At about 8.30 last night, I felt like a fraud. The wife had suggested earlier in the evening that we - the two of us - could go along to the Vic quiz and I said that as much as I know she enjoys her quizzing, I didn't think it was a sensible idea considering I was off work with a chest infection. But the thing was I was actually thinking/wondering if I actually had a chest infection...
The thing is, I knew I had this COPD test on Monday and it seemed a bit of a coincidence that I should start feeling a bit crappy a few hours before it was due to happen. The thought had crossed my mind that it might be psychosomatic and I was just terrified of being diagnosed with the same thing that ultimately killed my mother. So my body made me feel ill to put off the test. It seemed plausible; I have an ancient history of making myself ill in stressful situations (I had School Phobia when I was 11, gave my mum all kinds of grief).
Instead of going out, we settled down to watch the dog programme from Monday night and within half an hour I was thinking that perhaps all of the above was a load of bollocks. "What's up?" Asked the wife.
"You know the last time I had a chest infection, I said a few times that it wasn't like infections I've had before, that it comes in waves. One minute I feel like a fraud, the next I feel like death in a fridge?" She nodded. "That's how I feel at the moment." By 10.30 I was feeling human again and I was sitting in the office thinking that it would be nice for my body to either be ill for a bit - so that I know - or just fuck off and let me get on with my life.
I was in bed by 11.15 (something of a rarity for me) and I appeared to have a really good night's sleep; waking briefly at 6am when the wife got up. It wasn't until I got up about 8.15 that I realised something was wrong. I might have caught this chest infection early and almost by accident, but it hasn't made it any less... grotty. I said yesterday that I felt lousy (not lice ridden) and like I said, felt a bit like a fraud when I didn't feel lousy later in the evening. I don't feel like a fraud at 9.30 this morning.
I have a chest full of junk. I have a splitting headache, sore throat and actually feel ill enough to be off of work. I don't know why, but that oddly makes me feel better...
Warped Nostalgia (ish)
My spare time has been taken up by the fantasy of George RR Martin since the beginning of the summer. Having watched the first two series on TV, I decided to read the books, so I bought them with money I had been given for my 50th and have been working my way through them slowly.
Obviously the first two seasons pretty much reflect the first two books (although the second book is in many ways completely different from the second season of the TV show; mainly because huge swathes of it have either been ignored or have been extrapolated on) and as Sky 1 has been re-showing the first series, I figured I'd record them and watch them when an opportunity arises. Such as now.
Blummin' eck. It's amazing how you (or me in this case) can either forget or have a slightly different memory of something, even if it was less than two years ago that I watched it. The first episode was pretty much how I remembered it, except it was also completely different. The opening scene didn't have the same impact as it had this time around, because I've now read 4½ books and know full well what the threat from beyond the Wall is. It was also the vastness of the story and the interesting thing for me is going to be comparing series one with two, which is still relatively fresh in my mind. The first season absolutely bristles with money; the special effects are impressive (apart from the dead bodies which looked a bit wrong, a bit false) and the entire series feels BIG. The first two episodes alone feel as though they had a feature film's budget spent on them, whereas my memory of season 2 was much more... restrained. Like the money pot was now a precious thing that needed to be guarded. I'm going to be wrong and the second season is going to look just as impressive, but my memory is telling me that isn't the case.
Go Team Go
Another bit of warped memory has come from my decision (at the end of the last blog) to play 25 CDs I haven't played for more than five years. I began with Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team, mainly because it caught my eye while scanning the racks and also because it gave me the chance to listen to it twice...
I have two versions of this album. I have the one I downloaded from the Internet and I have the one I bought because I was so impressed with the downloaded version. They're both roughly the same length - around the 35 minute mark - but the earlier version I downloaded sounds different; it sound clearer, fresher, like it hadn't been produced to death. Someone suggested that I possibly had downloaded a poor quality version, but some tracks actually sound different; some don't even sound like the corresponding album version. There's also two extra tracks on the downloaded version.
For those of you unfamiliar with The Go! Team, they are not the kind of music you would normally associate me with; yet this album sounds like a bizarre mish-mash of Vince Guaraldi (the guy who did the Charlie Brown music), a 70s TV series soundtrack, Toni Basil's song Mickey, and a kind of indie production, which gives it a completely unique feel.
http://youtu.be/goCdrBd01d8 will give you an idea of what I mean.
Ignorance Isn't Bliss
Fucking Lithuanians... Yes, it's the latest adventures in the Sexually-Explicit Family!
Do you know ignorance pisses me off. Not genuine ignorance, like not knowing who someone or something is, but doing something that actually suggests you're a fucking moron rather than just uneducated. Many years ago, just after Fishwife's first child was born, I watched him stick a bunch of disposable nappies into his brown recycling bin and when I pointed out to him that disposable nappies have a fucking half-life; his piss-poor pathetic excuse was that his black bin was full. So. Fucking. What?
I'm pretty sure Fishwife still puts the wrong things in the wrong places (oo-er), but at least if he does it I don't have to witness it. Yesterday, however, I saw a similar case of wilful ignorance and this time from the lady I like to think of either the Wank Woman or the Masturbating Matriarch.
As some of you will be aware, yesterday was a bit windy and the Sexually-Explicit family seem to have used their recycling bins for something else and have for the last couple of years used a couple of old black bins to keep any or all of their recycled waste in. Now, this is good up to a point and that point is when it is really windy it is more of a target and subsequently always falls over, rolls around and distributes their recycling shit on everybody else!
The Old Man always used to come out of his house and clear up the mess, because you got the impression from the Lithuanians that once it was on the pavement it was no longer their responsibility. However, the Old Man is dead that means when the bins went walkabout yesterday there wasn't a friendly old geezer to clear up the mess. It was everywhere! There was so much shit in the road that cars were stopping and driving round the mess. The bin men were never going to clean the mess up (why is that?) so unless some kindly neighbours decided to clean up, it was going to make the street look like a fucking landfill site. During this redistribution of junk, the family returned (in their fuck off Mercedes), drove right past their own black bins and completely ignored them, despite them lolling about the street like two monstrous tadpoles out of water.
Eventually Fishwife and his wife went out and cleared away the stuff in the vicinity of our two houses, but left all the rubbish that had found its way onto my front garden for me to clear up a little later. Fishwife even picked up the two bins and took them over the road. He knocked on the door, Sexually-Explicit man came to the door; there was an exchange of words. Fishwife walked back across the road shaking his head; it was the first time I'd seen him look disgruntled at anything.
The Lithuanians then left again and for the next hour what rubbish had found its way onto other peoples yards was now being stirred up again and dancing around the street. A little red Peugeot pulls up out and in it is Wank Woman (so called after giving the street an exhibition in self-stimulation a few years ago from her window). She gets out, spies a plastic yoghurt carton and what looked like a polystyrene container and picks them up. Huzzah! Unfortunately, she walks to the nearest brown garden waste recycling bin and deposits them into it. BOO! It was my brown bin!
I ran downstairs, opened the door and called over to her. Now, this is a woman who can speak English very well. I've heard her. However yesterday her English had suddenly deserted her. "Excuse me, you're not supposed to put plastic in this bin." I said and she stared at me blankly. "You put plastic in this bin," I said, pointing at it.
"No understand." She says, turning away.
"Fucking ignorant bint," I says not too loud, but enough for her to hear it. Her reaction suggested she completely understood that.
As the bin had been emptied, I had to fish out her rubbish and put it in the proper bin. Yes, it probably should have gone into some recycling bins, but I'm not having her shit clutter up my bins and she wasn't about to conform to what is expected of people who live in this country. But this a family that has at least four cars. There are only three adults in the house. Parking sometimes can be a nightmare. It's a good job the Old Man is dead because they've been using his drive...
Edukashun
I was given some work by a teacher the other day. She was an IT teacher - that's Information Technology. The work asked a student to check out some 'web sights'. I almost choked on my complete and utter amazement.
Stuff & Nonsense
- I have been listening to The Go! Team (as mentioned above) and also Nikka Costa who I have a special place in my heart. This is worth checking out - http://youtu.be/E3XZbfzg6DQ because it is a great live version of one of her best songs. Queen of funk rock! I also have Hot Fuss by The Killers and the first Hot Chip album to listen to today. There's a distinctly groove thang going on.
- My dogs are more popular than me on Tumblr.
- We will see just what kind of backbone UEFA has this week when they fine Serbia considerably less for racially abusing black English footballers than they fined Nicklas Bendtner for showing a t-shirt with an advert on or Man Citeh for being 38 seconds late onto the pitch for a game against Porto. UEFA is a joke and we have to do something drastic for these idiots to acknowledge that racism isn't allowable.
- Today's neologism: Blates - means 'blatantly' apparently...
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