How Do You Use These Toothpicks?

I’ve just noticed a switch on the wall by the shredder, which has a sign below it saying “Do Not Touch This Switch”. I’m so tempted to press it. Douglas Adams would be proud.

It is nearly dark for the whole drive to work now. As Martin said the other day, you know it’s autumn when the garden lights come on before Emmerdale. His wife is the soap addict by the way; Martin would have the whole Eastenders/Corry/Neighbours mediocrity up against the wall, being the nasty old misanthropist he is. I went cold turkey from my 20-year addiction to the Weatherfield soap as soon as I was sure that dastardly Dicky was no more after his dive into the canal. I can watch it now without being sure to set the video for the next episode. I can handle it. I really can!

Anyway, back to the drive. The clouds had a delicious 3D effect as the sunrise caught them, matching the Villa-Lobos music on the radio quite well. Finally, as I pulled into the car park, it started to rain, creating an almost semi-circular rainbow off to the west. Now the sky is just a dark grey mass. I seem to be on of the few people happy with new BBC weather forecast. It tells you as exactly as forecasts can how the weather will appear in any point in time or space, the cloud cover, the rain, the wind. The problem is that people want everything simplified in some sort of nannyish way. Those little cloud symbols have become the equivalent of the clichés that everyone seems to want to use today to save time in some sort of newspeak way. All news seems to have to use a set of defined phrases to explain everything. The problem is that the short sets of words become words in themselves; they don’t trigger the required images in the brain because they are filtered out as what is to be expected. I requote my ‘paradigm’ example when I asked a number of people who received an email with that word in it, what it actually meant. None of them could tell me without looking it up as I did. It is shorthand for something that requires explaining in sentences rather than with a single word. The jackbooted octopus and all that! Pretend to be stupid, say you are stupid when you are stupid, but make sure you get everything explained rather than just nodding as if it’s all clear. My name has been Pot. Kettle will be back after these messages.