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Cough-splutter!

[people of a sensitive disposition will want to skip this]
It was supposed to be a nice long weekend. At work, our production has exceeded our storage capacity, so we all get Monday and Tuesday off.
Well, Friday I had an itchy throat. By Monday... well, I don't actually remember Monday... I set the PVR and the satellite decoder in sync for the stuff I wanted to watch, and the way I felt I'd be surprised if I correctly recorded any of it...

Today, Tuesday. I feel a bit better. Very down, very hurt, very much like I occasionally want to cough up everything I've ever eaten. I am sitting outside. It would be nice, except it is way too bright for my eyes. I'm looking only at my PocketBook, on which I am writing this, for want of anything else to do with my time out here. And even at that I have to squint. I am on about my sixth (7th?) cup of tea and wondering why I don't need nappies. Where's all that liquid going, or is it keeping a balance with what's coming out of my nose? [told you I'd throw in some icky stuff]

What I wonder, given our happy litigious society, is why there is no recourse as yet for people who pass around bugs like this? I mean I can understand it being hard if a person takes reasonable precautions because there lives go on too and we have a certain responsibilty ourselves, even if this means going Japanese and wearing a face mask in the late winter months? But those people - usually the slightly overweight "chav" types that dress in track suits and probably have a white van for them and their assorted brats, letting the little bastards cough openly all over the fruit&veg aisle of the supermarket. The mother carrying a three (?) year old with snot all over its face, a child who picks up stuff and puts it back on the shelf somewhere else, or maybe just throws it on the floor where it is left. Those sorts of people are just wholly irresponsible and I am surprised that there is nothing that can be done about it. Why can't I punch it, repeatedly, in the face, until blood and gore covers the aisle alongside the trail of snot the little turd has left in its wake? [you can tell I'm feeling happy as a bunny, can't you? can't you?!?]

 

Angela

I have watched up to episode 3 of "My So-Called Life". Had I been better, perhaps more, but the list of stuff I should do is large. I must take a moment to apologise to Mick for I have not had time/inclination to examine his program...
MSCL is, if anything, deeper than I remember. The voice-over being used to incredible effect (i.e. the polar opposite of the one in "Blade Runner").
I can imagine one of the problems with the scheduling of the programme being the adults in charge found it scary. This is no "Saved By The Bell" (thank god). Like Amy Heckerling's films, this contains real teenagers acting and thinking like real teenagers, not a fake this-is-what-a-40-year-old-thinks-a-teenager-is which must surely be the explanation for any random Pauly Shore movie... It would probably target the older teen crowd without hitting the adult demographic, who by definition seem to instantly forget that period in their lives when they hit their 20th birthday.

 

What to aspire to

Aged 35, I can safely say "high school" (for the UK is seeming to take on US parlance, including in some places imported yellow school buses!) is a long time behind me. My memory of many events is somewhat hazy, and like anything some stuff that seemed so important at the time is now so far beyond trivial that it isn't even comical. As for the memories, by definition I would probably have to 'sex up' anything I recount, for if I told it as it happened, nobody would be interested. You know I had a Sony "Watchman". A cute 1" CRT television. Absolutely trust the Japanese to make a multistandard TV and squeeze it into a thing about the size of a ßetamax tape. And no messing with LCDs, which were seriously in their infancy back than. No, this had a CRT. A 1" cathode ray tube. And a resolution so good that I could lie in bed and watch BBC2's rolling teletext pages along with that restful music. Kids nowadays can probably do that sort of thing on their mobile phones, not to mention Internet access so what that get up to in bed in the dead of night can be a two way experience. Like, say, instant messaging. Me? I sat in bed and watched teletext. Wooo.

In a way MSCL can rekindle some of those feelings and emotions. Certainly my school was quite different, for a start no guns that I am aware of, and no girls either. I do wonder sometimes if this is a contributing factor to my singleness? Not ever having had a "High School Sweetheart" and, frankly, not quite knowing what to do with a girl if I did have one. That's not to suggest that all the boys are single, some went on and on about their weekend conquests and they probably married somebody who can give good sex - but is that a basis for a relationship? It was never any sort of priority for me. Hell, if all I wanted out of a relationship was sex, I'd buy an inflatable sheep. I value intelligible conversation much more highly. I guess this is why I never really understood the obsession with, well, a number of people (mentioning no names) who are hosts of ITV2 chat shows, panel show contestants, and on/in/around Big Brother and people-in-a-rainforest "reality" programmes - they are all a giant celebration of the failings of the education system. In my humble opinion I don't see how filling the television channels with utterly gormless people is going to be in any way productive, something for viewers to aspire to. How you can be, if you excuse the phrase, as thick as $#!+, and still able to be a "celebrity" and get paid well for... actually... what have half these people ever actually done?

 

Dribbles

And to link all of this tidily together, a friend has come back from England and delivered some copies of various magazines - magazines that can give a smile without requiring any sort of sentient thought process. Look at it, Bella 2009/02/17 "Why I Want My Daughter To Be A Hooker Like Me!" on the front cover. Really? Somebody really wants that for their daughter? In, like, what alternate universe? Love It! 2009/02/03 has "My Bum's Made Of Concrete" on the cover. In fact, Love It! goes a step further with emotional cue words - like "My Cindarella's dancing in heaven" Tragic or "BB's STU I'm all alone this Valentine's" PHWOAR! - see, no necessity for a thought process. Chat 2008/11/13 "I ate 40 curries in a day!" and pictures of 'suggestive' vegetables, like a three-legged carrot... you know what I mean.
In this pile, I have two Bellas - 2009/02/03 which says "Drop a dress size in 4 weeks" on the cover, and 2009/02/24 with "Drink yourself slim Lose 7lb in 7 days". Nice to see the quick-weight-loss myth is still going; instead of the truth regarding, well, eating properly and exercising. Not sitting on your ass munching chips. Oh, and being realistic. If my (non-existant) girlfriend looked like pictures I've seen of Mrs. Beckham, I'd have her round the doctor's before she finished a "good morning". Some people are itty-bitty and some people are not. Trying to go too far from your body's comfort zone, in either direction, is a foolish game.

So there I am looking through these magazines, thinking that's a weird neck whatsit on the dress that Molly Sims is wearing to some film premiere (who is she, anyway? any (distant?) relation to Joan Sims (re. various Carry On films)? at least I've heard of Zooey Deschanel!) and I think I can condense all of these magazines down to one single little bit that is a comically great example of "too much information!". Here it is, from Heat issue 2009/01/12, page 21. Something about Dancing On Ice and who is in it:

( I wonder how many people, after reading this, were watching the next programme thinking "has she? hasn't she? has she? ..." ☺ )

Before I chuck this lot in the recycling bag, I'd love to hear from some girls. I mean, do you actually take this stuff seriously, or is it some clever form of sardonic social commentary that I am just not understanding?

 

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