Watery sponges and cheesy bricks

Every now and then, Julie and myself have a recurrent conversation. It usually takes place after a Gem, or when I have splashed out a little nugget of information. Essentially, Julie marvels that the garbage collector that resides in my skull manages to keep hold of so much detail - usually along the lines of "God, you know a lot of crap, don't you?"

This time around, I was expanding the definition of the word 'acoustic' for my wife. More precisely, that when applied to guitars, it means that they are of the non-electric variety (yes, I know that you can have an electric acoustic guitar, but it wasn't worth throwing that in, because I'd have been bogged down in explanation for another hour). This, of course, is why you had the MTV Unplugged shows and albums - back when MTV was about music, that is.

Luckily for me, I wasn't given a complement of the backhanded variety.
It was more a statement of wonderment.
Wonderment cut with a hefty dose of WTF.

....yes, dear.

Ten, not ten.

Last year, Britain stopped airing TV programmes via analogue signals. In the final few months leading up to the switchover to digital TV, there was a sort of genteel scramble to either replace or adapt televisions. It didn't help that many people (us included) thought for a while that we would have to buy completely new TV sets. This was something that incensed us. We don't have much in the way of money, but compared to a pensioner who has to decide whether to spend a day's money on heating or food, it's a small fortune.

In the end, all we had to do was adapt our analogue TV, push the signal through the DVD recorder and away we went. Of course, we had to pay to get someone in to show us that. Nothing we could do got us a reliable signal.

Once it was all sorted, we sat and scrolled through the channels to see what delights lay in wait.
...
...
...
...
...
Well.
What a load of crap.
I knew there was a reason I preferred reading and listening to music.
OK, so we only have Freeview, but we're not going to fork out for stuff we're not going to watch, are we? Especially as a lot of what appears to be on offer are repeats.
To me, one of the oddest channels is Challenge TV; showing repeats of game shows from days gone by. If you are of a certain age and lived in Britain at the time, then you will no doubt recall some of the weirdest notions for game show formats. Bullseye was a cross between darts and a pub quiz, and 3-2-1 asked people to make the most tangential leaps of logic to solve clues and win prizes.

There are other game shows on the channel, too. One of them pits adults against children, the premise being that adults are often less intelligent (or have less knowledge, at least) than their offspring.

When Julie saw the programme title in the listings, she seemed to take it as a very specialised challenge.

Oh deary me...

Dazed about days; Too many hours in the day.

People who know me are aware of a certain individual, a colleague of mine, one I shall refer to only as BD. My friends will know precisely who I'm talking about. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, it's true. In fact, to be perfectly honest, if we're using cutlery as a scale, he's somewhere around 'wooden spoon'. The only reason, sometimes, that I haven't clobbered him is that I'm too busy facepalming or beating my head against a brick wall.
Not long after he had started in the warehouse, the two of us were in the packing area together. I gave him a tape gun and got him to pad out and seal some boxes while I set our some address labels. Ten minutes later, the labels were done, but the boxes weren't. Why? Because the tape gun had run out of tape. And he didn't have the wit to say something about it, so he just stood there like the pillock that he is, waiting for the next thought to arrive.
Gah.
Oh, and another thing; he's a moaner. About how many orders he has to pick, the size of a box, where something is, how scratchy his throat is (despite the fact it hasn't got better on its own, instead of, say, buying some lozenges)... You get the idea. Every day begins the same way; sat in the canteen before we start, listening to BD moan about how we may be busy or quiet and how he can't wait for the weekend. In fact, he decided to take it a little further and wish it was the weekend all the time. I know, I know - what's so odd about that? Most of us feel the same way too, right? Sure, but BD likes to be a little more... avant garde* in his approach. (caution - naughty word ahead, although it has been 'blanked')

Yes, I know what BD meant, but look again, and you'll see that the prat has included Friday in the weekend. Last I knew, he was working Fridays, just like the rest of us. Also, when I commented on his desire, he just sat there and grinned nervously; I'd confused him and he was waiting for either an explanation or some sort of permission to forget about it and move on. Like it was with the tape gun.

(* okay... maybe 'avant garde' isn't the right term. Try 'bloody stupid')

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Talking of people who are somewhat slow at times, here's a clip of a couple in a car. The man is driving and trying to explain the concept of 'mph' and what it means. If you don't facepalm at least once when you watch this, that'll be because you're too busy doing the *head-desk*.

Me, I love the expressions on the guy's face. Seriously, I have had ALL of them when talking to Julie sometimes. Although I have to say (quite protectively) that Julie is in no way as dopey as the woman in that clip.

Intelligent is as intelligent does - or doesn't.

Just a quick bit from me today, I'm afraid (stop cheering, you sods).

No real background to this one, folks, it was just 'one of those days'. You know the type, where everyone is having a bit of a bad day. Nothing you do goes right, you can't seem to think straight and nothing you say comes out right. When I have a bad day, I tend to keep quiet. After all, as the phrase goes, "it is better by far to be silent and appear to be an idiot, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
Julie, as we all know, just happily plunges right in with both feet.

That's it for today, I'll try to post Wednesday, but I'm out and about this week, so the earliest definite date for a new post will be Friday.
TTFN!