High Heels

Here’s something to ponder at two a.m. in the morning.

Why does my upstairs neighbour think it’s a bright idea to let his lady friend (and I use the term generously) wear her high heels all the damned time? I’m thinking there’s a fetish at work here.

Parquet wood floor + high heels = bad idea. I’m just saying.

It doesn’t bother me all that much right now, because I’m up at that hour anyway and they almost always admit defeat and go to bed before I do, it’s more the principle of the thing, you know?

I know that living on top of each other the way we do in modern times is trying for very different reasons than living in a village in the 1800s was. Some of it is just attributable to sheer stupidity, though. I mean, I keep odd hours. If I wanted to be a pest it would certainly be an easy feat for me to pull off. I could… oh, I don’t know… Play Mahler at eardrum splitting levels at three in the morning. Turn up the sound on my X-Box while playing Constantine (at three in the morning that’s more than a little creepy) or I could practise my knife throwing without discrimination. Hours on end of a solid thunk to the wall. I could take showers at inconvenient times. All that stuff. But I don’t. Because I actually think about shit before I do it, and I don’t operate under the illusion that I am alone in the bloody universe, okay?

I’m just saying.

Also – one bedroom apartment. How much running around can you do? Obviously a serious lot, judging from recent events. Normally,  though, I don’t hear my neighbour at all. It’s all quiet on the Western front, so I’m not going to pop an aneurysm over this or anything. It will all return to normal shortly I’m sure.

And should it not there will be countermeasures.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that, okay?

ROL

The Brains of a Fruitfly

Okay.

So I enjoy science. It’s so much like straight up lies sometimes it’s just plain funny. And I do laugh.

Okay, I was reading the paper and found this article about sleep and sleep-deprivation and you could say I have a vested interest in keeping up with that stuff, yeah?

So I read the latest scream in sleep research. No, not a nightmare scream…Sheesh, the puns, the puns.

Science is still trying to figure out why we sleep, what the whole point is with the sleeping-thing. Seems like a waste of time, now don’t it? (don’t ask me, I wouldn’t know)

Anyway – they have come up with a theory now that during sleep the neurons get cleaned. Some gunk builds up during the day, or so they claim, so that at night neurons, actually the synapsis, need a quick dusting and vaccuming.  All in all once the cleaning gets done your brain fires on all cylinders again.

Hmm… this is why, or so they say, when you don’t sleep enough you get that fuzzy feeling. (What? Have these people never heard of coffee?)

And that fuzzy feeling is … dirt on your synapsis? Imagine trying to sell that as an excause for being off at work. “Sorry, sir/ma’m/dude my synapsis haven’t been properly cleaned last night”

Didn’t think so.

Meanwhile I’m just running this stuff through my mind and thinking “wait, you mean I could be faster without performance enhancing drugs?” And then I hit the part of the article that had me (and all my synapsis) boggled and snorting coffee out my nose.

They are basing this amazing discovery on tests they’ve done – on fruitflies.

First off – How do you know you’ve managed to keep a fruitfly up?

Secondly – How do you know it’s feeling a little under the weather?

What kind of test can you give a fruitfly to determine if it’s doing its level best?

And thirdly – In what way is a human being like a fruitfly? (other than the whole ‘here have  a banana’ thing)

See this is why I love science. It sounds so clear and intelligent and worked through – and then you get to the part with the fruit flies.

I get that you can’t perform these tests on people, that would be cruel. Also I’m thinking you need to perform an autopsy and I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules.

Oh, well.

I guess that puts a spin on having a dirty mind.

ROL

It can’t do that… Oh, really?

Okay, so my life is weird. This is a well established fact.

Or, it should be anyway.

I have this job… well, I have a few of them actually, but what the hell… and of course there are computer tools (not the one’s manning them, the ones that are on them) that are supposed to perform certain functions.

So the great mystery strikes again.

My current program is not doing what it should be doing and doing things that it is according to support impossible for it to do. Sound familiar? Yeah, well, if you’ve read any of my previous posts you’ll be well acquainted with the fact that this happens to me. A lot. Enough that I would rant about it anyway.

I swear, if I have to talk to one more tech who tells me “it can’t do that” I am personally going to … well, I don’t know what I’ll do. But it won’t be pretty, that much I can assure you.

Anyway – I swear that’s the reason they stick the support guys in a city nowhere near you. There just comes a point where you want to be able to look a nerd in the face (and believe me I have nothing against nerds –more power to ‘em, I have my own nerd tendencies) and quietly, but with some force explain that it just did the thing it’s not supposed to be able to do… twice. With sprinkles on top.

May they all ride to hell on a saddle made of hedgehog skins!

So until next time – signing off, you’re faithful captain of the great ship It Can’t Do That…

ROL