Firstly, and most importantly, today is five years since Li’l Bhaji made an appearance. He had his big party on Saturday and had a fab time, so tonight is (yet another!) family trip to McDonalds for dinner. Thank goodness Akra’s favourite food is a little more sophisticated as his birthday is next Saturday and I think I may sob if I have to eat another McNugget quite so soon.
Word deprivation is going … erm… slowly. Okay, I’m going completely insane and it’s not helping my addiction to spider solitaire any. If I get a sudden burst of creativity I’ll probably tell it to go away until I’ve managed to get out all the heart cards or something. I’m sure this wasn’t the point of the exercise.
I did slightly bend the no reading the internet rules to book tickets for TAM London as Google Checkout wasn’t playing nice and I needed to access the message boards to work out what was going wrong. I did eventually manage to register at last, though …. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
For the last three weeks, I’ve been working through The Artist’s Way – a 12-week course designed to help you become more creative. It had been recommended to me by a number of people so I decided it was time to give it a go and hopefully kick start my writing again.
So far, I have to confess that the author completely and utterly drives me up the wall. It’s not just a 12-week course, it’s written in the style of a 12-step programme treating the reader as if they were fighting an addictive substance rather than searching for inspiration. The tone is very patronising in places. God is shoved into practically every other sentence, verging on proselytising in several places.
To summarise, she’s not going to be making my Christmas card list.
However, I do have to confess that some of it is quite useful, so I’m plodding along, if only because I don’t have a better plan right at this moment in time. Today though, I got to the instructions for week four: word deprivation.
Yes, this week I am supposed to read NOTHING. NADA. ZIP. I sat down and worked out what would be banned in consequence: any internet use including RSS feeds, twitter and IM; books and magazines (obviously); podcasts and audiobooks (because that’s clearly just replacing books with spoken words instead of written ones); reading to the children. Shit, that’s pretty much everything I do.
I’m also not even sure that’s even physically possible for me. On Weekend Luddite days my first reaction is to reach for a book. I survive utterly boring household chores by listening to books and podcasts on my iPod. I can’t even get to sleep at night if I haven’t wound down for an hour with a book (audio or paperback). What an utterly joyless prospect.
I ranted at Akra that the entire premise was completely impossible. “So don’t do it,” he said. I explained that rather defeated the object of dragging myself through this whole course kicking and screaming. “So do it,” he replied. That’s about as helpful as he gets.
So I’m doing it. Monday to Friday only, because I think I’ll be dangerously close to depression by the end of five days, let alone seven. I’m interpreting it as “no reading for pleasure”, so chores will still get done, as will my blog posting and Project 365 on Flickr. Only automated updates will be showing on Twitter or Facebook for the week, though. IM will be switched off. Important emails and various paperwork will still be done. Effectively my Internet use for the week will be a write-only medium.
I’ve ordered in extra gin and Southern Comfort.
(Thinking about it, it’s probably just as well that I’m familiar with the structure of a 12-step programme now, isn’t it?)
It’s a busy weekend with Li’l Bhaji’s party and catching up with all the chores we didn’t do last weekend due to Akra Jr’s party, so here’s something for you to watch while waiting for actual content.
I know it’s 12 minutes long, which feels terribly long in our 4-minute YouTube video culture, but think of it more as a very short film. It’s beautifully made, and if you like a good love story, you’ll love this.
Great sceptical podcast on all things medical quackery. Mostly, I like it that the podcaster (Mark Crislip) isn't afraid of completely taking the piss out of obviously stupid scams and scammers.
… in a land far far away. Oh, okay, if you insist on boring fact… Croydon.
Where was I? Oh yes. Akra Jr is 8 years old today. EIGHT YEARS OLD! I don’t feel old enough to have an eight year old son.
Anyway, he’s as had as fun a day as possible with a streaming cold and having to go to school for most of it.
Tea (at his request) was at McDonalds, with just the four of us (his party was at the weekend). He has played on his new DS games (Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones, spot a theme?) and he is actually eager to go to bed so he can try out his new reading light. A 6-speed bike is cluttering up the living room ready for a day that it does not rain.
First, one of our skylights started to leak during the heavy rain yesterday (we think it might have been due to some sort of grit/debris stopping the window closing properly – at least the seal seems intact – we can’t be sure until the next bout of rain) and now today my oven has given up the ghost.
An hour into cooking baked potatoes (normal temp of 180C) the kitchen got very smoky. Looked inside the oven to find the potatoes utterly incinerated and a bit behind the fan glowing red. I switched it off pretty sharpish and have flung open all windows and doors in an attempt to clear the smoke. The fan had been making a clanking noise for a while, but obviously something has gone very wrong – thermostat maybe as well as fan?
Of course it chose to break in May which is our most expensive month of the year excepting Christmas (Akra Jr’s, Li’l Bhaji’s and Akra’s birthdays in quick succession). It wouldn’t wait for time when we actually had money spare would it, oh no.
In 2003, Dr. Roger Mugford invented the “wagometer” a device that claims to interpret a dog’s exact mood by measuring the wag of its tail.
Or that…?
Humans smell “in stereo.” Scent signals from each nostril travel to different regions in the brain. This may help a person determine the direction the odor is coming from.
Or even that…?
Under the Hays Code (1930-1968), people kissing in American films could no longer be horizontal; at least one had to be sitting or standing, not lying down. In addition, all on-screen married couples slept in twin beds…and if kissing on one of the beds occurred, at least one of the spouses had to have a foot on the floor.
It’s one of those fun sites to get lost in when you have some time to spare, like when it’s a Friday afternoon just before a bank holiday weekend.
The quantity of articles seem to be a little sparse, but there seem to be new ones being added regularly. Each article also lists its sources at the bottom, which is handy for cynics like me who are suspicious of the provenance of internet factoids.
