Licked

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who feel the need to lick their finger before turning a page, and those who do not. I suppose technically there's people who believe that there's two kinds of people, and people who actually know there are many more. There's also people who smell their clothes before putting them on, and those who already know all the clothes in their wardrobes are clean. I don't know where these groups intersect.

When I turn a page, I do not first lick my finger. I wash my hands regularly, I have a keen knowledge of where my hands have been, and yet I still do not lick my finger. I have always found that the pages turn without that being necessary. I cannot help considering it "icky" to have saliva on the pages of anything I'm going to read.

Mum is a licker, dad is not a licker. They should have known from the start that it would only end in tears.

I do not judge lickers. There's nothing necessarily wrong with being a licker. Some of my best friends are liquors. So long as you don't want me to handle your document after it's been moistened that's just fine.

It's also important to note that some things are OK to lick. Envelopes are fine, so are stamps, lollipops, and the tops from yogurt pots. It's OK to lick your fingers if there's food stuck to them, though, in most cases this should be done with minimum fuss and no seductive gazes at people across from you.
Especially if you're a guy. And/or in your 40s. And/or clinically obese. In which case failure to comply may mean that I'm forced to sterilize you. Sorry, it's the rules.

It's OK to lick salt from your hand before a shot of tequila (another excellent liquor, possibly because it makes other kinds more bearable). Though you should only do so if there's lime wedges handy.

Perhaps I am more of a sucker than a licker. It seems that anything that can be licked is likely to be better sucked. At least that's what I'm told. It's certainly true for the lollipop.

4 Overdose

I'm generally not a huge fan of tv. I don't like advertisements, normally I have a good attention span, but when they come on I discover that it's less than 30 seconds long, a fact that fills me with self-doubt. Maybe if I could stay interested in commercials showing how white my whites could be, or how much other people are "loving it" I'd be a better and more complete individual. Yet somehow my will is not strong enough, and I always end up changing channel, or going to make tea.

I also fail to be interested in the majority of programming. While my mother will always have the tv on in the background (sometimes as many as three at once in different rooms, so she can pay attention to different shows as she moves around the house - an odd habit) I tend to observe an absence of interesting material, and then switch it off. I later find out that I missed something I would have liked to see, because I wasn't browsing channels at the right time.

Other's seem to have a physic ability, telling them when something good is showing, apparently that physic ability normally manifests itself as those adverts I can't bring myself to watch. It seems the trick is to either watch them, or leave your sofa only when they're on, so you never miss anything important.

The introduction of things like 4od (which I refuse to call "on demand," there is an older and better acronym using those letters) iplayer and the imaginatively named "demand five" which I've never even tried to use, should be a blessing. But for some reason, I barely use them.

There are always many things available, I only consider the options that are free, because I don't like paying for things I can't hold. I tend to go for Channel 4, because on my home connection iplayer crashes. The problem is, I'm now swamped by choice, quickly each item looks less inspiring than the first, and when the first option is "Celebrity Big Brother" that's pretty horrific.

It gets to the point where even a show titled "Catastrophe" which stars Tony Robinson and has a picture of an exploding planet won't persuade me to sit and watch. I like Tony Robinson, I like space and planet-type objects, and I like explosions, but now I'm questioning Channel 4's motives - why is it free? What do they have to gain?

Maybe my mother's state is due to years of channel hopping, maybe she's been steadily hypnotised by television, bound to always have one, pay the license, watch the adverts, unable to function without it anymore. The thought is a scary one.

I'd be a great conspiracy theorist, I wonder if I could involve Tony Robinson somehow...

Oh, Alright

A real new year's resolution? Seriously?

I like to set myself nice, attainable goals. For example, three ideas I came up with for new year's resolutions were;

1. Don't smoke.
2. Don't invade any third world countries.
3. Wake up every day.

Technically, if I consider these to be easily attainable goals then I must be more virtuous than certain entire governments, but lets not make this political, it's not a competition or anything.

I think I'll do the three things above, but I'll have a challenge as well. My challenge will be to stop swearing.

I tried it last year for lent, but I kept slipping up, and two weeks in I remembered that I wasn't Christian, and uttered something along the lines of "f*ck lent." See that, just censored myself, I've started already. That's motivation for you.

I'm going to make sure the goal isn't entirely impossible by starting easy. I'm going to cut a handful of words out of my vocabulary, and then add others when I've completely stopped using the first lot.

The first to go will be the mother of all curses. I can't help thinking it's a shame, because honestly, I like it. It's only the "worst" because we allow it to be, just as it is only a huge insult to women because that's what we've let it become. The sharp "c" sound flowing into the harsh grunt is, as fas as I'm concerned, everything that swearing should be.

Still, I'll try not to use it. Along with a few other particularly harsh four-letter words. Not sure if this is a goal worth aiming for, but if I succeed people might tell each other off for swearing around me (like they do when they swear around my mother, a fact that I find hilarious, but that's because I've seen her drunk).

It strikes me that this would be a lot easier if I could pronounce asterisks.