Big Brother!

This must be my blogging nadir: a pointless online diary entry about a pointless reality TV program, in which I will point out various things that the housemates / inmates / `characters' have done to render themselves fractionally less pointless than the other mewling gits whose company they're saddled with.

Before I go on you must understand that I love Big Brother. I watch it as often as possible. I spent the entirety of Big Brother 4 sewing a Highland Cow for my baby niece: BBLB at six, the normal show at nine, and repeats of both in the small hours, for ten weeks. That's a lot of telly and a lot of sewing.

People seem to find my love of Big Brother surprising, as if being interested in maths and stuff excludes me from watching the best show on the telly. For example, wine-soaked twistor theorist Toby Bailey was rendered speechless when I revealed that I watched Celebrity Big Brother last year. This kind of thing would be excusable if it didn't go round in circles: people whom I shocked and disappointed last year forget my affliction, enabling them to be indignantly condescending afresh the next time.

So where is all of this going? Well, I don't think this is the right venue to discuss my favourite housemates, except to say that Nikki should be appointed Enunciator-Royal for services to clear diction. Besides, my opinions about the current crop change more regularly than the England formation. No. I'll just strongly encourage you to watch this year's foul-mouthed, tattle-barbed, implausibly-augmented stropfest in all its hideous glory. And I'll also ask you to think back on Big Brothers past: how innocent and clean does the business with Nasty Nick and that guy Craig seem in contrast to this year's gaudy horror?

I'm going to try to be a little more regular with the posts in future. In particular, I will update all the music stuff and give an explanation for my slowness in reading Middlesex.

Days spent with the grass and sun, in the office, on the phone.

Do you know what doesn't grind my gears?

Sometimes I agree with Dave's rants. Not the ones about customer service, but to whinge about posties, for example, is righteous. However, I now have to weigh in with an anti-rant. On tuesday I toolishly left my mobile on the bus. I assumed that it would be lost forever, was annoyed with myself, then got excited at the prospect of being able to buy a shiny new one. But no! The driver actually called Archibald (first in my phone book) telling him that my phone was in lost property; a trip to the top of Leith Walk and a two pound charge later, and I am reunited with my phone.

Three worrying things come from this: First, that I was quite anxious about not having my phone (I am only a recent convert, previously opposed to the things), and may have become dependent. Second, that in my two days of phonelack I didn't get a single message (boo!). Third, that I now can't hate Lothian Bus Drivers with every fibre of my being. True, most of them are miserablist gits who spend their workday trying to skittle the elderly onto their arses by braking sharply, but at least one of them is a kindly soul. Grr!


New Office

Right. I now have a new office. They moved me, and now it's permanent. This one feels a little bit bare, but it does have a slightly nicer view, and thank god it doesn't have one of these things spewing out heat and noise at my tired brain.
There's lots of unpacking type stuff to be done, but it doesn't seem worth it quite yet. It also has a whiteboard which keeps getting randomly decorated by my very many friends. Any small amount of maths on it gets hideously derided, while several senior members of staff (including the head of school) have seemed to quite like the pictures...


Summer Music
In deference to the lovely weather, which has finally arrived after weeks of gruelling malaise, I have been listening to Since I Left You by The Avalanches. This is probably the summeriest record I own, and one of few that I can forgive for being more than an hour long. But then on the bus my mind drifted to circa 1995, to Wake Up, Boo!, Staying Out For The Summer, and Supergrass arriving at Glastonbury via helicopter. Those were the days, eh? I like to think that my music taste has changed in the last ten years, but still reminiscing is nice, right?