Christmas Cheer

Posted: Sat 20 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Creativity, Cynicism, Festering Season, Media, People, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

ScroogeAs always in the run-up to the Festering Season, the BBC is currently promoting the Eastenders Christmas Day special.

I don’t watch soaps, haven’t in years, and I really don’t get the appeal of them in general. But even in that sector, I truly don’t understand why so many people keep on watching Eastenders. It’s such an unremittingly depressing programme, one where nothing has a truly positive outcome. Even happy occasions – births, marriages etc. – have to have a downside, a negative touch. (Who’s the father? Who’s had an affair? What other explosion of emotion will happen?)

Christmas is, as always, the worst of all. There’s apparently going to be someone effectively going through the throes of a breakdown, so on Christmas Day there’ll be millions of people watching this whole thing of someone’s life collapsing around them.

Maybe it’s about making people feel better about their own lives – that no matter how bad they get, the people on Eastenders are suffering worse. I don’t know. But it’s a mindset that I simply can’t get my head around.

Solo – Introduction

Posted: Sat 20 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Single Life | Leave a comment »

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing quite a lot of thinking about being single / solo, what it means to me, and what it’s like.

Some of those thought processes haven’t been the happiest/perkiest, but in general it’s been a good process, and much needed. If it had been happening earlier this year, it would all have been a lot darker and depressive (some of it still could be, but you know, we’ll see) but as things stand I’m pretty happy with how life is.

Anyway, I’m going to write a few bits about it all over the next couple of weeks. They’ll all have titles starting with “Solo” (like this one does) and be filed under the one category of “Single Life“.

You have been warned.

Bizarrely Chilled

Posted: Fri 19 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: 2014/15, Change, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Thinking about things, I’m actually really quite contented as we come to the end of this year. No bad thing, considering that this year has been – variable, to say the very least.

But here at the end of the year, things have been going well, and it’s looking positive for the start of next year.

I don’t know quite why it’s all clicked into place over the last six weeks, but it has. I’ve suddenly decided to start going out, and spent time doing so. It’s a bit random still, but that’s fine. Even more interestingly, I’ve started making some plans for the new year, including addressing a couple of the things that freak me out. (Of which more later/another day)

I suspect a lot of this is all due to feeling a lot more sorted, with finances, work and so on being really pretty organised. It’s not perfect yet – the finances in particular still need some more work to get them to where I’d like them to be – but it’s a far far more positive outcome than the year-end situation I thought I’d be in six months ago.

I don’t know what 2015 will hold – but I’m aiming for it to be a good year, and a much better one than the majority of this year has been.

 

Decorative – the Exception

Posted: Thu 18 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season | Leave a comment »

ScroogeOf course, following on from my post yesterday morning about Christmas house decorations being more tolerable this year, I came across this twinkling monstrosity during my evening walk in the village.

I’d take it all back, but actually this one – from what I’ve seen –  is more the exception than the rule this year…

Christmas House. *sob*

Decorative

Posted: Thu 18 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season | Leave a comment »

ScroogeI don’t know if I’m mellowing out, but for whatever reason I’m not finding myself taking offence at lots of the Christmas decorations that are around this year.

Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like the damn things, but it seems like there’s either less of them this time – or at least less offensively chavvy ones – and on some occasions I’ve actually found myself liking a couple, which is very scary. (Round here, Woburn has used exclusively the white icicle-type lights, and they make the place look really nice, which is a shock to the system)

It could be about this area not being as chavtastic as Bracknell or Manchester, and not as remote as Norfolk – where people seemed to feel it was OK to use as many lights as possible if they were in the arse-end of nowhere and not affecting anyone else. I don’t know.

Regardless though, it’s meaning I’m not feeling quite as ranty and FFS-y as usual about Christmas lighting. It’s all very odd.

Bellwether

Posted: Wed 17 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, M1, M25, People, Thoughts | 2 Comments »

In a conversation the other day about driving – and motorway driving in particular – I was told I was too callous and calculating. I’m not sure this is true, but I’m interested…

 

So.  When I’m driving motorways, and even more so at night, I usually let someone else go in front who’s driving faster than I am, and let them be the testing point for whether there are any active speed cameras or unmarked police cars around.

My theory is that if [Other Driver] blats past a camera and it flashes (or a car that then turns out to have concealed flashing lights on/in it) then that’s their problem rather than mine. And it gives me time to slow down before getting to the camera myself.

I was told that’s callous and calculating. I think it makes sense.

Surely I’m not the only driver that does this?

Spam Tendencies

Posted: Mon 15 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Geeky, People | Leave a comment »

One of my geekier interests (and there’s a long list, I know) is that I find it interesting what sort of subjects are used by spammers in their efforts to get people to click on their ropy emails/links.

I’ve got one email account that gets spammed rotten, and I look through it on occasion when I’ve nothing better to do.

In this case, I had a look on Saturday evening, while my brain was somewhat comatose, and found that the following seem to be currently popular…

  1. “You’ve been accepted onto this year’s ‘Who’s Who’ listings – click here to verify your details’ (appealing to the vanity of the vacuous who’ve done fuck-all)
  2. Working from home  (no surprise there)
  3. ‘Super-low’ mortgage rates (again, no real surprise)
  4. And some weird shit about ‘this 57 year-old man cured Diabetes/Alzheimers/Cancer’ which I don’t quite get.

Of course there’s plenty of others, but I’d guesstimate that those four account for about 60% of the shit I receive on any given day…

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →