Cut Down To Size

I hate getting my hair cut. It means I have to describe to the lady with the sharp implements and the "whaddayouwant?" attitude what I'd like my hair to look like in its prospective shorter state, and I'm terrible with foresight. Many times I've undergone this ritual and come out the other side looking like a girl with fashionably short hair accentuated by my naturally girlish face. Last time I asked the keeper of the scissors to just give it a bit of a trim. I quite like having fairly longish hair in an early-2000s emo kid kinda way and I expressed my desire to keep some of the length whilst keeping it trim and unruly. I even gestured towards a framed monochrome picture of a male model on the wall of the damned place, trailing off with "something sort of like that, but still with some length". The wench agreed with my request in a second, and in the subsequent second forgot it as she took an electric razor to my scalp. It took virtually a whole year to get back to how it was in the first place.

That year ended yesterday as I embraced the sun (although not literally cos that'd involve me travelling millions of miles across a vast vacuum and ultimately end in me burning to death in seconds as I attempted to hug what, in the interest of perspective, would essentially appear to be a wall of fire) by accepting that the thick shagpile rug atop my head needed to be cut down to size; plus it's started to look like a mullet and I am neither a 70s rock star, one of the cast of Grease or a part of the travelling community.

Dreading my explanation of what I wanted (essentially, make it shorter, but still make it look okay), I proceeded to ask the hair-sorceress what was the longest setting on the electric razor. She dully (that's dull-ly, a state of dullness) showed me the "number 8" from her arsenal of clipping attachments. I opted for this because it seemed the easiest to explain, and because I'm so used to having longer hair normally, this number 8 looks to me like how I'd imagine a number 3 would. So that was the back and the sides sorted. How about the front and the top? I like the front and the top; they're the first (and only) bits I see when I look in the mirror and, thus, care about. I asked her not to completely destroy them, just trim them down a bit, which she did, under the impression that I wanted to follow the latest indie fashion trend.

"They're all having it like that now, aren't they? Where it's kinda top-heavy."

As I sat there, pondering the fact that in six or seven minutes time I'd look up to the mirror and see a wannabe T4 presenter horrifically staring back, I got to thinking about the fact that many students seem to have longer hairstyles, or experiment in cutting their own. Originally, I'd naturally assumed this was because they were making some kind of statement about individuality, independence and lack of care. Now I realise that it's because they don't have any money, and that I too shun the idea of a quarterly trim in favour of letting it all grow wild and bushy until I can tame it nae longer by which time I'll have taken a pair of Crayola scissors to it and emerge with a fringe in the shape of zig-zags, or waves, or whichever fun-shaped scissors I had to hand that day.

Fortunately, my new doo doesn't make me look like a girl (much) or an indie fashionista. Instead, I look about as close to what I wanted to look like as possible without me having to physically project my mind-thoughts into the brain of someone who's able to hold a pair of scissors and not ram them, pointy-side-first, into my ear. Huzzah, I can rest in the knowledge that I at least tolerate my own appearance and will not have to worry about it again for another year and a half. This means I can keep saving money (if I had any) so that I can eventually get all the things I've been promising to get myself: certain books I'd like to read, certain musics I'd like to listen to, certain games I'd like to play and certain consoles on which to play them.

In a bout of freak coincidenceyness (or another made-up word like that), my newfound appreciation of food from McDonalds has aligned with the resurrection of their recurring Monopolopoly tie-in game promotion-type thing. So far, since they started it again, I've eaten there twice and gained a whole two stickers because of it. Both those stickers represented different train stations which, in pseudo-gameplay terms, already puts me half-way to owning a PS3. Naturally, having not eaten at McDonalds in many years, this is the first time I've played along with the Monopolopoly game and I must say I'm getting mighty swept up in it all. If there is a God, or other all-knowing sentient being that takes any interest in the happiness of human life - specifically mine - then all he, she, or indeed it needs to do is give me the other two stations in my next two visits to a McDonalds outlet and I'll be able to cross one of those items off the wish list and not piss away hundreds of pounds on it.

It'll also be especially helpful now that Gamestation's gone tits up.

A Bit Of A Mess

In the last week alone I've eaten more McDonald's cheeseburgers than I have done over the last decade. Four. I blame influencial students and close proximity to fast food outlets. But enough of that.

I was able to go outside yesterday in short sleeves and without the need for some kind of thermal hooded jacket for the first time in what feels like seven years. This might've been because of my recent hermit-like state in which I've spent endless consecutive days in the same room, let alone the same house, to get every last shred of work done. I swear, one day after taking a shower I leaned over to slightly open the bathroom window and was suddenly reminded of what fresh air was. Anyway, The last time I went outside the weather was practically Antarctic, so you can imagine my surprise when I stepped out into the blistering sun and, once again, allowed my mind to engage itself in the thought that comes around this time of year that the planet is slowly dying a boiling, melty, flooded death. Also hayfever's coming.

It's the time of year that the world of Academics flounders; in fact it's virtually common knowledge that the University year begins to end as soon as the sun shows up, thus allowing the citizens of the world to enjoy food and good company in the presence of others in the great outdoors. Huzzah! We can play outside again!

I know. This is very sporadic and a bit of a mess right now, but I've come fresh from several wheelbarrows full of making long reams of text link together in the hope that it makes some kind of sense to intellectuals to deem worthy enough of a grade of some decency at degree-level study. But back to the sun.

I got a ukulele last summer and barely touched it. I would even say I've barely looked at it if it weren't for the fact that it's been leaning against the wall for a few months that not viewing it every day has become impossible to do, like fridge noise and trees, they're always there but largely unnoticed. Anyway, pointless similarity aside, I've finally picked up the ukulele, attempted to tune it, feebly strummed out a dodgy sounding version of a Coldplay song for some reason, and left it to lean back against the wall, where it'll probably stay until this time next year, by which time it'll need tuning again and I won't be able to do anything with it because my mind's been so clogged up by assignment work around the same time.

I'm very sorry if you've decided to read this at all, but if you've made it this far you only have yourself to blame for having needlessly wasted your own time.  You really should've given up a long time ago. Somewhere around the word 'consecutive'.

Now go away. I'll do the same. Meet back here in seven days, and hopefully I won't be spouting as much crap by then. Or if I am, I'll at least have learned how to channel it somewhat.

Too Much

About a year ago, students at my University complained about how the student support services did too little to support students. This year, I'd say they're doing far too much.

It's around this time of year, students who pretend to care about the way things are run in order to gain popularity amongst their fellow kin litter the halls, the cafés, the walls, the ceilings, the shops, the classrooms and even parts of an unknowable fourth dimension with light-hearted propaganda detailing how they plan to make University a better place. In most cases, these are usually the same pledges made by the same people as last year who were elected then and are gunning for re-election now.

When it comes to politics, I may be a cynic, but it's only because I find politics to be complicated; so complicated, in fact, that only idiots think they know what they're doing because they're too thick to realise they don't know what they're doing. That's why I think the Alternative Vote referendum should've passed last May and if I was able to vote at the time (which I wasn't due to circumstances revolving around address transferral and generally having a busy life), I would've gone for a 'yes' vote, not that it would've made the blindest bit of difference.

The AV system of voting is complicated, which is exactly what politics are. Voting under the current system is easy to understand, thus extremely simple, thus flawed. To me, the idea of using a stupidly simple method of voting to elect political officials is like washing a plateful of discarded roast dinner in a dishwasher: yes it's the easiest, quickest fix, but ultimately you end up with specks of gravy and cabbage permanently dried to the plate, which only leaves more damage for you to have to manually clean up later on anyway. But the Uni seems to have the right idea since votes for student elections (no matter how dull or pointless they may be) are conducted under a similar system to the once-proposed AV style.

Why am I babbling on about this? Because yesterday, during a particularly enjoyable afternoon workshop session, my phone began to ring. Embarrassed, I terminated the incoming call, which apparently sent it to Voice Mail. I'd pondered who would be calling me from an unknown number in the middle of the day, even allowing myself to wildly believe that one of my previous endeavours into the world of potential part-time work was letting me know they wanted to offer me the chance of giving me money. Once the session had ended, brimming with anticipation, I went straight ahead and listened to the message left for me. The voice that emanated from the phone was far too friendly and optimistic...

"Hi there Jamie (as if she knows me personally), it's Sally (or someone, I don't remember the name) from Student Services, just wanting to let you know about student elections coming up, et cetera, blah blah, pointless information you've already heard, blah-de-de-blah-de-de-bl- **Message Deleted**"

Many things ran through my head at this point. One: I don't care. Two: HOW THE CRAP DID YOU GET MY NUMBER?!?!!? Three: I really don't care. I voted in the student elections last year and nothing particularly special happened, I noticed no change, I was not directly affected by anything and I have other, more important things to concern my time with.

The University and its affiliates are now just going out of their way to definitely make sure every single droplet of information is distributed around every single student seventeen times, way before anyone's supposed to even care. As well as the election shite, unit choices for next year's studying had been open for a week or so before the reminder emails were circulated - a good three weeks before the actual deadline for them to be done.

An email I received last Monday lovingly informed me that I hadn't made any choices yet. Naturally, I was aware of this since I've been waiting for information from certain course officials to allow me to tailor my course specifically the way I want it. It's a situation that only affects me personally, so I could forgive the generic reminder email on the Monday telling me that if I'm confused, I can find out more information at the Options Fair that Wednesday. Pretty standard stuff.

On the Tuesday, I received the exact same reminder email telling me that if I was still confused I could find out more information at the Options Fair that still hadn't actually happened since the last email was sent out.

Luckily, I'm now on track (or at least as 'on track' as I'd like to be at this point) with assignment deadlines since, of my three assessments due next week, two are completely done. I'm now staring into the face the biggie (4,000 words on a bunch of stuff I don't know or care about), with a week or so left to do it. I've vowed to myself to keep my head down, to get on with it, and not to interact with the world or its affiliates for the whole week, meaning the chances of me dealing with an email reminding me about student elections, or any other banality I genuinely don't care about, shouldn't come to my attention until this time next week.

Unfortunately, I have a whole week to deal with a massive something I genuinely don't care about just so that I can pass this year.

Ad-libbing

I've been sat here looking at a blank screen for half an hour now, trying to think of some kind of topic to do moaning about. Well, actually, that's a lie. If truth be told I've ended up writing a sentence, realising it wouldn't go anywhere, erasing it, writing another sentence, realising it wouldn't go anywhere, erasing it, and slamming my head into the desk repeatedly. Unfortunately, it's difficult to expand that into anything more; trust me, I've tried it, but then I erased it and began this particular sentence instead.

Just now, I even considered highlighting all of that and hitting the "Delete" key but stopped myself when I realised that would've just resulted in a waste of another three or four minutes of my stay on planet Earth with no evidence to show for it.

As it turns out, ad-libbing these things isn't as easy, or as fruitful, or as some third thing when your mindspace doesn't want to co-operate.

That said, maybe it's too busy engrossed in the work I have yet to do and so little time left in which to do it. In that case, what the heck am I still doing here? Screw this for the moment, I'm staring a potential degree in its hypothetical face and it ain't gonna get itself.

Same goes for next week, I suppose. Unless, of course, something of vague and mediocre interest happens. Stay tuned for a tale along the lines of "I finally figured out how to comfortably eat Chinese food using chopsticks", although that wouldn't really be true because I did that yesterday and, in fact, it was one of the original sentences I started this with which I got rid of because it couldn't stand on its own as the sole topic of an entire blog post.

But at least I brought that idea back from the brink and am able to prove what a small portion of my life-time was initially wasted on.

Rare Occurrences

The date is the 29th of February, but you knew that already; it's posted right at the top of this thing. Right up there, in the blue bit, above the white bit. This date is a significant date in that it only comes into existence every four years or so because the Earth position and movement in the grand vastness of space is weird like that. In return, people born on this date get to deal with the dilemma of lying to themselves most years when they try to celebrate their birthday on either the 28th of February or the 1st of March, yet deep down inside they feel neglected and insignificant and unimportant. No matter though, there's over seven billion of us, we're all insignificant and unimportant.

On a lighter (if more narcissistic) note, this lot of words apparently mark the 100th time I've put something here. That's right folks: it's the 100th-post-anniversary-super-happy-spectacular-phenomenon-o-rama! What's more is that this comes about as we approach March, which is exactly the month three years ago that this navy blue mess o' crap spawned into the matrix and started displaying words in this fashion. That means I've created approximately thirty-three or so rambles like this per annum, or to put it another way, that's a lot of time wasted when I could've been  poking a slug with a highlighter or shoving twigs into a postbox or singing to plants to encourage them to grow. I mean seriously, have you read any of the earlier things on this? I have, they're shite. Seriously, don't even bother looking at them. They'll take up far too much time and that violin ain't gonna learn itself. But I suppose that, considering I'm taking a course in how to write to a somewhat decent standard that's better than most, learning to write in a style that feels somewhat natural and comfortable and "finding my voice" has definitely come through on here. Then again, that's the way things go in my head. You don't have to agree with it, just accept the fact that I'm writing this and that's what I think.

Anyway, before I run off to find a party hat which I won't wear and pretend to get a cake of some kind, I need to decide on which birthday this thing should actually celebrate, no matter how mundane and pointless the celebration may be. Is this H.A.'s 3rd anniversary or milestone 100th? And in an amalgamation of multiple rare occurrences happening all at once such as this, I find myself facing a 29th of February-style birthday-related conundrum.

But fuck conundrums, this should be a happy occasion, not a philosophical study. So to mark the occasion of three infrequent events coming together, I've thrown in a fourth and redecorated the place a little bit. Yes, it still looks blue and white, but that top title bit doesn't look like it's been scribbled by a sherbet-stuffed 7-year-old with ADHD anymore. Slightly more pleasing on the eye, n'est-ce pas? Plus I got bored and wanted a wee change. Shut up! It's my blog and I can do what I want with it. Just be glad it's a rare and special occasion.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go outside and pretend there's a full solar eclipse happening.

Sport For The Socially Reclusive

Think of a sporting event. Got one? Well then bloody think of one like I told you to!

Right, got one now? Good.

It's football, isn't it? Or basketball. Or rugby. Or cricket. Or anything that's played on a field by a team of considerable size.

How about if I told you to think of a sport you might find at the Olympics. You're thinking of running, aren't you? Well bloody think of an Olympic sport like I told you to!

Right, it's a running event, isn't it? Or swimming. Or boxing. Or table tennis. Or gymnastics. Or Dream Platform. Why does nobody ever think of archery any more?

Considering the popularity of role playing games set in medieval times with dragons and mages and collecting logs to trade for a lump of iron (or some shite like that), you'd think more people would be into going über-retro and shooting arrows from bits of wood and taut string. Then again, the kind of people who venture into such role playing worlds aren't exactly the sporty types; hence the majority of sporting focus coming from those who couldn't concentrate on a classroom whiteboard for long enough without bursting into flames, but easily managed to cause physical injury by means of kicking a spherical bit of leather into somebody's (my) face as hard as their swinging leg would let them. (School was a bad time for me, you know, socially.)

So I call out to you, nerds and geeks, bully victims and introverts, wallflowers and nobodies, let us claim the world of sport from the big kids who pushed us around and from the sex addicted footballers as well. Let us rise up and take aim at a tiny target some variable yet considerable distance away from us. Let us not be bombarded with coverage of men running around a field shouting racial insults at each other. Let us reinvent sport for the socially reclusive, with more focus towards accuracy, dexterity and occasionally a bit of blind luck because we're oh so sensitive like that we take it to heart when we lose but try our best not to show it. Let us compete one on one in all kinds of events. One does not just have to try archery. We also offer snooker, darts, tennis, pub quiz, ludo, judo, snap, even Wii Bowling.

Come on, you numpties! Get off World of Warcraft or whatever (WoWoW) and do it for real rather than for role!

The preceding ramble was motivated by the following sentence:
I competed in a University archery tournament at the weekend and did alright, but loads of people beat me in the end.

How A PlayStation Ruined My Life

Imagine, if you will, the Christmas period of 1998. Then imagine a house in the north-west of England. Then an overly sensitive nine-year-old boy with a head of ginger hair and a life of cultural flânerie before him. If your imaginationoscope isn't functioning properly, please regard those opening three sentences as scene-setting for the forthcoming tale.

The last present I got on the 1998 edition of Christmas Day was a joint one, to be shared between me and my older sister. But to keep you, dear reader, hooked to this 'ere thing, I'm gonna leave that for a moment and tell you that a typical childhood Christmas back in my first house followed somewhat of a formula.

The day would begin, like many other Christmas Days across the world, at 5am. The two excited children would mercilessly jump on the bed of their parents whom, I now realise with the benefit of hindsight, had probably managed to get to sleep some two hours earlier once all the presents were wrapped and carefully placed. In our old living room we had a three-piece suite (which I now realise is not a 3p sweet); my stack of Christmas presents would adorn the armchair nearest the door, the window and the television, while the stack belonging to my sister was stationed at the other armchair on the furthest side of the room. I naturally assumed that this was because she was older than me and, thus, had to walk further to get her presents as a general rule-of-thumb. Once the wrapping paper destruction ceremony was finished and it had just started to get light outside, breakfast was on the cards. But screw breakfast, the next significant event on the Christmas agenda was dinner, strategically placed around 3pm so we wouldn't have to watch The Queen (probably). Having the biggest house out of several close-by relatives, our place became the one where most of the close family would come for dinner. And if they couldn't manage dinner, they could at least show up later to sit around and watch the EastEnders Christmas special where three or four characters get killed off in a bout of ironic festive cheer. But before the sitting-around-the-TV portion of the night, the evening allowed for family members who weren't around at the crack of dawn to exchange gifts of good will and alcohol. It was at this second gifting period of the day in 1998 that my father sprung forth with an additional surprise. May I refer you back to the aforementioned shared present with my sister.

This moment was especially odd, not least for the fact that my sister was sat in "my half" of the living room while I was sat in "her half". Between us sat a large box on the floor. It could've been absolutely anything, but whatever it was, it was rare enough, or expensive enough, for us to have to share. Naturally, being nine-years-old, the concept of monetary cost did not occur to me. Anyway, I don't know why I'm stalling here because in actual fact, I didn't have the time to analyse the contents of the mystery box since my sister had taken it upon herself to rip open the festive paper on her side. With an audience of family members anticipating two things - the revelation of the gift and the reaction of the kids - I proceeded to do the same. I blame my overly sensitive, technology fearing, cotton-wool child mentality for filling me with such horror at the sight of a brand new Sony PlayStation. And I mean one of the original ones; the big fucking grey behemoth boxes.

My sister, in a fit of eleven-year-old-at-Christmas-time-ism, screamed 'Wow!' much to the delight of our audience. My reaction was somewhat more stoic. My face displayed a look of shock and awe, my mouth followed suit and let out a mimicking 'wow', but my brain screamed at itself and wanted this beast of technological devilry to stay as far away from me as possible. It's quite probable that, if past lives exist, I could've easily been Amish at some point before my current bash at existence.

Anyway, the Winter period passed and I'd learned to tolerate the PlayStation, even enjoy its presence from time to time, just as long as it was accompanied with the appropriate software; namely the two games we got given along with it for Christmas:

Tomb Raider 3 which was really only good for the training level set in Lara Croft's mansion because you could trick the slow butler into the walk-in freezer and lock him in there (which, quite frankly, for a couple of pre-teens, is nothing short of hilarious). However, that's as far as our adventures with that game ever went. Nothing can describe the horror of the first main level set in India where you inexplicably start atop a giant slope and begin to slide down it, not realising you need to time a jump over some spikes, thus treating you to a painful death groan and the haunting image of a triangular woman crumpled in a heap with red spots flying outwards. What's more frightening is the idea that she'd never be able to get back to the house to free her butler.

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped was a lot more child-friendly, if a little repetitive. Then again, I only mean repetitive in the fact that venturing beyond level five became something of a taboo. Very quickly, a formula for the game had been established. Play level three first (where you ride a tiger cub along the Great Wall of China), level five second (where you're on a jet ski) and then, if you're feeling particularly daring, try level one (where you run around avoiding men trying to slice you in half and giant frogs that, I now realise, actually try to molest you against your will... but in a cartoony way so it's okay for kids really). Levels two and four were no-go zones, however, due to how fucking terrifying it was to navigate an underwater maze in scuba diving gear and later run away from a giant triceratops who was perpetually breaking the fourth wall.

However, in order to play the games, first one had to navigate the startup screens and it was the first of these screens which literally meant that I could not physically sleep in the same room as a Sony PlayStation for a good few years. For the uninitiated, the console started up with a fade from black to white. Soon after, an orange square would appear, tilted to make what idiotic children (like myself at this time) would call a diamond, then the words "SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT" would appear, emblazoned in navy blue. All the while, the accompanying sound was a terrifying declining buzz, like a thousand alien ships slowly touching down on the planet's surface in perfect synchronisation. If you think that doesn't sound at all terrifying, watch this with the mindset that you are a sensitive nine-year-old who probably gets scared by goldfish if they look just the tiniest bit weird.

After watching that slice of technological history, you might have noticed that particular startup went on for considerably longer than it normally would. And that was what I'd have nightmares about. The worst part was when it lingered. Imagine, if you still have the mental capacity to imagine, the first startup screen as the 25-stone bouncer to a fantastic club where you know you'll have a good time and all your troubles will melt away. That menacing, unforgiving, static screen coupled with the deteriorating, extra-terrestrial musical sting was the main stumbling block between me and blissful interactivity. If I had to sleep in the same room as a Sony PlayStation hooked up to a television in the dead of night, my paranoid, innocent, too-sensitive-for-its-own-good mind could see visions of me, lying there, comfortably drifting off to the land of nod only to be interrupted by the infernal machine spontaneously turning itself and, by extension, the TV on and filling up the pitch blackness of the room with the ominous glow of pure white and the booming, zooming buzz of SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT. Me, in this exceptionally hypothetical situation, would be too afraid to move from my bed to switch off the machine manually in case I, somehow, angered it. Instead, my eyes would be locked into a staring match with the orange square, willing it to blink and give way to either total blackness once again or any other screen that wasn't that damned white startup monstrosity, which, in my head, it never would. The buzz would disappear into quietness and leave a perpetual static gift from SONY in its wake. I'd often wondered whether I'd need psychological help but I suppose that might've involved me having to point out where, on the anatomically correct doll, it was that Sony touched me and I'd have to spend afternoons lying on a maroon leather couch recounting tales of how a PlayStation ruined my life.

But the PlayStation opened the floodgates for me and years later, after I'd gotten over myself, I can comfortably say I became and am now a fully converted technophile, although I don't like to use that word since any idea with the suffix "-phile" or "-philia" produces strictly sexual connotations in my head and I don't like to think of myself as one who has sexual contact with machines. Technology and interactivity now dominate my life, which is not so great considering there are other things in life to work towards and appreciate, like the beauty of a sunrise, the smell of daffodils in the spring air and the assignments I need to get on with to pass this degree. I can't be doing too badly though; I managed to get the word "flânerie" in the first paragraph of this which, if I hadn't had to read certain essays by German philosopher Walter Benjamin in which he speaks highly of the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, probably would not have featured in this thing otherwise.

Needless to say, though, I can now comfortably sleep (alone in my bed, mind) with a desktop computer, laptop, iPod, telephone, TV, PS2 and Wii all sharing the same room and without the fear that any of them will rise forth in the middle of the night and eat me, which I suppose is more than I can say for the humble PS1 way back when.

Come to think of it, that slowly opening, mouth-like lid probably had something to do with it too.

Where Science Steps In

The world's finally started paying attention to the obscure theories I keep locked up in my silent mind. Well I say "theories", plural, but specifically all I'm noticing right now is one theory, singular. In case you hadn't noticed (or in case you're not currently in the UK which, this being the Internet, you're probably not), it's cold. It's very very cold. Colder than it should be for the beginning of February. So much so that I've finally resorted to leaning against radiators which refuse to go higher than 17°C and wearing four layers of clothing just to keep my body temperature feeling somewhat normal.

So my theory? Yes, I shall reveal. For the last few years I've not been able to shake the feeling that the typical seasons of the year are disobeying the timeframes that we as a humankind have imposed unto them and are shifting about of their own free will. Of course, this is the point in the ramble where science steps in and goes "Hey, I'm Science" and delivers a lecture containing long jargonistic words, possibly in the dulcet Mancunian tones of Professor Brian Cox. Unfortunately my brain doesn't possess enough accurate scientific knowledge to fully explain the situation so I'm afraid you'll just have to settle for a pseudo-scientific explanation of what I think, in my little head, what's happening here. Observe:

Earth spins round and round and round in unknowable large vacuous space along an invisible line around giant star we humans call "Sun", except there is no line, we made that up. We pretended there's a line that Earth follows like a track all the way around Sun and we called it "orbit" because if we didn't we couldn't teach children in schools about the way space works or something. Anyway, Earth completes one lap of this invisible, imaginary track every 365 or so days give or take a few hours or something, but for the sake of mathematics we just stick to whole numbers like 365 and every so often make up for all those extra hours with an extra day in February thus confusing people born on the 29th of February as to when they can celebrate their birthday. Basically, because we simpleton humans can only function using whole numbers when it comes to how we experience time, a notion which we invented, our approximations are never accurate in accordance with the amount of time it actually takes for stuff to move around in space. I could go on about how days are actually only about 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds long but fear that might explode your mind if it wasn't already dribbling out of your ears right now. Anyway, because the actuality of stuff happening in the universe doesn't conform to our exact specifications, the timings of things can be slightly off. Based on that principle, my thoughts shift towards how the traditional seasons of the year are, themselves, shifting into different points on the calendars what we made.

I'd noticed that typically we northern-hemisphere dwellers experience the Winter period beginning in December, before it reaches its peak in January and finally dwindles over the course of February. By this logic, and designating each of the four seasons to a block of three months over the course of the year, Spring has taken charge of the March-April-May period, Summer; June-July-August, and Autumn (or "Fall" for non-English people which, quite frankly, is a stupid name for a season... Autumn sounds vaguely mystical and deep whereas Fall is what expensive ornaments do when knocked off mantelpieces) reigns over the September-October-November portion of our Gregorian method of counting. However, over the last few years, Summer has strayed from the path and normally takes until late July to reach us now. Still, to make up for its lost time, it likes to stick around until September now, meaning that Autumn doesn't get a look in until October and wants to stay to see Christmas and maybe (if its parents let it stay up late enough) New Year too. Winter doesn't come along until January now, but even then it merely begins as a mild breeze before the peak of the big freeze hits around February, i.e. now.

According to this preposterous, non-factual deduction of mine, we're now experiencing Winter later (or much much earlier if you like to approach your calendar from a strictly linear viewpoint) and by my reasoning, we're doomed to experience more minus-numbers, climbing gas bills and ponders of whether it's actually going to snow or not until mid-March, which would be fantastic if it wasn't for all the assignment deadlines I'm currently facing and not doing due to low morale, lack of food and being frozen in the same spot for twenty-two hours a day.

For goodness sake, I've only got 1 hour, 56 minutes and 4 seconds to get stuff done now.