535: Sunday

It's Sunday. Yesterday was Satunday, before that was Funday, Thunday, Wunday, Tunday and Munday. Tomorrow is Munday, and after that comes Tunday, Wunday, Thunday, Funday and Satunday. It's like a cycle; it just goes around and around. It cycles. Today is Sunday and I am sleeping one off. One whisky, and a few more. And some beer and wine. This passed morning was a cycle of waking up with a headache, drinking some water, eventually being relieved of the headache and drifting off to sleep again, before waking up half an hour later with another headache. But it's Sunday so I imagine I'm not alone. Hands up if you are struggling with being hungover.

I wonder what the German word for a hangover is; I bet it's a good one. BRB. Google translate gives me the pretty boring word Katen, but two much more satisfactory synonyms. Katzenjammer literally meaning Cats pity (yeah, I don't get it... I suppose it's from the pitiful whinging that a Katen suffering lady or gentleman might indulge in), and my favourite, Überbleibsel, meaning remnant, leftover or carcass. Überbleibsel is a good word; I like it. Probably can't pronounce it properly, but I like it nonetheless.

Guess what? I don't know, what! I'm going to open the curtains; I know, crazy right!? Oh my god, man, don't do it unless you're sure you are ready. I'm ready man, I've had a cup of tea, and I'm about ready for another one. I know what I'm doing. Tea and natural light are the doctor's orders. Yes, I'm going for it. BRB. I've got a fresh cup of tea and natural light streaming onto my face; streaming onto my steaming mug of tea; streaming onto my mug. I'll just wait a moment while you pop off and get yourself whatever you need to get through this hangover day; Diet Coke, full-fat coke, coffee, bacon butty, whatever....

While you were gone I borrowed your phone and made some international calls, raided your fridge and tried on some of your clothes. I didn't think you would mind. Hmm, that bacon butty looks nice, you don't mind if I just... nyom nyum num num, burrrp. Thanks. Make me another cuppa. Cheers.

466: Hotdogs, pigs, politics and December

Waiting for a takeaway to arrive (wonton soup and shredded chili beef); watching a BBC4 doc about the history and culture of the American Diner; looking forward to Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror on Channel 4 in 25 minutes; communicating to the world in semi-sentences like facebook status updates. Communicating nothing of interest for no reason other than to communicate something. Fully aware that more blogging should be done; many days missed; much catching up to do. Fascinated by the fantastic imagery in this diner documentary. An artist who paints scenes of diners lives in a fantastic home full of tin toys, tiny Cadillacs, plastic hula girls, and old diner signs. America is a wonderful foreign fantasy land of endless roads, bottomless drinks, and towering platefuls of pancakes, eggs, and burgers.

I want a chili-dog, a corn-dog, a coca-cola; grits; coffee, black; key lime pie; biscuits and gravy. To travel empty roads with untouched horizon and crushed scorpion in tire-treads; to see and walk in the scenes of movies seen a hundred times, Goodfellas, Ghostbusters, Godfather, Natural Born Killers, The Blob, Psycho, Tremors; to live the lyrics of Tom Waits, the sound of jazz and blues and country; the desert, the bayou, the hills, mountains, creeks and gorges. From diner to diner, eating so much my picture ends up on the wall and I win a t-shirt and a certificate.

Had my takeaway (v. Disappointing, disgusting chicken, boring rice; the wontons were alright though); watched Black Mirror (the ITV news just came on now and I half expected the headline to be about the PM and a pig) and still not quite recovered from the trauma; then turned over to watch the end of An Audience with 'singer' Beyonce – a pretty disgraceful performance as far as I'm concerned in which she dances around, holding a microphone but not using it, to a recording of her own voice. Imagine going to see Pavarotti live, and instead of singing he repeatedly thrust his groin at the audience while a CD of his 'hits' played. Yes, I know Beyonce is a dancer as well as a singer, but what's the point of doing both if you can't do both at the same time. Elton John plays the piano and sings at the same time; he doesn't play the piano in accompaniment to a recording of his voice.

Imagine if she did it the other way round: instead of dancing to a mechanical recording of her voice, she actually sang whilst a robotic system of ropes and pulleys, hoists and harnesses manipulated her body in a dancing motion.

Now it's Heston's Christmas Feast followed by Father Ted Christmas Special on More4+1. This is absolute - Xmas, winter festival, yuletide, solstice, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and my own personal favourite Saturnalia – luxury.

463: Sunday stuff

Waves of folk from a vast array of this wonderful world's ethnicity's have just passed by my window, singly and in pairs, for the last twenty minutes; all of them wielding a black bin bag and a pair of tongs each, and wearing a yellow high-visibility waistcoats with something about a church written on the back. They must be doing a litter sweep, I suppose, but I can't report on that action having not seen any being picked up. Our street is, at the moment, wonderfully free from litter; the only detritus is that left by god himself, the fallen leaves of autumn. The churchy tong-wielders don't concern themselves with leaves.

When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was speak out loud the content of my dream: I can't decide if kisses are Xs or Zs. For that moment between sleep and wake this seemed like a vitally important distinction, and it seemed like an argument that had been raging for decades between sectarian camps of believers and dis-believers. This momentary thought seemed to have an entire history behind it, backed by the activities and thoughts of an entire world's population and culture. I'm over it now.

What other whimsical Sunday observations are there to be made? Oh I don't know... int it gettin dark early these days? What's music coming to? Where does the day get to? No, sorry, I'm just not feeling any of those. Oh, here we go, here's something almost worth mentioning. There was a dreadful film on this afternoon about some sexy women dressed as school girls and something something man in a dress something something Stephen Fry something something girl with a pearl earring. It was called St. Trinian's. It was on in the background being watched by my partner and occasionally glanced at by me. Meanwhile I was at the computer reading Comment is Free and all that sort of stuff.

I relented and eventually moved onto the sofa to eat my soup and watch the end of X-Factor, but again my attention was short. I pulled a book, The Illustration Handbook, off the nearest shelf and opened it random with the intention of looking at some drawings. A black ink drawing of a cat towering over a city – The Coming of the Great Cat God – with a red and yellow glowing sky, caught my attention. It was by Ronald Searle, and I began reading about him in the text beside the image. When I got to the sentence "...however, he is more famous for having created the St. Trinian's schoolgirls in his books Hurrah for St Trinian's [etc]..." I yelped with surprise. Coincidence spotting seems to be becoming a minor hobby of mine.

329: in which I start a story and dream a dream

"Sunday morning, bloody sunday morning" was the first sentence in what was going to be today's blog post. As it turned out it somehow lead me into a short story about interpersonal relations between two people confined together for an unimaginably long period of time set against the background of high-concept hard-SF. Because it seems like it might be pretty bloody good I can't post it here; that will immediately make it inadmissable for the competition I am preparing entries for.

I wrote a good portion of the hard-SF intro (hard meaning attempting to base it on the fundamentals of real science, as opposed to the space-operas of soft sci-fi), before realising I had made a fundamental mistake. The entire story rested on the concept of relative time speeding up to an observer travelling close to the speed of light then, just as I tried to expand the concept in my mind by yammering about it to my fiancee, I realised my mistake. Of course time would appear normal to the traveller at the speed of light, but relative to him stationery observers would be moving extremely slowly. If I travelled out to the stars and back again at the speed of light only a year or two would pass for me, but millions of years would pass on earth. This realisation resulting in me spitting damnation and the desperately trying to fix my mess ; and more importantly fix my story. It's done now. The seams need hiding somewhat but it's getting there – trust me.

We sat in the park in the beautiful sunshine, read Asimov and made notes in my girlie little pad. She made a daisy chain and I scratched the little fleaflies off my knees. In my notebook I wrote I dreamed of a different world where all was the same except that the word 'plunger' had been replaced with the word 'plumb' and only I was aware of the disparity. I'm not sure 'disparity' is the right word here, but that was a real dream I had. I was entirely bemused that not only were people saying plumb to mean plunger, there seemed to be a higher than normal number of reasons to use the word. How often do you have cause to use a plunger, let alone actually see one or think about them. The fact is there is one in our bathroom, but it's not something I thought I was particularly interested in.

Science fiction is more interesting and exciting than I ever could have imagined ; now in retrospect I think my whole life might have been contrived in order to arrive me at this point. I am reading a huge amount, planning a wedding and a future, being happy and creative, and my belly is full. I've also just sorted out the majority of my tiny little office space and am actually sat at my desk writing this. Until now that was impossible due to the insane amount of crap I have accumulated and the boxes they live in. There is a bug on my laptop screen. It's gone now.

211: Time Team and Songs of Praise

Is there a more boring programme than Time Team?  I used to enjoy watching it on a Sunday afternoon, but watching it now for a matter of minutes on a Saturday afternoon, it reaches boredom point in only three beats and a breath.  Perhaps there is a natural tolerance for tedium on a Sunday that doesn’t exist on other days.  The big shaggy-haired wurzel in the hat has just summed up the entire programme with the proud statement, “I spend my entire life digging holes and finding nothing.”  Tony Robinson recons this isn’t always the case: “Finally we’ve done what we always threatened; after 160 programmes we’ve found absolutely nothing.”  Call me when you find a vast unknown underground maze of catacombs and burial chambers populated with alien remains and ancient black magic paraphernalia.  I want inter-dimensional portals and deadly booby traps, not more broken pots and barbed-wire.

Sunday is a day of inoffensive and unchallenging religious programming that would not be tolerated on any other day; The Big Questions and Songs of Praise, not to mention the never-ending cycle of Antiques Roadshow.  And apparently there is a sort-of comedy called My Family.  No society worth its name would tolerate this kind of shite on any day other than Sunday.  If we were forced to tune in to the unenthused drones of the faithful singing their praise on a Friday evening we would raise up en masse to tear down the last remaining edifices of this so called civilisation.  It’s bad enough when a mass sporting event like the World Cup or the Olympics takes over the television, but imagine if every couple of years the whole country and all the media became obsessed with singing hymns.  Charlie Brooker highlighted the ridiculousness of the World Cup by imagining a world where the entire country periodically becomes obsessed with country music.

It’s possible that there might be other things on telly on a Sunday, but I can’t imagine a way I could discover this obscure knowledge and to be honest I cannot be arsed putting in the effort.  This is unknowable without the most perfunctory spot of research, and shall remain unknown.  Sunday is antiques and Anglicans; and if it’s any different I don’t want to know about it.  I don’t like it, but it’s tradition, and who am I to change things or open my eyes.  What am I really talking about, I wonder?  Durn’t nuh.  Anyway it’s not Sunday today so what am I even going on about?  I miss Time Team.

Anyway what was I talking about.  

206: Caveman was a fey, wet wastrel

Sunday remains a day that inspires laziness.  It must be genetic; either that or cultural.  Or social.  Definitely one of those big concepty things.  Sunday laziness has nothing to do with me enjoying sitting on my arse watching Indiana Jones and Cooking in the Danger Zone; it is an unavoidable natural human trait evolved for survival on the savannah.  Tens, perhaps even hundreds, of thousands of years ago when our primate biped ancestors first wandered the plains of Africa and began the long quest to populate the planet, they took it easy on Sunday and didn’t bother writing their blogs until early on Monday morning.  It’s just the way it is, was and always will be.

After a successful week-long hunt when the antelope has been brought down, butchered, and brought back to the nest to feed the tribe, the decent right-thinking men and women of the early human species would settle down to watch events in the life of a fictional detective played out before them on freeview channel Quest.  They ate their antelope with Yorkshire pudding and gravy.  Nice thick gravy; not that watery rubbish that modern man sometimes dabbles with.   And it’s under those kinds of conditions that we evolved to face the challenges of a 24 hour day and a seven day week.

The habit has been settled into for generation after untold generation, week in week out, bringing us squarely to today with me laying back on the sofa, brain dribbling out of my nose, slack-jawed gawping at the screen, eyes taking in pictures and sounds that I can barely comprehend, not knowing why I waste time so but feeling it on some guttural or primal level.  No, caveman was not the archetypal alpha male, hunting, fighting, brutish sexual predator you have been lead to believe.  He was, on Sundays at least, a fey, wet, wastrel, with the heart of a poet, the mind of a philosopher, and the get up and go of a dead dog.

Even by trying to complete this blog I am battling against nature; overcoming the brutal desire to just, you know, sort of not bother.  But to overcome certain primal traits is the privilege and duty of that single species (as far as we know) in possession of a higher brain capable of reasoned and enlightened thought.  This laziness is a misfiring of some evolved habit that was useful in caveman life (perhaps laziness was a sign of wealth and prosperity and was therefore evolved by sexual selection), but which now must be overcome.  Like a moth, that navigates using the parallel rays of light from the stars at optical infinity, this works fine until it encounters a lightbulb or worse, a candle.  The moth that could overcome its assumption that light rays are always parallel, adapting its navigation techniques under presence of artificial light, would never be stuck inside a lamp shade, or indeed wasting its time in any other way on a Sunday afternoon.

Dear me, what a load of old bollocks that all was.