SO2

You'd think I'd have learnt by now that if you happily eat your way through a pint and a half of lentils a significant proportion of them are going to be corporally eliminated in gasceous form. Just nobody smoke, OK.

Laundry

Pan has gone laundry mad. I can't stop doing it, but more keeps coming out of the wordwork / vast 6 box laundry basket. When it's all done I'll post you some lovely pictures. Actually it's not the doing of the laundry that turns me on, it's the ordered rows of socks and pants and t-shirts you gain along the way, instead of crumpled bags of shit. Does that make me autistic? Definitely borderline. Timmmyyyy!!

Blogosphere

The Guardian and The Observer have been great supporters of blogging for some time, but something about their reportage rubs me up the wrong way. It's partly that the blogs they eulogise claiming hundreds or thousands of daily readers seem to me to be no better than my own (readership : 3 on a good day) or indeed many, even the majority of other blogs out there. It's partly the way they seem to present getting a lot of readers and peer recognition as a sort of goal that bloggers per se are aiming at. I suppose it's partly inevitable that journalists, even with the best will in the world, find it hard to understand that many bloggers genuinely don't care who or how many people are reading their blog. Ok, they understand this point intellectually, but they still don't 'get it'. It's weird.

On the subject of blogs I've been reading them for a long time, and have come to the conclusion that there is little correlation between the interestingness of a blog, it's quality, and how many people read it. I mean I never particularly saw what was special about Belle de Jour but now it's bigger than Jesus. But I'm probably in a minority there. Some of the bitterest, funniest, most entertaining blogs seem to get no readers at all, whereas another that springs to mind (and this is just an example of many) is so unbearably dull that I have sometimes wonderd if it was a piss take. A red letter day entry would read something like this :-

Had to pick up Jill's dry cleaning so didn't get to my desk till nearly 8.15. Tchuh - slacking! Got the 'tricky' deposition done and had lunch with Mike and Darren from Corporate .They've both been billing some big hours on the TV takeover thing and are super stoked. Go Guys! Picked up some milk at the station on my way home - by the way I've found that the 7.56 is a bit more reliable than the 7.35, so I've been aiming for this one lately. The guy didn't have my regular 2 pint semi skimmed so I got a pint of skimmed to tide me over. Anyway I got home about eight thirty and Jill came over to pick up her laundry. We got chinese and watched Friends. It was nice.

But it never has less than 30 posts in the comment section. Every day!! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DRIVEL SPEWING DULLARD. I know it's super childish to poke fun/paper bags full of dog shit at other people, and especially my fellow bloggers. After all, shouldn't we all be supporting each other and displaying solidarity within the blogosphere, and hey, if I don't like it I don't have to read it, right? But that's not the point. These numpties seem to be enjoying bovine success and satisfaction in everything they do from writing a memo to getting a new 'super hot' partner, and boy do they seem happy to write about their interior dialogue-free lives. Of course there aren't any rules for writing a blog, and of course there shouldn't be either, but surely, surely blogs written by people with even the slightest smattering of self awareness are more interesting than the people who report their stress, anger and rage free lives like they were detailing how to construct a self-assembly wardrobe.

And the bit that I really can't bear is that most people seem happier to read this shit than interesting blogs. And by interesting blogs I mean mine.

Of course the alternative solution is that they're all correct and this blog really is boring. But that can't be right. Can it? Basically I just don't like blogs written by happy well adjusted people. If you're that fucking content why not piss off and have some more cats or whatever it is you do and stop boring the living crap out of me? I don't want to read about how you are having a great time and everything is peachy. I want to read that the bailiffs came round, reposessed your scabby flea infested home (which all the same was all you had), threw all your stuff onto the pavement and a huge bag of porn split open in front of a bus full of 10 year olds. From the school where you teach. Well, taught, because when the head hears about this, you're never going to work in this town again. Or any other for that matter.

But my all number time pet hate number one loathing is saved for people who write about how simply divine, how wonderful, how uniquely fantastic their partners are, and what a lucky, blessed boy/girl they are to have them. Especially when 3 months before they were writing about someone else in exactly the same way and will have most likely be moving on again soon. I'm reaching for my pills just writing that line above.

Of course I do have some self awareness and my interior monologue dialog is only too strong. By the way that strikeout is not an affection I did genuinely write 'interior monologue' the first time round. How Freudian. Anyway, all that self knowledge tells me that this particular diatribe is fulled pretty much 100% by jealousy, and jealousy of all those people out there for whom life seems an entirely effortless exercise. The important question you have to ask youself is this :

"Are you jealous of them because

a) they have loving partners and wildly exciting sex lives, meaningful careers, tax efficient saving plans, low cost mortgages and never go more than 6 months without a dental check up whilst you are very much no longer young, very much alone, a cigarette paper away from destitution, and are no more likely to change your life around than you are to grow wings and fly up Alvin Stardust's bell-bottom, or

b) their blogs get more hits than yours?

I'm just having a bad day. Normal service will be resumed at some future point, no doubt. And yes I am aware that my last 2 posts were about cauliflower cheese and hanging the washing out. And, yes, some 'I'm a happy camper' blogs are pretty good, I read them and I like them.

But most of them aren't, so stop being so fucking literal and look at the bigger picture, alright?

Buggering bollocking ball-bag bollocks. Oh fuck it all.