We’re literally only seconds away from 1325397599 and the excitement is palpable. So to usher in the new dawn of 1325397600, may I present the ancient lost classic story of Caudexus of Neucrox.

Caudexus was an uninspiring man with a very tangled, disordered mind; he also denied the existence of the Gods, which angered them greatly. Despite being Gods, and therefore all powerful, the idea of a human denying their existence made them uncontrollably angry. Even with their infinite powers, they were unable to ignore him and therefore had to punish him for eternity.

Caudexus’ tangled mind caused him great impatience, and hindered his abilities to concentrate on any one activity at a time. Sometimes this would lead to great accomplishments (by his own estimation) but more often than not it would lead to him being unable to do anything even vaguely practical.

The Gods took advantage of this weakness (despite being infinitely strong themselves) and condemned him to forever live out his days in the same wretched task: making a cup of tea.

He would sit on the sofa, fancying a nice cup of tea, and plugged away at his laptop. He spent his time flipping between pointless programming projects, reading blogs, and sending lame messages to his on-line friends on whatever social network was en-vogue at the time. On occasion, the desire for a nice cup of tea overwhelmed him to the extent that he had to abandon the sofa, laptop, and foot cushion, to head to the kitchen.

He simply filled the electric kettle with water, turned it on, placed a tea-bag in a mug, and waited for it to boil. As he waited his tangled mind would soon begin feeding him ideas that he had to investigate further, and so he would temporarily go back to the living room and resume his place on the sofa with the laptop, and maybe a small bird.

A cup of tea was always in preparation from his last visit to the kitchen; the Gods’ evil plan was so cunning that it ensured he would never finalise his cup of tea.

On his next visit to the kitchen he would discover that the kettle boiled some time ago and needed to be boiled from scratch. He would inevitably become impatient and return to the other room to continue pursuing the new ideas that his tangled mind had suggested to him. This cycle continued.

Very occasionally he would concentrate on actually waiting in the kitchen until the kettle had boiled, at which point he would pour the boiling water into the cup and onto the tea bag. But the Gods’ had planned for this by ensuring the tea would be revolting until it had brewed properly. The brewing process was even more tedious and led to even more tangle-minded thoughts, which in turn led to forgetting the tea until it was too cold to be considered potable, and the process would have to be restarted from scratch.

Very occasionally, of the order of several months, he would eventually manage to make a drinkable cup of tea, at which point he would approach the fridge to get some milk…but the Gods’ plan ensured that by this time, the milk would have gone off.

Caudexus was thus condemned for eternity to engage in this perpetual battle which would never yield a nice cup of tea.

There’s a lesson for us all there probably. Happy New Year.

Update – Caudexus eventually moved to the USA where the problem was further exacerbated by the 110V kettles which took twice as long to boil.