Who decided that pine = clean

Am I unaware of some natural predilection of pine trees to clear up after themselves? Is it perhaps some ancient tradition that before we had the chemical means to remedy bad smells, readily available pine leaves/sap/bark was used to reduce odours? I have never actually smelt a pine tree specifically, but I'm pretty sure I have never smelt anything like pine scented air freshener or toilet cleaner whilst wandering through the woods, so I can only assume that the smell we now call 'pine' is an extrapolation on the smell of some part of a tree rather than an accurate representation of the natural smell of pine.

I wonder if the other trees are aware that, by virtue of their exclusion from the world of cleansing products, they all fail to measure up to the sweet aroma of pine. Do they all feel hard done-by? Do pine trees get together and make fun of oaks because nobody wants their toilet to smell like an oak tree? Maybe Christmas trees and pine trees get together to enjoy their privileged status of being exalted by the human race either as decoration or nasal adornment. Perhaps they are shunned by other trees for aiding and abetting man despite his noted antagonism towards their fellow trees, which would be a shame seeing as Christmas trees never seem to survive the optimistic new year 'planting in the garden' and pine trees presumably don't even get near the reproduced smell that bears their name, let alone any royalties or even preferential treatment on the back of it.

Having thought about this for way too long, I am now considering a time consuming and ultimately pointless project to reveal the origins of pine scented products, so I can only hope that something else crops up to distract me before I end up wasting my time and boring other people rigid with my tales from the pine project.

Cereal dreams

I have always loved cereal. When I was younger, I didn't even give any other breakfast food a look in, always preferring a bowl of cereal and on one memorable occasion eating 12 Weetabix in a row at the age of around 7. A couple of years ago, my doctor recommended that I stop eating breakfast (on the grounds that I was throwing it straight back up almost every morning), which I did despite having it ingrained in my consciousness that I was relinquishing the most important meal of the day.

However, our return from the country where eggs seem only to occur in threes combined with a new working regime means that I am now firmly back in the camp of breakfast and the last delivery of shopping I received fulfilled a dream I had been having since deciding to revert back to my well trusted cereal lifestyle - a wall of cereal. That's not a metaphor - I literally had a recurring dream over the course of around 5 nights in which I owned a seemingly limitless supply of all kinds of cereal. Given the uplifting nature of this dream, I decided to make it a reality and I now have that wall of cereal adorning the top of the fridge which makes me happy just to see it.

I am a little saddened that Grape Nuts have bowed under the pressure of the modern world of breakfast snacks and instead of a small opening in the cardboard on the side of the box, they have now fallen in line with an inner bag and top opening system, but they taste just how I remember them so I can overlook their transgression. The other bonus is that cereal is a good way to up my calcium intake - I have never been able to drink milk neat, but my reignited love of cereal might also be the thing that stops be from crumbling from the insides like an ancient scroll when I reach the golden age at which these things start to happen.

Little did I realise that a wall of cereal could make me so happy, but clearly I am either a lot deeper or a lot more shallow than I ever realised.

Hotel living

Handy hints for people living in hotels/motels:

If you don't get up in time for housekeeping and eat mainly snacks from vending machines : two coke cans will fit into an empty pringles tub to maximise the length of time you can go without emptying your ridiculously tiny bins.

If you can't work the shower, and are scared to try jiggling anything else in case it breaks, try pulling the rim of the tap, where the water comes out as that is way less embarrassing than calling down to reception three times and eventually having to have someone from maintenance come up to show you.

Check everything you're going to want to use before unpacking because once you've got all your stuff out before finding out the TV doesn't work you'll be annoyed even if they kindly offer to move you to another room and will make a good five trips with arms full of trailing stuff before you've got everything from one to the other.

Watch the Family Guy episode where Peter gets a job as a maid, so that even when you are awoken at some ungodly hour by someone knocking on the door and screeching 'housekeeping' it will make you laugh rather than throw something at the door.

Take, keep and use earplugs - there is almost nothing other residents of hotels will not do,

in order to stop their fellow guests from sleeping, up to and including strangely rowdy parties, an apparent desire to rearrange whatever furniture can be moved without unscrewing it from the floor or weird, loud conversations with their friends in the wee hours of the morning about the middle east during which they display surprisingly comprehensive albeit wildly inaccurate views on the history of the conflicts taking place there.

Glad I don't believe in interpreting dreams

A couple of nights ago I dreamt that I was tied up at the wrists by a girl I hardly know (a friend of a friend) and forced to sleep in a room filled with fibre glass despite telling her that I was not only afraid of it but also concerned for my health. I was really angry with her for reading a book I was writing in, and wanted to punch her.

The night before I dreamt that my engagement ring was falling apart and the stones were shattering so I couldn't even pick them up to have it repaired.

Last night I dreamt that the Boy Wonder and his friend were playing a monopoly game based on the world cup which I wasn't allowed to join in with. Instead of proper dice, they were using an apple with numbers drawn on it in a cup of water - you tried to roll the apple and when it came up with no number on top it was declared 'in the sea' and had to be rolled again. They were supposed to be headed off to a strip club afterwards, but none of them really wanted to go, and Eric was actually riding his bike around the village letting everyone know which televisions were working in all the pubs. He also had five TVs in his bedroom which was a bit weird, but I had to stay there while they all went off to the strip club so I had plenty to watch which was a bit of a relief.

Clearly these dreams are a sign of my slightly overstuffed brain, but for anyone who actually believed in interpreting dreams, I can imagine it would be pretty terrifying to guess what the hell it all meant.

Unfortunate juxtaposition in TV scheduling

For some reason, the folks at NOLA 38 have decided that an appropriate show to follow 'Reno 911' at 4.30 in the morning is 'Cops'. This means that if you kind of half watch the TV when drunk before bed, you get about half way through 'Cops' before thinking 'That's odd - this is hardly funny at all, and that one guy in the really short shorts has hardly even been in this episode. And it's a lot more gritty than normal, what's that all about?' before realising that the junky being cuffed is actually genuinely threatening the police with an attack with an infected needle, and you probably aren't going to see the sassy black one with all the junk in her trunk any time soon. I can only assume that somebody was actively encouraging this mindset when they came up with the idea of putting these two shows back to back, otherwise it's a desperately inappropriate oversight which, if we are anything to go by, has lead to a lot of late night confusion and disappointment.

Crazy TV land

Why is it that on television, the continuity people never seem to notice flaws in weather conditions? I frequently see loads of guys in suits, clearly quite comfortable as they have kept their jackets on, talking to women in skimpy vests or sleeveless tops who 'clearly' aren't as cold as you would think...

What is with these 'reality' shows

The first time I saw Run's House, the 'reality' TV show about Rev Run and the antics of his hilarious family, I was understandably intrigued to see how life would play out when you spend your whole time with a full sized clock around your neck. Then I watched it, and realised that it was scripted, and poorly at that, making the whole premise pointless and resulting in some of the most ridiculously poor television I've ever seen.

Since then, our nocturnal lifestyle has lead to us watching TV at odd hours of the day or night, which has limited our viewing to some extent and resulted in us watching 'The Hills', the most entertaining element of which is the anger it inspires in the Boy Wonder who without fail declares all those involved to be hateful and gets genuinely agitated about their continued existence. I think the fact that every turgid, over emotional scene is played out in this weird fake reality but with peculiar camera angles, inane whiny conversation and utterly vacuous situations engineered apparently to entertain people who have yet to become bored of the pathetic teenage antics of people with nothing better to worry about than how they look and whether they can steal their friend's boyfriend without looking like a bitch on television. I find it amusingly crap, but it is worth it for the rage that 'The Hills' inspires in the Boy Wonder - watching him fume in fury at the fact that these people continue to occupy space on the planet is hilarious.