Procrastinating Genius

Keeping yourself away from news & current affairs programmes is very difficult. After my first aborted attempt at doing so last year I gave up after a few days on my own volition, but this time I'm determined to maintain as low a level of news input as possible.

This means that when in the car I have to be very careful what I listen to as I run the risk of hearing any doom and gloom that is being broadcast on the airwaves and inadvertently crash into a crowd of nuns; and therefore, perversely contribute to the chronic pessimism that I'm trying to avoid. I now have three options whilst driving.

1. Listen to a CD
2. Turn the radio off every time a news bulletin starts
3. Drive in silence.

Driving with the window down and the radio off allows me to relax alot more than if I have a cd on and I simply can't abide Radio 1 & 2 or any commercial radio station. Radio 4 is all well and good but I have had to ban it on account of it's many current affair's programmes. Driving up the M6 on this Saturday just passed I thought I would do something wacky and listen to Radio 3 as I had no memory of ever doing so before. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that It was a rather pleasurable experience. For the majority of my trip it played Jazz music and as someone who has not heard much Jazz before I found it refreshing to listen to. So instead of going back to doom and gloom news stories I think I'm gong to immerse myself in the world of cool Jazz.

Nice

This weekend just past I had a Latte from Costa that tasted terrible.

I have noticed the quality of Costa's latte slowly going downhill but put had this down to bad luck on my part, after all, even Bob Dylan has written a few stinkers. It has also been several weeks since my last visit to one of the franchise's establishments due to a number of factors.

1. Poor service

2. Condescending staff

3. Dirty toilets

4. Broken high chairs

5. Terrible coffee.

I have had abit of a love affair with all things Costa but I'm afraid to say that it is now ranked below Starbucks on the hight street coffee shop list.

The young lady serving me asked if I wanted an extra shot of espresso in my drink which was something that I had never been asked before by any Costa employee. At the time I thought nothing of it but upon pouring the faintly coffee flavoured warm milky drink down my gizzard I realised why she had asked - the coffee content was virtually nill and instead it was like the drink that my mother used to give me at bed time when I was still a bain. I'm sure that they (Costa) have reduced the standard espresso shot they put into each Latte so that the mug (customer) has to spend extra in order to get their caffeine fix. As a caffeine addict I find this deplorable and will be takng the matter up with the relevant human right department - after Ive finished my coffee that is.

I now proclaim Nero to be the king of the high street coffee house. At least you can taste the coffee that you're paying for.

I'm one of those people who can't go more than an hour without checking a news website such as bbc or reuters. After a while however I'm left with the impression that the apocalyspe is just around the corner.

For every news item that details yet another teenager being stabbed there is one telling us that our houses aren't worth as much as duck turd, that we're all clinically obese and couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without collapsing, the ice caps are melting and the only way of combating it is to pay more tax, or that our hospitals are dirty and infect more people than they cure, and that we're either all going to die or need a small mortgage inorder to fill up our cars because Iran, Israel, and the USA seem intent on having a contest to see who's got the biggest WMD's.

I'm in desperate need of a news black out. I tried this last year and felt great while it lasted but like anyone who has tried to give up smoking will know, you have to make sure that you have no access to cigarettes at all. This will mean forbidding my good woman from watching any news programmes in my presence, and attempting to self-govern which websites I go on.

This second point will perhaps be the hardest one to do as I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to the world wide web. Having my own office and an attention span shorter than a goldfish's makes it extremely likely that, at some point during my working day, I will get the overwhelming urge to flick onto Reuters or the BBC for a quick sneaky peak at the days events. For all the good things it does the Internet is the mother of all distractions. Take this blog for example. Hardly anyone except myself (and the kind person who left me a comment on my last post) will ever read it. The same can be said for news websites. They are great at distracting me from what I should be doing but I end up feeling mad about things over which I have no control.

So as of now I'm burying my head in the sand - metaphorically speaking.

Feel free to join in and feel good about society again!

Hello,

Seeing as I'm largely ignored in real life I thought It would be fun to be ignored on a larger scale, so I started a blog.  God knows what I'm going to put in it but I suppose that's part of the fun of being ignored.

Where to start:

My "job"

I'm currently in a job I find dull and unispriring but it does pay a good wage which makes it's unlikely that I will hand my boss a letter of resignation anytime soon.  If I was a few years younger I might be tempted to to throw caution to the wind and leave the accursed employment and start a life as a busker.  The thought of doing that still excites me but once I put my Captain Sensible hat on I soon come back down to earth as I remind myself of the mortgage and family that I have to support.  

Still the weekend is fast approaching and I'm feeling optimistic that we will see a bit of sunshine.

It is July afterall.

I apologise for any grammatical errors but I can't seem to find a spell checker in this editor.

such is life