Collision

 I am an invalid. Not in the sense that I am not valued or necessary to society though that is in fact true (I suspect I am one of those people who are making minimum positive contribution to the world around them since I am distinctly unhelpful, currently unemployed and not even likely to spend money, the one redeeming trait of the undeserving rich, to aid capitalism. A fact that I am rather proud of since this means that every positive I might take away from the society I add nothing to, therefore becomes a profit for myself in its entirety with nothing given back.) but in the sense that I am injured.

 Today I was injured in a truck related accident. Of all the things that it is considered mortally precariously to be involved in an accident with, one being a unicycle and ten being a jumbo jet, a truck comes in at around seven point five. The incident occurred this morning while I was out on my morning jog (to those who believed that I thought I avoided all forms of exercise like the plague, I would say that the plague was notoriously difficult to avoid, hence the high death count. The Duke of Edinburgh bronze award which I officially started two years ago and have predictably managed to procrastinate completing until this time, requires a minimum of one hour of extra curricular energy wastage every week maintained for one month).

 My jogging route takes me, first from my house to the local park. This route involves crossing a rather busy road where I have had quite a few near death (that is to say, near in the same way that Brixton is near Chelsea) experiences and numerous irate horns honked angrily at my general person. The sort of road which trucks hurtle through quite frequently, with speed enough to quickly transform any careless J-walkers (I have always wondered what the J in J walkers stands for? Jurassic? Japanese? Judgmental? Jewish? Jelly?) into a splatter on the road spread thinner than my grandfather's hair (which must be very thin considering he has been dead these last eight years).

 I made it across this perilous River Styx like road with some help from the zebra crossing ferryman, and entered the park which, according to my normal slightly optimistic running schedule, I would run four laps of in twenty minutes. There is a fifteen meter long section of the park where the path upon which I jog is flanked by two chest high metal fences, one marking the circumference around a basket ball court and the other a defensive barrier acting as noble protective custodians of the childrens' play area. Therefore if a spontaneously appearing truck were to drive at me while I was on that short stretch of pedestrian paving, there would be no way to dodge it.

 As it happened there was a truck in the park today, a vehicle which was being used to transport the tree branches that workers were trimming in order to castrate the powers of nature within the domesticated greenery. Just as I was on my fourth lap, the obese white truck parked its self squarely in between the two fences, completely blocking my way. Through my hazy sweat and fatigue filled vision, I vaguely saw the two blurred figures at the front of the truck signaling for me to go back ten meters or so and run across the completely open flat grassland from where the fence surrounding the basket ball court ended.

 As I recognized this attempt to navigate me, despite feeling worn by the exhaustion of physical movement I gritted my teeth in frustrated irritation. The concept of being moved at another's command fundamentally annoyed me, furthermore I had already run a good fifteen meters, to have to waste that non-refundable energy for the sake of a single lazy truck seemed like conceding a minor defeat to the world. Hence, dazedly mentally conjuring up something inspirational and courageous along the lines of "a true man must not giving up on his dreams and run on forwards whatever adversary might await" or something, I charged on towards the stubbornly stationary truck like a desperately unfit bull at a giant matador.

 Then, at the last possible second, I changed course ninety degrees to my left, grabbing hold of the bars protecting the childrens' play area and heaved myself swiftly up onto its precarious metal frame. During the run my brain had clearly suffered some natural disaster, possibly the disproportionate amount of sweat pouring out of my pores flowing into the cranium through my ears and flooding the brain, since it seemed to me at the time that the most logical course of action concerning the fence was to, using legs still shaking weakly from the exercise of a good jog, attempt to athletically vault over it. I leaped, my black running tie fluttering elegantly behind me then I caught the tip of my shoe on the fence and fell forward into the playground, face painfully making contact with the firm muddy ground.

 It also seemed that during this process (to be exact within the nanoseconds starting from my unfortunate loss of balance on the top of the fence to the graceless gravity dependent arc through the air as I fell, followed by the harsh introduction to the grassy ground) I pulled a muscle at the back of my leg which is why I have been hobbling around the house. A poor crippled victim of a truck related accident.

Very Little

 Hold your mind firmly in one hand, tense your muscles and slowly draw back your arm, preparing for launch. Then very quickly turn one hundred and eighty degrees on the spot while strongly swinging your arm, releasing your grip as you do so. In this way, cast your mind back and perhaps you will remember, to the days of your childhood or young adulthood or just your adulthood (depending on what age you are at present) a certain particular juvenile tool of amusement.

 An arts and crafts type object given to children by parents in the vain hope of inspiring some creativity, basically consisting of a tube to blow through and a certain plastic paste which, when inflated with use of the aforementioned tube, formed a near (relative to normal soap bubbles) indestructible plastic sphere. This tough, thick, strong, rubbery, plastic, burst-proof bubble is the sort of bubble I mean when I say, "my school is an upper middle class social bubble."

 Nonetheless, even this seriously snobbish private school which proudly presents its self as at least in the top five if not one percent, still attempts to make some sort of gesture of compensation for the excessive use of wealth by organizing community service projects. There are many community service projects on offer, ranging from gardening to helping out at a disabled school to serving the aged and statistically close to death. However the one I have chosen to partake in this year, and which I also took last year, is possibly the least socially helpful of the lot.

 In no way does it give anything back to those less fortunate than us, at best it is the five percent being mildly helpful to the six percent in a patronizing and self indulgent manner. This most obsolete community service of all is "Minimus", teaching Latin to nine or ten year old children from a relatively wealthy background.

 Last year I was given the task of drumming a dead language into the minds of two nine year old girls, Anna and Mia, the former being a bright but irritatingly patronizing individual, the latter being a cheerful air headed snob in the making. To give an example of the difficulty in dealing with these malignant creatures, in the second week of teaching Latin to them (the lessons occur once a week every Friday), Anna, who had clearly not been impressed by my efforts in the first week, gave me a hand written ten bullet point list of "How To Be A Good Teacher". An outline of the skills that I had apparently been lacking, beginning with "be firm but kind" and ending on "Make the subject come alive!"

 However, despite my obvious sneering contempt of their existence and ever present insulting remarks which their juvenile brains could only hope to vaguely get the gist of, the two of them seem to have some affection for me. Hence this year, even though they can no longer be part of the Minimus course, they still send word to me via their friends who now attend the classes. It is through one of these friends that I learned something today which truly filled my heart with joy.

 Towards the end of the last year, the two children, Anna in particular kept insisting that I give some sort of present to them. Their pestering was so incessantly grating away at my sanity that I relented and, having quickly rummaged through my pockets, I lovingly gave Mia a well worn pencil (so internally fractured that it was probably beyond saving even with the full use of modern day medical technology) and Anna a rusted muddy bottle opener which I'd found on the ground that very day. Mia accepted the pencil as a sentimental gift and made no complaint, however Anna insisted that she deserved a better present. In order to keep her quiet, I sarcastically and dismissively told Anna that the bottle opener was magic and if she licked it, it would grant her three wishes.

 Today one of her friend's reliably informed me that Anna had in fact gone home and licked what was essentially a solid chunk of disease roughly sculpted into the shape of a bottle opener. This then directly leading to her skipping school for several days due to severe sickness. The friends accused me of being a malicious liar for telling Anna she would be granted three wishes but in my defense I would argue that, in the fashion of a self fulfilling prophecy, she probably did have her wishes granted. More specifically her wish that her temperature would go down, that her headache would secede and her nausea stop, which of course, after several days of pure sickening agony, it did.

 All things considered, I would say that I went above and beyond my call of duty as a teacher. Educating Anna not only about the Latin language but about some key principles in life as a whole, namely "don't unquestioningly lick things that a man tells you to because you will probably get a disease". Now thanks to my compassionate diligence and sheer excellence as a teacher, Anna is far less likely to get oral herpes.

The Case of the Anonymous Riddler

 It has been a few weeks since the sixth form term began and though initially the invasion of girls into what was previously an all male educational institution was seen with hostility and suspicion (like the landing of early pioneers in tribal lands), thanks partially to the continuous efforts by the school staff to valiantly yet awkwardly promote "Mingling" through school barbecues and tea parties, the gender barrier (which first seemed as damningly sinister as the Berlin wall and as colossal as the Great Wall of China) has been breached and so far (unlike early pioneers in tribal lands) none of the females have stolen our land, extorted our wealth, destroyed our culture or brought disease (though that may be left as an unpleasant surprise to discover when inter gender relations within sixth form penetrate new depths).

 I for one have acted as a friendly native welcoming these strangers into our lands and promptly integrating them into my personal culture (grown in a Petri dish labeled "weird and wonderful")by near forcibly converting them to my Detective Agency. With the exception of a few for whom I am yet to think of an underling name, such as Olivia (an extreme Lord of the Rings fan with whom I discuss youtube and Tolkien's work, often together), most new girls I have conversed with have gone through the initiation process of being given an underling name (by which they will be referred to for the rest of eternity... if I were to find some way to live eternally).

 Though some still refuse to accept their fate, such as Underling Salmon (an often bitingly sarcastic character, occasionally as cold in attitude as her native Iceland) most have passively joined the Detective Agency, such as Underling Spirit (A tall individual who gives off an atmosphere of gentle tranquility. Of a generous nature, so determined by myself as I borrow her Paperchase rubber every mathematics class) while some have even supported it enthusiastically, for example Underling Solo (An orange haired mistress of memory who appears to be able to remember even the slightest of personal details if mentioned once) and Underling Swirl (A french girl often adopting the appearance and attitude of a six year old with occasional glimpses of someone five times as mature).

 The incident, began last Saturday, when, with a sinister buzz heralding the arrival of a new message sent to my phone via the invisible cybernetic strings which seems to bind most of developed society today, I received a text message from an unknown number. Within the round friendly corn colored speech bubble were simply written in a collection of pitch black pixels "Only you can hear this". Ignoring the fact that it made little sense to claim anyone, not even me as suggested by the message, could actually "hear" a text, the message was quite obviously sinister (Positioned, in terms of the sinister scale, two notches above the dark and stormy night in a crumbling castle but three notches below the trench coated figure in a night time alley way).

 When I demanded the villainous sender's fiendish identity, several devious texts malevolently came flying my way, three enigmatic words:

"Ursus major perro"

 and two suspiciously traditional riddles, in which, the malicious sender claimed, menacingly, that his/her devilish identity could be discovered. Seeing this as a challenge to my not inconsiderable skills as a detective, I set to work.

 From the fact that it was an unknown number I swiftly worked out that, seeing as I updated my list of contacts roughly two weeks ago, the number could only belong to someone I had met recently or someone I had known for a while but not bothered to add to my contacts in which case they would be thoroughly dull people worthy of being disregarded by myself and thus not the sort of people to send me interesting messages, from this I immediately narrowed my list of suspects down to the new girls at the school. From there began the challenge.
 The first riddle went thus:

"A box without hinges, key or lid

 yet inside golden treasure is hid."

 After a moments thought I correctly deduced that the answer was "egg".

 However seeing as this proved no help at all, I progressed to the second riddle.

"Alive without breath,

 As cold as death;

Never thirsty; Ever drinking

All in mail never clinking"

 After a slightly longer period of thought I deduced the answer to the riddle was "fish". From there I considered all of my Underlings and the possible meaning of these questions and their respective yet equally mysterious answers. Soon I reached one conclusion, an Underling mildly malicious enough to attempt to harass me in this way whose number I didn't have and who was associated with "fish"... Underling Salmon. It seemed to make sense, the pieces falling into place, however I couldn't shake off the feeling that there was something more to these riddles. Ignoring this I continued with my hypothesis, perhaps "ursus major perro" was a constellation found in the general direction of Iceland?

 With this thought in mind I contacted Underling Butler (A snide but intelligent underling with a wide knowledge of astronomy and zoology who surrounds himself with too many books and too few friends). "Yes, what is it?" he questioned irritably upon answering the phone, his posh accent and upper class pronunciation galloping through the mobile phone connection like a polo pony through the town center.

 "It is I, Veritable Galanthus," I announced as per usual, "great detective and your immediate superior. I have a request, underling Butler."

 "What is it O' Great detective?" he muttered sarcastically, a mixture of mocking amusement clinging to his tone like stench of garlic to breath, the sort of insulting condescending manner of speech that will cause problems for him later in life. Ignoring his attitude, I gave the rough context, including the precise nature of the riddles and proceeded to inquire about the words "Ursus Major Perro".

 "I'm terribly sorry," he responded after a moment of thought, using the malignant tone of voice that has so permeated the core of his very being that nothing short of surgery could remove it, "But I can't say I know what that means beyond that it has something to do with a great bear. Whatever it is its not a constellation."

 "Well, you're useless," I concluded, "Farewell."

 "Oh," exclaimed Underling Butler a moment before I hung up, "the riddles you mentioned are both from the Hobbit though."

 As those words rang in my ear, the metaphorical penny began its slow earth bound journey, plummeting through many meters of air as cognitive gravity gradually but inevitably took hold. Then after a minute of silent vertical descent, it hit the ground of understanding with a reverberating metallic clink of comprehension. "Olivia!" I shouted.

 I later learned from her that "Ursus Major Perro" or "great bear perro" was a reference to the surreal animated youtube video, "Mr Ando of the Woods" which she showed me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqzt3T4R38c

Perhaps Underling Sinister would be a good name...

Popular

 I've recently noticed that the current trend in advertisement seems to be competition. The most prominent example is that of chocolates. Chocolate companies now emphatically announce several separate flavors of the same brand ranging from caramel to orange to nuts to human despair to broken dreams and then insist people vote and compete against each other in order to prove the superiority of their taste buds over other like minded chocolate connoisseurs. Though essentially even if you were to vote for your favorite flavor of a chocolate and successfully confirmed that you in fact have the same preference of chocolate flavoring as a vast proportion of other chocolate consumers/future diabetics, you still are in actuality a loser since all you've done is basically had a race within a hamster wheel or in this case the cooperate publicity wheel. So everyone, except the chocolate company, loses (Or if you're of an extremely positive mindset, everyone wins since there really is not a jot of difference between the victorious and the defeated in their gullibility, cooperate usability and potential for obesity).
 This competition of flavors within individual chocolate brands is its self a part of competition between separate chocolate brands, each trying to get more publicity and sell more products than the other, a competition within a competition. Even this competition is then swallowed by the larger competition between chocolate and other luxury foods typically consumed by children and lonely adults such as ice cream or cake, thereby creating a competition within a competition within a competition.
 If this trend of creating a marketing battle within another marketing battle continues, much like in a medieval ten bird roast, the subject of each battle would naturally become smaller and smaller. Perhaps in the future there will be voting polls to decide which of the many unhealthy ingredients used to create a certain chocolate flavor within a certain chocolate brand is the nation's favorite. Eventually there maybe surveys to discover which particular electron attached to which certain atom within a chosen molecule composing what preferred chemical contained in an individual ingredient used to create a select flavor within a certain chocolate brand within the large category of various sugary foodstuffs labeled as chocolates within the category of non-essential delicacies labeled as sweets, is the people's choice.
 Though I find this culture of competition irritating I have to admit that it seems effective so perhaps I should use it myself. I have recently noticed that other people may have more friends than I do, in short I need to become more socially popular. Hence, adopting the policy of competition I shall now develop schizophrenia/multiple personality disorder and those people around me could decide which of my changeable personalities they like best.
  However, as people see the social success inducing effects of a serious mental disorder, multiple personality disorder will catch on as a trend. Then very soon everyone will be going around with several different minds hidden within them, each of whom may have a different preference in the electron of an atom of a molecule of a chemical of an ingredient of a flavor of a chocolate of a brand. There would then have to be a democratic vote to decide which personality is most fit to vote before any one individual could even vote for their favorite electron. Inevitably the world will become a dark and dull place of near infinite voting where one must vote for one thing to vote for another thing to be able to vote for a further more important thing, resulting in infinite reams of paper work and long winded government election processes causing indecision, fracture and general anarchy.
 In conclusion, these chocolate flavor votes will more than likely result in the apocalypse. Hence we must start a campaign against voting. Now there are several campaign methods I have in mind but seeing as I'm indecisive about which to choose we can decide through a democratic survey of popularity.

To Start On an Epiphany

I have before this time attempted to start and maintain several different blogs but this evening, at precisely around (a combination of words which seem to contradict each other but nonetheless capture my desire for it to have been precisely midnight for my own personal love of dramatics in real life and the unavoidable fact that I do in fact have no way of knowing when exactly the idea appeared in my head as I simply am not the sort of person to regularly look at the time) midnight I had something of an epiphany. Or perhaps epiphany is too large a term for this instance, rather like over wrapping a present with several layers of garishly colorful wrapping paper when the present its self is something small, relatively cheap, appropriately cheerful but not particularly significant to the recipient of the gift, a "cute" object from "Paperchase" for example.
 I have recently gotten into borrowing a "Paperchase" rubber from one of my female underlings, one Underling Spirit, who is in my maths class and although I used to sneer at the pointless brand of "cute" stationary in favor of the far more functional, cheap, unisex and less fashionable WHSmith brand; I must admit I have recently grown fond of the little green rectangular semi-transparent block of broken dreams or whatever rubbers are made of (possibly rubber unless the term "rubber" comes from the act of using the object to rub something and not the material out of which it is made in which case the name "rubber" is terribly deceptive and must be changed immediately)with the name "paperchase" scrawled neatly, almost seductively, in nice curled sloping writing on its melon coloured surface. I may go and buy one of my own Paperchase rubbers in the near future but considering my dignity as a man is always skimming the surface of utter oblivion like some fish-hunting sea bird cruising a centimeter above the dark oceans of extreme male femininity, I suspect going into a Paperchase store may result in me losing all rights to owning a protrusive reproductive organ.
 Anyhow back to the main point, epiphany or not, I came to the realization that so far in my attempts at being a blogger I had gotten everything completely and utterly wrong, I had gotten lost in the maze of the very fundamental concept of blogging to such an extent that it was no longer a matter of turning right when I was meant to be going left but rather continuing to plough head first into the floor of the metaphorical maze.
 I simply had not realized that blogging was all about presenting ones self and ones own experiences in a genuine fashion.
 In my previous blogging attempts I had employed well thought out, plotted and planned methods to attempt to be more amusing than I actually am or to purposefully over dramatize certain events for the benefit of an utterly non existent readership. In doing so my blog had lost all character and voice, essentially becoming a multi-coloured soulless empty husk of a chunk of text. I had lost sight of the fact that people usually observe blogs to see into the lives and minds of other people, like looking into a neighbor's garden. What I had essentially done with my cybernetic mental gardens was, instead of growing plants of my own personal preference in the garden as I should have, conducting thorough research into what my neighbor's botanical preferences were then proceeding to stick lots of garish plastic copies of said plants. Thereby depriving my blog of all life or interest (where the garden analogy falls down is that an entirely plastic garden would, in its own slightly creepy way, be quite fascinating whereas my previous blog attempts had absolutely no such charisma or, consequently, readership).
 Hence I intend to keep this blog, I have no idea how long it will last but I have a good feeling about this one (The primary reason being that I have just enjoyed myself immensely in the last thirty minutes or so of worthless egocentric typing) so i would be honored if anyone would care to stick around for the ride (and as a word of warning to avoid disappointment, the term "ride" gives suggestion of an element of speed and excitement whereas, as you may have guessed from this long introduction, my rides are quite slow and full of utterly irrelevant detours). All aboard.