Shit - if I had been up at 4am today I could have been the first on Twitter to make jokes about Kim Jong-il. But I slept in until 8 today and so my stream was already full of "I told you I was il" and Kim Jong-dead and "that's the end of his Korea" gags. I was too late to the party, so was reduced to being withering about people who thought it was worth making jokes about his name having "ill" in it (almost) and then him being dead (surely they should have done these jokes when he was ill for them to really make sense). I said, "Can we move beyond the puns? An evil world leader has died. Let's have some proper satire. Didn't he have funny glasses?"
I did manage to find a different way to go though, but one that relied on people being aware of
this response to the death of Patrice O'Neal. I tweeted, "Can't wait to see Piers Morgan's obit to Kim Jong-il. "She was one of greatest Korean leaders".... Cut to VT" and then sat back pleased with myself for having found a joke in the death of an old man. Though to be fair the joke is really about Morgan who is still alive. There really is no justice in the world. If God is going to take out the biggest dicks in the world (and He's been having a good go this year), then Morgan comes before Jong-il. I am not even joking. Kim
was the greater show man too. Still two weeks to go in the year. I can't wait to see what news story we're going to get to top what 2011 has given us so far. God is really going to have to pull a rabbit out of the hat if He is going to leave this episode on the exciting cliff hanger it deserves. Which evil politician will go next? Place your bets. No point betting on Thatcher, the odds are very poor.
I was up early enough to meet the binmen though. I have neglected to give them a Christmas gift for the last couple of years and though I considered staying in bed, my girlfriend convinced me to go and give them some cash.
I waited by my gate as they approached with my gift. A binman jumped out of the cab and came towards me. I smiled and it was clear I was about to give him money. He took off one of his gloves. I wasn't sure if he was doing this to shake hands with me as I handed over my token of appreciation or if he was just worried about getting the money dirty. I had no problem with shaking his hand. He may be a man whose work literally gets his hands dirty, but I genuinely appreciate what him and his filthy trash-obsessed friends are doing. But I don't think he did want to shake hands. I maybe made a move towards doing so, but it wasn't reciprocated, so I just handed the money over and wished him happy Christmas. He thanked me graciously and I thanked him and then went inside.
But I worried that he had actually been going to shake my hand and we'd mistimed it and that to him it might have appeared that I was refusing to shake his hand. Even though I was pretty sure he had no wish to shake my hand and would have been happy enough that I had given him some money (for a change). He might think I was some kind of sniffy fool who thought he was too good to shake the hand of a binman. But I wasn't. I would have done it. I've got some anti-bacterial soap in my kitchen. It would have been fine. I was left feeling uneasy, like I might have been rude though.
Ah the troubles of the middle class.
I got a Christmas present for myself today -
the Bury Music Bluetooth car kit. My car is from the distant past of 2001, a time when no one could dream of MP3 players - NO ONE KNEW WHAT WAS POSSIBLE THEN - so I am unable to attach my iPhone to the radio and the only way to play non-radio based music is either by tape (I know) or CD. But that's too much faff right? I have been thinking of upgrading my equipment for years, but kept putting it off because I thought I might get a new car (and the way my mind works I was tempted to buy a new car just to get a better and more modern sound system), but I have accepted that I will be driving my dented and dirty VW for another couple of years and so it's worth the investment. And a man came round this morning to install it for me. He was from
AVR mobiles who were very helpful and efficient and who only lost a point or two for making me pay for their parking (which is fair enough anyway I suppose). They haven't given me a kickback for the mention (they made me pay for their fucking parking), but I was impressed by their service (I only decided to order all of this while I was on holiday and they were accommodating enough to correspond by email and sort out delivery so I could get this done this week) and would recommend both them and (so far) this particular device.
I hadn't really been too bothered about the blue tooth phone function, but it's actually very impressive and turns your car into Kit from Knightrider. You just have to say "Dial" and then the name of the person you want to speak to and about two out of every three times it will connect you to the right person. I nearly rang a few people who I haven't spoken to for years by mistake, but even that could be interesting. I like the random factor of danger.
I annoyed my girlfriend by ringing her up about four times from the car, even though I was just outside the house and she was inside. No one really ever rings me, but if they do I can now talk to them really easily when I am driving. I might drive around all the time, just so that I can talk to any of the wrong numbers that occasionally come through. More importantly I can now listen to music and podcasts when I am on the road. I couldn't be more delighted about this.
But it only works when the ignition is on and I was so excited about playing with my new toy that I didn't think about the fact that the engine wasn't running, so when I came to use the car later on I found I had managed to run down the battery. Ah hubris, thy name is Herring.
I had to call the RAC out. And I couldn't even do it using my new bluetooth device. Bah!
Anyway, I am looking forward to the tour now thanks to this new gift and if you want to help me feel that it's not a huge waste of time then please, if you know I am in the car, do give me a ring. My number is 07977.... hold on. You'll have to guess the rest. It's got a 1 in it. Good luck. And to be fair I should point out that those aren't the first five numbers. But if you're persistent you should find me.
And the Bloomsbury gig was loads of fun again (though still a little jet lagged, but now only tired rather than the whole cotton wool brain thing). I actually got a round of applause on "exponential mathematics". I think that might be the first time this has happened. Why can't all audiences be made up entirely of nerds?
To be fair, mine pretty much are.
Oh and thanks to Matt Whitby who claims that some software he is testing has ascertained that so far (as of yesterday) I have written 2,685,525 words in Warming Up which he says is equivalent three and a half King James Bibles (though with less filler, right kids?)
It's an amazing and depressing statistic. It's basically two books the length of "How Not To Grow Up" a year!
