Waiting, and how I always had to do it.

Have a little patience...

Now, whatever your opinion about Take That, I must admit I like the sentiment.
Patience is something I value very highly in people.
If I was rich businessman and owned a company where talented young people came to me looking for a job, I would be enigmatic and eccentric, and if people were impatient they wouldn't get the job.

There are a few things I place in the category with patience that I value.

Being on time is one. I hate it when people are late.
I really try hard to be there with plenty of time, and if I am going to be late I tell people.

Selflessness. That's a good one.

But back to patience.

As another example of pure conjecture, I think that people with last names starting with a letter late in the alphabet are more naturally patient.

My last name is Wells. Many other people have last names with late letters:
In this respect, I am not alone.

That means everytime a register was called at school, or indeed anything where you have to wait in alphabetical order, the late-letter people are alay waiting until the end.
And it happens every time, so they become naturally more patient.

Yep.

Rich cultural history.

You would not believe how many travel guides I read which contain some reference to a "rich heritage" or "rich cultural history". Every guide to anywhere features these words... and they tell you nothing!

Everywhere and everything has a rich cultural history.

I can tell you that this blog has a rich cultural history.
So does the office I'm sitting in.

"Rich cultural history" doesn't mean anything. It's just a phrase with no tangable quality that can be copy-and-pasted into any document about somewhere to make it seem interesting.

Thought of the day.

I've just eaten some "cola bottle" sweets.

Whenever I eat cola bottle sweets I always do exactly the same thing.

I bite off the brown bit to enjoy the cola flavour.
Then I eat the clear bit to enjoy the (I presume) glass flavour.

St Vincent and the Grenadines.

St Vincent and the Grenadines sounds like it should be a 70's mixolydian funk band famous for their summer hit "I Love The Sunshine". I imagine St Vincent as being tall and very slim, with slick dance moves and innumerable ladies constantly girating around his hips.

A kind of ruthless charisma, he'd have too, like, you wouldn't really like him if you met him in person, probably due to his enormous ego, but you couldn't help being drawn into his mysterious and aggressive personality, and he'd always make you laugh.

Like many musicians, drugs would have ended an otherwise promising career, and three years after the release of their phonomenally successful self-titled second album, St Vincent was arrested on drug trafficking charges in Chicago.

That krooked smile he had on his face as the police drugged him away, he knew he was guilty. It took three officers to drag him away; he was slim, yes, but deceptively powerful. He'd get off on a misdemeanor charge, but only four days after his release he'd be found dead from a gunshot wound to the head.
The report said that evidence to whether it was self-inflicted or not remained inconclusive. He is survived by his wife Elizabeth and their son George.

In reality, of course, St Vincent and the Grenadines is a country not a funk band. But I think this makes a much more interesting story than the country guide I'm going to write for the next couple of hours.

Justin Bieber.

I'll admit now, that I know very little of the works of Justin Bieber.
If you are reading this blog post in the hope of establishing something of a better understanding of the innerworkings of Bieber's lyrical qualities, or perhaps hoping to find a piece of yet unrevealed information, you will go away bitterly dissappointed.

I know two things about Justin Bieber. Just two.

1) He is universally loved.

2) He is universally hated.

Now, take a quick look again.

These points appear to contradict each other. But it's an optical illusion. He is an optical illusion.

He is a 16-year-old boy with the appearance of a confident-within-her-sexuality 17-year-old lesbian.
Yet somehow he has managed to convince the massive majority of pubescent female Americans that he is the most attractive thing on Earth.

So, logically we're looking at a future in which all males are going to have to look like females. Or we are going to see a whole generation of in vitro babies.

Groups, and how I can't talk in them.

I'm not very good at meeting people for the first time.
I'm not so bad one on one. If everytime I met someone new we were immediately forced to sit together in a room for perhaps half an hour, I'm sure I could do a good job of making them like me.

Over the years I've built up a strong repetoire of comic observations, mainly about myself, that do very nicely for first meeting someone.
I have standard phrases I always use. They usually make people laugh. Not properly, just mildly.

I can't tell you them. I mean, you could rent them from me for a reasonable fee, but I can't give away good material on a free-to-access blog (perhaps I could implement a Rupert Murdoch-esque pay wall...)

Those phrases don't really work in a group environment.
For a start the chances are that some of the people have heard them before. And if there is one thing I know about comedy, it's that hearing it again is merely an awkward experience. You are forced to politely laugh at something that you are not finding remotely funny, but are aware you found it funny before.

I don't know what to do in groups. I stay quiet. And the problem with staying quiet is that you have then type-cast yourself as "the quiet one". And you can't really escape it. I can't really say to the group:
"If you all individually give me a chance to talk to you one-to-one I firmly believe we'll become close friends, or perhaps lovers *winking to the ladies*"

I have neither the confidence, nor the wish to be labeled a wierdo.

Nurses, and why we don't make 'em like we used to.

We don't train enough nurses in the UK.
This is clear because we have to bring in a large number of foreign nurses to keep up with demand.

I don't want this to get bogged down into a debate about immigration, because that's not the point I'm trying to make.

Clearly, however, we currently need immigrant nurses in the UK, because otherwise we would not have enough nurses. Why aren't we training enough?

This is purely speculation, but I wonder to what extent sexism has played a part in it. And possibly not sexism in the way you expect.

I used to play this riddle with people at uni (and you've probably heard it before but I'll post it anyway). Also, I should note that this is not integral to the story.

Here we go:

A man and his son are involved in a car accident and are rushed to hospital in separate ambulances.
The son arrives at the hospital first.
The doctor takes one look at him and exclaims:
"This boy is my son"
How is this possible?


People go for the obvious things first. I usually have to re-say the riddle several times, by which time they have usually tried: step-dad, two gay parents, and some elaborate story in which the original father was a grandfather or something stupid.

It's none of these.
And it's actually quite funny to see the look on the more feminist-y girl's faces when they don't get that simply the doctor is his mother.

A female doctor. The greatest riddle on Earth.

Anyway.
The point is the sexist cliche.
Men are doctors. Women are nurses.

I wonder how heavily that plays on girl's minds when they think about their future career paths. Do they subconsciously reject the possibility of being a nurse and conforming to gender stereotypes?

Basketball, and how I came to love it.

I was introduced to basketball by a person who could be considered my first best friend. I mean, I recall having frineds before him, but I don't remember their names. His name was Daniel and I went to primary school with him and he was a fan of basketball. I remember watching Space Jam round his house.

I remember liking basketball and being jealous that he liked it too, so I pretended I didn't like it. I remember a particular incident in which we were taken to McDonalds (other fast-food brands are available) and got Happy Meals. The toy in the Happy Meals were these little plastic figures of monsters playing sports.
The basketball one was a vampire. His name was Slam Drac. (I had hoped to find a picture of him, but the internet appears to have forgotten about him). I definitely remember he existed.

So we got our Happy Meals and opened up the package.
I got some werewolf doing something rubbish like cricket or something.
He got Slam Drac.
And I was jealous.

I tried to think of a witty putdown, but this is the best my year 2 brain could muster:

"I think they should have called him Slam Drunk...because he looks drunk"

He didn't look drunk.

It didn't even make sense.

So after that (not specifically because of that incident) I became obsessed with basketball.

I used to watch NBA games on the TV and played a little game.

I would listen out for a name I didn't know and then I write the name down and draw a picture of what they might look like. I don't know why I did that, but I learnt a lot of players names that way.

In year 4, Daniel and I went to different schools. Well, more technically I moved school. My mum and his remained friends/business-friends so I saw Daniel irregularly.

The first time was perhaps a year or so after I'd moved, and I tried to have a conversation with him about basketball and all the players I knew.
At this point my knowledge dwarfed his.

The student had become the master.

Success, and how I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

I think it's for the best that my life never amounts to what someone could call a "success".

I function as a semi-tolerable member of human society because I am knocked back fairly regularly. If I get proved right about things I am likely to become smug and pathetic.

I mean, for example, I know I'm pedantic a lot of the time.
I've done my best to cut back on being pedantic directly to people's faces and correct them about things. Fundamentally I'd like to be one of those people who is just really nice about things.
But I don't think I am.

I can't help wanting to be right. I am obsessed with being right.
I am terrified of being wrong. And I get angry when I'm definitely wrong.
I take the anger out on myself, mainly, I promise.

I use the example to illistrate what it would be like if I was proved right any time often.

I can imagine why successful musicians develop such egos.

I mean. I write a lot of songs, and I like them. Sometimes I think to myself "that's a good song, if I heard this song I'd like it". Yeah I know that's pathetic, but it's just how it is.
It doesn't last long. I look back at some songs I've written and can't imagine why I even bother to play guitar.

But.

If I was to become succesful, it was just show me that I was right all along.
And the thing was, I always knew it. I knew how amazing I was before anyone did.
And you better believe I'd rub that in.

So, yeah, for the benefit of my relationships with my friends and other people I care about I hope I never do anything impressive. I hope my life is filled by minor successes always reduced by larger failings.
I don't want to become something worse.

Can't even think of a title.

Haven't written a lot recently.
Fundamentally that's because something that I can't really wrtie about is taking up most of my thoughts.
It's fairly predictable, I'm afraid.
I can't talk about it properlly, I just don't do that.
I can't concentrate on other things.

To read this will only take you a moment... mwahahahaha.

The English language is full of units of measurement that fundamentally mean about the same thing, but nevertheless, cannot be specifically defined.

Many
Several
A lot
A few
Loads
Numerous
Some

Dictionary.com humourlessly defines several as being "more than two, but fewer than many". It then goes on to define "many" as "a large number".

Also: a "moment".
A moment is the most stupidly non-specific amount of time.

"I'll be with you in just a moment" probably means between 10 seconds and 10 minutes.

"A moment in history" could last hours, maybe days.

We have the word "minute": a nicely prescribed 60-seconds. Easy.

But no.
The English language has corrupted minute, so now it can mean anything. Someone says "I'll be with you in a minute" and they take, I don't know, perhaps 88 seconds to be with you.

They meant a "moment".
And then we're just back to where we started.

See, this is just another example of our language conspiring against us to make things more difficult for us.

English hates you.

See, even simple phrases can become funny with a little hard work.

I went into Subway on Monday and was quite shocked by the words I used to answer the question of what I wanted.
"A six-inch Italian"

That's just the first of a number of cock-based humour I will be implementing into this blog.

On a funnier note, I saw Stewart Lee at the Brighton Dome.
He was great. But I suppose I was expecting him to be.
His Russell Howard material was epic.

The Christmas Number One.

As we head towards the winter, I brace myself for the inevitable spate of Facebook groups with the idea: "Lets get "blah" to number Christmas 1 and beat the XFactor".

The X-Factor was already beaten. There's no need to imitate it. Let's do something more interesting.

A picture.

This is an image taken on Nicki's iPhone in the restaurant on Thursday night.

Using another "app" which takes a psuedo picture booth photo.

Image One: Nicki and me in standard photo pose

Image Two: We change the pose. Nicki does a better job. My hand remains in an identical position.

Image Three: The waiter arrives with hotplates, and we can only laugh in embarrasment.

Image Four: I reveal my subconcious Nazi sympathies with a fleeting Hitler moustache. I have no memory this occuring.

One Thursday night, and a revelation.

The level of wit didn't extend much beyond a scrawled "insert penis here" followed by an arrow pointing to the vagina/anus/mouth of the victim. "I Love Cock" made several appearances, not to mention the ubiquitous "I'm gay".

This is why giving drunk people in a club an unlimited supply of Crayola pens is not a good idea.

Permit me to furnish you with the context.

20:04 - Thursday night

Nicki was late. It wasn't unexpected. I was in my nervous state I'm always in when people are late. Once it goes past two or three minutes I become extremely anxious and usually I'm not able to relax or think about anything other than the minutes leaking further and further from the time.

She turned up not long after. It's kind of like when I used to wait for a bus on a rainy winter morning, and it didn't turn up, and I'd be really angry. And as the time passed my rage become stronger to the point where I would think:
"I'm gonna have a go at the bus driver, he's so late".
But then when the bus turned up, I was so pleased to see it, I forgot all about being angry.
Not that I was angry with Nicki, just anxious, I think.
Will and I got in, and we started the epic journey to Joe's at 20:09.

20:10

We arrived at Joe's.
A brief exchange of pleasantries followed a discussion of the plan.
Curry, we could all agree, was going to be the ultimate highlight. However, there was certainly an air of reluctance to commit to going out afterwards.
Joe was saving money for the Verses tour starting soon. I had work in the morning. Will was going elsewhere. Nicki really wanted to go out to, what she described as some sort of club/bingo hyrbid which Mary was photographing and had put us on the guestlist.
At that point I was fairly convinced I wouldn't be going out.
I would consider it, but ultimately, I was fairly sure I was going to pansy out.

20:23

Joe drove, and we parked in George Street. Complaints were made about the cold weather, but it definitely wasn't cold. However, for the purposes of dramaticism, we will pretend Hove was sub-arctic that evening.

With the illumination of a large Tesco substituting poorly for the Aurora Borealis, we battled against the gusty winds until we reached the blissful relief of the Hove Tandoori curry house.

20:31

We were seated. The restaurant was smaller than I remembered it, but perhaps that was just becuase it was utterly packed. Infuriatingly small serving spoons did not detract from the quality of the chutneys or the raita. I had manly beer, whilst Will and Joe pansied out with coke. Nicki had a non-gender specific cider.
Nicki was particularly displeased with the lack of a ladies-first attitude when giving out the menu and drinks. Perhaps Indians are just more enlightened in terms of gender equality than we?
Nicki "signed herself in" to the restaurant on her new iPhone, giving any stalkers she may have, an easy time.

20:56 (I estimate)

Our main courses arrive.
Joe had a lamb dish that he had been raving about for the last millenia. Will disappointed me, as usual, by ordering vegetarian. Nicki had a Mermaid Korma (christened due to the gigantic, fantasty-size of the king prawns she had ordered). I had a Muglai Chicken.
Delicious, I must say. I tried a little of all their three, and they were really, really nice.
Using an "app" the aforementioned iPhone, we attempted to find out what music was playing in the background. Unfortunately "Generic Indian Restaurant Song" was not listed on the database.

21:25

I defeated my curry with ease, but the others didn't fair so well. Joe disappointed me the most with his failings.
Usually, once your done eating in an Indian restaurant, your waiter will remove your dishes and then immediately furnish you with a plastic package which, when opened, reveals a volcanic-hot mini-towel to "freshen" yourself.

The Hove Tandoori does things a little differently.

A small porcelain plate was placed in front of us, with what looked to me like 4 big white Refresher sweets (apparently they looked like marshmallows to Nicki). However, when boiling water was poured onto them, they sprang into life, erecting to their full height. With tongs and assurances that they were "very hot", our water placed one each in our hands.

It was those lava towels! NO PLASTIC PACKAGING.

I was highly impressed, let me tell you.

21:45

We paid and left the restaurant.
It was at this point that Joe admitted he would go out as long as we didn't stay out more than an hour or so.
This worked to my advantage, as I didn't want to let Mary's guestlist kindness down, but had no intention of going out for a whole night.
So we drove to Brighton's Churchill Square carpark, and Will ventured to the PavTav.

22:03

Walking to the seafront means go past Oceana. And going past Oceana means you have to go past people queueing to get into Oceana.
The queue itself feels like Groundhog Day. Everyone looks/smells/acts exactly the same. Male teenagers drenched in Lynx's newest flavour, wearing an Abercrombie and Fitch shirt and one of those studded-leather "Jesus Loves You" belts speaking with a semi-London accent. I don't think they could aggrovate me more if they tried.

We made it down to the seafront and made our best guess as to where Digital was. It wasn't far.
There was some initial confusion, as the guestlist-woman (I am unsure if there is a specific word to describe her, I don't think "bouncer" is correct. Maybe I'm being think?) was unable to locate our place on the guestlist.

An exasperated Mary was forced to come out and sort thing out, but we made it in eventually.

22:14

When we got inside we were immediately provided with a Crayola pen (mine was orange, I still have it) and a little bingo sheet thing.

People were using their Crayola pens in the manner I told of earlier.

22:44

After Killing In The Name played (which was the musical highlight of the night) a man took to the stage in a formal shirt and tie, and began a humorous skit about health and safety. The costume would have been much more realisitc had he not been wearing the cliched geek glasses, which have become fashionable amongst even those who have never heard of binary.

A little while into the skit, the host (as he shall he now be known) announced that tonight was "not about health and safety" because "we don't give a fuck about health and safety" and that tonight was about underground bingo. He was very charasamtic, and funny, and I think the concept of the night is very good. I would have really enjoyed it a couple of years ago.

The premise of the night was that inbetween dancing and drinking, the music would occasionally stop and bingo would be played until someone won. The prizes ranged from a soft toy panda to a HD video camera.

I didn't win anything. Even if I had I don't think I would have pushed my way through the crowd and claimed my prize.

23:32

We walked back to the car. We discussed how old we felt, and blamed the teenagers in the club for making us feel old. Near the carpark, Nicki said the immortal words:
"Are they having sex?"
I looked over to the alley where she was pointing. There were a set of stairs. A man was thrusting, and a pair of bare legs extended over his hips.

They were definitely having sex.

We didn't want to stare, so we carried on walking. When we pulled out of the carpark we tried to get a picture on the iPhone. I don't know how good the picture is, if it ever goes up on Facebook or something I'll add it.

Friday morning

It was sometime Friday morning I realise that I really have no interest left in the going-to-clubs thing. PavTav is fine, and if people want to do something it's not like I'm going to say no, but it just doesn't hold any interest for me. Not anymore.
It's not like it was that night's fault. The night seemed pretty good, and it's not like all the people were dicks or anything.
Just in terms of going out on the town, I'm not really interested in anything more exotic than seeing my friends and drinking to some music I at least remotely like.
Maybe that makes me boring.
But I don't mind.
I'll be boring.

Plurali, and why that is definitely wrong.

So what did I learn today? This:

Graffiti is plural.
Who knew?
I didn't.
One piece is a graffito.
Graffito comes from the Italian meaning "little scratch" or "scribble". It doesn't quite translate that way anymore, but it did.

The same is true of spaghetti. A single strand is a spaghetto. My mum told me that. I'm sure there are other examples of Italian words tricking me with their rare -o singular and common -i plural, but I can't think of any.

Here's another thing about plurals.

So in English, our standard way of making plurals is by adding an "s", or at least a variation that ends in "s".

Word becomes words.
Baby becomes babies.
Box becomes boxes.

However, I'm sure you were already aware, being skilled users of the English language, that we have some plurals that don't end in "s".

Woman becomes women.
Foot becomes feet.
Mouse becomes mice.

There are many examples.

Some people use octopi as the plural for octopus, but this is incorrect. Octopuses is correct. The -i ending tends to be Latin words, fungus becoming fungi, for example. But octopus is a Greek word, not Latin, so it has never been correct to say octopi.

My favourite plural (yes, I have a favourite plural) is: passersby.

It's the only word I can think of (and feel free to shatter my dreams by finding other examples) where an "s" is used to indicate plural, but that "s" isn't found at the end of the word.
I am aware of hyphenated examples such as "days-off" or "sisters-in-law", but I can't think of a single word like passerby which is changed in this way.

Noise, and how lots of people are wrong.

Few things annoy me more than Strictly Come Dancing.

But one of those things is when people, invariably stupid or old people, describe the music I listen to as "noise".
"It's just noise".
It's another example of a cliche that is true. I experience it most times distant family members ask me what kind of music I like.

I can give a specific example that happened last Christmas. You remember, when Rage Against The Machine defeated some X-Factor rubbish to be the Christmas no.1.

As a little side point, can I add: a number of newspapers picked up on the fact that when the campaign started to get Killing In The Name to the top-spot, RATM where on Sony, the same record label as Joe McElderry (I had to look up his name, as I really did not have the slightest clue).

The newspapers said that it was just a cynical campaign that would make no difference because the same people would make the profit out of it eventually. Some even suggested that the whole campaign was orchestrated, or at least supported by Sony.
But they were completely missing the point. People didn't buy that single to shun the major labels, or strike back at the corporate money making.
We bought it to show we supported real music, not commercialised crap. I didn't/don't even like RATM that much.
But I like it infinitely more than I like Joe McElderry.
We'll come back to this in a minute.

So anyway.

It was Christmas time. Christmas, of course, is a fantastic example of when I always find myself agreeing with stupid/disgusting world-views purely out of politeness (note, I have semi-plagiarised this thought from Stewart Lee).

This Christmas RATM was no.1.
This topic of conversation hadn't been brought up.
So I considered it my duty.

These paraphrased replies basically give you an idea:

"What a load of rubbish"
"Just a lot of screaming and swearing"
"It's not real music"
"It's just noise"

No.

There's a lot of music I don't like, but I still respect, because it is good for what it is. It's artistic. There's good types of all music. Or at least most.

To me, noise is something that has no artistic talent. It's just a regurgitated pop song no with no discernable unique or interesting elements.
Joe McElderry's attempt at Christmas no.1 was a cover of a Hannah Montana song.
That is noise.

The Gay Side, and how it definitely existed.

Trying to explain "the gay side" to people who didn't go to Manor Hall Middle School is something of a challenge.

Walk into the boys toilets and there are a series of cubicles first, followed by two long, steel urinals, one on the right hand side, and one on the left.
Everyone went to the right hand side.
This is because the left hand side was "the gay side".

Even if there was a queue, everybody patiently waited.
Those poor kids who were not aware of "the gay side" on their first visit, would be mocked insessantly.
"Look," said the chorus from the right side "he's on the gay side!"
Those kids learned quick. We all did.

No-one questioned "the gay side". No-one, no matter how badly they needed the toilet, questioned the ludicrousness of this unwritten rule.

Perhaps the rule was true. I mean, I never used the gay side, and have remained straight. Although I don't think the gay side ever implied that it was exclusively for homosexuals, or indeed made someone a homosexual.

It was just "the gay side", and it was avoided.

Creative solutions.

Broken blinds and unexpected October sunshine has lead to improvisation in the office. A surfboard stands proudly on the windowsil protecting us (rather ineffectively) from the sun's rays.

Of, my worst enemy.

I think it's Ben Goldacre who said something to the effect of: you should never judge people on things that they have said, you should only judge them on things they have written. We all say silly things sometimes in the "heat of the moment", things that don't reflect what we actually think most of the time.

You can blog in the "heat of the moment" too, and update your Twitter, and your Facebook status. So maybe I'm being unfair to people when I criticise their use of language on such mediums. But this is a blog, of course. And as I said a second ago, if people are not be judged on the content of blogs, then you are not allowed to judge me for judging someone, because either way we are just as bad as each other.

Moving on to the point.

I have another thing that annoys me.

And it's "of" again.
Bored of.

You can't be bored of something. You can be bored with something, and you can be bored by something.
Take another example at I just makes you sound stupid.

"I am bored by your grammar pedanticism" becomes "I am impressed by your grammar pedanticism"

"I am bored with your grammar pedanticism" becomes "I am impressed with your grammar pedanticism"

"I am bored of your grammar pedanticism" becomes "I am impressed of your grammar pedanticism"

It is never "bored of".

Professor Richard Dawkins, and how he is Hermione.

I knew there was a reason I found Emma Watson attractive.

Exploding heads, and how they don't actually happen.

Okay, so here's something else that annoys me: the use of the word "literally". I don't mind it when it's used for comic effect, in the sense that the person is aware of the stupidity of using "literally", when it becomes a parody of itself.

"Literally" means taken in the literal sense. In other words, you are saying something which is not hyperbolic or any other figure of speech.
It seriously annoys me when people say something like "I literally can't understand why people like this kind of music".
You literally can't understand? Merely the concept of  understanding is beyond your comprehension? No.

You don't tend to hear "literally" used an awful lot in speech or even written, but when you do it is almost universally used incorrectly just as a way of emphasising something. I was reading an article quite recently which featured the line "It literally blew my mind".
No. It figuratively blew your mind.

Stop saying literally. Be interesting.

I forgot.

And I keep forgetting to put this up.
I like it.

Things, a few of them.

I have my first piece of writing published on an actual professional website.
Shameless self promotion is very much my thing, but I'll resist this time and instead urge you to venture over to Adventure Sports Holidays to satisfy your adventure sports holiday needs.

I would also say that you should all listen to Jimmy Eat World's new album Invented. Really really good.
Also, check out The Sleeping's album The Big Deep and Bad Books, Kevin Devine's project with Manchester Orchestra.

Finally a quick note that given my academic and blogging hero The Plashing Vole now follows my blog (albeit, I'm sure purely as a gesture of polite reciprocation becuase I follow him) you may notice an immediate and steep decline the the quality of the blogs in an attempt not to plagiarise anything he said in lectures.

Trains, and where you must not sit.

So, now that I have work to go to every morning I have to ride the train. I get the same train everyday, it leaves Southwick at 9:37 and arrives at Hove at 9:44. Some of the people who get on at Southwick I see virtually every morning. It hasn't got to that stage yet where I could say "morning" and they'd recognise me though. They fairly often have papers or magazines to read. I invariably leave my issue of Kerrang at home and only have them to look at.

I get on my train, which is always the same level of fairly-busy. Now, here is an observation about English people. It's something that has been made many times before, but the point is that it's not just a cliché: it genuinely happens. We really do not like invading personal space.

As we noted weeks back with the male toilets, the train also appears to have this unwritten social rule about where you are allowed to sit down.

Arranged into rows of two seats on each side, there is also a couple of "table" seats in each carriage.
The table seats are the most highly prised commodity, even if you don't need a table remotely, you go and sit there if it's free.

If a table isn't free, then a free set of two is your best bet. If they are taken (and by taken I mean one person is sitting in the window seat: that constitutes both seats being taken) then you must sit on a table but at the furthest possible point away from the person who has already occupied the table. If they're facing forwards sitting on the window seat, you must sit facing backwards in the aisle seat.

After that it's better to stand than to encroach people's personal space.
No-one will complain or even give you a funny look if you sit down in the adjacent seat.
But inside you are dead to them. Dead.

David Wells, for we are many.

David Wells isn't me. He's a "digital marketing strategist, blogger, podcaster and psuedodesigner". He's also got a lot more followers than me on Twitter.

Motivated, I'm sure, by the fact that we share the same first and last name, he kindly "tweeted" my blog. And whilst my meagre 16 followers does not compare to his muscular 2,000 odd, I feel I should return the favour. Here is a link to his website where he is a highly skilled digital marketing strategist.

There are a few David Wells' hanging around who've done much more impressive things than me. Wikipedia confirms that this David Wells is the most famous. He was a highly succesful pitcher who played for a variety of teams. In 1998 David Wells become only the 15th pitcher in MLB history to throw a perfect game.
He is impressive, and he flies the flag for good David Wells' all over the world.

Just like this one. He was an economist, but I don't know much about him. He was a close friend of 20th United States President James Garfield, though, who opposed slavery. Good man.

But this David Wells. He's let us down. He bismirches the good name of David Wells. He is a peddler of astrology bullshit. I have no respect for him.

Psychics, and their multiple skills.

Sorry, lots of blogs today. Inspiration strikes and all that.

If you watch as much Dave as I do then you'll have seen this clip a few times. And seriously whichever researcher who found this for Would I Lie To You is a genuis. Just thought I'd post it up because I remembered it and it made me laugh.

Dreams, and Cylons taking over the world.

Dreams.
And no, not dreams in terms of hopes for the future.
Those, if you're interested are a simple trinity:

1) Get a job writing.
2) Own a basketball team.
3) Marry Jesse Lacey

No, this blog is about dreams that you dream about when you sleep. And don't get me wrong, I know how boring it is to listen to people rant on about obscure dreams they've had. I do a bit of that in a moment, but there is a reason for it. I'm not just trying to entertain you with a dream annecdote.

I hear it sometimes, people say "I had a dream last night about..." and almost immediately someone will say. "When you dream about... that means...".

Now.

I would like to use a case in point here, with the dream I had last night:

Robots had taken over the Earth (Cylons from Battlestar Galactica to be precise). I was the last person left alive.
My only companion was this little sort of hamster type thing that communicated with me by smiling.
I think it was female.
I can't be sure.
Walking around through wartorn England I entered a hospital. I should add at this point that there was a voice over telling me what was going on, that's how I knew about the robots, and how I know the following:
The Cylons had killed everyone. Even everyone in the hospital. Even the babies in the maternity ward.
BUT they had left 1 baby still alive.
I approached the crib. And picked up this baby. And it wasn't a baby. It was a human leg. An alive human leg. Not attached to anything, but definitely alive. It couldn't talk or anything. I don't know if it was a male or female leg. Just a leg.
So that was it. I was on my own with a hamster and a leg. I also wasn't sure whether the hamster was real or whether it was in my imagination.

So... who is gonna analyse that for me?

I can tell you where the Cylons came from. I watched Battlestar Galactica before I went to bed.
But possibly not real hamsters who communicate by smiling? And one remaining baby being a leg?
I'm sorry but these are the thoughts of a lunatic. The first point of this is you couldn't possibly interpret that dream rationally. You could talk about being alone, I suppose. But show me a textbook with leg babies. That is just a weird creative decision on the part of my sleeping head.

And that's the second point I wanted to make.
How fucking creative is the unconcious mind. That is a weird story my mind made up to keep me entertained as I spelt. Of all the things it could have thought of.

The third point is why, when people talk about dreams in fiction they talk about highly simplistic things.
"I have a recurring dream where I am falling"
"I have a dream where I am drowning" etc

My dreams, and indeed no-one who ever tells me about their dreams ever, ever has anything that simple. They always contain a drawn out and fairly complex narrative.

Basketball, and how it is wholesome family entertainment.

"Would you give him head?" said the girl, pointing at Evaldas Zabas, Worthing Thunder's Lithuanian star player.

This was the first line of their conversation I had accidentally evesdropped and, given that the tone of the sentence was very nonchalant, I don't like to imagine how many blowjob related questions she had asked about basketball players previously.

"Oh yeah, I'd give him head," she replied "I'd do anything for him"

"I'm gonna go get some fucking chips"

Fascinating lives these teenagers lead.

Trust, and how this blog has nothing to do with it.

I don't usually have trouble finishing blogs. I don't put a lot of thought into them. Well, I do, but not in the sense that I worry about how they will be perceived, I just write what I think. This blog serves a dual purpose: to document things that I find interesting and to be a sounding board for things that bother me, both in general and directly personal.

The problem though, is these things are easily confused.
I've tried to write this two or three times now, the general theme is trusting people, and when I write it, I'm trying to make a general point, I'm not trying to use it as a thinly veiled excuse to have a go at people.

It is an issue becuase of the way some people use the internet/blogs as a disgustingly cowardly way of having a go at people without saying it to their faces. You see it in Facebook statuses sometimes, and in blogs. It's childish, and not something I would like to be accused of.

If I want to have a go at someone I'll do it exactly the way it should be done: behind their back in a conversation with a friend, while maintaining a perfectly amicable relationship on the surface. Cos the point is, most things are superficial, just little annoying things not worth actually arguing over. You just want to make it known that it annoys you, and then you can go back to whatever relationship you had with the person, and no harm is done. I like arguing, but I like don't like seriously arguing.

So yeah, I just worry that it's easy to take things personally, especially when the point is vague.
When I re-read what I had written it could certainly have been misconstrued. It's said that as soon as you start believing something you are immediately blinded to all the sensible arguments against it. I think that's true. I've had that experience, at least.

And see how this blog has not become about trust at all, I'll try to write something about trust one day.

Heights, and how I am not the biggest fan of them.

This video makes my stomach go funny.

Of, and the difficulty of explaining what it is.

I get annoyed when people write "could of". Aggravatingly, though, I'm not too good at explaining why.
I can tell them that what they are trying to say is "could have" and the problem comes from the fact that it is almost exclusively pronounced "could've" these days. The next question is inevitable: what's wrong with "could of"?

The explanation is extremely simple. "Of" isn't a verb, and if you remove the "could" before it, that becomes obvious:

"I could have gone swimming" becomes "I have gone swimming"
"I could of gone swimming" becomes "I of gone swimming".

This is difficult to explain, however, because the chances are if you're someone who doesn't know the difference between "could've" and "could of", you probably don't know what a verb is, either. Not due to stupidity or anything, just because the rules of grammar are not interesting to you... or perhaps because of stupidity.

Second language users of English don't have this problem, this is because they have to reconstruct what they want to say, they've had to learn the rules of English. For first language users this is a natural process. For example learning other tenses in different langauges seems very difficult for us, but in English we just naturally understand.

A Correction

Wear It Pink Day was not, as I previously stated, 28th September, but in fact the 28th October.

So you all have the oppurtunity to wear pink and donate money to fight breast cancer.