Say what you like about water, about how healthy it is, how good it is for you, all that stuff, I’ve got to say, drinking it in place of anything else really is fucking boring. Normally I don’t mind too much, but the stuff in the place I’m working at the moment is supposedly purified blah blah blah and all it tastes of is, well, water. Cold tap water at that. I’m not sure what it’s been purified with, but it’s definitely not like one of the bottled mineral waters.

See, the path to lower caffeine intake may not be paved with good intentions and/or the skulls of the people who get in my way while I haven’t got a decent caffeine supply, but it’s definitely verged with boring substitutes, and the tinkling sounds of mineral water springs in the fields/ditches to either side is beginning really to get on my tits now…

Like VodkaBird I’m in an area dominated by Stagecoach Buses.(and I can’t believe I know their URL without even thinking about it – I need to get out less) So I’ve just spent 20 minutes standing up (or at least trying to) on a Bus where the driver seems to only know two speeds – Fast as Fuck or Stop. And spends as little time as possible transitioning between the two.

Now, F1 drivers might be used to braking and acceleration up to however many G’s, but frankly, they’re not standing up on a keffing bus. Having watched one woman try concussing herself against the metal poles (pleasantly unpadded) during the bus’s throwing an anchor out the back to stop ASAPbraking and various other people wobbling dangerously far from vertical towards horizontal during both approaching lightspeedacceleration and braking (never seen someone at a 45 degree lean? Ride a stagecoach bus), it’s been a fun-filled journey. Honest. No really, it has.

On a slightly related thing (they were both on the BBC) I watched a tiny section of Breakfast Time (or whatever they cal their Morning TV now), and they’re reporting on “Cracking Crime day/week (whatever)”.

The film goes to some dodgy area of Bristol, and starts with the standard shots of low-rent prostitutes, skimpy clothes and that fog to obscure their faces that makes it look like they’re either heavy smokers, or have just sneezed. The voiceover starts off about “this is an area of prostitution…” (like, no shit, sherlock, I’d have figured that if I were deaf) and then continues “… and cheap drugs” with images of Kebab shops, Halal meat merchants (butchers), Cornershops run by Patel et al, and a Sari shop.

Um – what??? Is there some kind of weird correlation here, that drugs are cheap in areas run by the Asian section of the community? Are Kebabs an illegal narcotic? (And if they are, why not include Macdonalds in the montage – I’m sure they put some kind of addictive additive in their food – I can go for months without wanting Macdonalds, but if I have one, I want another the next day. But that’s a rant for another day, I think) Is Halal meat addictive? Or do you have to be on drugs to wear a sari?

It just seemed quite racist in a way, attempting to portray areas of ill repute and poverty as primarily Asian – and I can’t think of any other link between words and pictures, except to attempt to propagate that idea.

Nice to see our Conservative Party trying to get on top of things again. However, I don’t quite think Tracking paedophiles by satellite is going to be the way forward. It’s all a bit Mission:Impossible, isn’t it? Besides, what are they going to do after that? Put in some AI and a laser weapon, so that if the paedophile commits a criminal act, they get zapped on the spot and burned to a crisp?

At the end of the day, trying something like that would require some form of surgery in order to implant the chip (or whatever) that responds to the satellite signal and says “coo-ee, I’m here!”. Would that surgery form part of the punishment for a prior offence? And OK, you might be able to track them after the first offence (with emphasis on the might) but how do you track them before you know they’re a paedophile in the first place?

Lots of bugs in that system, I think. Probably means it’ll be happening within five years, and scrapped in ten.

God I’m feeling optimistic today…

And no-one noticed this at any time?

The real joy of stopping an intake of caffeine, or even of a drastic cutting down of the caffeine intake, is just how crap you feel without it. I know, that’s the basic form addiction takes, and anyone who knows me properly knows I’m a complete caffeine junkie at the best of times.

But right now I’ve been good, and had an absolutely minimal amount of caffeine for two days, and the headache of withdrawal is beginning to become a real pig. I know it’ll get better, but right now, all I want is a nice mug of coffee to take the edge off it. I’ll wait til I get home though – there are some things I won’t put my body and/or tastebuds through, and one of them is *shudder* Nescafe. Or any of the other instant coffee’s that abound in this office block.The only instant I’ll really use is Carte Noire which is about the best I’ve found for instant coffee, although let’s face it, we’re still talking instant rather than proper coffee through a semi-proper machine at home.

Hmmm – I wonder if these would do me any good? Probably not – I know what I’m like after I’ve eaten a few of them.