How Many Modems Do You Need?

How Many Modems Do You Need?

Me again.

This week we turn inwards and talk of blogging. There is still much I have to learn about blogging. I was tagged on MySpace recently and it came back to haunt me in many ways, namely being shouted at by everyone I tagged. But it's not just poor choice of playmates. There's judging content, for example. With that in mind I would like to tell you some Ray Budick stories - the name given by the mighty Bill Bryson for things I have read and like, but can't make fit my prevailing theme, such as it might be. So.

1. I heard this in a bar in Barcelona, and so it is automatically a cool thing. Any story that begins "I was in a bar in Barcelona when..." is going to be cool no matter what it is about, no matter how mundane. A tale which starts with "I was in Swindon, when..." will automatically be dull whatever it concerns, be it bank raid, aliens or spontaneous human combustion. Whereas "I was in Barcelona when I caught the bus..." has much more cachet, despite being something that could happen anywhere. This in mind, I was in a bar in Barcelona and heard this story from a Dutch backpacker called Ulle. I found Ulle in the kitchen of our hostel taking what he assured me was a brand-new digital camera apart with a kitchen knife to fix a rattle in it. I do not know Dutch for "warranty" but I am sure he found out once he got home.

Anyway, in 1975, Maestro Dorban, Peru's most famous magician, performed his last and greatest illusion. He was well known for a knack for making things previously thought secure, disappear. And so one day the ruling military junta allowed him to borrow a suitcase containing Peru's last $2,000,000 in order to give the annual Military Variety Command Performance a climax to remember. Accordingly, on live TV in front of El Presidente and the whole of Peru, the suitcase vanished, and so did Maestro Dorban. Naturally my friends and I were mightily impressed by this, and it was topped off by the barman, a short man with a giant moustache, orange peel nose and nine fingers. Peru's most wanted criminal and we find him in a small bar off La Rambla in Barcelona. Perhaps we were a bit drunk. Calle Mocho. Dangerous in the wrong hands.

2. There is a regimental sergeant major in the Royal Norwegian Guards called Nils Olaffson. He has been twice decorated for his long and loyal serivce to Norway, some 21 years of military life. He is unlike other soldiers, though. He is a penguin in Dundee Zoo.

3. I used to be rabidly left wing. I believed in smashing the state, abolishing the Royals and the rise of the working classes. I though Ben Elton was funny I was so bad. Then came We Will Rock You and references to Bo Rap, and that all went out of the window. I am still left wing, though perhaps more circumspect. I am definately still an idealist, but not so much the guerrila. Well, Banksy has sold out too. Anarchy.

4. Somewthing from ny Uncle Charlie's local paper: Mrs Irene Graham of Thorpe Avenue, Boscombe, delighted the audience with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was sent each week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of 1945, she
recalled. "He'd always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt out Heil Hitler".
(Bournemouth Evening Echo)


5. I work in local government, and with its liberal dress codes, I haven't found myself wearing a suit to work since my third day there. No-one does, and because we are traffic engineers and so never seen, we are left to it. I wear jeans most days. One man in my office wears shorts every day of the year. Eat it, private sector types. Anyway, the one time I did wear a suit, apart from my interview, was for a photo for some award we tried to win for bus lanes and stuff. And if you look closely, one of the people pictured has forgotten he has a pencil behind his ear. I am definately not a suit person.

6. I have been poisoned by tapas every time I have eaten it. It seems that the more expensive the tapas, the worse it has been. A dive bar in Malaga just made me throw up afterwards. The posh place on Queens Road in Leicester left me laid up for three days and I lost a stone.

7. A quote from a national newspaper this time: A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coastguard spokesman commented, "this sort of thing is all too common". (The Times)

8. No-one else I know can cut a deck of cards with one hand, but I can. I learnt it from a man on a train in Devon; I don't know if any of my friends have been on trains in Devon. Perhaps that's why. He called himself a grifter. How cool is that?

How am I supposed to keep those to myself?

Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal