Uni Cycles.

There were a tonne of bikes in Oxford today. More than usual – I mean, there’s loads of them anyway, it’s like Amsterdam, but with less organised prostitution (that’s not to say there’s no prostitutes in Oxford, just that they’re not very well coordinated), more Christian fundamentalists preaching on the high street, and about the same number of tourists gazing at architecture in wonderment, before tripping over some cobbles and into a canal.

It was some kind of race, with barriers, and people handing out drinks, and big metal frames with lights to show the start line, and road closures, and fluorescent lycra and helmets shamed like squash seeds.

For people who I assumed were having fun (or else why would you do it?), they seemed to all be grimacing a tremendous amount, but then again, that could have been unfortunate testicular seat positioning rather than exhaustion – people ask how Lance Armstrong managed to win all those Tour De France titles, simple, he was 50% less likely to sit on his testicles while mounting the bike. That’s a joke, not a dig – he’s done great work for charity, and inadvertently caused one of the biggest fights my school has ever seen when a box of LiveStrong wristbands was placed in the Main Stairwell. The sheer smoking fury of the ensuing fracas, if inhaled, was surely enough to cause a multitude of cancers.

Anyway, well done to anyone who did whatever it was that went on, especially if you won. Unless it wasn’t a race, but in fact a hunt that had circumvented regulations by riding bikes instead of horses, and you were all chasing swans through Blackbird Leys, in which case, very well done. I’d join you next year, but I’m busy washing my heirlooms. And my bike got nicked. See the irony of parading your fancy road bikes through Oxford, a bicycle theft hot spot? No, you don’t, because you’ve got really expensive sunglasses on, have the helmet’s visor pulled down for aerodynamics’ sake, and you’re focusing on the nylon-elastane-blend clad arse rhythmically shimmying in front of you. And a peachy bum beats irony any day.

The Hip Hop Chip Shop.

Just a brief one – I do a couple of hip hop jokes on stage and a bit of freestyling in my set, and like a lot of hip hop. Most audiences don’t cheer when I ask if they like the music, and that’s fair enough, because most of it is terrible, but there is some good stuff. I say this because El-P’s new album is out, and it’s really good. You can listen here:

http://www1.rollingstone.com/hearitnow/player/elp.html

Some similarities (mainly production based, and the fact it’s hip hop) with Death Grips’ latest, which you can hear here, and is similarly awesome.

http://soundcloud.com/deathgrips/sets/the-money-store

If you’re into hip hop/rap, then you should enjoy these. If you’re not, give them a go, and you might like them anyway.

Doorkward.

Yesterday’s post reminded me of a corridor at my old College, one that my girlfriend terms ‘The Corridor of Doom’ by virtue of the sheer number of ‘hospital’ doors along its length, and the probability of having to hold these doors open for fellow students any time you walk along it. It starts at the library, and runs along four entrances to ‘staircases’ of student rooms, each door on the left hand wall partitioned from the next by a pair of swinging, wooden framed doors with panels of reinforced glass in them, their hinges allowing them to be pushed from either side.

The doors are nothing like this, but it’s a silly picture. The doorman serves no purpose.

There are four of these doors, and so if you hold the first open for someone following you, you’re obliged to do so for the other three. From this, there are two primary concerns:

1. If the person walks slower than you, you have to slow up and hold each door open, or you end up holding open the first two, before seemingly accelerating away and letting the last two swing in their face.
2. If the person walks faster than you, they end up overtaking you, which is just awkward. Admittedly, this would be the fairest – if after the first two doors, the person behind you leapfrogged to the front, they would hold open the last two. However, this issue is not one of fairness, but social awkwardness. Plus, there’s one more normal door to the outside (to access the Kenyon building or more Wolfson staircases), and so someone’s going to end up opening more doors.

If you’re the one holding the door, while you’re concerning yourself with the whole awkwardness, at least you don’t have to worry about reciprocation of manners. The person walking through behind you now has the challenging decision of how to thank you for your generous door holding.

1. Say ‘Thank you’ (or a similar statement of gratitude) at each door. This may seem like the simplest way of dealing with it, but you’ve then said the same thing four times in a row. If you try to mix it up by varying the intonation, you’re going to seem very strange.
2. Say a different statement of gratitude at each door. While combating the concerns of  the above, you’re now saying something along the lines of “Thanks; thank you; cheers; merci”. Oddball.
3. Say thanks at the first/second/third/fourth door but not the others/less than all of the others. Seems to be a good compromise, but you’re valuing some of the person’s ‘holding’ above the others. That’s rude.
4. Don’t say thank you until the last door. You’re waiting for them to finish all the holdings before you thank them – it may seem sensible, but the first three holdings, they’re going to think you’re a dick, and you may find that last door left swinging in your face. Plus, it’s quite easy to sound sarcastic.
5. Say thank you at the first door, and indicate your gratitude for all future door holdings. A safe bet, if a bit presumptuous – again, you may find them leaving doors swinging, as you now seem to expect them to be your servant.
6. SAY NOTHING. In ‘The Corridor of Doom’, this is your best option. It’s every man and woman for themselves – a Gladiators style gauntlet of shouldering your way through heavy swaying barriers, leaving a trail of hapless, following students in your wake.

It’s a minefield. And while this may only be of real concern to someone with undiagnosed, mild social Asperger’s, it’s still an interesting minefield. You could just do what most people do, and never walk down the corridor when another student is nearby – either speeding up and pulling away from others before you reach the corridor, or waiting until they’ve travelled through it and then proceeding yourself. Life’s so much simpler when you take away any human interaction.

I’ll finish with a cute pictorial representation of yesterday’s ramblings.

Doordicks.

If you’re a bit of a dick, but wish to maintain a veneer of politeness and good manners (like all good stealthy dicks), you can have a bit of fun with this.

Rather than holding a door open for someone who’s passing through just after you, start holding doors open for people who are just a bit too far away.
It’s happened to most of us – someone walking ahead of you holds a door open for you when you’re still a couple of seconds away. You wouldn’t want to inconvenience them by making them hold it open for any longer than they have to, and so you quicken your pace, near jogging to make it through the door quickly. This inconveniences you, as you’ve had to run. And sometimes, you didn’t even want to go through that door, but did it just to avoid any more embarrassment. Therefore, if you are a stealthy dick, start (or continue) to do this; and if someone you suspect of being a stealthy dick does this, play them at their own game – when they hold the door open, don’t speed up, walk normally towards it, and at the last moment, veer away, and leave them holding the door. HAHAHAHA. Thwarted.

————————

Having just written that, I found an article on Psychology Today about door holding, speeding up walking and collective effort – read it here.

I then found this, from only 2 weeks ago. A fine example of the above.

My Hyundai left High and Dry.

I’ve spent the day in Cheltenham. I didn’t intend to – I’ve no ties to the place, and their branch of TK Maxx only has one floor – but events transpired such that I ended up not leaving until 3.30pm.

I had gone there to get my car serviced – the nearest Hyundai dealership is in Banbury, and they were charging silly money for a 48k service and MOT, so I headed to Hylton Motors in Cheltenham, who had offered to do both for £229. I arrived at 10.10am, and left the keys with the nice man at the desk of the dealership, who then offered me a courtesy car while mine was in the garage – as I’d been told the car would be ready for 1pm, I declined, and said I’d mosey into Cheltenham and have a wander. They said I could have a lift there if I wanted, so I hopped in a shiny new Nissan Juke whose protruding, finned brake lights and bright white reversing bulbs made the rear of the car look like Angelina Jolie and Cillian Murphy had made sweet auto-vehicular love with a BMW X5.

A car with crazy-ass cheekbones/crazy ass-cheekbones.

Once the nice lady from the desk had dropped me off, I had a look around some shops, including the aforementioned TK Maxx (where I bought some delicious Sussex Valley ‘Summer BBQ’ sauces) before decamping for a coffee. After an hour in the company of my ever-cooling beverage, I popped into Mü, a great, little, steak-focused bistro, where I had a truly scrumptious knickerbocker glory, with boozy cherries at the bottom and everything!

I then journeyed the two miles back to the garage on foot, so I could listen to the next essay in my audiobook of David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again - a really interesting collection of arguments and insights that I recommend highly.

I got there at 2pm, paid the bill, and waited for one of the mechanics to finish chamoising the bodywork before I headed off. I’d received the ‘Platinum service’ - all the bits that needed checking had been checked; all the bits that needed changing had been changed; and they even gave me a free bottle of ELF motor oil to keep the engine topped up. AND they even threw in a really nice touch where they locked the keys in the car.

Yep. Fun fun fun. I told them that the keys were in the car, to which they replied, “Yeah – they’re in the car”, not really understanding my statement. “No, they’re locked in the car”, I said. So a mechanic came out and looked at the keys through the window of the car, for about a minute. Then he went round to the passenger side and looked at the keys from a different angle, for about a minute. This continued for the other windows, before he had a brainwave, and tried all the door handles. To my surprise, the doors didn’t open. I thought he’d been using psychic mind powers to activate the central locking mechanism – because it was quite clear that I’d already tried the door handles. I may have been full of knickerbocker glory, but that heavenly combo of cream and slightly colder cream hadn’t resulted in severe mental deficiency.

Not to worry, I thought, they must have a master key for all the models of car – nope, doesn’t work that way. So I had to wait an hour and a half while someone attempted to break into my car. Eventually, they removed parts of the passenger door and got in, retrieving the keys. This did result in that door getting, in engineering terms, proper fucked, so now I can’t open it.

They’re going to mend it for me (obviously), picking it up from Oxford, and returning it the same day; and I’m expecting a substantial refund on the cost of the service. They did provide me with hot drinks and a television showing Escape to the Country while I waited, so there’s no problem with their customer service, which was very good, and the car drives nicely, it was just a small human error that put a downer on the day.

Oh well, shit happens, and it was a double D-licious knickerbocker glory.

“My name is Adizone, gym of gyms: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Last Saturday, I was in Tewkesbury at a picnic with my Dad’s extended family. We consumed sandwiches, sausages and chicken while our dog slaughtered a toy bunny.

I love the smell of polyester stuffing in the morning. Smells like Winalot.

I soon realised that the picnic area was next door to Tewkesbury RFC and Bowls Club, a place that I gigged at last year, and so went to have a look and a seminisce (half a reminiscence). Right next door to the clubhouse was a play area (my thoughts on those), and next to this was a fluorescent behemoth of a monstrosity. An outdoor gym, branded an Adizone, with various resistance and cardio machines dotted about a springy blacktop, shaped like the LO2K12 (catchy) logo. There was a bouldering wall, and a basketball hoop, and a football goal, and a lack of anyone using it.

Tewkesbury Adizone – Artist’s Impression (before the canopy’s been nicked, the bouldering handholds snapped and the athletes’ portraits redecorated with performance ‘de-hancing’ drugs)

While I think these things are tremendously awesome in principle, in practice, they’re vandalised, and then not used. This seemed to be the case in Tewkesbury. The pedals on the 4 pieces of bike-based equipment were looser than an elephant’s labia, and the ‘rock’ holds on the wall were little more than nubs, useless to all but Alain Robert. Without a security guard, and on-site maintenance, these places are going to end up ruined – a shame, as anything that encourages exercise is clearly good, yet the propensity of people to break stuff is undeniable, and so you wonder why people bother spending £150k on these things (I mean, it’s clear why, as it’s great publicity and helps showcase councils’ health drives, but yada yada ya).

This was very much the situation when I was there. Empty, I mean, not a man taking photos of girls.

 We can’t have nice things. We struggle to allow anything nice/beautiful/beneficial/good to survive, and seem not to really care that, like a child who continues to throw a toy from its pram, there comes a point when mummy or daddy can’t be fucked to pick it up again (I’m not veiling any environmental sentiment here – although clearly it applies – I’m not one to be sanctimonious regarding that issue, as my actions and concerns about it are perfunctory at best).

Like a small, brown toy rabbit in a flowery dress; once a Tibetan Terrier (that kind of looks similar to the dog that won Britain’s Got Talent) has torn the fibrous filling out of it, it can be restuffed, and the cycle repeated, until eventually the fabric becomes so tattered that its CE mark seems dreadfully sarcastic and the threads wears thinner than the conceit of (insert example of mindless audio/visual drivel here), and we have to forget about it, and admit that it’s gone. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Creed-walking.

I walk quite fast.
I’ve got big legs and a big stride, and I like to make the most of this by getting where I’m going quickly. This, combined with dexterous swerves of the pelvis and sashaying hips to dodge obstructions, means I’m rather speedy when it comes to making my way along the pavement.

So today, while bombing down the street at a decent pace, I was surprised to find my path blocked by a pair of small Chinese girls – they had appeared out of nowhere and ensnared me. I plucked out one earphone, leaving it to dangle at my shoulder, blaring out Torche’s Harmonicraft (recommended), and looked at them quizzically.

They presented me with a small, folded card, and asked, “Bible Study Group?”
I saw my chance. I took the card, and the girl dropped her arm to her pocket for another leaflet. This was all the space I needed. A small gap; I burst forward, fleeing my confinement, legs whirring, waving the card above my head to ward off the evil spirits of the two evangelists. A hundred yards down the street, I turned to see whether they had gained on me.

They were further up the street, handing out another card to a confused tourist.
Not as persistent as they used to be.