Witching Hour

Carrying on from the last post, where I wrote about things that I see from my bedroom window- my neighbour's neighbour (no, not me you fool, on their other side!!! Ugh) has a lamp in his back garden that goes off if anything goes past it. Kinda like an intruder lamp thing. Only it's utterly pointless because it's perpetually flickering into life and unless he's VERY unfortunate, I'm beginning to suspect that most of these are false alarms...

So I'm leaning out of my window and happen to be gazing in that direction when it comes to life, out of the blue. Now, we had one of these lamps in our back garden when I was like, 8. I remember how I used to have to dance in front of it and wave my arms and legs around to get it to register. 

As this-VERY BRIGHT, I must say- light bursts to life, its intensity is such that it illuminates the surrounding four gardens on either side, including mine. My eyes dart around for the culprit. A cat? A fox? A ninja?! Nothing. His clear, open lawn remains a vast expanse of nothing. As do the neighbours'...

Now I live in such an area where every garden is surrounded on all sides by a neighbouring garden, save the front end where the house is. So each garden has another one situated to its left, right and back. 

Behind the house with the useless burglar alarm is a garden with an enormous tree. The bane of my mothers gardening, when she was around. Its leaves would scatter come autumn time, filling our garden throughout winter and its looming presence would leave our own shrubbery devoid of sunlight in the spring and summer. She HATED that tree...

Well recently, since this guy's light has been flicking into life, I've noticed that it casts a really peculiar shadow on the wall of the property it belongs in. The walls of this house are a pale brown brick- a generic colour of relatively newly built houses. The roof is composed of dark charcoaly black tiles, such that shadows cast on it barely register. And as such, the thick, low hanging branches are the only ones to cast a shadow. Now, when I count them on the tree, there are around 11, but because of how they overlap, they create five distinct blocks of shade, shaped eerily like that of fingers on a hand. 

Each "finger" and "thumb" seems to be coiled around a first floor bedroom window of this house, only barely touching the frame.

It's strange to think that their electricity could be connected somehow or that his lamp could really draw THAT much power, but when I was looking at the shadow, I noticed the bedroom light was flickering. And I link the two things because as soon as the super-stupid burglar alarm switched off, the flickering of the light stopped.

I suppose I'm lucky I live alongside this burglar alarm, I'd hate to be the kid that sleeps in the room directly in front of it. All that light being poured straight into my room every night. I assume it's a kid's room because the bedroom light is incessantly switched on throughout the night.

Anyway, I'm shattered tonight. More soon. Goodnight.

Crack Fox.

I think I might live near one of the following things:

•A vampire (a mashed up screeching zombie like one)

•A crow.

•A child possessed by a demon.

•A sound effects technician.

•An animal that finds itself suffocating on a regular basis.

Every once in a while I hear this noise from outside my window. It sounds like all of the above. My double glazed window is shut, yet this screeching/belching sound penetrates to the extent that it sounds incredibly shrill and piercing.

Now, anyone that's seen Salem's Lot knows what happens when you look out of your window at night.

Your recently deceased vampire brother hypnotises you and kills you and sires you into one of the undead minions of Nosferatu. So fuck that!

But yeah, that sound happens and as a matter of fact, it just occurred prior to me writing this. One thing I can see outside is my neighbours' trampoline. 

Once, in the warmer summer evenings when I'd have my window ajar, I heard the clattering of the material, followed by a thud. Followed by the clattering of the material, some scuffling around. Followed by a thud. This was really odd sounding and late at night - we're talking 2-3am so no kids playing outdoors. I look out of my window and there's a fox rummaging around my neighbours' enclosed trampoline, trying to get out. The more he struggled, the more he'd bounce. He was whacking his head against the protective netting around the trampoline and the elasticity of it caused him to skimper backwards, roll over and bounce back on all fours. Poor thing actually looked quite distressed. I was considering getting up when suddenly he managed to find the hole in the netting, and as if expecting resistance bounded his head trough the gap and summersaulted inelegantly out of the enclosed trampoline and into the neighbours garden. He then immediately went on to bash his head straight into the neighbours fence, turn around and run STRAIGHT BACK INTO THE TRAMPOLINE!!!!!!

That pissed me off.

He carried on doing that for a long part of the night.

Notice how I assumed the fox was male? I dunno- even with how much the fox annoyed me, I kinda dislike girls right now... I wouldn't even call the retarded fuckwit brainless head bashing fox a girl.

Right now, girls are Nazis.

Girls are racist paedophiles.

Girls are the opposite of Batman.

#SixSeasonsAndAMovie

Ah, only that damn girl would understand that I'm referencing Community.

Ah I was in such a good mood writing this as well. Fuxxor....

Going back to that sound I mentioned at the start of this post- it sounds crazily demonic. I've been out to a sheesha place where a group of fully grown men are discussing their beliefs re: possession and their "personal" experiences of it. It's really interesting to hear their views. I suppose I grew up with a very analytical approach to things. While I'm religious- I accept that morality can't be dictated by humans, our perspective is just too narrow and as such, the idea that we should govern by man made rules is scary(+the idea that we came about out of random nothingness- that's replacing the, I'll admit, rather out there notion of a deity, with the ridiculous theory that contradicts itself). 

But while, yes I'm religious, I never gave much thought to the more.... Spiritual aspects of beliefs. Things like Jinns and possessions and dark juujuu (mighty boosh).

But these guys!!!

They explained the things I mustn't do. Like go out at night. And cross rivers. Wee on trees. Something about gutters. But yeah- very surreal experience. Confounded by this video:

Make of it what you will...

Prank? Real?! Who knows...

And what a strange topic for my return to writing...?! But anyway: hope you enjoyed this.

Bye bye miss American pie.

Hey! This is awkward. Typing on my new iPhone 4. Way cool, very crisp- it seems easier to hit the buttons but maybe that's just a sort of placebo effect of eating how pretty and sharp the pixels are and how much better the touch screen is apparently. But whatever. It's still got bloody predictive text so every once in a while a word I write is mistaken for snout. Which is a little annoying. Anyway, I've recently been told- not asked- by many people I know to stop blogging and to go back to writing notes on my facebook page. Apparently they used to be better. I reckon they're just too lazy to type in looserballs in a search engine. Anyway, this is probably Bon voyage for the meantime while I consider going back to facebook. If I have the time I'll try and copy/paste stuff here.

On a side note, I wa on a rail replacement bus the other day and had an Indian dude say the next stop is north greenwhich. He pronounced it green witch. Sooooooo funny. Many people on the bus couldn't help but laugh. Awe poor small Indian man. :(

Late night peep show

This is gonna have to be a short one. Its already half twelve and i have work in the morning. It's been a while so i thought I'd make an effort. Whats new with you lot? I went football on yesterday- well, technically two days ago, and all was well, same old, same old, though the air con was off and we were playing indoors. On a hot day. Not cool. Oh and to top it off, i had a burly big man kick the football with all his strength towards me while I was in goal. Fortunately, my face got in the way...

It was so bad, the game stopped and even people on his team, not only him, came up to me to apologise. Man, it hurt. But nothing compared to how bad it hurt the following morning. I had to ibuprofen my ass up and take the day off work. My nose has swollen. MY nose. Yeah, and it was a big one to start with. Boy, it's so big I'm getting back ache...

On the plus side, I got out of goal...

Aside from insulting myself though, the main reason i decided to write today was to pose you all a question. I have a mate who's been insane about his ex for, what, a year now and has been pining over her madly. Insanely, the week he finally mans up and gets eyes for someone new, out of the BLUE she texts him and asks how he is. A few texts later and he's head over heels about her, almost completely discarding the new girl he fancied. She- the ex- broke up with him for another dude. As far as he was aware, she was still with him. Or possibly not. Who knows?

Which is why he should, in my opinion, ask her if she's with anyone. Given he has feelings for her.

Unfortunately, it turns out she's not with her ex anymore. This is unfortunate because now, there's no brick wall to stop him coveting her. If she was with someone, it would be unethical of him to be sneaking around behind some dudes back talking to his girlfriend. Especially since he's been burnt by her sneaking around behind his back, you'd think he'd appreciate how much that sucks. But Now he has a cart blanche to dream away his ikkle love dreams. Which sucks because, come on... Wheres the me time?

She only recently broke up with her last boy buddy so to me he seems to be the dependable rebound texting buddy who's either a form of gratification for her, or just a temporary replacement for the conversations she's accustomed to having with her ex but he's simply getting his hopes up for nothing. And when it all come a crashin down- when she finds her feet with her next man, the consistency of her texts to him will reduce and then I'll be having to hear his bewildered moaning incessantly.

Am i wrong? Is it alright for him to get so excited? Should i just help the dude out whatever he decides?

Ahhhhh, what do you peeps know? You're on a bloody blog called looserballs for flips sake.

And now, as it turns to one, i should call it a night.

Hello

Previously, i said one of my posts was the most well travelled of the lot. Well, this one could well give it a run for it's money. There's even a bit of time skipping where we'll be going from the present to bits i wrote earlier to... Well, more of the present. Only, more recent than the older bits of the present. This has also been the most time consuming post I've written. I've contemplated writing, written, re written deleted and then done the whole process again, many times. Why, just now, I've had to re-write this whole paragraph be use my application on my iPad crashed. Wondeful.

Let's begin:

I've just come out of the bathroom, my lunch at kebabish- NEVER go to kebabish in manor park (actually, NEVER go to manor park)- has ensured me and my bathroom get close together at least twice an hour... WShing my hands, i came too close to the faucet and caused the water to splash all over the place, especially my jeans. Meaning now, having entered the living room, I'm being offered my niece's nappies. Apparantly in China, adult sized nappies are being sold for workers who live in distant, more rural parts and have to commute for hours on end to get to work in the city. I wouldn't really have put much credibility to this, had i not seen a few YouTube clips of commuters being crammed into trains at stations.

And you thought the central line was bad?

Word of warning, Ive noticed my ipads space key is being lame. De-jumble words as necessary...

But imagine that? The thought of pooing while you're sat next to someone on a train. Into a diaper. But the concept is, those trains are sooooooo packed, the people are practicallu stacked onto one another. You'd actually feel the... Bowel movements.

Classic thoughts by yours truly.

Let's go a few hours back on my short train trip home:
Im sat reclined slightly on a train home from manor park. Im using the overground for a change. It's spacious. And comfortable. Oddly. The last time i used one of these trains was on a trip to south end. Which I hope to be visiting tomorrow, as it happens. It's not often we get a heatwave in Britain. And on a weekend im not working on to boot. So hurray for the beach! Listening to "accidentally in love" from the soundtrack of shrek. Shrek 1. Im still dubious about shrek 4. One and two were fantastic, but three and that short Christmas film they did were horrid. Let's hope they go more towards matrix mocking and prince Charles slamming than they do squeezing every last dollar out of a movie franchise.

I actually got a ticket for the train today. It's a journey that begins and ends at stations where there are no barriers. So i could have jumped off scotch free... And was tempted to..........

But thats stealing. And we're trying to rebuild this economy people...

A paper ticket that was so redundant that i didn't even put it through a single barrier. There was nothing for me to actually make use of that ticket with.

Let's come back to the present:

That trip to the beach has been cancelled now. Damn having to please so many people. I know it's not the MOST appropriate use of the phrase, but bend your minds to make it work: a camel really is a horse by committee.

This app for typing on my ipad is actually kinda buggy. They need to release an update.

As much as i like work, there's a limit to how long i plan to be working in local government. I mean. It's nice and it could be seen by some as a career, but i don't see myself as a lifer... Not since they're introducing a bloody ugly uniform. UNIFORM! Im suddenly back at bloody o2.... Speaking of which im counting down the darn minutes till the white iPhone 4 comes out!!! Hopefully shipped without a signal glitch in the bottom left hand corner of the phone...

The iPhone4-
it video calls!
It records HD video!
It has a flash for the camera!
It multi tasks!
It groups your apps!
It's smexy looking!

It's just... SOMETIMES, it wont make phone calls.

More often than not if you're left handed...

Damn...
But brand loyalty and that, it'll take a much bigger cock up than a phone that doesn't make phone calls to keep the hordes away from buying needlessly and heedlessly.

I want one.

My point stands though. My local(and by that i mean sheesha joint, not pub- come on, I'm Asian) is fantastic. I go to it regularly and they treat me well. I am without a shadow of a doubt, a very loyal customer. Coffee inn, seriously, check it out. And it's because when they're at their peak, they smash it. The sheesha rocks, the T bone steak is tender, oozing with gravey, the home made chips are soft, fluffy, the cakes, they even do 'dud pattee' an asian tea with loads of milk and a tea bag. No watery crap. Good stuff. And even when the sheesha is rough and tastes like coal, even when the t bone is well done rather than rare, when the portions of chops are meagre and the dud pattee is more... Pg tips... I like it better than any other place.

I was at the local today actually, and had a great experience. I've been listening to music really loudly on my bose (tm) (boo yah!) headphones and yeah, its cool. But im deaf. Almost. And I've sort of devised this way of mixing up lip reading and listening carefully. Being deaf doesn't really help when your talking to customers and trying to listen to their problems about abuse at home and needs for council tax.

"WHAT?! Your husband hit you with a WHAT?! A gardening fork? WHAT??"

no no no no no. Not acceptable.

Worse though, (and it IS worse than embarrassing a customer when you jeopardise your sheesha) was today at coffee inn. The dude made us what was possibly the best sheesha ever. Nuances is the word i would use to describe how the three different flavours were enveloped about one another. Fantastic. Though inevitably as the coal sits on top for any period of time, the flavour becomes harsher. The guy who was with us told us that blowing in, rather than sucking would remedy that. So i did. When he said don't blow harder, i only just heard- but didn't make out the "don't", looked up to do my combo of lip reading and listening to make out the "blow harder".

And so i did. I huffed and i puffed with ALL my might...! And kinda broke the sheesha. Liquid oozed out from the top, the coal on top kinda bounced and fell off the tray and every one else in the room looked up in silence...

Oh crap....

The guy, obviously quite taken aback by my.... I'll admit it, retardedness, shook his head and fixed me up another one.


So, so nice.

I also have this really weird habit of trying to sop from local shops as much as I can instead of going to bigger businesses. Keep the big man at bay and help out the little guy. And that's why i try to go to these Easter European/ algerian coffee shops that have sprouted along the high street instead of starbucks evilness. I used the same altruistic (yes, altrustic- i could save a bucket load going to bigger supermarkets!) approach when i walked past this kinda run down dime-store barber that's near my house. Ok admittedly, I'd pay MORE for a Toni and guy haircut, but that's by the by. The last time i went to a salon they gave me a fringe. Or at least tried to. For flips sake, im BALDING! The place i DONT have hair is in the bloody fringe region!

So i didn't risk him giving me an "awesome" hair style; "blade one on the side and two on top, blend it if you feel up to the task with a 1.5 in the middle, no biggie if you can't"..

Or so i told him. The dude smashed it up. Bladed all over the sides, line in my hair, all the bells and whistles. I was so proud of his work, i let him shave me. And that too, with expert precision, towards the end he was intricately chissling off individual hair around my line. I couldn't help but smle with the expertise he showed. But he told me not to. It was messing up his shave...

I go to him so often that i think im actually the person who's keeping his business afloat...

So good customer service is a must in the business world.

So there you have it, my note that breaks my silence. Hope you all enjoyed it/ used it as an excuse to distract yourselves from work.. It bloody took up all my evening/ my journey home on the train...

SketchUp.

I've been mucking about again on this 3d modelling program. I should upload the 3d model sometime soon actually, but as it stands, here's a (2 dimensional) snapshot of... my desk, my computer, my bed (with half it's legs chopped off for now- it's not really that short) my window frame and some of the bricks outside.

(Click it to see it larger)
I'm hoping to have the whole house done, maybe then I'll pop it up in 3d and post it up for the world to see. Sort of like a high tech, low budget cribs.

Thanks for your comment Babor, means a lot.

Targets

This is probably my most well travelled blog post. I started writing it at work, then on the a13 and now in the hospital.

No, I'm not in the hospital because i was blogging while on the a 13, i was in a cab back then. At work, there's a catch 22. A horrible clash of performance and funding. We need to be well staffed to perform well, though the better we perform, the less the higher ups want to give us more staff. Why would they? If we perform well. Unfortunately, we don't. In fact, we fudge the books a little here and there. To make us seem better. Which inadvertently leads us to performing even worse since the impacts the aforementioned staffing issue. As such, we stagnate in a downwards spiralling toilet flush.

Wow, thats bleak imagery for work since im kinda loving it right now. But that's here and there. It doesn't change that changing figures is wrong and leads to people being done wrong. Not very obvious when it's done at my work place. All it makes at worst is people getting annoyed at having to wait to be seen by one of us. Big deal.

This culture of target driven work and such is applied across the board though. So what happens if the government legislate that patients who are diagnosed with cancer must receive treatment within x number of days after diagnosis? Well, then you just get doctors who delay giving patients scans so that the cancer isn't discovered until a later date so that they don't have such stringent workloads and tight deadlines.

So as i sit here, next to my mum who only got her ct scan by a miraculous mistake/novice doctor, I cant help but feel a little jaded. Had we not been told by our doctor to assume this was a minor stroke, we wouldn't have been prompted to send her to the hospital earlier the following day when she was feeling slightly unwell. Otherwise, we would have been waiting till the day after tomorrow for a ct scan. Just thinking that my mum would be sitting worrying at home uncertain about what was wrong with her while she had a lesion and excess fluid in her brain..? We've become quite pessimistic in this family, we're quite sure the doctors assumed cancer before they ran the tests to confirm. Vis a vis aformentioned doctor facts.

My brother and i spoke about things like this while he was down last week, in the run up to my mother's hospitalisation. While we were witnessing her deteriorating health and being pushed around by doctors who were laughably insisting it could be due to high blood sugar.

Imagine you run a pharmaceutical company and make billions on selling a drug. And you come up with a drug that works better and cures diseases amazingly quickly. Do you stop selling your current drug, which isn't as effective but sells bucket loads and makes you rich, start selling the new one which makes you less money?

Or do you withhold your new medicine and make loads of money???

Visiting hours are over now.