Monday, November 10, 2003

…Aren't there capital numbers? We have uppercase letters and lowercase letters, so why not big numbers and little numbers? And, considering that there are no capital numbers and never have been any capital numbers, why do I always type *00 instead of 800, or 'on the !7th January…', or even more confusingly ££50.00?

I think there should be capital numbers, if only to satisfy my ongoing inner yearnings for them. It's only fair, after all – letters get them so why are we case-ist about numbers?

Equally, why is 'I' always capitalised? I vote for only capitalising 'i' at the beginning of a sentence, just like all the pronouns. I fail to see why 'i' should be singled out for this special treatment. Rise up, you other pronouns, rise up against your capital-ist oppressors and bring down this ugly, arrogant I!

I shall never use 'I' again. In fact, i think i might just start an anti-I campaign and attempt to convert all the good and the great to my cause. So, are you with me? Or are you for I? Er… for me? Er… no, that's not right… You're either with me or you're with the evil-I! Are you on my side or are you part of the Axis of I-vil?

Right, I'm off to take the cat to the vet. Oh bugger, my finger slipped…

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I've been going through that 'what's the point?' phase of job hunting. The one where you really can't be arsed to search through the job sites anymore because no one has shown the slightest bit of interest in you when you've applied before, so why should they start showing any interest now?

Job hunting is tedious, boring, depressing and generally a miserable task. It’s not helped by the fact that many of the job sites appear to have been designed by morons who've never really thought about how someone might actually search the site and for whom the word 'usability' is merely an interesting sound, rather than a concept they should take to heart. It gets particularly frustrating when you spot a job that looks interesting, only to figure out that it's exactly the same as one you applied for unsuccessfully a few weeks ago, just posted again in a slightly rewritten form.

But I have started the hunt again, after gentle but persistent enquiries from friends as to the state of play. (For which I am actually thankful, although maybe when I’ve responded to such enquiries I've simply sounded whiny and annoyed.) After all, it only has to work out once, right? I only need one job to come together and I'll be sorted.

Of course, in a way, it doesn't help that I also have this journalism course going on, because part of me's thinking 'well, I can earn more money doing that in the long run than working as a project manager'. The temptation is to trust in that rather than look for a more secure job.

But of course, I'm not actually earning any money from writing yet, and it's a longwinded process to start up a new freelance career. I've done it before, I know how hard it is, but sometimes it seems the easier option than to do all this job hunting.

Really, I should do both. Get my arse in gear as regards this course but keep searching for a job, and just see which one comes up roses first.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

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…And then he'd be Weevil Knievel.

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I just cooked dinner for my parents. Wholegrain rice, with vegetables, chicken and mandarins.

I was somewhat sickened to discover that two little black flecks which I had thought were just bits of herb or something turned out to be weevils. That was a brand new, unopened packet of rice bought in Tescos only last week and well within its use-by date.

The store manager is going to get such a bollocking off me tomorrow. I have sealed said weevils, and their live friends from the unused portion of the packet, in a plastic bag and will be making my point quite loudly sometime tomorrow afternoon. I don't take kindly to being sold weevils.

Ick.

Ick ick ick ick ick.

They must have had this problem for months because wholegrain rice has been a bugger to get hold of since springtime. In fact, the last packet I had, months ago, had weevils in but I'd assumed that it was my fault because the packet had been open for a few weeks, sitting in my cupboard with only a little sticky tab holding the top down, and that maybe they'd got in from outside somewhere. But this packet I opened myself and there's nowhere else they could have come from.

Weevils. Yuch. We should be beyond contaminated foodstuffs in this country by now.

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I think I was lucky – the live blighter that was still in the packet was much bigger than his cooked friend. I definitely chose the lesser of two weevils.

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Gary Turner wrote seven posts today. Not that I'm feeling competitive, because who can compete with Gary?, but you know, one extra post here won't hurt, will it?

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You know what I love about Professor Colin Pillinger, the man behind the Beagle 2 mission to Mars? Here he is, sending incredibly complicated and expensive technological marvels into space and, where you might expect to see a slick and polished Oxbridge professor, what you actually get is this big cuddly-looking bloke with the best west country accent this side of Phil Harding.

Anyway, half of Blur – the Alex James/Dave Rowntree half – turned up today to have a play at Jodrell Bank for some reason not made explicitly clear on the News at Ten. I think it was just to make sure that we didn't forget that Beagle 2 is still up there, still on it way to Mars and has only 45 days before it finally arrives. Seems only yesterday that it took off – not called Mars Express for nothing, I guess.

Ah, I love British science. We do it so much better than everyone else. I just wish we did it more often.

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From my friends at Zoe:

See no weevil. Hear no weevil. Eat no weevil.

Take care, lest ye be branded part of the Axis of Weevil!

My next screenplay: a story of good beetles vs bad beetles entitled A Touch of Weevil.

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