Wednesday 22 August 2018

Handwriting vs Time

Man charts handwriting deterioration over time!
(As always blogspot doesn't like large images much, so if you're on the desktop and can't read the text, right click -> open image in new tab and then magnify. On mobile, just tap the image and pinch zoom.)

Thursday 9 August 2018

My Revenge On Mr. W

Everyone knows that someone who’s a professional whataboutist. Members of this species tend to strut with a smugness that’s like a body part, and are identifiable by sight from a distance of up to five hundred metres. They’re usually known for interrupting conversations with self-congratulatory cynicism.


“Oh, you’ve given up on plastic bags? Congratulations. Not! If only you’d use your good intentions for something actually productive like helping the homeless people of the nation.”


“I see that you’ve decided to carpool to help the traffic and pollution situation. So pointless. What about focusing on real problems instead? Like corruption in the State government?”


“You think men catcalling women is a problem and you want to call attention to it? This is why feminism sucks. What about real problems like false rape accusations?”


I think you get the idea. It boils down to not doing anything at all to make anything even somewhat better because of course there’s something more critical that you could focus on. And pat yourself on the back for it.


Most days, Goody Two Shoes like you and me tend to ignore this invasive species, but one day I’d decided I’d had enough. I’d fight back.


I started the day early. I knew that Mr. W left home at 7 in the morning to beat the traffic, so I snuck into a moderately large bush near his apartment car park at 6.  Hugging my feet to preserve some warmth, I waited.


Out swaggered W, cloaked in a sweatshirt and arrogance, and put his car key into the slot, which promptly got thoroughly stuck. I sniggered as Mr. W turned the key this way and that, and after a few minutes of utter befuddlement, let loose a volley of curses at the vagaries of fate and the cruelty of life and how he had the most important meeting ever to attend to, and why O why was he so unlucky?


That was my cue. Speaking through a makeshift megaphone, a tinny voice (mine) filtered through like the pronouncement of a malevolent god.
“Oh you think you’re unlucky. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be an orphan in sub-Saharan Africa? A day that goes without food is a good day, because you did not die.”


Startled, Mr. W pondered this for the briefest fraction before he finally managed to extricate his key from the slot which may or may not have been filled with chewing gum.


A few hours later, while Mr. W was smack dab in the middle of the most important meeting of his life, the fire alarm went off. Nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to Mr. W as everyone in the audience gossiped about which surreptitious stairwell smoker had set off the alarm this time. Just to let you know, I don’t smoke. But I do know how to light a cigarette.


Mr. W cleared his throat most impressively, but his audience continued to joke about the most ridiculous ways in which they had set off fire alarms in their hallowed youths. Exploding rice cooker! Magnifying glass on dry leaf! Too lazy to do laundry, so decided to put underwear in a microwave, which started to smoke most impressively! W watched this with growing consternation until he finally gave up and sat in a corner with his face having what authors like to call a stony aspect.


Eventually, the message about the fire alarm being a false one did come, robotic monotone and all. The contents were a little different though.


“Sorry for the inconvenience. Just remember that any inconvenience you may have felt is negligible compared to the daily troubles malnutritioned children in sub-Saharan African have in obtaining food. Have a nice day!”


At this point, a brief glimmer of something like recognition may have flitted across W’s face - I, watching from my vantage point beside a printer, celebrated - but it vanished. He attempted to pick up his presentation where he had left off, but his audience realized they had another meeting to be at, and walked out.


It was lunch. Usually W’s finest hour, as the everymen and everywomen of the workplace discussed their humble accomplishments, with W on his ivory throne and smirking at the pointlessness of it all. But this time, there was a twist. W’s lunch box was missing.


I assure you that I would never steal lunch boxes from children. That’s evil! Incidentally, and unrelatedly, W is not really a child.


Poor W had to actually taste some of the cafeteria food. The grumbling began even before the eating did. The plates were too plasticky, the food was too watery, the salad was too little, the taste of everything was like a bucketful of sea-salt. I watched from behind my forkful of sea-salty salad and waited for my moment.


Midway through W’s meal, the TV showing the news in the corner suddenly boomed out loud


“Breaking News! Starvation kills ten more in the nation’s worst ever famine. The food you throw away could save lives. Reach out to us now!”


To be fair to W, he shut up. He still threw away the too watery salad though. And I definitely don’t have the kind of smartphone that allows you to control a TV.


As the afternoon wound to a close, W made his way to the office printer. I, who knew his routine better than his mum, knew that this was the time he’d print out some documents to peruse at home.


“F***. F***. F***. F***!”, he bellowed like an angry buffalo.


I casually sauntered in from a nearby meeting room where I’d been waiting to pounce.


“Everything OK there, W?”


Something about my demeanour must have cut through even W’s incredible self-possession. He looked at me, he really looked at me. The mouth opened as if words were about gush out, words dripping with acid, but nothing happened.


“No, no, everything’s fine. There’s no paper in the printer, that’s all. “


I nodded gravely.


“How on Earth can you say everything’s fine? What about the recently published statistic that a child dies every minute due to malnutrition? I cannot believe someone can be so callous as to say everything’s fine. Unbelievable.” With that, I made a hasty exit.


I wasn’t done though. For those of you who still doubt the purity of my intentions, I mean I wasn’t done observing poor W’s day, and nothing more.


A distinctly gloomy looking W may have crawled into bed at eleven in the night, and I may have observed this from my perch on a nearby branch in a nearby tree.


There may have been a confused bird that pecked at his window all night. Strange, right? Don’t look at me, do I look like a bird whisperer? I also definitely did not have anything to do with the pamphlet dropped in W’s frontyard in the morning that screamed:


“UNHAPPINESS IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL! SLEEPLESSNESS IS NO CAUSE TO BE UNHAPPY! THINK OF THE MILLIONS OF STARVING CHILDREN!”

Thursday 2 August 2018

Online Dating

(The scene begins with two friends staring at a third man sitting off in the distance, alone.)

"What’s he trying to do? With a frown like that, either he’s pondering some deep, dark tragedy or he’s in desperate pain."


"No, I had a brief chat with him a while ago. He’s trying to come up with the perfect opening line for this online dating thing he’s got going."


"Ah, now that’s perfectly good reason for that furrow. Tell me, what category does he belong to?"


"Hmm? Category?"


"Well, in my vast experience, I’ve seen that there only a limited number of categories that Tinder opening lines, and by extension, the composers of said opening lines, belong to."
"First, there’s the poet."
"There was this time, when I was so moved by the sight of a bottle of Coke when I was thirsty that I penned this:"


An amalgam of soothing curves and startling edges you are,
Like the sharp aftertaste of a soft bottle of Coke.
Oh angel from heaven!
Have you been sent to quench the thirst in my eyes?


"Nice. Did it, er, get you somewhere?"

"I got a lolbye. Remarkable as that singularly constructed word was, it was like a tsunami dowsing the flames of my little backyard poetic fire."

"Then there’s the comedian."
"Especially the comedian who spends most of his time IRL not being funny and mostly being offended about the moral decay of the world, but thinks having an online persona that's diametrically opposite is a cinch."
"Also, by the way, this isn’t drawn from my bottomless well of knowledge, but suffice to say, I know someone who knows someone who may have said something like this."


A blind man, a rabbit and a monkey in a top hat walk into a bar. But I don’t know what happened next, because I saw you.


"Ha! That’s mildly amusing."


"Perhaps. But the response was, while completely deflating, possibly funnier."


So I’m a cop and you’re a drug peddler and you saw me and ran from that zoo bar?


"Haha, burnt toast. Now that I'm thinking about this categorization thing, wouldn't there be like millions of categories."


"Not at all. Patience, patience. Next up is Mr. Frankenstein."
"This category of people are frank and mon.. you get it."


I’m lonely tonight. Let’s make out? Oh, and hello.


"I’d think this would work. Props for honesty right?"


"Well, if your mother told you that honesty was the best policy, she was only referring to you lying about school report cards and throwing broccoli dinners down the toilet. This honest man, on the other hand, got no response, and in retrospect, that was probably the kindest thing that could have happened to him."

"The next category is what I call The Scientist."
"Men in this category carefully front load their first message to convey as much information as possible with the least verbiage. Everything from their hopes, dreams, fears, family background, great grand Uncle’s fourth profession, their previous, current and preferred religions, expired hobbies and wishful ones, expectations of their prospective partners, their thoughts on adoption, poverty in Madagascar, Love Island, everything's fair game."

"Not my style, but surely, information isn't a bad thing?"


(I must interrupt this free flowing dialogue to interject that our resident Love Guru is so gobsmacked by the previous statement that he spends a moment experimentally trying out this cool thing called flapping-the-jaw, while also trying this other cool thing called forming words. He eventually recovers and continues with his discourse.)

"Since the Gods of online dating tend to be fans of irony, walls of unparseable text such as these tend to be responded to with a single letter."


"K"


"That stings, man. I’ve actually had that happen to me IRL. Stings harder, except, since the woman I was talking wasn’t even listening, I could semi-self-hypnotize myself into believing some Zen woo that if the targeted listener in a dialogue didn’t actually listen, then the dialogue didn’t happen at all, did it?"

"I like your optimism. But anyway, that about wraps up this categorization business. There’s remains what I call a flavour because it can garnish every category: the Perseverer."
"Hey, remember that joke I told you two days ago about the blind man, the rabbit and the monkey in a top hat walking into a bar? Here’s another one, only it has a lion, a teacher and a drunk armadillo and it’s not in a bar but a broom closet, and it’s funnier."
"Hey, remember those two jokes I told you two and four days ago about an assortment of humans and animals walking into strange places?"


(Just as our protagonists are winding up their intellectual discussion, they notice something strange. Messr. Furrowed Brow in the corner is now standing up, ready to leave, freshly uncreased of the brow, and full-creased of the cheeks, and a toothy grin splitting his mug in two.)

"How well did you say you know that guy?"

"Er, well, I said sorry once when I accidentally spilt coffee on his new tennis shoes."

"That works man! Go, go, go! We need to know."

(The two of them scoot towards the departing man and cut him off unceremoniously. There's no preamble when this is said:)

"Hey-I-met-you-once-at-coffee. Did you have any luck with the online dating thing?"

"Yes! I am talking to this lovely woman."

(Looks of disbelief are promptly exchanged.)

"What did you say, man. What did you say?"

"Hello."