where art collides philosoperontap

It’s uplifiting. The conservatory doors are wide open. The birds are singing away happily knowing that they have a beautiful sunny day ahead. The lawn needs a bit of a cut but there is no rush. I was going to cut down the undergrowth at the bottom of the garden but I think I’ll leave it until tomorrow. Manyana. I’ve got some lively musing streaming over the wireless interweb. Radio Oxford fwiw.

I realise  I should be tuned in to Radio Lincolnshire and news of the Waddington Air Show but an offspring is reading the traffic and travel news in Oxford so I am being a dutiful parent. I’ve been to the Air Show a couple of times and it is a fantastic day out. Long queues very long queues on the roads though so if you’re thinking of going you need to get there very early. Waddington is probably three miles from our house and the cars back up on the road outside us. You have been warned.

I don’t know why we don’t go to the Air Show more often, considering it is such a good day out. The only times we have been are when one or two of the kids has been playing with the school band in one of the hangars. This is the best way to do it as we get a free family ticket and a car pass so that we can park right next to the hangar and not have to join the unwashed masses in the public car park. This also makes it easy to nip back to pick up the picnic.

Although there have been wet weekends for the Air Show on balance the weather has usually been great. On one of our visits one of the kids forgot to bring a hat and I had to share mine. The concept of hat sharing is quite novel I think. Probably not original though. Hey you can’t live your life doing completely new things all the time. Most of it has already been done before – taking a shower, making the toast, cutting the grass. You get my drift.

You’d never get anything done if it all had to be new and original. Spend all your time doing nothing trying to think of something new. I suppose you could cut the grass in a different way. Make interesting patterns with the lawnmower that gradually disappear as more of the grass gets cut. That would be a valid “new thing” because each pattern would be different even if the concept might not itself be new. You can’t spend all your time cutting the grass in a new way though because once cut the grass would need to be left a week or so to grow back to a cuttable length again. You could cut if very slowly but I don’t think it would fly. You are going to have to think of other things.

Paining a big landscape watercolour could be one way of doing it. Unfortunately I’m not a very good artist. Also I don’t have any watercolour paints and in any case this is just a mental exercise. You don’t actually have to do any of the things being discussed here although I’m not stopping you. You should let me know what happens. Take a pic of the grass half way through the mow for example and send it to me on Twitter. Simple to do and a highly effective way of sharing. I might even retweet it if I thought it was good enough to share. You could find that everyone on the planet ends up seeing your picture of the pattern in your lawn. Not that everyone is online yet but I’m sure someone would print off a copy and post it somewhere public so that everyone else could see.

The only drawback with that level of publicity is that you would find your house besieged by the press all wanting to take “exclusive” pictures of your lawn. You would spend all your time doing interviews and never have enough time to cut the grass. If you charged a fee for the interview you might be able to afford to hire a gardener to cut the grass for you but that would somehow defeat the object of the exercise. I imagine, and this is pure hypothesis you understand, people would even hire airplanes to fly over your back garden for photographs of your lawn. Google would redo its satellite shot of your house to incorporate the pattern on the lawn. How cool is that. Pre-pattern images of your lawn would begin to sell at a premium although that would not last long because we all know how easy it is to copy images on tinterweb.

This whole sad line of reasoning is of course built on the premise that there is actually a pattern to be viewed so you’d better make sure you don’t finish cutting all the lawn like  I originally suggested and leave  a pattern. Think how disappointed everyone would be if there wasn’t one after all the fuss. You would start getting adverse comments on Facebook and Twitter. People can be very cruel you know. It may all stem from jealousy and their own pathetic inadequacy but that is real life.

The alternative is not to stick your head above the parapet. Don’t do anything original. Nobody will then notice you and you can go to your grave in soon to be forgotten ignominy. You may get a few people along at the funeral. The odd passer-by and a priest, if you are that way inclined, paid to do a job of work.

“Shed not a tear for this departed brother for he was not different.” You may now cry if you think that person is you.

3rd Law Part 48 here

3rd Law Part 50 here

One of the features of the 3^rd Law and its perceived ability to manipulate time is the perpetual day. You don’t notice the change between day and night and to all intents and purposes there is no night. This does assume that you have the stamina to last that long and that in the process of continuously getting up to go and make hot drinks so that they can go cold you don’t look out of the window, or at least don’t notice what is outside the window which is perfectly feasible.

There is also a counter argument that what we are talking about is the perpetual night. Some people think that this is a reflection of an individual’s personality – the glass half full/half empty debate. I’m not so sure. Who is to say that a creature of the night isn’t just someone currently working a night shift though if I was that person’s employer I’d want to know why they spent most of their shift surfing tinternet. If I was on night shift I’d want to spend the whole time surfing. It would make the time go more quickly. That is what the 3^rd Law is all about.

It is easy to imagine people wanting to join a 3^rd Law club. Somewhere for like minded people to meet up and ignore each other by staring into their screens. This club might as well be internet based. Makes sense. People would communicate via IM and leaving comments in each others’ Facebook or Twitter streams. It happens already. We just didn’t know it was because of the 3^rd Law.

There is a dark side of the 3^rd Law and that is addiction. It isn’t something most people like to talk about. This is partly because the addicts are hooked to their screens and don’t talk but also because they are in denial. This addiction is of the worse kind. It can be totally invisible, except to those closest to you who notice the gradual degradation in your ability to communicate, other than via social networking platforms.

For families blighted by 3^rd Law addiction the yellow post it note is a thing of the past. Their only way of getting a message across to the addict is through the computer. Sticking a post it note on the screen of the computer is to be avoided as it can provoke violence. The only real answer is to call in the professionals and you know what? This form of addiction is so new that there are no professionals. The medical fraternity is still coming to terms with the problem.

3^rd Law addiction is so new that it is possible to attract government grants if you say that you are studying it. There have been few takers of the grant because not only do families not want to come to terms with the fact that one or more of them is an addict but also, being a government grant, the number of forms that have to be filled in require a week off work to get it right because the slightest mistake results in the rejection of the grant by a civil servant who is incentivised to save the government money. Job creation schemes gone mad I say.

This isn’t entirely fair on the civil servant because 3^rd Law addicts themselves have been known to apply for the grant and spend the money on expensive jars of coffee. Remember this is coffee that gets made but never completely drunk. It makes sense to stop wasteful public spending like this.

Coffee manufacturers (growers?/both?) love the 3^rd Law. Profits have shot up since the advent of tinternet and this is despite the fact that the environment that fertile ground for the 3^rd Law is the same environment that facilitates online shopping and finding the best deal for coffee. Despite this the price of coffee seems to remain high. No accusations of cartel have yet been made…

It is quite possible that there is no internet near to the slopes of Brazil, Colombia and Kenya where coffee is known to be grown. I could look it up but I wont. I quite like the smell of coffee but the taste rarely lives up to the promise. Especially when it has gone cold which it frequently does, obv.

As I write this I have just realised that I made a pot of tea about half an hour ago. Bloody 3^rd Law! Stewed tea is something I have had to get used to since my head started getting into the 3^rd Law. It’s just as prevalent as cold tea but worse in a way. You have to put up with cold stewed tea instead of just cold tea. Huh.

3rd Law Part 45 here

3rd Law Part 47 here

I had a dream. Normally I don’t remember dreams. This one must have been on the edge of wakedness, if that’s a word. It is now. So I remember some aspects of this dream.

I was living somewhere on the coast when some massive disaster threatened the community. I think it was the threat of invasion from somewhere. The leaders of the community decided to evacuate to the beach where for some reason it would be safer. We all trooped into a jumbo jet (might have been another bit type of plane – it didn’t feature in the details of the dream) that had crash landed on the cliff edge above the beach and slid down the emergency chute onto the beach.

The beach was a hive of organisation with people handing out emergency rations and directing us towards shelters that were being built out of sheet materials that had miraculously appeared from nowhere. After a while I noticed that the shelters were being built below the line for low tide. This advice was contemptuously ignored so I took the family back to our house.

At some point a deputation of invaders arrived to look around. The only people left were us. We had in the meantime either managed to fortify our house with an unbeatable array of defences and weapons or we went out to greet the invaders and had a friendly chat with them – what had all the fuss been about? I don’t think I fully finished off the story in the dream but that was the gist of it.

Whaddaya think? Do any other readers have a strange dream they can remember. Don’t worry. I’m not about to set off on some line of psychoanalysis here, though I might if the dream is juicy enough. My dream wasn’t the Martin Luther King visionary type of dream though without getting a shrink in to look at it I can’t 100% guarantee that.

We might get invaded by aliens and have to hide on the beach because for some strange genetic reason stemming from the planet of their birth their vision is restricted to above cliff level. The planet of the cliff level visionaries. Had someone invented the varifocal lens on their planet that could have sorted their eyesight problems and allowed them to see below the line. Of course that would have meant we beach dwellers would have been toast. What a bit of luck!

The one thing that amazes me about the whole story is that a planet of aliens intelligent enough to invent intergalactic travel couldn’t invent a simple varifocal lens. I’m not sure what these aliens looked like but I do have this strong gut feeling that they were from a different galaxy. Otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it.

It’s important to get these things right. Some sort of journalistic integrity applied to the 3^rd Law. It’s funny that a physical law of tinternet should be able to engender integrity as part of its sphere of influence. I keep finding new facets to the 3^rd Law don’t I? If you’ve just joined the conversation at this point then you might not know what I’m talking about. In fact I might not know what I’m talking about most of the time but that, dear reader, is just, one, of, those, things. Commas inserted there to create a pause between words though the sentence didn’t really need it. That emphasis was unnecessary. Dear reader.

I must stop calling you dear reader. I’m sure you would prefer me to use your first name. Ok Leonard it is then. For now. Until I feel like calling you something different. After all it would be namist to stick with one reader’s name and I don’t even know if Len is reading. Notice I slipped in the abbreviation there. I don’t know if he is a Len or a Leonard. It matters to some people. Lesley, Les etc. Doesn’t matter to me.

I might have upset Len here but it’s one of the risks you take when you live life on the edge, when life is governed by 3^rd Law rules. Life is short. Get over it. Len. Les. Des. Dave. Phil. Go out and cut the grass if it bothers you. The 3^rd Law isn’t available as a podcast. Yet. Good idea though. Might put it to the publisher sometime. Sometime in the far distant future in another galaxy where time stands still long enough for me to do so. Time standing still is the polar opposite to the 3^rd Law. It’s the dark matter of the internet. We are pretty sure it exists but nobody has been able to find it yet. Internet dark matter could be the source of lots of problems: page not found, emails not arriving, twitter fail whale. Yea yea I’m sure there’s a good reason but the unenlightened medieval believer in alchemy, superstition and the power of prayer in me tells me that there are dark forces at play here.

It’s always obvious with hindsight isn’t it? It takes someone to make that initial discovery, the eureka moment, to make it thus. I like that work eureka. Wasn’t sure whether it should have been capitalised. Eureka. Presumably it is Greek seeing as it is attributed to Archimedes though how that bit of the story got kept over the centuries of its telling I don’t know. Maybe the first thing Archimedes did after running naked from his bath and down the street shouting eureka was to realise his predicament, run home to grab a towel to cover his embarrassment and site down to pen his exact thoughts. After all it was one of those momentous moments in history. One you would want faithful capturing (of!?). You have to get these things right and I know for a fact that ole Archimedes would not have had a smart phone to immediately record his findings before he forgot.

It would have been a bit awkward having someone recording him running down the street in the nude anyway. The nude bits here are what I recall reading about the event in my youth and may not be totally accurate. However seeing as there was a bath involved there may be some truth in it.

I quite often whip out my phone to record a moment, lest I forget.

3rd Law Part 44 here

3rd Law Part 46 here

The toast pops up and I spring into action. Not quite the same as the whistle going and me climbing over the parapet to go into the line. Actually nothing like it at all so the analogy isn’t a particularly good one. The toast has been buttered and consumed in rapid order. We are off out for a Saturday night in Newark to watch a popular music concert. Madness you say, knowing what home loving types we are. Yes indeed Madness I say. Night Boat to Cairo, Baggy Trousers, Embarrassment etcetera etcetera etcetera.

I do like Madness though when I last saw them which must have been five years ago in Brum I remember saying to one of my pals “the didn’t do Come on Eileen. It’s one of my faves”. Course turns out Eileen was not a Madness song it was Dexys Midnight Runners. It’s a mistake anyone could have made. I made it. Haha. Hah. Wouldjabelieveit!

Next day and it’s my day, apparently. Father’s day. Not my birthday. I got a card from my daughter in Durham. Very nice. She sent it a month ago. Nothing like making sure it gets there in time. How often do you wake up realising it’s your little nephew Johnny’s birthday tomorrow and have to rush out and buy him a last minute card and hope it gets there in time.

Doesn’t happen in our house. Anne is super organised like that. If it was left to me it would happen every time. Years and years ago I bought a job lot of Happy Birthday Father cards from a closing down sale at a stationers shop. There were seven identical cards with the same picture of a red car on the front. My dad got the same card seven years running. Not sure if he ever noticedJ It amused me.

I do the writing of cards in our house. Something a bit more than “hope you have a great day, love xxx”. I can’t be more specific than that because every message is different. Tailored towards its recipient. The biggest problem I have with writing messages in cards is my handwriting. My handwriting is terrible and has grown steadily worse since computers arrived on the scene which is quite a long time ago now.

Word processors have killed off the art of handwriting. It occurs to me that there could be a typed equivalent of your handwriting becoming more of a scrawl as you get older and that is the number of typing errors you make increases. Doesn’t mean to say these errors are visible to the reader thanks to the power of the spellchecker. Means it takes longer to type though. I type pretty fast but sometimes find myself going over stuff and correcting it which is the bit that takes the time really.

Still I prefer typing to handwriting. My hand always used to get tired as I recall. Now I just get RSI! I went through a phase of having to use the mouse with my left hand because my right wrist got sore doing it. Seemed to have phased that one out and am back on the right hand now though half the time I use the pad on the laptop instead of the mouse.

Must have been a real pain in the old days when people used typewriters. The old fashioned ones with the levers that swing over and bashed the paper when you tapped a key. I can picture them now. A lone author hunched over his desk tapping away long into the night. A pile of scrunched up paper overflowing from the waste paper basket at the side of his desk. Several coffee cups on the table, all with some cold dregs in them.

I could add an ashtray into the scene. It would be authentic. The thought of the smell makes me feel sick though so I won’t. Especially as the pile of cigarette stubs grows.  You won’t find no pile of cigarette stubs in an ashtray in this house nosiree. Don’t even think we have an ashtray. Anyone daft enough to want to smoke has to go out into the garden.

The other thing that isn’t used a lot in this house is the sugar. Sure we use icing sugar and castor sugar in baking but the granulated stuff that goes in tea and coffee doesn’t get used. In the past whenever we’ve had some building work doing it’s been interesting to see how quickly the sugar goes down compared to normal. When I was a kid I’d have a couple of sugars in a milky coffee but at some stage of the game I weaned myself off it. Did it gradually by cutting down the amount I was using and eventually it went completely. Now the idea of sugar in tea or coffee makes me shudder a little although I have been known to stick a little in a latte if the coffee has been on the bitter side. Cue advert with woman smarting at bitterness of her coffee when a bloke arrives shaking coffee beans in one hand and holding a jar of Nescafe in the other. Might have been some other brand of cawfee but the concept is there.

On the subject of adverts I remember the time when I was a kid there was a strike on tv. Not sure if it was a ban on adverts or what but I do remember that when normal service was resumed I seemed to think that the adverts were more entertaining than the programmes they cut into. Probably have bigger budgets. Nowadays adverts are a pain in the arse. Not that I’m a big TV watcher but there are one or two compelling shows like Timewatch (yawn say the kids) and Storage Hunters (yippee say the kids).

I’m in to things like Timewatch even though there can be long stretches where very little happens and even when something does happen it’s usually just someone finding a tiny fragment of a bowl at which point a team of experts hurriedly gathers around to pronounce it early twelfth century or late 11^th but not the circa 800AD that they had been looking for.

Storage Hunters is so bad it’s compelling. Yesterday I switched the box on in the middle of the day to see if there was any sport and found to my huge joy that SH was on. Imagine my disappointment when I found that I’d already seen it

3rd Law Part 43 here

3rd Law Part 45 here