Saturday 16 October 2010

Thirty bajillion days later...

My Dogtanian T-shirt is losing the decal that gives its name, but it's doing it coloured-layer by coloured-layer. Once a happy sort of yellow, now mostly but not entirely grey, it seems as if Dogtanian has pissed on his own shoes, and tried to mop it up with the otherwise needlessly flamboyant feather in his hat. I think this is pretty much the way that I want to present myself to the world.

Lately the fly is back. A depressed feeling that I'd like to dispel with the sort of hand gesture as might shoo off an insect intent on flying repeatedly at my head. I don't know. It's the uncertainty and stagnation that's been building ever since I came back to this side of the world, really. I've no idea what I want to do next, I've forgotten -if I ever knew- how to do it anyway, and I no longer know how to explain what I've been doing in the meantime.

In hopes of at least lifting my mood I decided to finally make an effort at learning -even if only to a limited degree as may suit no particular use what so ever- another language, and doing some regular exercise beyond the current if largely pointless daily walk around the village. Exciting times indeed. Having obtained by entirely lawful means a copy of some popular language learning software, and despite my best intentions, I've actually spent much of the day being cheered-up by repeated listenings to the voiceover-woman's proper Welsh pronunciation of eliffant (I'll leave you to wonder at the possible meaning of that most cryptic word). Alas, I don't think that the Welsh course goes much beyond some basic vocabulary, so I'm trying to decide what to make do with. Spanish seems like it might actually be, y'know, useful, but the CD contains only American Spanish, and I'm still considering the implications. French or German may make a little more sense given that, having studied both in a half-arsed fashion umpteen years ago, I could actually have somewhere in the recesses of my mind a basic understanding of either, waiting to be triggered, and as a bonus the former would mean that maybe I'd finally be able to appreciate Diabologum's lyrics. Decisions, decisions. Likely inconsequential decisions.

As to the exercise, I dunno, maybe I'll just walk faster.

Good news of the day: while the deli still won't bring back butter pies, the bakery across the square has finally got on board with the food that got me through college (sort of).

Moving on, quote of the day comes from the mysterious mind of Líam and reads, quite simply, as follows: "This isn't helping my biscuit-rage!"

There was a whole biscuity debate to provide context for that remark, I must add. It probably had something to do with my lament that invading oreos are inferior, inedible, and in our biscuit tins.

Headline of the day is crickety in nature, which is always good, and reads as such: "Anderson fit for ashes."

All right, he is from Burnley, but come on, that's a bit harsh.

Before I go, a note to myself: In polite company, no matter how dull anecdotes about a recently-heard radio programme may be, if they happen to feature tales about some guy's first job in a lab and his accidental breeding of excess test mice and subsequent shoebox/cottonwool/chloroform -> furnace -> explosion disposal debacle, one's weary reply should not feature the term, "Mousewitch".