This is not what people do in a civilised society. Every part of me wants to sleep, but i'm standing at a bus stop waiting to be shepherded to the airport. Also, i might have to eat my own face. Happy sunday, everyone!

You all ignored my all-too-serious plea for help! I need to know what song to set my phone ringtone to. I can just upload MP3s and it'll use them; at the moment I've got Washington DC from the Magnetic Fields' awesome 69 Love Songs (which I've been listening to over and over again), but eventually I'm going to need something that won't annoy the piss out everyone around me. Or that will, but in a comic fashion. All ideas accepted with thanks.

It's warm today. There's sunshine, it turns out I can get frappés with my free coffee tokens, I've written my Elgg communities and Rachel's turning up tonight to hang out. We're in a good mood today, folks, even if we did see one of the worst films ever made last night. And actually, even though I felt like George Lucas had strapped me down and raped me with his greed for money, I kind of enjoyed the experience. "Wookiee" and "Dooku" are funny words which could have kept me going for an entire film on their own. I loved mocking the asthmatic robot, and laughing at the wooden acting, and burying my head in my hands whenever Yoda spoke. It appealed to me on a Plan 9 From Outer Space / American Ninja 3 / Manos: Hands of Fate level.

That said, I actually think Congress should pass a law banning him from not only making movies, but also speaking or walking anywhere. He should even be banned from rubbing hair gel into his brain to make that ridiculous coiffure. And then we can lock him in a box with the guy that made Van Helsing and the Wachowski brothers, and they can slowly eat each other, far beneath the sea where no-one will ever see them again.

Except the fish, but the fish can take it. They have short memories.

I do not.

With the aid of my cameraphone, my review of Revenge of the Sith follows:



Avoid.

Emma tagged me. I'm all a-quiver.

1. Total number of books owned?

I have no idea. And what kind of books? I've got an absolute ton of computing manuals, from BASIC primers all the way up to The Art of Computer Programming. Those are definitely books, in that they have spines and pages, but they're not books - they don't whisk you away to other worlds or describe things you'll never get to see. They're just manuals, no different from those Hanes books that tell you how to change the sparkplugs on a Nissan Micra. I have no love for them, and therefore they don't count.

A lot of my books are imprisoned. There are lots of children's books in boxes; quite a few novels and non-fictions as well, spread between here and Edinburgh. I've got two small bookshelves in my bedroom with books of the free-range variety.

Er. Some?

2. The last book I bought?

Fiction: The Secret Purposes, The Da Vinci Code and Vernon God Little, all at once as part of a 3 for 2 deal.

Non-fiction: The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers, which someone recommended to me.

3. The last book I read?

The Forest for the Trees.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me?

I'm going to split this up. I'll also deliberately ignore the growing canon of books written by blood relatives (helloo Sarah), because obviously they mean something to me, but here's two recommendations: Sarah's Someone Like You is emotionally wrenching, gripping and brilliant (and made me cry), and Jonathan Neale's Lost at Sea is exciting as hell. They're both technically "young adult" books, I guess, but don't let a marketing genre put you off.

Anyhoo -

Books I read as a child:

1: Dogger (aka Dave and Dog), Shirley Hughes, which is the best picture book ever.
2: The Dark is Rising sequence (actually five books, but that would have been cheating).
3: The Chronicles of Narnia.
4: 101 Dalmatians.
5: Bridge to Terabithia.

(And a magical 6: Something Wicked This Way Comes. I feel like The Book of Three should be there somewhere too.)

Books I read as an adult:

1: Elizabeth Wurtzel's egocentric, melodramatic Prozac Nation used to mean something to me. Maybe it still would if I reread it.
2: Equally, Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma.
3: And The Bell Jar.
4: I'm going to use this bullet point to group together every single damn book Margaret Atwood has ever written. But specifically, Cat's Eye and The Handmaid's Tale.
5: Art Spiegelman's Maus (both I and II, but particularly the first part), which I keep going back to.

5. Tag five people and have them fill this out on their ljs:

Shrug.

Um.

You!

Oh! I've just discovered I can make my chair higher. Hello, good posture, haven't seen you in a while. While no-one's in the office I think I might spin round and round awhile in celebration.

Whee.

So, Christians, I've got a question for you all. If everything is predetermined and God will make everything a-ok if you only believe and devote your life to Him, why bother doing anything? What's the point in going to university, getting a job, striving to make yourself a good life or even doing good unto others? Surely God will make everything great in the end? Isn't 100% devotion, in other words, a surefire recipe for laziness? This is a serious question based on things I've read from some of the fanatical believers on my friends list recently; basically I'm worried for you. I mean, I'm sure you'll get into heaven and all of that, but there's a good eighty years inbetween birth and death that you might want to think about. I don't want to be presumptious, and I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but I thought I'd say something.

On another note, if you could convince your brothers and sisters to stop trying to convert me every time I walk down the street, that'd be handy. I'm pretty certain in my beliefs, which is I guess ironic because I'm agnostic (leaning towards atheism), and I'm certainly not going to align myself with any kind of organised religion. Ditto the krishnas. Gouranga? Grrr, anger, more like. See what I did there?

Speaking of religion, albeit of a different kind, I was just unnecessarily short with someone who wanted me to take out all my heading and paragraph tags and replace them with bold and line break tags. This is not done; it'll reduce your search engine rankings and make things harder for disabled people. "Semantic web! Semantic web!" I screeched at them internally, like some kind of lanky technoparrot, although what I actually said was, "no".

In about an hour I'm going into town to buy myself a new phone, even if I mysteriously haven't been paid. The time is right, the planets are in alignment, and I'd quite like to be able to call people again. And this time I won't give the number to my boss. It'll be one of those new Nokias that lets you have a recorded ringtone; I'm leaning towards the opening riffs of Smells Like Teen Spirit, but what would your perfect ringtone song be?

This entry has been really, really highly strung. More sleep tonight, methinks.

Dear university,

It's the last Thursday of the month. So, like, payment. Why not?

With love,

BrokeBen

Another example of what I was talking about this morning: I went out for my lunchbreak and came back without actually having had lunch. I guess I'd better go find some soup or something ...

Ooh, someone's gone and fixed the iPod's biggest problem. One of the major reasons I bought the iRiver instead of an iPod was my undying hatred for iTunes and the iPod's insane digital rights management. Now you can get round that with a Winamp plugin - although for how long?

(Winamp is so much better than iTunes. If you've only ever used the latter, you don't know what you're missing. And the thing about only being able to use an iPod with one copy of iTunes on one computer? What is that all about? Seriously?)

Oh dear, they're turning off our electricity tomorrow at 6 so we need to leave at 5. Whatever will I do? Aside from go home early and grin at the stench of premature freedom.

It's a tough life being me, you know. All the things other people seem to be able to do with no effort at all, I screw up at. Repeatedly. The first day I moved to Oxford, I managed to melt Thomas's food processor (I bought him an identical model) and burn some paper that happened to be on the counter. That month, I burned more dinners than I ever thought possible. Since then, I've repeatedly broken glasses, let things rot, left the door to the freezer slightly ajar ...

And that's just in the kitchen.

If anyone's going to spill yoghurt over himself, it's going to be me. If anyone's going to fall off his bike, get mud on his trousers, wear the wrong coat in a rainstorm or lose his front door keys - I'm your man. The person most likely to spill his drink? I've got that covered. Sit on his glasses? That'd be me. Say something stupid or put his foot in his mouth? Hi!

To summarise, I suck at life. I always have, I always will, and I would have given up by now if I didn't enjoy it so much. I just have to regularly apologise to everyone who gets caught up in my forcefield of uselessness.

Other people don't seem to have this problem; they know what to say, they can dress themselves without looking like a mannequin at a charity shop in a bad part of town, they pass their driving tests first time and get great exam marks. "It's just luck," they'll tell me, but I know different. I even have a name for it: the serendipity of the perfect. The perfect, in this case, being everyone else.

When I was younger, I used to think that maybe there was a magic word that nobody had told me, that would suddenly grant me the magical ability to be a competent human being. Later on, I thought maybe it was a magic potion, and for a little while I blamed it on my parents. Of course, all those are cop outs; we all have to make do with what we've been given, and I happen to be prenaturally awkward.

In writing this entry I've missed the beginning of a meeting (edit: despite being reminded by my calendar). See?

Whew.

On the downside, I was up past midnight doing Elgg stuff (and, okay, talking to Katie and drawing cartoon pigs once I'd finished with the Elgg stuff). On the upside, there's now much less Elgg stuff to do - I might finish the Exciting New Feature this evening, and then I'd even be able to relax and do stuff for the rest of the week. Like clean the house. And weed the garden. Uhm.

I couldn't get to sleep last night; I made the mistake of breaking my self-imposed caffeine rule (on the first day, too) and having two cups of sugared tea. At 1am I was still staring at the ceiling, listening to the house make creaking noises and wondering if the millions and millions of spiders were coming to get me. Net result: less sleep for Ben, and a slightly more weary outlook on life this morning. Also, it's freezing cold and windy, so it took me longer to get to work, and I left late anyway, so I walked in at 9:20. Bastards. Although the Big Boss - who also cycles - came in at pretty much the same time, so I guess I'm safe.

Last night I downloaded the last episode of Doctor Who, so I can watch it again sometime. I've got all of them so far, although my copy of episode one is the leaked version with the lousy editing / sound effects. I'm guessing this is pretty illegal, right? Even though I've paid for the programme with my license fee. In Britain each household has to pay around £110 - $220 - for an annual license to own a television. This sounds ludicrous, but it pays for the BBC to remain advert free and a bit of Channel 4's diverse arts programming, and is therefore worth it. It also means that the BBC don't lose any revenue by me downloading their programmes, because I've already paid for them. They're in the process of setting up a legal (and hopefully free to license payers) download service, which will be a bonus, but I somehow doubt all the clips will come in DVD quality DivX, as they do from the current BitTorrent download sites.

I don't download movies, so although I'm sure I've written the right keywords to pique the MPAA's interest, they can move along. One of the things about having a deaf girlfriend is that you value subtitle tracks, and although I've done so by accident a handful of times, I'll never buy a DVD without one. I'm effectively barred from downloading films; although I think there's a technology for downloading subtitle tracks, it all seems like too much effort. Might as well spend seven quid on a DVD (I don't do new releases). I'm not so much into watching films by myself on TV - although at the cinema is another matter, because you've got a bunch of strangers to share the experience with anyway. Except for the time I saw Shaun of the Dead. Brrr.

I hadn't read it before and the media had me asking questions about it, but now I've read it from beginning to end I am completely, 100%, without reservations in favour of the European constitution.

( Here's why. )( Or, the extra-short version )

I was accused of running Britain down yesterday, and I'd like to redress the balance: Europe, of which Britain is and should be very much a part, is fantastic and I love living here. I sincerely hope this constitution gets voted in; all it does is cement the values we've always known are present here, and are what make it special.

Back to work now ...

See, another reason to dislike Terry Wogan is that he's a dirty strikebreaker.

Meanwhile, I'm turning over a new leaf this week. You know how I've started complaining about the pretentious cafeteria food? I've finally got it together to bring my own lunch in, and it's - wait for it - courgette, garlic and wild rice salad, with parsley, cucumbers bio yoghurt and all kinds of good stuff. And I haven't had a coffee yet today. In fact, I'm only going to have one coffee, which will be the free one they throw at me at 10am; I've even deliberately left my wallet at home to stop me from buying more drinks, brownies, flapjacks, etc. We have a perfectly good water cooler, and I've brought in some apples to snack on.

Dave has sent me a couple of anxious emails about communities functionality for Elgg; there'll be lots of programming every day after work this week. Until Friday, anyway, when Rachel + friend pop up, and I get to have some fun again.

Does anyone know how easy it is to withdraw money in Denmark? Do they have bank machines all over the place, or will I be stuck if I don't change some money first?

About to go out into old London town (must dash! must dash!) but:

1. Doctor Who irritated me last night by suggesting that Britain won World War II. Nobody seems to remember the Russians - thirty million people are rolling in their graves ... Aside from that, it was the best episode yet.

2. Who else wanted Moldova to win Eurovision? And how pants was the British entry? And surely I'm not the only one who finds Terry Wogan's remarks anachronistic, demeaning and unfunny? Give him a crown, a peerage and a copy of the Sun and he'd be all my least favourite parts of Britain in one tidy package.

3. God, I'm so opinionated. Sorry. Sorry. Er, sorry. Sorry. Terrible sorry. Wot.

4. My headache turned out to be sheer exhaustion. Much better today, although I'd better aim for another ten hours of sleep tonight.

5. I must away!

Worst. Headache. Ever.

So tired.

Ill.

Bad weekend. You're meant to let me be free.

The internal weeping shall commence ... now.

I think this is a worthy meme, which I've swiped wholesale from the BBC News website's magazine section. We're all constantly learning, even if it's mundane, useless information, and sometimes it's fun to share. Although I've halved their ten things, because I'm really not observant enough to pick out ten brand-spanking new things in only seven days.

1. Gene Wilder isn't dead. I genuinely thought he was; when was the last time he did anything? IMDB tells me his last movie was in 1991, and it seems perfectly reasonable that someone that famous could only disappear by being dead. Yet he's signing books at the local Waterstone's soon; it turns out his disappearance was due to cancer, which he's now recovered from. So that's a story with a happy ending.

2. Tom Stoppard co-wrote the latest Star Wars film. Okay, so I'm sure all the big Star Wars fans knew this for months, but it was news to me. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was one of my final Theatre Studies A-level pieces, as was another, shorter play of his. He also co-wrote Shakespeare in Love, Enigma - and this is complete news to me right this second - Terry Gilliam's Brazil. All hail at the church of Stoppard.

3. The Qur'an is being flushed down toilets. It's not just Newsweek; every major news outlet has reported similar activities at different times reported by different people since the beginning of the conflict, and the International Red Cross confirms it. Quite why the venerable news magazine is being shat on by the Bush administration for lying is beyond me; or rather, it isn't, but I'm curious to know why they're being singled out as opposed to, say, the New York Times.

4. Baltika gives me indigestion. Or at least, I assume that's what it was. It might have been the monterey jack and jalapeno burger from Native State. Either way, Monday morning's flight wasn't particularly pleasant, even before the passenger four rows behind me died. Normally I've been lucky enough to travel while in good health, but ... yeah. *whistles, walks away*

5. Garry Trudeau is king of the cartoonists. This one I've re-learned. But lately he's gone from strength to strength, making explosive and - beat this, Garfield - insightful comments, decades after he started. Check out today's:



Or last week's:



I've been loving it. (It takes time to get into - add doonesbury to your friends page and then it's zero effort. Just the way we like things.)

Ungh. I couldn't sleep last night - always the problem when I've been on the computer for ages and ages. The upshot is that Elgg's weblogs are now permissions-based - although there's currently no interface for it, you can internally give permission for someone to post on someone else's weblog. That paves the way for communities, which Need to be working by thursday ... although now I've got the permissions code worked out, I can easily port it to the file repository, profile data and so on. Then it's just a case of building a community membership system and altering the users table so I can define a user as being a real person, a community, an RSS feed, an external user imported through FOAF, etc etc etc.

Yeah, you didn't want to read that.

I never did have my chicken and lettuce wraps; I considered making them last night, but then I remembered I had a chicken leg to use. Maybe I'll try on Sunday night - until then I'm in New Barnet, where I intend to hide from the rain with Katie, largely in front of a screen. Garden State has been rented, there's the ever-present Doctor Who (which is still making me grin from ear to ear), and the beauty that is the Eurovision Song Contest.

Eurovision, of course, was designed in the sixties to illustrate how similar all the european countries really are, and succeeds annually in doing the exact opposite. There is nothing kitschier, or more fun, on television: for example the German song always tries to send it up using their internationally famous sense of humour, and the Greek entries are very often sexually explicit. (One year their song mentioned cucumbers. Use your imagination.) The British entry is usually the blandest thing you've ever heard, and the Ukrainians - who won it last year - all think they're extras in Xena: Warrior Princess. In short, it's a beautiful illustration of the stereotypes europeans spend the rest of the year trying to extinguish. I love it, despite Terry Wogan's patronising repartee (although I know I'm alone in hating his monotonous narrative).

Tip for British viewers, although you must all know this by now: the subtitles always provide the English translation to each song. The experience is nothing without them, so switch them on!

And with that, I return to my hole and contemplate LDAP queries over free coffee.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am craving something. Craving. My blood is thick with desire and I can think of nothing else. I've got, all things considered, a lusting going on.

For Chang's chicken in soothing lettuce wraps.

Seriously, if someone came up to me now, in my office, and offered me a plateful of those, I would do anything. I'd quit my job. I'd max out my credit card. I would sell the soul of my future first-born and become a lifetime member of the Republican Party, the NRA and the American Family Association.

What I don't understand is this: the common room do a selection of sweet snacks, like brownies and so on. They also do full-on toasties with things like pesto and cheeses I've never heard of. Why can't they do little savoury nibbles? Maybe some nuts, or pitta with houmous, or - this would be the Second Best Thing Ever - nachos, or even, were they to really push the boat out, Chang's chicken in soothing lettuce wraps?

Curse them for being thousands of miles away from me.

Oh well, a brownie it is ...

If anyone knows any free software to make photo slideshows into screensavers, please speak up - it seems bizarre for such a frivolous thing, but I need one urgently. By preference it needs to be able to handle fades between pictures, but I'm not picky.

Yawn.

I've got a really long entry about marriage in my head, but I'm too lazy to actually write it, so I'll summarise with a question: do you think marriage has changed since the fifties? And has it changed for the better? I was pondering while I made my green eggs this morning (parsley is my lord and master, incidentally) that I probably wouldn't be happy in an old-fashioned, husband = breadwinner, wife = homemaker relationship, and particularly not one where the onus would be on looking after my hypothetical wife (or her looking after me).

Marriage as two people sharing their lives and pooling resources as equals seems the most comfortable, and is the only kind that actually makes sense to me. I wouldn't want to do it any other way, and I certainly wouldn't want to be the sole supporter: although I'm fully aware that house stuff is a job in itself, I think I'd be happier sharing those kinds of things.

(It should go without saying that I see a marriage with two wives being equal to a marriage with two husbands being equal to a marriage with a husband and wife; I'm talking about the latter because that's the best fit for me.)

Just pondering. Obviously all this stuff is as hypothetical as how I'd raise a child or any other aspect of my life - things are subject to change.

I brought a bottle of Irn Bru into the office a couple of weeks ago, on a day when I hadn't been able to sleep for more than four hours and knew I'd need some kind of terrifying chemical stimulant. Not being an illegal drugs or Pro Plus kind of person, it seemed reasonable that Scotland's #1 carbonated beverage would come closest to keeping me awake, given that it's bright orange, packed with sugar and virtually lethal. Okay, so Red Bull it ain't, but who's going to drink glass after glass of that?

Anyway, I just finished it, and will buy no more. The last thing I need is to be at the fizzy drinks (I've started having a daily Purdey's, but that doesn't have so much as a spoonful of sugar).

For future reference, it's unwise to pick spots at the office, particularly semi-consciously. The resulting copious blood spurt will surprise yourself, your officemate and anyone you happen to run into in the corridor, and you will find yourself sitting in a toilet cubicle with a paper towel on your face until the bleeding stops. I'm so not cut out for a professional business environment. And so ready to go home.