Captain B's boatload of space

Under the threat that I will be inundated with daily comments until normal service resumes (although I'm not exactly sure that one-a-day is the same as 'inundated') and since it has indeed been approaching two months since I last wrote anything it is probably for the best that I do so again. Not doing so would probably result in me forgetting how to write, and that would be the end of my chances of getting my DREAM JOB of working in the factory where they make the yellow signs saying WET FLOOR as the guy who writes the letters on the side, because I'd end up writing WAT FLEUR by mistake and then when one day there is a spillage somewhere and they put the sign out a confused passing frenchman will go "What iz theez? I cannot zee any flowerz from Cambodian Buddhist Monasteries*!" and then he will slip over on the wet floor and I will get fired, or worse.

Anyway, in lieu of me actually having anything that interesting to talk about I shall instead rummage through the aptly named "My Pictures" folder for another entry in our ongoing series of "ADVERTISEMENTS FOR THINGS BRUCE HAS SEEN ON THE INTERNET AND THINKS TOO MUCH ABOUT" So, without further ado:

Yes. As we can see, it is an advertisement for a SOCIAL SKILLS GUIDE. The main reason it caught my eye to begin with is that our protagonist in the middle - despite all his claims of popularity - is the only one in the whole picture standing by himself. This kind of scenario is more commonly associated with words like "smells like old mayonnaise" than "popular".

I also only just noticed that our man is apparently an amputee. I'm not saying theres necessarily anything wrong with amputees - I've been friends with many...people who I would continue to be friends with were they to lose an arm or two, but on the other hand there's nothing to tell us in that picture that he isn't at perhaps an arm-wrestling convention. I tell you, there is nothing worse then an amputee at an arm wrestling convention. Obviously in these kinds of scenarios he is likely to be unpopular.

It is also interesting to note that his friends (or not-friends, depending on how you look at it) seem to have arranged themselves so that all the short people are at the front, and then his freakishly large friends are all standing behind them. Either that, or this guide will make you SO POPULAR that you are able to bend the laws of perspective, which I guess isn't all that unreasonable a suggestion.

A little while I ago I read one of Bec's books (somebody needs to open a bookshop I reckon) called How to Talk to Absolutely Everyone or something to that effect. It was full of advice ranging from obvious common-sense suggestions to probably-accurate-but-also-slightly-impractical ideas. I can't really remember all of it but as a general rule to being popular, as a crass succision, being NICE and POLITE to people is a good place to start. The statement I'M POPULAR YOU'RE NOT seems to me to be a little bit in contrast to those ideas. I'd perhaps even go as far as to suggest it's the kind of statement that would make you less popular. So ha, internet advertisment. Ha to you.


*Apparently this is what a 'wat' is. So perhaps you have learned something to day (french people already know this fact, so my story makes sense).

To air a confession, up until Sunday I had managed to avoid ever seeing Susan Boyle on or in anything over then a newspaper. This wasn't so much because I was actively trying to avoid watching Susan Boyle, it's more because my interest in watching Britain's Got Talent is roughly akin to my interest in going and looking at the plumbing fittings on offer in Homebase. Sure, some of them might be interesting to look at, but it's not the kind of thing I'd go out my way for.

However on Sunday Steph was over and was (probably) forcing Sam to watch Britain's Got Talent and I ended up slumping in a chair and watching it too. And, of course, Susan Boyle came on and ended up smashing my record of not having watched Susan Boyle do anything, ever. I guess she can sing but I didn't really think she was anything that special. Loads of people can sing. I have no idea how many actors and stage musicians and club singers and everyone-elses there are, but its probably quite a lot. All she's got going for her is that she is absolutely terrifying to look at (if she was a 20-year old stunner then she would never have got so far). It's like last time they got some ugly dude who could sing and thought hey, RESULT, so when they did it this year the only way they could make it more impressive was to up the uggers factor. It's not so much that she's just ugly, but she goes so far down that line that she becomes really weird-looking. She sort of looks like a demented gnome, as if a load of garden ornaments decided to try and create a human-sized version of themselves except it all went wrong in the cloning vats. And it's not just that she looks weird, it's that she behaves like a badly programmed robot. She just seems to stand there vacantly until she recieves input from Ant and Dec, and then she whirrs herself round slightly in their direction while all the time appearing to be motionless and then continues to pause vacantly until she manages to think of something to say.

I don't know, perhaps that's just what Scottish people are like.

Changing the subject briefly, just so this doesn't turn into an only Britain's Got Talent blog, in Tesco (also on Sunday) Soph pointed out to me one of the aisle signs. It says:

Butters & Spreads
Cheeses
Continenal

It made me think of Bec and her unstoppable spelling-rage. I had never noticed before, since I don't go round dairy very much but really. How could they miss that one? The odd misspelling on a restaurant chalkboard or something is one thing, but when it's on a permanant sign it is something else entirely! Perhaps no-one else has noticed, or perhaps they're so expensive they just thought SOD IT.

Or perhaps most of the staff there are really stupid.

I got an email earlier. It was from Tagged. Does anyone still remember tagged? Riding the crest of the social-networking-sites wave, I have no idea what its USP is, if it even has one. All I know is that it exists, and somehow, despite facebook trampling over everything else like some kind of angry elephant, it continues to exist despite having a user base of about 3*.

Now, admission time: I do have a Tagged account. Back some time in my sordid past, I received an email - one of those "now you've joined, spam all your contacts!" ones. And, at the time, I wasn't a member of facebook and had not long been a member of myspace. I was a little bit late to both those respective parties. But yes, I had a look and was all "hey, all these dudes that I know are on this, I will also sign up". Maybe in those first few days I accepted a few friend requests, checked out a few profiles and things like that but then I NEVER SIGNED IN AGAIN. I didn't even upload a picture.

And I forgot about tagged. But tagged, it would seem, did not forget about me. And the emails started to come:

"Bruce, you haven't signed into your Tagged account for a while"

"Bruce, you have unread messages in your Tagged inbox"

"Bruce, please respond to your pending alerts!"

"Bruce, you haven't signed into your Tagged account for really quite a while now"

"Bruce, are you ok? Are you not signing in because you are dead, or have had your fingers cut off? Ok, just checking, Tagged"

"Bruce, you haven't signed into your Tagged account for a while"

"BRUCE COME BACK TO TAGGED THE LIFE OF THE PRESIDENT IS DEPENDING ON YOU"

...and so on. If you actually go onto Tagged's website they are apparently so thrilled with this that they then send you another email informing you that you have been given some gold or something and I don't know what it's for. And then there was another email from someone who looked like an ugly fat girl but apparently is actually a 43 year old man from Pennsylvania named Michael so they are lying one way or the other who bought me for $500 but subsequently set me free in a further email. I don't know what any of the above actually means, but apparently it happened. And also there is some kind of sexy cowgirl who is wearing impractical clothing for ranch-work named Sheila V and she clicked YES on me. I don't know what that means either. Then , the other day the sent me another one. "Bruce, is this you?" it said. And it had a picture on it, taken from my MySpace profile. So it was me, obviously. But there's a line between "mindless spam" and "I think this website is acutally stalking me" and I think that this line has been crossed.

Who knows where Tagged will stop? Will I turn around one day and see Tagged looking through the window at me? Maybe Tagged will run up and grab me in the street one day and refuse to let go until I log in again. I urge you all to be vigilant! Before it is too late for us all.

Or, you know, go and change the email notification preferences and delete your account. Whatever's good for you.


*Actually I am informed that it is very popular in the State of Qatar. So, well done on that, Tagged.

What? Politics? Bruce, you might say to yourself, you are in no way qualified to talk about politics! BUT I AM. The past few weeks, the various partiez (do they have cakes with icing in the appropriate party colours? If I was in charge this would be mandatory) have been vying for votes with the tried and trusty method of thrusting hastily printed out leaflets full of political slander through everyone's letterboxes. INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, the primary cause for their concern at the moment seems to be potholes. The Lib Dem's tactic for dealing with potholes seems to be getting our brave and trusty local councillor Maureen Miller (who either looks like an old women pretending to a Batman villain or a Batman villain pretending to be an old woman and I'm not sure which) to stand next to them looking into the camera as angrily as possible. Perhaps she has hulk like powers except she turns into a workman and she is going to fix it herself, or perhaps she is hoping to shame the cameraman into fixing it for her? Her plan for actually repairing the damage to the road seems to be a little unclear.

The Conservatives on the other hand were quite enthusiastic to talk about their "DEDICATED POTHOLE PATROL UNITS" who would be outfitted with specialist equipment for measing them. Now I can see how they are just making a statement about how "oooh, look at us, we will take care of this pothole menace" but the thing is, the rest of their double-sided piece of A4 was pretty much all talking about THE FINANCIAL CRISIS OF DOOM and about how they were cutting back spending public dollah, and things of that nature. So to me it seems a bit silly that on the same page they talk about spending less money they also talk about creating dedicated pothole patrols. Which cost money. Surely that they'd get to know the potholes existed anyway, probably from a letter signed "angry motorist". If reading the local paper has taught me anything, it's that people will complain about everything they can think of. Potholes inclusive. And hey, "specialist equipment"? Go down to WHSmith and buy a ruler for 15 pence. I hear they are pretty good for measuring things, all round.

Really it doesn't bother me in any way if they want to have a pothole patrol. I won't be writing into the Weekly News to complain, or anything. It just struck me as a bit silly that they'd put it on their leaflet like that, contrasting the whole "HEY WE'RE NOT FRIVOLOUSLY SPENDING YOUR MONEY ANYMORE GUYS" vibe of the piece by sticking in a "FRIVOLOUS SPENING ON POTHOLES" section.

Mostly I end up thinking, daaang, I don't want to vote for any of these dudes. They need to have some kind of potato baking contest or something, I don't know.

So hey recently I have been thinking quite a lot about THE FUTURE? Truth be told I have been thinking about "the future" for a good long time, but not enough to warrant a blog! However, as of late I can say I have, so a blog will naturally ensue.

Our story would probably benefit from some exposition, so to start we are going to have to go back to the last three or four months of last year! Life was stuck at a little dead and working in sound was looking ever more unlikely, so the gurlf and I thought "hey, you know what, re-education is looking pretty sexy right now!". AND IT WAS. However, during the university application process I unfortunately came across some companies that were all YOU TOO CAN BE AN AIRLINE PILOT. Pretty awesome! I thought. Because I quite like the idea of being at the wheel (or yoke, or joystick) of a 60 ton jet (whether or not it would be a good idea for me to be so or not is a different matter!). So we trundled off to a couple of open days and had a look round, and I was all AWESUUMZ which was as to be expected from a person that likes planes quite a lot. And it would've been great! Sadly though, Bec came along and (quite correctly) used her BIG HAMMER OF COMMON SENSE (seriously, she has a real hammer for this) to smash up my big blinding screen of unerring cheery optimism and remind me that we are kind of poor. At least compared to the snot-nosed little rich kids who were also there. It's a sad fact, but it's kind of true. It's not the kind of course you can save up for. Either you have enough money that it doesn't matter (or it doesn't matter that much) or you don't. And we don't.

We are now maybe in around February now in our story? Even though the pilot option had been given the ol' thumbs-down, I still had the university places right? I hadn't really thought about them that much. They accepted my offers and they were sort of there for back-up. And it was around this time that, flicking through the tv channels, I caught the end of Ross Kemp in Afghanistan. Watching Ross and some other burly types run around in the desert and play with guns, I thought to myself, you know what? That actually looks pretty fun. And I thought, well, the armed forces get to play with some pretty cool toys, and they don't get payed too terribly as an officer, and it would mean you wouldn't have to be an old-man student alongside all the youths at university. And it's something that you've considered before. So perhaps it would be worth a go? The results of this train of thought have been mentioned before a few blogs back, in their long and drawn out and unorganised attempts to get me to join.

So that was that. I had the places at uni if I wanted, and I had filled out some "army interest form" and was seeing where that was going. But then, the other day I mentioned them both in an email. Looking at them both on paper and thinking about both of the options in front of me, some little switch triggered in the back of my mind. It said, look at the army. That isn't you. And not in a "having second thoughts and being afraid to join" kind of way. I stand by what I said earlier - I do think it would be fun, it would certainly be an experience, they do have cool toys and I could probably get through it and make a career out of it if I wanted to. But I look in the mirror and the person looking back at me isn't a soldier. There's not some butch gruff hard man. There's a tall, lanky and pale nerd who likes his hair to be stupid and unruly, and who likes to have a bit of fluff sproutimg out from his face. Who wears stupid clothes. There's an reasonably intelligent man who seems to have not picked up any common sense at all and instead filled his brain with useless facts and figures that no-one could possibly want to know but he tells them anyway, who probably looks somewhat retarded thanks to his propensity to chasing butterflies around and to lolling his head back in waiting rooms and fixatedly studying all the ceiling tiles and lighting fixtures. There's a man who has never been content with just knowing that something does something, but wants to know how it does it, and why, and who came out of the library as a child with a big stack of non-fiction books about aeroplanes and spaceflight. I had favourites. I just think I'd fit in so much better with people at uni as an engineer then doing officer training. I look at a photo of some soldiers in a war, and then look at an old photo of some quirky looking British engineers building an even quirkier looking machine with a slightly crazy smile, and I just know I'm better suited to the latter.

Depending on how well you know me, you might have noticed that I have a bit of a fanatical obsession with machines. It doesn't matter if it's a car, boat, plane, rocket, robot, farmyard equipment, kitchen appliance, lamp - anything - if it has been built I get drawn to it like a moth to flame. Except in this case the flame is exposed structural components and wiring. I don't know what it is, I just like things that have been made rather then that just exist. When I was thinking about this, I was reminded a bit of when we went to the Tate. I would just see some paintings and things but Bec would be pretty much squashing her face up against the protective glass to look at the details and the brush strokes and techniquies, and touching (tsk!) all of the pieces she could to see what they felt like. And I guess that, I don't know, I'm kind of the same with machiney things. If I was to have taken Bec to Duxford I'm sure to her it would've all just been a load of planes. But to me, to walk under the wing and bomb bay of the Vulcan there, and see the struts, control linkages, wiring, rivets - you can see this this incredible complexity and to know it all does something is astounding. There's nothing superfluous, it's all there for a reason. I love complexity. Seeing there sheer number of seperate components, knowing they were all designed and put together, and then that they all work together perfectly to somehow throw a 90 ton chunk of aluminium up into the sky - that does it for me, for use of a better term.

And to think that, through university, I could be doing that - designing aircraft perhaps - that's an exciting prospect. Ok, sure you could do it for a lifetime and the opportunity may never come up (they don't design as many aircraft as they used to) but I think if, as a old man hobbling around an airplane museum with his grandkids, I could point to some plane's tailfin or something and say in a croaky old voice "yeah, I did that," I think I would be happy. I'd like to make some kind of mark on the world. Even if its something that no-one knows your name for, that no-one even cares about. Just something that you can recognise as yours. And hey, aeronautical engineers have become astronauts before! It could happen! Ok, it's very unlikely, but the sky's the limit, as they say!

I saw a piece of advice a couple of years ago, for someone that was a good number of years older than me, who wantedto go back to college but didn't know what to do. And someone said to them, "is there anything you used to like doing when you were younger? Do that." And I look at myself, and for whatever reason, I seem to have this inbuilt imperative to give gravity the finger and get as far off the ground as possible. When I was little I would climb just about anything you put in front of me. I probably still would. My room is full of picturs of rockets and planets and plastic model planes and books about flying and space and things. Flying is in my blood, as the saying goes. I don't think I'll ever get bored of it, stop staring at the sky and the moon and the stars wistfully and wondering what it would be like to be there instead. And of course, I can think of good reasons not to go to uni and to join the army instead, and vice versa. But you can over think anything if you ponder on it for too long. You can tell yourself that anything is a good or a bad idea, and if you work at it you'll start to believe yourself. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut I think.

And, so, ignoring the above advice a little a continuing to ponder these things over for the past week or so, and starting to revise and relearn all the maths and physics I have forgotten and need to know, it is really looking like university is the right choice for Bruce. Everyone - eventually - finds their place in the world, although some manage to find it a lot faster then others. Perhaps this is where I'll find mine.

So I traversed my personage to a suitably licensed premises last night to partake in the consumption of certain yeast fermented carbohydrates (or, as is more commonly spoken in these parts, went down* the pub innit). It was (of course) the second Bay (horse) reunion, cunningly named "ReBay II". It was probably named as such because the word "rebay" is the only portmanteau that can be formed out of the words 'reunion' and 'Bay' that the organisers could make with a screenshot of the eBay logo, and "II" because it was the second time round and no-one could be bothered to think of another name for it.

I'm not actually sure when the Bay closed down, so even if I was old enough I never actually went there, which makes the point of going to a reunion a bit moot, but oh well. It was an ok night I guess. What made me laugh a little was that, for all the flak that a large congregation of chavs will take for their appearance and taste in music, you get much the same effect with a large group of metalheads. Never before have I seen so many slightly (and some very) overweight girls heaving out of their black and red corsets (at least tracksuits cover fatties up!) with their hair dyed in neon shades of pink and green, with their short leather skirts and their high leather boots. Never before have I seen so many slightly (and some very (and some very very)) overweight men with their long, greasy and unkempt hair, yet surprisingly well trimmed and maintained rock-beards, all in their metal band t-shirts and Matrix-stylee leather coats and boots. Unique little snowflakes them all. I pulled out the trusty Soviet jacket for the occasion (is there never not a good occasion for Soviet surplus?) and a nice lady called Polly kept telling me how awesome it was. Apparently she is a SUPER FASHIONABLE TYPE, and since I'm also told that she regularly designs, makes and sells handbags for up to 400 quid a pop I'm inclined to believe these statemens, mostly because it would mean that I am also offiicially super fashionable. But hey, we knew that already right?

I also met on of my sisters friends there, which normally isn't a big deal but it's worth mentioning because she has a younger sister who is friends with Phil who I only met through Bec and I don't have any idea how they met in the first place, and it amuses me that these 6 completely random people have all ended up with (often multiple) links to each other through completely unrelated reasons. Small world after all, as the saying goes.

One of the rest of the known crowd there did sort of ask after Bec maybe. I say maybe because he sort of mumbled something about me and my slag and I'm not sure and can't remember if he was referring to her as a slag because she is my ex, or if it was as a colloquialism for girlfriend and he doesn't know she isn't, or maybe even if he was just asking about me and slags generally. I DON'T KNOW. So I sort of gave him a vague answer and he seemed to like it because he shook my hand. To be fair to him, he was also off his head on horse tranquilisers and spent the rest of the night drooling and the table while people slapped him round the back of the head to try and wake him up. Someone also asked me about her last Saturday when I went out. It appears that people do enough facebook stalking to find out you're in a relationship but never seem to notice when you are not, and AWKWARD QUESTIONS ENSUE. Nice work, facebook!

Also I got an inflatable garden gnome with a weighted base somehow? He's pretty alright I guess. He is part of some WKD promotion and on the back it says WIN IT DON'T NICK IT but I'm not really sure what that means. I also saw an inflatable traffic cone that may have been part of the same promotion. I can only assume that they are giving out free inflatable versions of items that the inebriated like to steal on a regular basis, in order to save the gnomes and cones of the world. Of course I could be completely wrong about that though and while I could look it up I only feel I'll be disappointed. I prefer the mystery.

And my sister found a £20 when we were walking home. This wouldn't be so bad except that they made me walk behind them becuase I walk faster and would end up 3 miles ahead, and I maintain that were I walking in front I would have found it instead! BOO TO THAT.



*Technically the pub in question is to be found in a North-Easterly direction from me but then I often find people to not tend to be too concerned about the relative orientation of their destination in conversation. Unless they're me.

Hey so I guess there are some pretty strange people on the internet? At the end of March I got a PM over spaces from someone, and it said:

"are u a real robot????????
 
 
or fake????????
"

(if you copy and paste a smiley into wordpad it appears as the word "smile". CRAZY STUFF). She also sent me an invitation to join her network and messenger or whatever. I didn't answer back but accepted the messenger invitation because I thought, hey WHY NOT. However since the first and only thing she said was "who r u" I decided to block and delete her instead! GOOD TIMES. So I thought that stupid story was done for.

HOWEVZ: About a week later she sent me an email as well! This time it said:

"are u a robot or a human or if u aint what are u??????????
 
 
from kelly              plz reaply"

I know that my display picture is a picture of a robot (specifically Torg from the film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, nerd fans!) and that this might lead to some confusion as to whether I am a robot or not, but I don't anyone has ever been quite so interested to find out what I REALLY AM as this person was. Anyway, so I sent her an email back.

"You seem to be pretty interested in whether or not I am actually an automaton as opposed to the a person that is made of meat. I would even perhaps go as far as to suggest that you found it concerning in that it seems to be the basis of both your messages to me. Does the threat of robot invasion scare you? Are you...ROBOPHOBIC? Are you trying to discover my true identity, so that you, as a member of the SECRET ROBOT POLICE may come and shut me down and destroy me, tearing the wires and circuits out of my metallic heart while I reach with my articulated gripper towards the sky, and ask, ask in monotone synthesis, "WHY?" Is that what you are trying to do?

Either way, the good news is is that I am not a robot! Hooray! I do own quite a few robots and I do not speak for them or their actions, however. I am not sure if this is or is not an issue to you."

That was four days ago, and funnily enough she has not said anything back. Perhaps she was looking for someone who was actually a robot? And as I am not a robot it made her sad and she went away. I do not know. Also her profile thingy is fairly terrifying in itself.

I guess it is nice to know that there are still some crazies using MSN spaces and stuff though.