A thought made flesh.

The internet is a vast black hole into which time and productivity vanish without a trace: discuss.

It's one thing to waste your life wishin' and hopin', that's quite wistful and glamorous, I can get behind that. What do I do at the end of my life when I've wasted it readin' and bloggin'? The internet is bizarre, it's like the entire sum of human knowledge has just been dumped right in front of us, complete with damaged psyche and ravaged conscience.

What sort of effect has that had on our culture, on ourselves - what sort of effect does growing up like this have on today's children? I remember books, I remember having to look something you didn't know up in an encyclopaedia. To modern children an encyclopaedia is a pervert on a bike, I remember being agog when dad brought home Encarta, I sat and listened to all the national anthems of the world's countries I could find.

I love knowing things, to me that is existence - knowing more and more interesting things, finding things out. But to end there, it's a waste - where we become human is in the sharing. The internet doesn't quite do that for me, we've created it so impersonal in the past seven or eight years. I've got this friend, Ashley - I've never met her before, but we've been emailing each other since we were kids, ten years now.

That's what the internet did for me back then, I emailed lots of people, created friendships. Most of them didn't last, but Ashley and I are still in touch. I think that's great - these days it's a blog, an open letter to no-one in particular. It doesn't sit in your inbox waiting to be read and answered, it's not special to you, it just sits there - no complications, no obligations to you. It's a bizarre relationship - if I want it to continue then I must strive to be witty/dazzling/insightful or whatever the hell the reason is that people even come back here.

Just thinkin'.

An interview.

I saw this fun-looking meme over at Clair's blog and wanted to take part - it's the latest craze that is literally sweeping some blogs. She has sent me some questions (quite good ones, I was impressed) and now I have to answer them. Here goes nothing:

1. You are in a plane with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The engines have gone up in smoke, the pilot's dead, and the plane is going down. There are two parachutes. Assuming you keep one for yourself, who would you give the other one to, and why?

I quite like Tony Blair, I'm just not sure he married well. Gordon Brown is infinitely more dour and dislikeable, but then I wouldn't want to be someone's executioner. A more entertaining although possibly slightly crueler option would be to put the parachute between the two of them and they have to decide who gets it. Having said that, Gordon's still in power at the moment and the promise of a peerage would definitely swing the parachute in his favour.

2. Captain Jack Sparrow, or Captain Jack Harkness? Who would you rather take to bed?

I apologise, I had to google that second chap. I can see the attraction in both, but even assuming a certain poetic licence, I'm afraid neither does it for me. I was trying to think of anyone who might come close to a sexy captain, and the only person I could think of was Cate Blanchett in the last Indiana Jones movie...

3. Is there a definitive childhood memory that you have? Tell us about it.

I always think about this sort of thing at Christmas time - I'm really hazy on memories, I can remember useless information but not things that I've done. In terms of defining my future I remember have two big boxes of car brochures that I'd collected and a big box of toy cars, I used to get up early on a Saturday and take over the front room with either collection, spend the whole day absorbed in those. I've always had imagination and the capacity to lose myself in thought. In terms of defining my outlook on life then I have really strong memories of travelling to Romania with my family in the early nineties, being exposed to colourful, smelly, overwhelming, emotional places and people. I grew up with a strong awareness of the context of my life, it has always made concentrating on trivia quite difficult.

4. If you were going to build a house for yourself, where would you build it?

I love Grand Designs, I'm such a Kevin McCloud fan. The answer to this question would depend on the context of my life at the time - I'd love to have a house in the Black Forest in Germany, somewhere to escape to, but if I was going to build a house in the UK I'd want plenty of land on the edge of the New Forest with room for a small lake and plenty of trees. Also I'd be needing a rally stage and short tarmac circuit. Not much.

5. Do you have a secret ambition? Something which you know you're never actually going to achieve, but you're still holding on to in a corner of your brain?

Gosh, I have loads of secret ambitions, I am nothing if not inwardly ambitious - I'd love to record a big band album, I'd love to go on a plane first class across the Atlantic, I'd love to compete in a round of the World Rally Championship, I'd love to sit in the House of Lords, I'd love to write for Autocar magazine, I'd love to write travel books, I'd love to have a chat show that's more fun than Parky but more high-brow than Jonathan Ross...if I'll ever do any of those I just don't know, but I like being at the age where they're all a possibility. That's the sad thing about getting older, that your possibilities contract, there's a resignation there - I don't want to go through that though.

A large part of my pre-life crisis that I'm going through at the moment is having to make decisions that are going to affect all of the above, things that will have an impact on the whole rest of my life. Thing is, though, I've lucked into everything so far in my life and I can only assume that it will continue so. It makes planning pretty difficult, must say.

Well that was fun, if I'm not quite Observer Supplement interview material - if anyone's got any more questions you can leave them in the comments, they can be as anonymous as you like. If you want me to ask you some questions then read the below...

——————–
If you would like to be interviewed yourself then leave a comment here saying something like “interview me” and I’ll send you some questions.

Here’s the cut and paste bit:

Interview rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum

christmas tree
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

Do they blog at Christmas time at all?

9.14am: Whilst every other schmuck in the country is opening presents this fine Christmas morning, I and my close relatives have to wait until tomorrow because my mum is at work today. On the one hand this sort of blows, on the other hand, there will only be 364 days until the next one.

I have decided to blog Christmas day live, from my considered and objective viewpoint outside of the day's proceedings.

11.17am: Literally sod all on the telly. We have been reduced to watching the Christmas Eucharist on BBC1, live from Peterborough Cathedral. I didn't know that Peterborough had a cathedral - just a passport office, actually, where I was robbed of £75 for a three hour number as I had to be in Croatia in 4 days. I content myself by tucking into a ridiculously oversized box of miniaturised chocolate bars (who thought of that genius idea?) and mocking choir boys.

11.49am: The Santa Clause 2 is on - I don't believe I enjoyed the first Santa Clause film enough to justify even acknowledging the existence of a second Santa Clause film, but I suppose that Tim Allen has bills to pay like the rest of us. Everyone knows that the only good Christmas films are Homes Alone 1 + 2. And perhaps that one with Richard Attenborough on alternate years.

13.56pm: Hey, this is going quicker than you might expect. I've been getting envious of everyone's presents on Twitter, had a shower and now we're watching Mr Bean the Outrageous Money-spinning Movie. Also, we must be the only family in the whole of the country eating sausage and mash for dinner today.

14.38pm: The sausage and mash was quite tasty, dad did cheesy beans and fried onions with it. He's now cracking open the christmas pudding and squirty cream...Mr Bean turns out to be surprisingly funny, which is not my memory of it at all. I think I must be getting far easier to please in my mid-twenties. Her Maj must be on in a bit. I don't think I've ever watched her before, this should be a treat.

15.39pm: Well, wasn't it simply lovely to see the Sovereign and her message of hope and succour sandwiched between a gurning maniacal fool and a bespectacled young wizard phenomenon.

16.36pm: Easy to forget what else is going on in the world - I imagine countless thousands of other households are just as affected by the terrible shenenigans at Cadbury's - those Bourneville darks are the new orange creams, who cares much for them at all? Also, Harold Pinter has died and people are aghast at President Ahmadinejad's alternative Christmas message on Channel 4. From what I can see it's pretty dull, personally Dame Edna Everage was my favourite alternative Christmas message...

18.33pm: I'm sat in the living room - I thought that instead of sitting in my room with my laptop watching the West Wing, I would bring it downstairs and be anti-social in the same room as everyone else. But dash it if I haven't ended up watching Doctor Who - I've watched precisely 3 episodes ever, I don't have a clue what is going on - no doubt fanboys across the country will be dribbling into their cereal on Boxing Day.

19.01pm: Excuse the profanity, but was that not the tiniest bit shit?

20.42pm: This is Christmas Jim, but not as we know it.

Many of the constituent elements have been there; I feel sick from the repulsive amounts of pringles I've eaten (they don't deserve a big P), I've watched an impressive amount of rubbish telly and sent several thousand text messages. On the other hand I had sausage and mash for dinner and didn't open any presents, so more like Christmas in the gastro-intestinal ward.

So what is Christmas these days? I'll tell you tomorrow if Boxing Day tomorrow feels more like Christmas tomorrow as Christmas day today should have felt like if it was today, except we're having it tomorrow.

Anyway - now I have to go and wrap some presents.

What's in a day?

I feel a bit sorry for the 23rd December - it lives forever in the shadow of its more successful brothers the 24th and 25th. Christmas Eve is a successful day in its own right, the 22nd is just an ordinary day - but the 23rd? Who cares? It's just meh.

I think it was Ron Dennis who first expounded on the fact that second place is first of the losers. It's been the motivating mantra of many a competitive person since time immemorial, but that's what the 23rd December is, the first of the losers.

What ever happened on the 23rd December? Looking at its page, not a lot. Although it is Carla Bruni's birthday, so joyeux anniversaire Madame Châtelaine - goodness only knows what first lady is in french. I shall ask my friend Melanie who is visiting tomorrow - she is a french teacher, she should know these things.

December 22nd on the other hand has always been business as usual - the first flight of the SR71 Blackbird in 1964, the 70mph speed limit on motorways was introduced in 1965, in 1989 the Brandenburger Tor is reopened and Ceaucescu's reign is ended in Romania. The only thing that ever happened on the 23rd December is that Europe's highest cable car was opened in 1979 at Klein Matterhorn.

So spare a thought for the 23rd - it never did anyone any harm...(save for the odd natural disaster, that is)

In which I nearly die.

I jump up with a start, a sort of multi-button combo move powered by a mix of being territorial and wanting a headstart should I need to leg it.

It is 1.30am and I have just heard a loud bang. These sorts of thing tend not to happen often at this time of night - like a pretty girl in the Midlands, what in daylight hours would be termed a mild whimper often takes on proportions outweighing objective scrutiny in the dead of night and merits ignoring. This, however is a loud bang.

I give it a few minutes to assess the situation. Should a senior ranking member of the family have been awoken and choose to investigate I can sink beneath the capacious duvet and pretend to be asleep. Also, there could be an extremely clumsy intruder on the loose.

Foolishly, I mount an investigative mission down freshly-carpeted stairs.

Foolish because despite watching the Bourne films so many times my eyes have repetitive strain I still lack the highly desirable ability to take a man out with a rolled-up copy of the tv guide. Neither do my parents have anything I particularly want to stand between a crack-addled loon to protect, except their new energy-saving kettle, with which I am still going through that smug gadget honeymoon where every time you use it you shake your head with sheer satisfaction in being ahead of the game. Even then should I be asked to choose between getting stabbed in the face and the minor inconvenience of my mum standing in the queue for the Curry's Boxing Day sale it's not going to take a great deal of deliberation.

I hear a crackling sound coming from the living room which could be one of two things: either the cheeky bastard has popped open a can of Pringles or the Christmas tree and its surprisingly tasteful decor-sensitive baubles have exploded all over the floor.

To cut a needlessly protracted story short, it turns out to be neither option - much to the chagrin of my inner nine-year-old. The glass in the patio door is comprehensively broken, I can't figure out why.

I return upstairs to get to sleep, but not before blogging about it. I make a mental note to get out more.

A meme.

How exciting! A meme that I found on my computer! Unfortunately I can't remember where on earth I got it from. The basic idea is that there are questions and you have to answer them in one word. Normally I try and cheat here by hyphenating-lots-of-words-to-tenuously-make-them-one-word, but for this one I had lots of spare time to think on the train and actually just use one word. Feel free to follow suit should you want to - coming soon, I answer Clair's questions...and they're good ones.

1. Where is your cell phone?
Bag
2. Where is your significant other?
Waiting
3. Your hair color?
Undecided
4. Your mother?
Scottish
5. Your father?
Thinking
6. Your favourite thing?
Being
7. Your dream last night?
Forgotten
8. Your dream/goal?
Lords
9. The room you’re in?
Carriage
11. Your fear?
Obscurity
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years?
Accomplishing
13. Where were you last night?
Skating
14. What you’re not?
Overachieving
15. One of your wish-list items?
Success
16. Where you grew up?
Coventry
17. The last thing you did?
Pack
18. What are you wearing?
Comfortables
19. Your TV?
Storage
20. Your pet?
Dead
21. Your computer?
Here
22. Your mood?
Untested
23. Missing someone?
Yes
24. Your car?
Scrapped
25. Something you’re not wearing?
Bra
26. Favourite store?
Expensive
27. Your summer?
Distant
28. Love someone?
Who?
29. Your favourite colour?
Yellow
30. When is the last time you laughed?
Recently
31. Last time you cried?
Weepy

A joke.

A philosopher and a sociologist are on holiday at a nudist camp. The philosopher says to his colleague, "I assume you have read Marx?"

"Yes," replies the sociologist, "I think it's these wicker chairs."

La Drogerie

Pharmacy
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

In which I respectfully decline a newspaper.

What's the appropriate body language to communicate the approximate sentiment of 'sod off, as I told the last ten people - I don't want a newspaper'? It's an horrific exercise in modern-day indoctrination - and anyway, why pay for your racist bile and shameless populism when the Daily Mail give it out for free all over London? It worries me sometimes that so many people read those newspapers, there are natural checks and balances when you have to actively seek out a vendor and shell out 80p; people will take any old crap if it's free. It tends to irritate me somewhat as I shake my head from a fair distance in order to not waste anyone's time that said chaps insist on waving publications right in my face as I pass. Perhaps they are goading me into taking a newspaper, although the sole purpose of me ceding would in order to thrash them senseless with it. Maybe I couldn't beat someone to a bloody pulp with the London Lite, but I'm quite sure I could riddle their scrotums with excruciating paper cuts if I had the time and the stomach.

It's a faintly disturbing indictment on society that you get treated like a pariah if you turn down a free something-or-other, especially in London. It's a mercenary world down here, one that's taking the rest of the world down the financial gazoo with it. I had a long and protracted argument with a guy in a shop at the end of my road around September time because Pepsi was on Buy One Get One Free and I neglected to take my One Free to the till. I simply didn't want or require a second bottle of carbonated soft drink, one already leaves me slightly bilious. The chap in the shop couldn't understand why I wouldn't take my bottle with me - I was tempted to take it and set it on the pavement outside, but that would have been churlish. Sometimes people just don't want more Pepsi, whether it's free or not.

To be frank, I've had enough of this crap - smoking has been banned for its anti-social proclivities, I'm suggesting here and now that the free newspapers be restricted by act of Her Majesty herself to Actual Newspaper Shops if only to IMPROVE MY DAY. If a dramatic reduction in lung cancer is a serendipitous outcome then so be it.

The rise and fall of Sam Burnett

I think I may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I fell over on the escalator when I was coming into work this morning; it was quite upsetting and none too good for my poor hands. I suspect, as I've said before, that these falls I suffer on a semi-regular basis are down to the outrageously long yet curiously stylish clown shoes cladding actually quite small feet. I went to lunch earlier and fancied some sunlight, as I've not seen any in over several weeks, but given the distance I had ended up from work I thought the tube might be in order. Too soon, I thought, as I suffered a wave of nausea ascending out of the gloom and stifle.

Far too soon for any physical exertions after lunch. The sooner they invent some sort of teleportation device my life will be far easier.

Brussel Sprouts

Atomium
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

Ooh, all technological like.

There was a big Thing on the Today programme the other day about the top searches this year on Google, about how exciting it was that Facebook and YouTube and Ebay were so high up the rankings in the UK. Unified only by the singularly awful usage of capitalisations and shoddy grammar, what struck me about the list was not how it showed what tech-savvy wallahs we have become in these fair isles, but rather what idiots. Who on earth has to google Facebook, or YouTube? Is it seriously too taxing to remember ebay.dot.sodding.com? I mean, really - Bebo and Hotmail are in the top ten and they're so 2003. Perhaps people have been googling them to see what happened and where did they go?

Searching for the meaning of life, or tom jones plastic surgery - that's the sort of thing that I can see people searching for, these are the kinds of complicated things that require expeditious wading through myriad irrelevances and seditious sponsored ads that lead to nothing but headache.

BBC, I ask you. Who couldn't work out at this stage of our internet-infested society that you probably can add dot.anything to the letters BBC in your browser and you'll find the Beeb? Idiots, I tell you, idiots.

Today's Acts 2008

Today has been a most exciting day. This morning I got to go on a tour round the parliamentary archives department in Victoria Tower, including a room where they keep all of the Bills passed since around the 17th Century. They should be a lot more crap up there, but there was a pesky fire in 1830-something that wiped out the entire Palace of Westminster and they lost some of the good stuff. I had a look at one Bill that was passed in 1797, opening up the import of Chinese silk, and another of some bloke from Warwickshire who wanted to change his name to Saint Nicholas in the late sixteen-hundreds. Interestingly the entire back-catalogue is done on goat skin. These days it’s printed on cow skin – personally I’d rather go naked than wear the 2007 Mental Health Act.

For lunch I met up with a new chum at the BBC, which was quite fun. The food was delish, and cheaper than Parliament, I may have to complain to my MP. I was slightly disappointed that the cast of Eastenders weren’t doing a conga-line in the foyer at Television Centre, but I did spot some chap off News 24. Thrills.

Anyway, must dash – Christmas parties hark in the middle distance. I do so like to keep my fans informed of my unceasingly glamorous life, though.

Not quite a city of iconic buildings, Brussels...

the great Commission
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

Wireless, wire loose.

I posted twice last week. Two whole times, and one was a picture that I'd already taken the week before, so that's hardly any work, you just need to think of a title. Sigh. I've been mostly without internet at home this past week and being incredibly lazy I just need any excuse not to do something and I simply don't. I apologise most profusely to my loyal readers who have no doubt been left bereft without my ponderous meanderings and supple wit. Fear not, for this week shall quickly pass and then I have two clear weeks in which I shall be blogging my brains out. I think I may limit myself to one post a day, in which case I shall have advanced posts until March to keep you all going should my wireless turn once again into wirelesslessness. Why is it even called wireless? That's more of a command. To be grammatical it should be fewerwires, but in reality you'd probably be better calling it nowires. Like No Nails - my Dad went through a grotesque phase with that.

I have had many thoughts to share over the past week, and have unfortunately had no conduit through which to siphon them. I fear that they may all have fallen down the back of the sofa, or somesuch. This is the danger with me, my thoughts are entirely and simultaneously vacuous, superficial and fleeting. That thing up there about the wireless? That was that, it'll never happen again. I might remember it briefly in the coming weeks, but it just won't be funny. It may not be funny now, but it'll be starkly unamusing once I've spent ten minutes on the bus overanalysing it to death. You had a moment up there, you experienced something. You were lucky that the two paths of my laptop computer and my thought processes were in alignment to the point that both thought and action collided into a blog post.

It was a special moment, I felt that. This is what they call stream-of-consciousness, where you end up writing any old crap that comes into your head. Look at the luminosity of the writers who employ that sort of technique. This is where it's happening, man - a little bit of literary technique in every box...

Night, I'm really tired.

One of the best bits about Brussels...

A glut of waffles
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

Something a little wintery...

footsteps
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

Drawing a blank

Do you ever sit down and stare at a blank screen and simply have nothing to say? There are thoughts unusable and words unprintable but nothing of the substance you require on this particular occasion. The brain is a tricksy thing; we might think we control it, but it's only letting us think that. Where do I begin, as Shirley Bassey once warbled. I think she was talking about lots of sex, but my point remains...

Stained glass

Stained glass
Originally uploaded by ALBOWIEB

So here we are...

I must apologise, this is all getting terribly messy. I am back to good old Blogger, those friendly corporate chaps. The people who are hosting my website don't seem to be doing too well with the whole business of hosting websites, given that the thing spends about as much time online as my Grandma. Which is to say, not a great deal.

So I'm back to A Little Bit Of Wisdom In Every Box...; my first, my last, my everything. You'd like first posts to be more profound, more exercising and more tone-setting, but I suppose no-one cares once you've got the next one trotted out. You're only as good as your last post, as I've often heard no-one say.

Whilst I get my head round everything I shall entertain you with some of my pictures from the past few months, and by all means please have a look round my blogroll. There's this sexy new thing where it orders them all in order of last updated - it's nice to refresh and see who has updated most recently. I'm not one for these feed services that summarise all of your blogs for you, I like the visceral experience of reading them for myself, pixel by bloody pixel. I'm currently mesmerised by Bookshelf, which as the name suggests is about specialised storage furniture. Who knew there were so many places to put books!

The other thing to do is to join Twitter - I'm on there, and I've rediscovered the fun little updates that characterised my blogging three years ago. Nowadays I'm far more considered and circumspect, more's the pity, but I'm having a good think about what ALBOWIEB is all about - perhaps instead of trying to think too much I should just write some stuff occasionally. Who knows.

Anyway, it's Saturday night, it's late, it's time for bed...