Can’t sleep. But I did find this wonderfully concise argument for why Tony Blair has to go.

Oops, looks like Rumsfeld got a bollocking for telling the truth, and had to backtrack. Odd that. I mean, it’s not like he usually talks a load of bollocks is it ?

For some reason, The Wankometer got put on some popular “Bay Area” blog. As a result, cynicalbastards.com has averaged over 1,700 visits (21,000 hits) a day since October 1st. So please don’t be disturbed by the slow response from my poor little server. God forbid we ever end up on the Slashdot front page…
As I type, my head is doing OK, but it has been a turbulent few days in there. On sunday I freaked out and went a bit mad, which upset and pissed off my mum, dad, sister and bat. I’m sorry everyone, but I can’t explain what went on…it may be related to recent events combined with running out of sertraline 4 days ago. Generally speaking I’m finding life quite tricky at the moment, but trying to supress the weirdness is doing me in even more. Lots of people would say that the correct behaviour would be to let it out. But that is such a crap idea. In fact, I do let it out, but only in safe places, or by accident. No matter how close a friend may be, they will get pissed off with you if you spend your entire time together banging on and on about things they can’t possibly identify with. I’ve been on both sides of this fence, and neither is fun.
It will pass.
Work has had absolutely no impact at all. In fact it’s had massive impacts, but in both directions:

• AFAICT, 6 out of 10 people at my workplace are
  hoeplessly cretinous dullards who believe they are geniuses. Anyone who thinks they are a genius is clearly a delusional loon. As Dave H says: “Intelligence is knowing what you don’t know”
• One or two of the idiots are also dangerous and should be sent to prison for their detrimental effect on all humanity
• The Dilbert Principal is not a joke…
• Working “in IT” actully means spending your life working around bugs in Microsoft and Apple software, and attending to the whims of stupid, lazy, users who shouldn’t ever be allowed anywhere near computers. The same type of people are usually responsible for forcing unworkable broken systems on IT staff and end up blaming them when it all, inevitably, breaks.

On the other hand:

• There have been lots of personal achievements (ok, some are quite small, but they’re still achievements) at work recently
• I’ve got a loving family, in at least 2 directions
• A 2nd cousin of mine has managed to trace the Wellard family to the 1700s (6x great grandfather a least). One was a jailer and his son owned a pub in Whitstable! Maybe it’s his influence that is responsible for my love of Bitter and Cockles ?
• The other systems dudes and I have been solving a few long term problems and, in doing so, have made several people happy.

Total result: 0. Which is progress.

Rumsfeld is now suggesting that there never was any evidence linking Saddam with Al Quaeda. Well, we all knew that of course, but why is he now saying it in public ? Rat deserting a sinking shit perhaps ?

Resident Evil? Surely it’s 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81, but with better graphics! No more exciting though. That shit had my heart pumping when I was a kid. Yet, correct me if I’m wrong, no-one has thought to make a series of films out of 3D monster maze. Fools!

Firstly, two things that deserve another mention:

1. Carpetface:Go to www.muffjam.com and watch his “Friday Night Sniper” video when you get a few minutes in the company of a lot of bandwidth.
2. Epitonic. If you ever find yourself desperate for some new music, but the idea of watching music programmes or reading the music press makes you feel like puking, then go to Epitonic, follow a link or two and then click “Stream this Page”. Instantly you get a massive playlist of excellent tunes! If there are any you don’t like, drop them off the playlist! I can’t stress how good the site is.

My head’s mellowed out a bit since the last post. Last night was great. Saw loads of people I haven’t seen for quite a while (Seb, Denny, David, Kate, Vic, Khalid, 10¥) and it was a really nice vibe. Nominally it was a celebration of Vic handing in her PhD…which, as anyone who has either done a PhD or lived with someone who has, will know is worth celebrating. But it ended up just being a good pissup.
Brendon, the landlord, had a quiet word with me as I staggered out to ask why we weren’t in the pub so frequently this week 🙂

It’s quite possible that I’m going out of my head. Last night I woke up at 3am and didn’t get back to sleep. At 7am I’d ripped the sofa to bits in the search for my wedding ring, which had fallen down the side last night due to my inebriation at the time. I applied a considerable amount of duct tape to it afterwards, but it’s still knackered.
Last night was emotional. The extended family experienced a bereavement which strongly affected everyone; in my case this was responsible for the imbibing of a load of Bells. This forum is not a good place to discuss the current state of family affairs, but we are all very upset. As a result I couldn’t sleep. I know I wasn’t the only person in London staring at the ceiling for most of the night. My thoughts are with the others as I type.
Luckily I’d taken the day off today which afforded me the opportunity to have lunch with some workmates and then sleep this afternoon. Thank god. Sleep is what I needed.

Humph has been really clingy today. It’s like he could tell how upset we all were yesterday. Everytime I left the room he freaked out! When we slept on the sofas this afternoon, he slept on the sofa!
This evening he was all over us. Most of the night was spent on the ibook. In fact the little bugger managed to pull off my ‘escape’ key before I could stop him. I dug out another laoptop for him (a knacked old 386) but he’s not interested. It seems that unless it’s got a G3 or better he’s not up for it. He’s a very lovely bird though. Michele, Humph and I spent some really good quality time together tonight.

Finally – Iraq. Inevitable eh ? Labour won the vote, thanks to some serious palm greasing I imagine. In fairness I don’t know what to think about moving out or staying now. If it had been up to me we wouldn’t be there in the first place. Like we’re not in China, Chile, Sudan, etc etc etc. However, despite the confusion in my head I was gobsmacked to here the UK’s special envoy to Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock, come out with the following two lines on the Today Programme this morning:

Remember it’s no longer an occupation, we are there by invitation of the Iraqis.

We are only there by invitation of the sovereign Iraqi state, and if they want us to leave then we must do so.

Sounds reasonable doesn’t it ?
Until someone stands up and shouts, in a very loud voice, over a very powerful megaphone, that we set up the current Iraqi state! In other words, anyone can invade another country, destroy the government, replace it with another one and then claim that they are there by invitation of the new government. Can we all play this game ? Could I walk into a nice posh house in Blackheath, kill the owners, set up some friends as the new owners, and then claim I was living there because the “rightful owners” invited me ? Could I bollocks! And we’re not talking about killing a nice family of 4 in Blackheath, we’re talking about killing over 12,900 civilians [at the time of writing anyway – of course this figure only ever increases].

Sleep well.

AFGHANISTAN!
Remember that place ? Oh go on! You do! Just because it hasn’t been in the press for a couple of years. Yeah – you remember, the UK and USA invaded it before they moved to Iraq ? They wanted to spare the citizens from the wicked Taliban (the ones that America gave power to in the first place…like they did with Saddam and the Baath party).
Well, despite the fact we have been victorious in Iraq and Afghanistan, it turns out that we still need to send more troops to both places because the ungrateful bastards still think they aren’t free! Idiots! Surely they understand what freedom means! It means doing what the fuck you’re told and shutting your fucking mouths while the people “with leadership skills” tell the rest of the world what you really think.
FTR – I think the people who are taking innocent hostages are the worst sort of scum. Listen dudes: Don’t opress the opressed!. The people you are kidnapping are as much victims as you. You are using easy, nasty tactics when you should be using your brains. Looks like you don’t have any. Fight by all means, but fight the guilty. Kidnap the guilty! Leave the pawns alone. They don’t understand any of it either. I know that Bush and Blair are both cynical bastards, but punishing some poor sod who has ended up in Iraq will not help the cause.

Who am I talking to ? Myself. I’m just angry. Angry with everyone…including me.

Alex was in the country for one day and I haven’t seen him since he went to Mexico. He called me on friday morning and we arranged to meet up after work. All he needed to do was call me on my mobile and we could arrange a time/place. The day passed and no call arrived. At some point I needed to call Steve at work and was informed that my phone was barred. I couldn’t even call the provider to ask about it! It turns out all of our work mobiles were barred…becuase the bill hadn’t been paid. Again! Arrrggghhh. Sorry Alex.

We nearly came unstuck on Saturday night. Michele and managed to pick up some fillet steak for less than half price due to a labelling cock-up (thanks Sainsbury!) So we were going to have Steak and onions for dinner. In preparation, I opened the kitchen window so that Michele wouldn’t suffocate on onion fumes. This meant I had to close the kitchen door so Humph couldn’t get out. One of the kitchen drawers was stuffed tightly withh all sorts of crap, and was blocking the door, so I squeezed it shut and closed the door.
Anyone with a single active neuron would not have done this, because they would have realised that once the door was pulled closed, the drawer would have sprung open, thus preventing the door from opening. I however, am clearly a dullard.
So, I had locked us out of the kitchen in such a cunning way that no amount of locksmith skill, picks or drills would allow us back in.
Aha, you say, but you had opened the window! Why not climb in ?
Because, this being a basement flat in New Cross, we have bloody great iron bars in front of it.
Eventually we hit upon the idea of using some sort of stick to try and push the drawer shut. The only thing that looked like it might do the trick was the hoover nozzle. So, I went outside and pathetically tried to push the drawer in with a hoover nozzle, that was far happier to twist around rather than apply force. Meanwhile Michele kept her eye on the drawer through the little glass window in the door and attempted to open the door just as I managed to push the drawer in. What a couple of pratts.

Anyway, we managed it eventually. Had a delicious meal of the most tender steak I’ve ever encountered, and watched SuperSize Me which nearly made us yak it all down the bog. Worth watching though.

Did I already mention Humphrey has his own blog

The first SU club-night of the year took place last night. Every one of the over-eager, fresh-faced, optimistic, over-compensating, youthful, little, rosey-cheeked, bastards went along. We know because between about 11 and 5 there was a constant stream of pissed people falling over, screaming, and generally jumping up and down on our bedroom ceiling, exhibiting absolutely no respect for joyless mid-30s miserybags like me and Michele.
At about 3:30 I got up and did some work for an hour.
So, imagine my joy when at 6:30 we were awoken by the piercing scream of the fire alarm. Humph nearly broke his wings off in panic.
However it was all worth it when we saw the state of our Hall mates. It was like Dawn of the Dead.
A couple of hundred kids in pyjamas, dressing gowns, and haggared expressions all huddled together on the opposite pavement looking shocked at the realisation that 6am does, actually, exist. One poor sod who had clearly only just passed out on his bed, in his clothes, curled up in a little ball on the pavement and received a load of motherly attetion from pitying girls.
What a joyful thought that only hours before, every one of this lot was plastering themselves in make-up, perfume, hair conditioner and putting on their best club-wear in preparation for meeting the rest of their hall-mates. They might has well all give up now. They’ve seen everyone at their best and their worst within their first 48 hours. Like speed-marriage. I’m surprised the halls warden didn’t dish out their degree certificates as we all filed back in. There’s no surprises for the next three years now. Go on. Give up! Go home and stop setting off the bloody fire alarm.