes on. 2019 was the same as 2018, 2017, 2016…

What’s the best meal/food you ate in 2019?
I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention. I seem to remember there was a very nice burger at some point. Though that might have been in 2018.

What are three activities you plan to use in the coming year to relieve stress?
I have no particular plans.

Any resolutions you’d care to share?
I don’t make resolutions. I don’t like the guilt when I don’t follow them.