HuSi

Well, that's 54 diaries from 2006, compared with 52 from 2005, which leaves me hovering around the one-a-week mark with vaguely distasteful tedium (What is the opposite of dynamism, by the way? staticity?). Lies, damned lies and statistics, though, Penfold: The advent of the hole means that rate is surely nearer one-and-a-half; a great thing, the hole.

Roh-reh-rez

At the risk of going all "Crap Seinfeld" for a second ...

Has anyone else noticed how the manufacturers of sausages are full of shit, with specific reference to the grilling instructions?

Sure, you can probably sizzle that fecker to the point where it's non-raw and therefore technically "cooked" in twelve minutes, but it'll leave one side like charcoal and the other like a deployed prophylactic. To get any kind of evenly-cooked banger you need to add at least another seventy percent to the stated time, turning constantly every couple of minutes.

Every time I'm cooking sausages, I think, "This'll be easy enough", and then: it isn't. When house-mates or guests then say, "Mmmmm, these sausages are delicious", you don't get that faint swell of satisfaction and pride as you might with most other dishes; instead you think, "I should effing hope so, too; they're tricksy little bastards".

Imagine if the suppliers of plant seed, or doctors were equally slapdash about their timing estimates. There'd be hell to pay. I once went out with a girl who had a nasty habit of telling you exactly what she thought you wanted to hear, rather than the useful truth (you can make your own jokes at this point; too easy, too obvious ...). In one way it's quite "cute" as she was trying to take my feelings on any given matter into account, but there's a tiny flaw in that plan: Oh yeah, it's a.) a lie and b.) it's goddamned annoying. If something's going to take two hours, say so, rather than "twenty-five minutes" (see the previous point regarding jokes ...). Generally, people care less about time than they do about being messed about.

Almost every decent human being understands this, but not sausage makers, apparently.

Rhunts!

Yule

Yule was cool. Did the usual. Family. Drinking. Road trips. Flew some kites. When your expectations are lowered, Christmas can be fairly enjoyable. Who knew?

Film median and mean: Atrocious. Television programmers need executing. Or maybe I should crapitulate and get SKY. I just can't bring myself to do it, though, and you can't take it with you.

The best things I saw were documentaries; 'Riding Giants' was excellent, especially the first half which was more of a fascinating history than the self-celebratory second half; the second half made up for it with much bigger waves, though; yeah, I'm cheap.

'Ricky Gervais meets ... Garry Shandling' was engrossing, mostly because it was a study of two media-savvy people not-really-getting-on in front of the camera. As they are both competent improvisers whose work dwells on the comedy of naturalistic human behaviour, it was hard to tell exactly where the ball was at any given moment — who was acting when; the extent to which the barbs were genuine etc. — and rumours of cynical footage-editing (by Gervais) have echoed around the UK media.

It's a bit of a 'Rashomon' piece, actually. Some viewers saw two comedy greats getting on really well and cooking up some improvised friction; others doubted the relative greatness and just saw friction. I think Shandling won on points, partly because he's a better actor and more inscrutable (in a well-studied way) — but he was also clearly playing a different game to Gervais; perhaps intentionally making Gervais uncomfortable to make the point that it is not always very funny, or not as sophisticated a technique as might be thought. Given the chummy, chatty, cooperative nature of the '... Christopher Guest' and '... Larry David' programmes, I suspect there was less contrivance in the Shandling show than many seem to believe.

Apparently, the rumours from within Channel 4 are that plans to complete the series by meeting the likes of John Cleese and Armando Iannuci / Chris Morris have been shelved, as the Shandling interview was uncooperative enough to make them rethink the project, not least because Shandling has shown any subsequent interviewees that it's OK to "cut" Gervais on his own show. Unsubstantiated rumours, though.

The Dangers of Hip-hop (part XVII - Redman)

A friend of mine, who has been bumping the Gilla House mix tapes non-stop for the past few months, got into trouble at work just before Chrimbo.

Fans of any form of music know the "programming" qualities it can develop. When you're familiar with a given track, often it only takes someone whistling a couple of bars, or being exposed to a second of airplay, to set the entire thing playing in your head. How often have you had a tune stuck in your consciousness, perhaps whistling or humming it to yourself now and again, only to find that, a few hours later, your partner, colleagues or friends are now humming it (by which point you might have forgotten about it)? This is often a by-product of the scenario where someone sings the opening few notes of a piece, and you feel compelled to complete it.

The political comedian Mark Thomas used to do a segment in which he asserted that the only effective way to tell which "class" people came from in a more egalitarian, prosperous and educated Britain was to sing the opening "Mah Nà Mah Nà" from the Muppets' version of the song: If the respondent looked blank, they were upper class; if they smiled with bemused recognition but in a slightly embarrassed fashion, they were middle class; If they replied, "Do doo do do-do", they were essentially working class, despite any protestations to the contrary.

This viral facet is part of what makes music so effective, engaging and popular: as well as dangerous.

Meanwhile, back at the plot ...

Our anti-hero, who we'll call ... Pete, had recently been re-hired, on much better terms and at a different position, by a company he'd left eighteen months previously. One of the tunes he's been playing a lot is Redman's "Da Countdown (The Saga Continues)" (Clean ... ish | NSFW). Pete gets on really well with his team and they enjoy a very relaxed and informal relationship within their group, but happily switch to more formal and "corporate" communication when in meetings with others.

A few weeks into the job, Pete and one other of his team are asked to attend a meeting with the heads of other teams, at which point they will liaise with a small number of moderately large cheeses from various other departments. The meeting is to be chaired by Driven-Ms-Daisy.

I've met Driven-Ms-Daisy. She always seemed OK to me. Early forties; late restarter, post-kids; had to do twice as well to be accepted by the pack etc.; hasn't really slowed down having established herself. Not the sort of person you could ever see yourself being best friends with, exactly, but generally an alright human being; different priorities, that's all; there are far worse out there. Not according to Pete, though. He and she wronged each other in a former life; well-meant jokes fell flat and were taken as a sign of professional flippancy apparently. I don't really know or care, to be honest; this is just back-story, ya dig?

At the meeting, tedium has truly descended. Pete is no longer paying attention as the relevance quotient has dipped below "trivial"; he's looking out over a grey Mancunian vista, drifting around in his thoughts, wondering whether he can avoid visiting pseudo-In-laws (not officially married, but may as well be) at the weekend.

Driven-Ms-Daisy is reaching the point where she's outlining where she will be for the following fortnight and how she can be gotten hold of. Everything is going fine until she decides to deploy an irresponsible and dangerous acronym in that clunky corporate fashion, e.g. "Assap", or "Pee Dee Cue".

                    DRIVEN MS DAISY
            ... and from the twenty-eighth
            to the second I can be contacted
            via email only as I will be in
            Brazil.

The expected "Ooooh"s are not forthcoming. Driven Ms Daisy
remembers something else ...

                    DRIVEN MS DAISY
                  Which reminds me ...
                    (emphatically)
                        F.Y.I ...

Pete registers this acronym. He knows it. It calls to him
on some primeval level. Driven Ms Daisy repeats it ...

                    DRIVEN MS DAISY
                    ... F.Y.I ...

Pete understands now. He knows what comes next, what should
naturally follow ...

                        PETE
                  (mumbled loudly)
          ... I'm back on the job, beeyatch!

The denizens of the meeting room don't quite know how to handle this.
Neither does Pete, as he begins to realize that, yes, he did say it
out loud.

It can't have been that bad; he's still working there.

Cup

Out o' the cup - to flaming Rotherham Blackburn of all cul-de-sacs. Damn; that's pathetic. Make some kind of an effort, at least ...

Attention [terrestrial] Longboarding infidels

Landyachtz trucks, people; landyachtz trucks. 10mm axles, biznatches; first time ever in a consumer-grade truck. I've just got some (the grizzlys, not the smokeys — I'm not that into it) but it's wet here so can't try them out. The build quality looks pretty good, though, and they come with 10mm bearings and washers to solve that problem. Remember to buy some 10mm diameter spacers when you get them, though.

MFC

Have enjoyed all the MFC entries so far. Hurry up, Gazbo ;)