What I Did for My Summah

Since formerly responsible members of my family have deemed it necessary to go on holidays for the end of the summah, certain domestic responsibilities are currently resting on my shoulders.


One such responsibility is the task of exhausting the dog.  A dog is a very energetic organism, and this one in particular is an electric bastard.  The dog's favourite activities are barking incessantly and digging the settee.  Barking is an annoying and futile past time, and the settee is not a construction that reacts well to being dug, as it is made out of leather, rather than a more earthy substance that would lend itself slightly better to the scramblings of doggy paws.  In order to foil the dog's infuriating and illogical behaviour it is necessary to completely wear him out, which I do by dragging him in a circuit of the mountain.


There's usually no-one on the mountain path, but since it was such an idyllic sunny afternoon today, there were a few others navigating the mountain.  This was a slight nuisance to me, as I was scruffily dressed and needlessly self-conscious of this fact, and had chosen the mountain trail in order to pander to my isolationist tendencies.  The dog is a strange mix of bullying nosiness and cowardice, eager to bark at all and sundry and then hide behind me, behaviour which is annoying and embarrassing.


During the initial ascent, there was a young lady walking her dog in front of me.  I purposefully hung back, in order to ensure that my dog was far enough from hers that it wouldn't cause a palaver.  This was the reason, and not, as liars would have you believe, that I was attempting to ogle rump.  This was not my aim.  But it did occur, due to circumstances.  I was aware that it was likely that I would have to pass her at some point, because my plan was to undertake a gargantuan route, in order to fully knacker my dog, and no feeble woman would have planned such a grueling trek.  As I foresaw the moment of takeover, I became self-conscious, due to my scruffy clothes, my unruly dog and a plastic clamp I had attached to my shorts that contained a bag of my dog's shit.  Using my powers of recognition, I identified the woman from her hair and height, not as liars would have you believe by ogling, as someone I had known when I was but a small boy.  Her parents live up the street, and I was expecting to pass some inane banalities as we briefly crossed, while secretly we would both be considering what possible relationship we might have had if we'd been better friends as kids.  Or probably that would just be me, in my fevered imaginings.


She sat down on a large rock, looking out over the valley, with a look of deep philosophising on her face, I imagined from a distance.  She raised a cigarette to her mouth and I was, in my squeaky-clean life-view, disgusted.  I realised then that she was actually an older woman, and not the person who I thought she was.  I then retrospectively realised that I had been ogling a sexy assed quadragenarian, and not, as I had believed, a youthful beauty.  Moreover, this realisation changed my situation from one of being a completely acceptable virile ogler, to one of being depraved.  I believe that lusting after an older woman is a gruesome perversion.  That is what I 100% believe.  No lie.


My dog spent the ascent strangling himself with the leash, licking pooh and drinking dirty water.  I was, reasonably I believe, frustrated by this.  My dog has no respect for me, despite how much bigger I am than him, and my ability to beat the shit out of him should I choose to do so.  I don't know whether he finds my 100% genuine opinions on sexualising mature individuals abhorrent, but if so, his methods of expressing it are unusual and confusing.  At around the half-way mark, his tiredness resulted in an improvement in his behaviour.


I realised that taking my dog for a walk has the same narrative flow as a Stewart Lee or a Richard Herring show; initial excitement followed by overwhelming annoyance, levelling out to enjoyment and ending with satisfaction and the feeling that something positive has been achieved.  And in deciding to do it again (walk the dog/watch a show) the annoyance part is forgotten.


My final bullet point in the plan that started this post read: coming to terms with the cowardice/bullying/annoyingocity of my dog.  At the moment he is sprawled out on the mat in a way that could, hypothetically, if I was a different sort of person, be described as 'cute'.  I am aware, however, that he will wake me tomorrow with his selfish plaintive mewling.  And I'll have to take him up the mountain, again, if it doesn't rain.  I resent the dog, and his stupid dog face.


Pokemon raised my pet expectations (petspectations) far too high.  Damn you, Satoshi Tajiri.


This is no way to restart blogging after a summah's hiatus.  It is the way I have done it.

Cruijff on a Bike!

I think I've broken myself.

I was unable to shift a persistent headache yesterday, and it has transformed itself into genuinely feeling ill today. I therefore decided to veto exercising this morning in favour of resting up, which was undermined by my dog, who decided he would indulge into previously unknown levels of misbehaving. Continuous barking and climbing on chairs (not allowed), culminated in him sneaking upstairs (really not allowed) and chewing on socks and eating potpourri (really really not allowed and stupid). Attempting to summarily deal with these antics, especially considering he reacts to discovery of knowingly bad behaviour by exploding frantically around the room.

A restful morning, then.

Leaving him unsupervised in order to make food, wash up or run a bath resulted in returning to find some form of bad behaviour, or the aftermath. I think I'm going to put him in the washing machine, it's the only thing he'll listen to.

In between warring with the dog, I managed to get a bit of the podcast edited, this week it is the show we did on Valentine's day, which wasn't really a special, but that's what we called it. I am enjoying the editing so far, it will probably be another long one, it has a particularly good God or Fabio segment.

I think part of how I broke myself involves how full on I have been in going into things recently. My wholesale embrace of Royal Rumbles and the consequent binging on them left no room for anything else. Similarly, since restarting Final Fantasy IX I have been obsessed with it to the exclusion of all else, I've only managed to force out blogs in work, and the editing of last week's podcast was done as a last ditch effort on the Tuesday. I am now trying to force the World Cup into my obsessive habits, which has been disappointing so far, with some decidedly sub-par games. Hearing the disgusted commentary on 5Live was more draining than the actual match however. Rather than just rage that the match was a waste of time, it would be more beneficial to look ahead optimistically, especially given the very early stage of the tournament, and the plethora of opportunities for excitement there is to come. Having a professional, paid commentator wailing along the lines of "oh for fuck sake, what an absolute load of arsemangle!" just saps the fun and excitement out of the whole thing. I enjoying hearing Robbie Savage covering matches, but having a Welsh accent whilst commentating makes me feel as though there's rugby on. If the matches were covered by Jonathan Davies I think it would really unsettle Welsh viewers. I think it would be exactly the sort of low-level freakout that would add an extra frisson of interest during a game. Especially when they are being the absolute waste of complete time oh my god this is an hour and a half of my life I am never getting back, skies above and Cruijff on a bike! sort of games they've been so far.

Hopefully the Brazil match later on will be more exciting, but if not I have more editing to look forward to, and since I am suffering wrestling-based brain damage if it gets too boring I can always shut my eyes and watch the never ending montage of over-the-top-rope eliminations I have playing in my skull. What's the best elimination you've seen so far, you ask? Sgt. Slaughter being eliminated by Sid Justice in the 1992 Rumble, nothing beats a lumper going over bigstyle.

I am still trying to find a way to kickstart my brain, hopefully service will resume eventually.