Top 10 things which don't involve hacking your own arm off

Ellen and I have just got in from watching Danny Boyle's 127 Hours. It was clever, engaging and utterly harrowing, at least from the the point where protagonist Aron realises that there's only one way out of his predicament. I feel emotionally exhausted. I keep grabbing my arm to make sure it's still there.

With this in mind, Ellen and I felt inspired to create an antidote to phantom stump syndrome. Here is our list of the Top 10 Things Which Don't Involve Hacking Your Own Arm Off.

1. Stroking a cat. This activity can be done with one or two arms, reduces 127 Hours-induced stress and definitely does not involve chopping one of your arms off.
2. Eating ice-cream. The "iron-y" taste of blood dripping oozily into your ice-cream certainly won't improve the flavour, therefore it's not recommended to indulge in this activity if you are or have been, cutting your arm off.
3. Playing the guitar. Not only does playing the guitar not require you to amputate a hand, it actually becomes exponentially more difficult with every one you lack. Facing the music in a life-or-death situation might mean giving it up in the long run.
4. Cuddling. It's a scientific fact that cuddling is stress-relieving. You know what isn't stress-relieving? Hacking your own arm off. I rest my case.
5. Drinking alcohol. This has the added benefit of helping you to forget amputation and general trauma-inducing based-on-a-true-story movie gore. It helped me to delete certain scenes of Irreversible from my memory, I damn well hope it works now!
6. Listening to Kansas' "Carry On My Wayward Son". While the after-effects of having hacked off your own arm won't directly impede your enjoyment of this wonderful song (apart from the drowsiness, nausea and inability to pump both fists in the air), why not just enjoy it with both arms intact - it's better!
7. Man-flu. Acting was invented by sniffly cavemen who really didn't fancy taking out a mammoth that day. It is to them we owe Hollywood, the works of Shakespeare and Premiership football. Lying in bed with lemsip and Call of Duty whilst seriously entertaining the notion that you have ebola is not only secretly quite fun, but also does not involve CRACKING YOUR ARM BONES AND HACKING, HACKING HACKING THROUGH THE MUSCLES, NERVES AND SINEW..
   
8. Wearing a cwtchy dressing gown. Fluffy, snuggly dressing gowns are brilliant for lazy bed days, mooching about the house, and making your loved one breakfast in on a weekend morning. They happen to have 2 sleeves, I don't think it's necessary to say that this is because you don't need to have amputated your own arm to wear one. So don't.
9. Typing a blog. Type. Kinda satisfying, no? Pleasing clicks, the cathartic process of laying out your thoughts and feelings..now pinch your arm. DO IT. Hurts, doesn't it? Well, I'd bet my right arm that's nothing on doing surgery with a penknife.
10. Pretty much everything. That's right. Pretty much everything is better than cutting slowly through the flesh, bone and other gubbins which make up an arm, in order to remove it from your body. Included in this almost all-encompassing statement are: being bitten by a duck, eating yogurt past it's "best by" date, and slipping over in front of children who'll point and laugh.

By Rob and Ellen.

The "n" word

For a group to take a word that was used to oppress them and make it their own is an empowering act. It shows pride, unity, and a shared sense of identity. Perhaps this can re-enforce segregation, but every time it happens it redresses the balance of power between groups, at least symbolically.

As a middle-class white guy who doesn't really know any black guys, the only "n" word I have any right to talk about is NERD. I am one, and I'm damned proud to fly under that banner. Nerd used to mean someone socially awkward with strange hobbies..combining that with body odour and bad dress sense meant that spending time in their company was social suicide. Admittedly, the way I'm painting this is a little bit schoolyard, but it's not untrue. Many people who would call themselves nerds still need a wash and brush-up, but for a while now society has understood that there is a lot more beyond that.

Being a nerd is about being able to define yourself by more than how much you can drink and how many women you can sleep with. More than the TV programs you watch or the clothes you wear. That doesn't mean you have to forsake those things - nerds are the new renaissance men. Interested, nay, obsessed by everything, they - we - reach a point of no longer caring about what anyone thinks of them, because there are a million things worth caring about more. Seeing the beauty in an elegantly written computer program, or understanding the physics of a sunset gives you another set of eyes through which to see the world. Even playing World of Warcraft has to beat watching Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps of an evening. Wanting to know more or do more than anyone can teach you is the genius of human kind and it is the dark force responsible expanding humanity itself. By striving to improve yourself, you better everyone.

Obsession is a part of being a nerd. When I get a new hobby horse - be it Esperanto and languages, computers and programming or learning a new instrument, I will glaze the eyes and chew the ears of my family, girlfriend and friends until one of them tells me to shut up about it. I can't help it. When I fall in love with something, I want to share the joy, and maybe even make the love affair a menage à trois. I have to ride the initial wave of enthusiasm as far as I can to make the thing worthwhile, and obsession is a tool for doing this.

If obsession were the key element of nerdiness, there would be a lot more people being called nerds. Take, for example, every serious sports fan I have ever met. I don't care about sport. What interests me more are the feats of memory that can be performed by your average football enthusiast. My dad, for example, can remember not only the results of matches that happened 20 years ago, but who scored the goals and in which order! I'd bet money he couldn't memorise the order of a shuffled deck of cards, though..why one thing and not the other? Obsession.

He's far from alone in being able to do this. I'm not saying it's a bad thing (on the contrary, it's an astonishing thing, and whatever makes him happy is cool with me), but it seems rather like revving a powerful engine while it's in neutral - it ain't really going to get anyone anywhere, and I think that's the difference. It's the desire to add to a thing, be a part of it, and to better yourself by contributing to that thing.

I have barely started to walk the road to Nerdvana (I wish I could claim that as my own phrase), but I'm definitely on it..am I talking bollocks? Possibly. It's around 2AM and I'm blogging because I can't sleep. I'm pretty much behind all these pro-nerd sentiments, but this could well be complete tosh. Oh well, sorry to put the disclaimer at the end!

To finish up, I want to remind you that the most powerful people in the world are nerds, and google knows where you live. Respect the nerds.
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Language guide

A belated happy new year! A new decade and still no hoverboard..

My computer(s) have been broken for a while, so I couldn't blog, but I replaced my netbook's trodden-on screen the other day, so my life can re-commence!

I have a theory, which has so far stood up to not-very-rigorous tests. It goes as follows: the only two things you need to learn to get by in any language are the words for "thank-you" and "cheers".

Here's my handy list:

• Language Thank-you Cheers
• Esperanto Dankon Je via sano!
• French Merci Sante
• Japanese Oregato Kampai
• Welsh Diolch yn fawr Iechyd da
• Klingon tlho' KaPLAA
• Irish Go raibh maith agat Slainte

These are ones I've actually used (except Klingon!). Can anyone add to this list?

Lies, Tesco and Citylink

I ordered a printer about six weeks ago from Tesco direct. It was on offer and could print photos, but that doesn't matter. It didn't arrive on the specified dates, so I called the Tesco helpline. What followed was two conversations with Tesco phone answerers who believed their computers' version of events over my own.

During the first conversation, the man asked me repeatedly whether I was sure I hadn't received the printer. Oh, silly me, I must not have noticed receiving, signing for, unpacking and installing this comparatively large piece of heavily-packaged office equipment! How unobservant! How foolish! How sorry I am to have wasted your time, phone answerer man! In retrospect, I was far too polite in my actual reply of "no". Apparently it said 'delivered' on his screen, and in some 1984-esque way, that must therefore be the absolute truth. It being contrary to reality was inconsequential, and presumably reality's fault. Despite reality contradiciting his Great Truth, he told me that the courier would be contacted, following which I would receive an explanation and, hopefully, a printer.

This did not happen, so for a second time, I entrenched myself a seemingly infinite loop of ringing, followed over and over by a voice telling me that I had moved forward in the queue, and that my call would be answered shortly. Eventually a morose female voice answered, to assist me with my query/rant. It always takes me by surprise when someone actually answers, because I tune out whatever white noise they're making me pay to listen to and watch the telly. This girl's Computer Of Truth told her that City Link had reported that the package was delivered to "a secure location at the back of the property". I live in a terraced house, behind which there is a skip, so City Link are clearly thieving, lying bastards. Morose girl seemed surprised that my perception of reality did not seem to correspond with her computer's. Once again, I was told me that the matter would be investigated and that I would be informed of the situation.

That was two days ago, and I know that through a combination the ineptness of the Tesco customer service department and the thieving, lying bastardness of Citylink, I will have to phone them again.

Anyone been here before?

Belgium

My girlfriend and I went to Brussels last weekend for a short break. It's not an obvious holiday destination for a hip young couple, but it was discounted, and there is a recession on.

If you consider that the things Belgium is famous for are waffles, beer, and chips with mayonnaise, then it starts to make a bit more sense!

The bad stuff was that the exchange rate is almost painfully bad, the weather was positively Welsh, and lots of places open apparently when and if they feel like it, especially at weekends. That aside, we had a good time!

Ellen and I are veteran mini-breakers. You learn quickly that whatever you plan to do, you won't get to do most of it in just two days, so the only planned cultural visits were to a music museum and a chocolate museum. The former was obviously much more for me. I love seeing the weird, dead evolutionary branches of various intruments, and this place had eight floors filled with them. Seeing violinophones and things that look like a cello having sex with a piano reminds me of dinosaurs and dodos and all things stuffed in natural history museums.

The chocoate museum had a bunch of information about the origins of cocoa beans, preparation of chocolate, principal exporters, traditional methods and suchlike stuck all over the walls, but everyone was ignoring all that to watch the live demonstration of how posh chocolate is made, complete with free samples, by an elderly Belgian chocolatier. Win.

I wouldn't want to mislead anyone into thinking that we spent a great deal of time absorbing Belgian culture, because we spent a lot more time drinking it. It's not an exaggeration to say that nowhere around the centre had fewer than 50 kinds of beer available, and that most of those were delicious. I'm a born-again beer drinker, blond beers are ace. Ellen is a vodka/wine drinker by disposition, but jumped right in at the deep end with a Bush Tripel, weighing in at 10.5%. It was good, and now my girlfriend drinks beer! In fairness, she mostly drank girly fruit beers after that, but kudos to her, nonetheless!

It was an expensive weekend. However, once we realised that Belgians do not check tickets for anything, we were able to save money by not buying any. I used the Belgian metro for free for 48 hours!

Another cultural difference is that Belgians don't know how to queue. This is angering, and surprisingly shocking to a Brit. It was nothing that muttered curses weren't able to solve, though.

Cardiff Half Marathon!

I finished! I didn't die!

The full details on my time are here. Long story short, I finished in 1:56:57. That's a personal best. Yesssssss!

It's not too late to sponsor me, just follow this link. Retrospective sponsorship has the benefit of knowing that I've done what I said I would!

My legs ache and my underarms are chaffed. What an unusual pain..

Rob

Update

I tend to leave ages between blogs, the have brief periods where I blog a lot, just because of a waxing and waning level of enthusiasm. Also, because I've been doing proper band blogs on The Automatic's website (I haven't even done any of those lately so that doesn't hold much water..that's pretty much a lie, in fact).

I've sort of abandoned my year of doing new things, because I fell behind and I'd rather catch up than add to the list of half-finised projects I already have. I have a small notebook, which is gradually filling up with ideas for short stories which I actually want to write, that's the main one I want to complete. I continue to learn Esperanto, my interest in which has grown beyond a hobby into something else. It is more than a second language because of the movement around it, so mentions of it or articles about it appear frequently on the web. These have led me to develop a big interest in languages and to discover some cool podcasts as well - I have to recommend the "Stuff You Should Know" podcast from howstuffworks.com. Their last edition was about zombies! I regularly meet with two other south-walian Esperantists, one of whom is denaskula (one who has spoken Esperanto all her life), so she's a handy person for a lernanto like me to know! We somewhat grandly call ourselves the Cardiff Esperanto Society.

My attempt at making air conditioning ended with mixed results. These included frustration, a wet floor, and the sense that thermodynamics doesn't want to be my friend. It sort of worked, but I couldn't find suitable copper tubes, and they were really quite important.

The Cardiff Half Marathon is less than three weeks away now (donate at http://www.justgiving.com/robin-hawkins, you know you want to. Go on, you'll basically be buying good karma) and I'm not really ready. I ran 8.2 miles two days ago (thanks, phone GPS) at my own leisurely pace and found it surprisingly bearable. I only stopped because I got hungry. That was, however, with quite a few random stops to enjoy the scenery and pet random dogs, so I need to up my game a little, maybe even use a performance-enhancing montage.

While I was on that run, I went up to Llanishen reservoir, sneaked through a fence and ran around there. It's quite eerie, but very beautiful and calm. Some kids were swimming in it, presumably unaware of the fact that reservoirs have a big plughole-type-thing at the bottom that can suck you down and turn you into a beverage. I admire their adventurous spirits, and I hope I don't end up drinking one of them. Next time I'll take a picture and post it!

Until next time, folks!

Rob


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