Unhealthy addictions
I'll bet you thought that once I got my broadband connection up and running I'd be spending all my free time writing ever longer and more charming descriptions of the sad little perversion of God's plan that is my life. To tell the truth, so did I. It turns out that the real joy of an always-on broadband cable connection is less the speed than the fact that it really is always on. And more often than not, so is my computer, downloading mis-titled movies and episodes of ever more obscure TV shows.

I have become addicted to TV shows which have, to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, never aired in the UK. I have, for example, downloaded and watched every single epsiode of the Gilmore Girls, a show which I came across quite by accident and which has proven to be one of the best written and most entertaining pieces I've seen in while. This is a show which gives The West Wing a run for its money, and yet not one of the 3 million channels currently crowding the various Digital Satellite and Cable platforms in the UK currently deems it worthy of broadcast. Tres Bizzare.

Ooooh. They're playing the Into The Temple Duet from Bizet's Pearl Fishers on the radio right now. It still gets to me.

Anyhow, don't give up on me just yet; I promise I'll up my posting rate.

Reading things (but not reading them)
Ever opened a letter, glanced at it and made a snap judgment about what it says before you've even read it? A letterhead, a few choice words and a date. Aaargh! You screw it up and throw it in the corner. Oh my God, that's so unfair!

Then you fume about it for three or four days, kick cans in the street and plot revenge fantasies. At night you lay in bed, spouting random swear words, like someone with that disease I can't spell.

One morning you're so distracted that you knock over the ironing board, singeing the carpet. The next morning, without thinking, you iron bits of melted carpet into your best shirt.

Eventually you calm down, realise you have to sort things out, and so you plan to call the people who sent you the letter. You take the number with you to work, wait until lunch, pick up the phone and dial.

It is, of course, only then that you discover the person at the other end of the line has absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

"No, you've misunderstood completely. It's not this, it's that. And no, it's not happening tomorrow, it's next week. And don't be silly, it doesn't mean that, it means this instead. How could you have so completely and utterly have missed the point?"

Reading, but not reading. I do it all the time.