Mathew Browne

Barney (a friend I met at university) posted a message to his blog cursing his “British skin”. He’s on holiday in Mexico and managed to get sunburnt, you see. Well you’ll get no sympathy from me, sunshine. (See what I did there?) Try being a redhead. I once managed to get mild sunburn on a mostly cloudy day in Wales. Wales! Surely Barney your impressive fluffy head of hair would have served as a makeshift sombrero?

While we’re namechecking people off my course, Marek is also on holiday at the minute. He’s living it up in Japan, and seems to have a radar for punk/ska bands playing in parks and such. Also, has developed a penchant for traditional Japanese bathrobes, it seems. Curious.

Not to leave anyone out… Liam is doing a PhD, something to do with peer-to-peer networks, so will eventually be officially the doctor of piracy. I have kindly requested that he makes me a super-user on this new-fangled network, allowing me to leech as many DVD-rips as I can. I will then burn these to disc. Despite asking me every day for about a year, I most certainly will not lend these discs to anyone.

Today’s fact of the day is: Canary Wharf tube station has more tossers per square inch during peak hours than anywhere else in the world. Stop getting in my fucking tube carriage, harping on about Mike in Accounts and your 5-grand Golden Hello! I Hate Canary Wharf. At least at rush hour. During the day (when the suits are being fisted by the corporate machine) or at the weekends (when they’re in their warehouse conversions, snorting charlie or having heart attacks/nervous breakdowns aged 27), Canary Wharf is quite pleasant.

Tying in nicely with this mini-rant, here is an actual conversation overheard (read: “eavesdropped”) on the Tube sometime last week. I am providing a transcript here (as best as I can remember it) for your amusement, though nothing will do this justice really…

Setting the scene: Two suits get in at Canary Wharf, carrying briefcases. Both are aged late-20s/early-30s. One (let’s call him “Tosser”) is about 6′2″, wearing so much aftershave my eyes sting, and has one of those faces you’d like to punch. Permanently smug. I can imagine him being told he has cancer and still looking like Mr. Big. He doesn’t walk, he strides, and is almost certainly called Piers. He is accompanied by a shorter, portly guy. We’ll call him “Bored Colleague”.

Tosser: “So, yah, Edward says I’m on track for the third quarter bonus. To be honest I was there at the beginning of August…”
Bored Colleague: (Staring intently at the floor and not moving his eyes up to acknowledge the conversation) “Really?…”
Tosser: “Oh yah, yah. Should go towards the motor that Carrie’s been after. Women, eh?”
Bored Colleague: (Feigned laughter) “Yeah…”
Tosser: ” Yah, so, er, yah. So, David’s off to pastures new, then. Think I’m in with a chance there. I could do with the extra 20k a year” (Guffaws to self)
Bored Colleague: “I don’t think so.”
Tosser: (I couldn’t see the guys face, but I imagine it dropping) “What do you mean?”
Bored Colleague: “He’s offered it to me.”
Tosser: “Oh…”
(Silence for the rest of the journey)

How’d you like them apples, dickbag?

So the Missus just calls me while I’m at work to cry down the phone at me. Seriously, it took me about 10 minutes so get any sense out of her. What is it with crying women? That scene from Friends got it so right.

Turns out that one of the diamonds in her engagement ring fell out. That’s what you get when you buy jewellery from Argos. (Predictable punchline I know. I just couldn’t resist making that joke…)

Seriously though, it’s no biggie. Math was smart enough to insure the thing. Problem is, I now have to go back to Ernest Jones on Oxford Street and, presumably, fill in a shitload of paperwork. Fun.

I remember when I bought the ring in the first place, the guy serving me went out of his way to assure me that I could bring the ring back “if it doesn’t fit, or for any other reason you no longer need the ring”. Translation: “No woman would ever marry you, you ginger freak”. Prick.

For years, I had a crippling fear of lifts. I mean panic attack-grade fear. However, working on the 5th floor and being a thoroughly lazy bastard, I have found that recently, laziness has beat out my phobia. Ditto the fact that Goodge St tube station has lifts or 130-something steps to ascend.

Unfortunately, an incident on the lift at UCL today has done some work in resurrecting the fear. Four people got on the lift on the ground floor, pressing the button for the 2nd, 3rd 4th and 5th floor. Here is a poorly-written transcript of my journey after that…

Doors close. Lift starts moving.
Voice of the lift: “Second floor”
Doors open. Person leaves. Doors close. Lift start moving.
Voice of the lift: “Third floor”
Doors open. Person leaves. Doors close. Lift start moving.
Voice of the lift: “Fourth floor”
Doors open. Person leaves. Doors close. Lift start moving.
Voice of the Lift: “Third Basement”
Lift stops moving. Doors don’t open. I’m alone in the lift and shitting myself - not literally but nearly. Door finally opens, and the lift is about 18 inches above ground level. I leap out and scuttle off.

Third fucking basement?! The building I work in doesn’t even have a basement.

I’ve got 137 of 150 stars on Mario 64 DS. I should never have started playing it - all other games I ever play on it will seem crap by comparison.

Saw the new WWE Ultimate Warrior DVD tonight. Unlike other DVDs that WWE puts out, the sole reason they’ve released this is to bury the guy. A generation of guys like me grew up watching the Ultimate Warrior on Saturday mornings, and everyone of those will tell you he was awesome. Or that he knew a good pharmacist.

To the uninitiated, the Ultimate Warrior was this massive wrestler in the WWF (as it used to be called before the pandas and wildlife people took the initials back…) who used to have this killer rock entrance music, wearing war paint, leg it down to the ring, beat the shit out of his opponent, and leg it out of there. All in about two minutes. The guy only ever lost once that I can recall.

Of course, I’m older and wiser. I realise that, for a wrestler, refusing to lose is not good business - it makes everyone else look weak. Especially when you beat each of them in the time it takes your Average Joe to make a cup of tea.

Also, his interviews were longer than hs matches by a considerable margin and made fuck all sense. Actual quote: “I only breathe the air that smells of combat”. Indeed. Sounds like an Iron Maiden lyric. Maybe his arm bands were cutting off his circulation that day and making him feel a little woozy. Or maybe it was the daily fistful of steroids he chowed down.

So, this DVD I’m watching tonight tells the “other” story of the Ultimate Warrior - that he was a self-confessed steroid abusing homophobe, who was such an screwball that he actually changed his full, legal name to Warrior. No surname, just Warrior.

EDIT (24-Sep-05): I read on the Wrestlecrap message boards that he has a daughter called Arizona. Arizona Warrior. It must suck to have a fruitcake for a Dad and a name that sounds like a shit Western.

I didn’t post yesterday so today is a double-post extravaganza!

I was up at 6am yesterday. Not a happy bunny. The trip to the school went well, though. Generally, the kids seemed to be positive about the teaching material we came up with. Of course, they may just have been polite because we were still there… I’ll presume they were honest comments for the sake of my fragile ego.

I had the dubious honour of being the worst dressed guy in the building. It was a boys school where the Sixth form uniform was “office wear”, it would seem. The rest of the boys had blazers, and each looked like the long lost member of McFly. Or Busted. Whatever. Considering it was an all boys school, I question the decision to hire so many fit young female teachers. Surely that must prove a huge distraction.

My boss actually said yesterday, and I’m quoting, that a million pounds “isn’t a lot of money”. I hate not being rich. Must buy a lottery ticket later…

In the evening I got a call from Pippa saying she’s acquired some virus on her Dad’s PC, and (in an effort to relieve the fury apparently being directed at her) asked me what to do to remove it. By the sound of it, it’s one of those virii (that word doesn’t look right) that changes your locally stored ‘page not found’ html file and forwards the user to some bollocks spam page, no doubt promoting some internet dating site or selling penis enlargement pills. Maybe both. Unfortunately, this particular virus has also sodded up the CD drive, apparently. People seem to think that, because I did a degree in Computer Science, I have some magic solution to problems like these. Granted, I hopefully have a headstart over your Average Joe, but ultimately when I get a problem on my PC, I’m usually stumped like other mere mortals. In my entirely-finite wisdom, I advised she does a System Restore and see if the problem has gone. She never called back to tell me how it went. I fear it did fuck all.

EDIT (23-Sep-05): I got a call later this evening confirming that, as I correctly predicted, my “advice” achieved nothing. Oh well. I tried.

if(wakeUpTired())
{hoursOfSleepNeeded++;}
else
{//this never seems to happen}

I became somewhat notorious in halls for the amount of time I spent in bed. (Alone, sadly.) I worked out that in a typical week in my first year of university, I slept 11 hours a day. In my time at halls I made it to breakfast on only a handful of occasions, and of those only three weren’t due to my staying up through the night. Henry, I believe, began addressing me as Lord Snooze. Others, however, made a “hilarious” link between my being half-Welsh and an excellence at counting sheep.

Arguably my greatest accomplishment, however, was managing to sleep for 27 hours. Not because I’d been out partying or anything, just because I could. Admittedly, I did need to wake up at the 13-hour mark to pee, but I did head straight back to the sack and comfortably slept - uninterrupted - for another 14 hours. I’m reliably informed this isn’t normal.

I’ve cut down on sleepy-time in recent years, but suffice to say I’m not enjoying waking up early every morning to go to work. I’m knackered today, despite clocking up a chunky 10 hours sleep last night. Pro-Plus doesn’t work anymore, neither does Red Bull (or any of the supermarket own-brand rip-offs). I guess I’m destined to spend the rest of my working life yawning…

…apparently she is “so beautiful in real life”.

Now you know.

EDIT: Ten minutes later she walked into shot where Paul Merton was filming something in Marks & Spencers at Oxford Circus. As you do.

I’m off to KFC for lunch again today. I bought a couple of KFC discount booklets of eBay (£60-worth of discounts for just £0.99 + postage), so I can justify eating KFC for lunch every day. I mean, by not eating the KFC, I’m just throwing away money aren’t I. Ploy!

Just finished watching The Lone Gunmen, a great spin-off series from The X-Files. Louise and I have spent countless hours since (OK, about half an hour) squabbling over the quality of the show - she thinks it’s pants, I think it’s superb.

Busy today - we’re testing out the PET teaching material at a school in Bromley and I still haven’t finished editing (let alone printed off) the worksheets. Panicking slightly now. Why am I writing here instead of doing something about it then? Er, well, because blogs are fun.

Jonny Hace: The Boy With No Face

http://www.bubblegun.com/toons/archive/hace.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4260706.stm