Confusing advertising, baths and death

4 free light bulbs for every customer, says the advert on the side of buses. Cue map of Europe, with Britain lit up green versus Europ lit up kinda yellow. A bit odd, but perhaps it's something to do with energy saving bulbs being a bit colder in colour than incandescents. It wasn't until I happened to see the ad on the television that I realised they were talking about the bulbs being 'green' because they're better for the environment.

9/10 customers... say BT; am I the only person who wants to amend the posters to say 9/11? I mean, it's not common for advertising literature to use numerals, is it? Perhaps I've missed a spot of media evolution, but i expect "Nine out of ten customers..."

Andrew complained that I hadn't reported his recent bath problem. He was bleaching some jeans or something equally Andrew. Probably to make him fit in better with the Skinhead thing, i would think. So: clothing into bath; add Domestos; leave and return once the nice cast iron bath is hideously scarred from the bleach. Cue me phoning to say hi and a spew of Andrew-flavoured hysteria. After a bit of 'check the internet you knob'-style advice from moi he comes upon a simple solution involving lemon juice (ah, those Old Wives had good tales) and voila! the bath is as good as new. Literally, since it's far cleaner than it was when he started. Way to offset suspicion!

Since he thinks he is newsworthy, I should probably mention that he recently had a somewhat more serious accident when his paramour of the moment (to be fair, he probably lasted a few hours; Andrew's idea of sexy fun these days is nothing if not protracted) decided to stop breathing for a few minutes. The moral of this story, kids: EROTIC ASPHYXIATION IS DANGEROUS, m'kay?

Continuing the Death theme, we were recently discussing the emotional trauma/lack of trauma suffered on the death of a pet. Clearly cats and dogs will leave a space on their passing, but fish, snakes, hampsters... the jury's still out. I developed a method to get through the deathdeathdeath which aquarium owners have to learn to live with. I never name my fish, or the shrimp, and when one of them dies without being munched too quickly for me to notice I flush them to a watery grave while playing 1000 Oceans by Tori Amos. A touch eccentric, but it works for me, although there have been bad periods where I find myself getting sick to death (sick to death, see what I did there? LOL.) of the song.

Andrew's comedy life

Andrew likes to do things for kicks that most people would baulk at the very thought of. And so he spends endless hours scouring the interweb for people who are similarly twisted. These are the people your mother warned you about, although most of them are so timid outside the dungeon that they'd never dream of doing these things without written permission...

So today Andrew found some local 19year old (apparently!) on t'internet, who announced that he would pop up to Andrew's "office" imminently. This threw the poor chap into a tizzy because he doesn't really Do Coffee with people, especially not people he's scouted for dirty sticky fisty encounters. Black Medicine is where he spends most of his free time, and people he's Meeting usually provide a venue, whether it be hotel room, dungeon or suitable stainproofed boudoir.

This tied in with reports of a be-mohawked homosexual sighted in BM by Ollie. When I arrived Andrew was, for some reason, concerned that the mohawkee might be the 19year old. Of course when this person happened to turn up it transpired that he is a friend of Martha's and NOT 19.

It was mightily amusing.

This was, of course, at the point where I had skipped out of Maths early to do my Japanese homework. I had done all I could in the classroom so I felt fully justified, and it marks the exciting event of me actually doing my Japanese homework for the first time! Not that it takes more than about 2 minutes...

In other, surreal, news I got my Jane Eyre essy back and it had been a roaring success! God only knows how - I was convinced that I had entirely failed to answer the question. In the end the only criticisms were that I hadn't noted page numbers and had been occasionaly distracted by plot. Unnecessarily. I love the fact that plot takes a back seat in these situations - no sorry, I HATE that. Plot is what I want in a novel and if it's captivating enough then character development and writing style can F*** Off if need be.

This is why I avoid Literature whenever possible. Streetcar is SO much better, even five pages in. And Jean Brodie is amusing! I will, if I can, be disowning Brontë and Shakespeare henceforth.

UPDATE: When opening Flickr I discovered this greeting: I'm pretty much speechless. Is Lolcat now a recognised language!?