Week 178: crushing bore

Sunday 14 August 2022

• Some work. Drew a little map for “the people who do the Barbour jackets catalogue” which was nice.

• The haematoma gets less red. At first, the bruise was the shape of Ireland, with an unbruised bit where Northern Ireland would be where my AirPods case had served as a shield. Resting indoors, sometimes with a bag of ice applied, is not so hard when the outdoors is on fire/uncomfortably warm anyway.

• Had some thoughts abut the difficulty of finding hats for plus-sized heads (a size 8 is too tight for me, and anything that says “one size fits all” can fuck off), UPS’s bad website (their quirky vans and smart uniforms look so smart, but do you know who else had smart uniforms?), and things of that nature, but I can’t be bothered.

• Still listening to Steve Allen’s radio programme (usually the podcast thereof). He (or the character he plays) is a strange, unpleasant man; you do not, under any circumstances, “gotta hand it to him”. But I’m drawn to the spectacle, rubbernecking, it’s a compulsion.

  The other day, he was marvelling at things like Flightradar24, and then imagine how I yelped when I heard him say “bus times dot org”:

  Thanks, Lee in Leicester. He was unimpressed – “no, no, it’s not normal, not normal is it?” indeed – and that’s OK. He’s mean-spirited about a lot of excellent things – trade unions, environmentalism, Gemma Collins – esteemed company!

  Given all the hours of radio I don’t listen to, and applying Bayes’s theorem, who knows what other bits of national media coverage there’ve been…

• Some cultural highlights of the week:

  • Enjoyed The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, in which Benjamin Cummerbund illustrates twee pictures of cats. It’s got most of the cast of Flowers in it. At one point Wain falls off the back of a 1922 AEC S-Type, which a crushing bore would point out is just slightly anacronistic because the war hasn’t happened yet in that bit of the film. I hate it when people complain about that sort of thing.

    I have some complaints about Curzon Home Cinema, but it does have a cool playback progress bar.

  • Zodiac, Gregg Wallace’s favourite film. It’s a strange choice of favourite, but I wouldn’t have watched it otherwise, so thanks. I have a “favourite movie” that I use for account security questions but I’ve never seen – maybe Gregg does the same.

  • The second of serie of Industry, set in the banking world of workwear and snorting and fucking.

  • Putting rocket on pizza.