Well hello there

[I've got some thing-bits to do at the moment; sorry it's been so boring here (unless you just come by to read the comments, in which case we may all be in luck! Over to you, MCL, Ramon and Squibelline).

I'll be back next week, most likely Thursday, with a whole load of twaddle just ripe for twaddling. See you then.]

Introductory Procrastination

Do you ever have those days when you do everything but the thing you're meant to be doing? I'm having one of those today, which is why I'm here blogging instead of, you know, doing the thing I'm meant to be doing.

It's not that I haven't given this thing a lot of thought. I have. I thought about it then started it, then thought about it some more then scrapped what I'd started, then re-started, then thought about the re-start and scrapped that too.

At one point this afternoon I had worked my procrastinatory thinking into an absurd circular argument, which didn't help with progress at all.

On the positive side, I've learnt over the years when to abandon something and go to bed. The abridged sequence is as follows:

1. Sigh regularly while sitting at the computer for several hours: type something, sigh, delete it, type something else, sigh, delete it, type something else, sigh, and et cetera.

2. Lie on the couch because you may have better luck thinking over there.

3. As soon as you realise lying on the couch makes no discernible difference to the quality of your thought (this usually takes two to three minutes), return to the computer and do something completely unrelated to the thing you're meant to be doing.

MCL, this seems like a perfect time to show you the piccy I came across in Frankie of that great cat-print suit:




I'm sure you would look totally hot in this and I vote you dedicate your next pay to the purchase of it (or else get work to pay for it; it's clearly an office essential).

4. Having done something completely unrelated to the thing you're meant to be doing, return to the thing you're meant to be doing and say out loud: "Screw this, I'm going to bed," then go to bed.

Works for me every time.

Anyone home in there?

Pic from here - awes.

Do you ever have those moments when you realise your internal monologue has powered down? Taken a siesta? Officially left the building?

Usually the sign this has happened to me is that I can read headlines about Posh Spice being hot again, a man biting a python who has hauled him up a tree, and platform shoes that will, uh-hm, "shoe us the way," without the slightest guffaw or snort, internal or otherwise.

So it has been over the last few weeks.

I suspect I suffer from Homer Simpson's displacement syndrome, whereby the addition of any new thoughts means the loss of previously held thoughts. In my case my kettly thoughts have been nudged out by my need to find a new job, and to figure out how to eat and pay bills and things like that. I've also just launched my own little business so that's occupying a significant chunk of my frontal lobe. So many projects, so little brain to go around.

On the plus side, I've answered so many selection criteria I now know my entire work history inside out! No more stumbling and trying to remember dates in interviews for me. No sirree. I've even come to believe the exaggerations in my CV! Go me.

This is a roundabout way of apologising for the dearth of posts lately and the questionable quality of those few that have so shamefully made it onto the site. I have a new bloggy project planned that I'm looking forward to starting and will post here as soon as my guffaw-ometre is working again.

Cheers.

Woz up?

Thanks for the pic, Freefoto.com! Free = cool.

I know this is potentially the World's Most Boring Topic and you may hear a faint 'neigh! neigh!' as I flog this almost dead horse, but text speak really shits me.

Not so much for the purity of the language thang but because it takes me too bloody long to read it.

My marker of an unsuccessful text communication is when I have to lean over to the person sitting next to me on the train and say "I'm so awfully sorry to bother you, but I've just received this very silly message from a very lovely but silly friend and I can't understand a bleedin' word of it. Would you be ever so kind as to tell me what 'ttyl' means?"

Usually said neighbour and the chappy sitting behind us are stumped too. The kid across the aisle suggests 'time to yell loudly' and I throw in 'ten tonne yellow legs' but that doesn't seem to make much sense at all. Half an hour (and several new friends) later we're still no closer to knowing what the heck darn it all means.

So a new study has shown it takes almost a trillion years to read a message in text-speak out loud while it takes only 14 seconds to read a message in 'conventional English'. Frankly I'd rather be creating a new universe or counting blades of grass etc in that trillion years than getting to the nutty core of 'ttyl'.

On the plus side, taking half an hour to read a text may lead to delightful flights of fancy: as Words, Wine, Coffee, Art suggested a few posts ago, 'lol' could easily be 'little old lady'. Throw in a haunted castle, accountant and a set of coloured pencils and we've got a Great Australian Novel. Noice.