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Saturday, January 22, 2005

Normal Rage

Bit of amateur psychology for you...

I don't get road rage. I don't get house rage. I don't get relly rage. I even know that I definitely don't get air rage... I just get bog standard, normal, no frills RAGE. It's a blessing, I know. It saves so much time that would be spent analysing and pigeonholing certain rage 'types'. I do my best to keep it under control but it has a habit of seeping and one of the best ways to cause it to seep is while driving.

KHAAAAAAAN!

It never used to be like this. There was a time when I would be driving along in my beloved old beige (with a brown vinyl roof) Morris Ital 1.3l and someone would draw alongside at the traffic lights or overtake me and it wouldn't bother me in the least. The fact that I couldn't go faster than 60mph without the car trying to shake the fillings out of my head had something to do with it. That was over ten years ago. I've got a Toyota MR2 Mk2 now. It's not the fastest thing out there but it's faster than most and it can keep up with the rest. When I got it, I had a right blast. It's handles like a go kart in the dry and I think its one of the best looking motors you can get on a budget. It's so much fun.

But something changed and I think it happened recently. My driving is no longer motivated by fun but by rage. Instead of "That's a nice car. If I give it a squirt, I wonder if they'll play" it's now "He is trying to climb into my boot! I must destroy him!" So today, I set out for a trip into Poole and I wasn't going to get angry at ANYTHING. I picked the most relaxing CD I could find and I was off. I drove through my sleepy little town and no problems. Got to the by-pass, cool as a cucumber. I was chugging along at about 45mph and I'd left a decent gap between me and the car in front who was accelerating away. It was all chill. I was in the easy listening section and nothing could harm me.

Boy, we're really going to get it this time. He had his indicator on!

Boy, we're really going to get it this time. He had his indicator on!

Then the spider sense started tingling. A yellow Beetle was coming up behind me fast and I knew they were going to try and overtake me... on a single carriageway... This was UNACCEPTABLE! All I needed to do was drop it into second, cane it up to 6,500 rpm, hit third and that mother would be HISTORY! EAT MY DUST! HAHAHAHAHAHA! This happened in the space of about half a second before I caught myself. DEEP BREATH. It didn't matter. I let them overtake and they ended up crawling all over the back of this Jaguar for about 2 miles while traffic was passing in the other direction. No hassles. I got to the roundabout at the end, the Beetle was going right and had to queue and I was going left so I passed it back with a little smirk. Where did that get you, Hey? All that effort and I still got to the end of the road quicker. You complete MUPPET! HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! Whoa! Stop! Another half second of madness. What's the point? (and here comes the bang...) It's a waste of energy!

I had three other incidents on my trip. A kiddie in a boyed-up Cavalier was trying to get me to race, a hapless 944 cut me up with malice of forethought and a BMW who seemed determined not to let me change lanes. I rode above all of these without so much as a single grunt of Anglo-Saxon profanity.

There's no doubt that my choice of motor causes some of these problems but I seem to have found my neutral space for an afternoon. If I can continue this and chill my boots enough, perhaps I can start having fun again...

Chill your boots. Find your neutral space.

Chill your boots. Find your neutral space.

By the way, the CD was New Adventures In Hi-Fi by REM. (an obscenely underrated album in my opinion) I was very serious about staying chilled...

:: logged by Maff :: 17:55 :: ::

Saturday, January 15, 2005

GRAAAAAPES!

Look at this terrible thing that has happened! (14.5Mb. Do right click -> save as.)

HAHAHAHAAAAA! shouldn't laugh really... HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

:: logged by Maff :: 01:46 :: ::

Friday, January 14, 2005

Sooner or Later II: Rhumba Winches

Some people take my blogging WAAAAY too seriously... Like the time I decided to post some Guns 'n' Roses lyrics... I BLOG FOR MY OWN FUN! I'm not sending messages to anyone. There are no cryptic crys for help. If I was attention seeking, do you think I'd be posting it on a blog that gets...

*actually checks site traffic for the first time in 6 months*

...11 visits a day. I mean, the last Google search to find my site was "rhumba winches". What the HELL are Rhumba Winches..?

*googles rhumba winches*

Blimmy! I'm fourth on the list! It looks like its some dance for wheelchairs...

Anyhoo, just so you know...

1. "Welcome to the Jungle" is a FINE tune. The only message that you should read into that is that I probably listen to Rock and Metal a lot more than you do.
2. I'm fine but still rather irritated, no really, but it doesn't stop them being complete BASTARDS!
3. My toe's fine too. I haven't kicked anything. But thanks for asking... (THIS IS A CRYPTIC MESSAGE, BROUGHT TO YOU BY RHUMBA WINCHES)

:: logged by Maff :: 23:47 :: ::

First Image from Titan

I swear those are rivers and thats a coastline and ocean. Wow!

:: logged by Maff :: 23:01 :: ::

Huygens Lands

Blimmy! Aren't we clever little apes! We managed land a probe called Huygens on Titan. For those who don't know where Titan is, it's a flipping big moon orbiting Saturn and it took seven years to get there so it's quite far away. It's the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere. The Huygens probe piggybacked on the Cassini spacecraft that left Earth in 1997 on a tour of Saturn and its moons.

This thing with Titan is that it's constantly under cloud cover so no-one has managed to see what is under there. They may find oceans of methane and/or a surface of sludgy frozen organic stuff and/or rock... they just don't know. I'm gagging to find out though.

I'm beyond help. It makes me feel like I'm nine again when the Voyager and Pioneer probes reached Jupiter and Saturn and the outer planets :)

I'll probably post more stuff later about what they found.

:: logged by Maff :: 19:05 :: ::

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Sooner or Later

So, my blogging muse went on holiday... again. It happens. But something has happenned that irritates the crap out of me so I think I'll try to vent my spleen here.

I've been made bastard bloody redundant. Bastards. I suppose I understand due to the fact that the company I work for managed to lose £1,500,000 in less than a year. I suppose I've managed to avoid the last two rounds of redundancies but it had to happen sooner or later. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that this was coming, it was just a matter of when. Don't stop it from being crap. Bastards.

The fact is I have been looking for a new job on and off for about the last six months anyway. I have had a couple of knock backs but I keep getting to second and third interviews for some pretty tasty positions but haven't got anywhere. I'm also a bit lazy and not looked at anything for a couple of months. Now it's being forced upon me and it's fricken irritating but, to quote a cliche I've heard tons over the last couple of days, it's the push out the door I needed and at least I don't have to do all that cloak and dagger bollocks anymore.

Still... bastards. A pox on the lot of them!

:: logged by Maff :: 19:13 :: ::

Friday, January 07, 2005

i'm still here

:: logged by Maff :: 01:24 :: ::

reading