Anyway - Beyond the usual human sources of happiness - the wife and kids - and the mundanities of housing and food on the table, I have three possessions that really just improve the fuck out of my life. To whit:
I've had my Kindle for just over a year now, being pleased to see that it's not exploded, cracked it's screen or otherwise renedered itself unoperational. Living in a non-English-speaking country as I do, one of my biggest niggles with my otherwise happy life here was either a lack of books, and/or the huge postage fees involved in getting them over the net.
No more.
Now it's a just couple of presses on the keyboard, a small blow felt directly in the credit-card and *poof* I can has book.
I love you my Kindle, don't ever leave me.
Okay - that's not actually my bicycle - mine's got disc brakes and a bigger front cogset - cos my thighs are made of steel, and the average cogset is for people with legs like noodles, but you get the idea - it's big, sturdy, high-visibility and does just one thing really well - a trait I admire in objects - ie. gets me from A to B really quick in all traffic conditions. Plus, it costs nothing to fill it up, unless you count air and marmite sandwiches, doesn't need a garage, road tax, MOTs, insurance arggh - all those Goddamn things that piss you off about cars. Keeps me fit too, and allows me to wear skin-tight spandex with deniability. "Oh - well, you know, I don't wanna wear all this stupid gear, but erm, ah, it's hmm - aerodynamic..."
I love you my bicycle, don't ever leave.
I'm sorry, despite all the 'wisdom' I've posted out on this blog I smoke. I smoke like an active volcano and have done for far too long. Sometimes, just to make myself crazy I tot up how much money I've spent on the damn things and it's like a new car or something, and not a crappy new car either, but a really jazzy one, one that comes with a turbo and a dishy blonde stuck in the passenger seat as standard. Sometimes I calculate how much space all those cigarette packes would have taken up, had I stored them in the house rather than chucking them in the bin. (I have too much free-time you may note here) anyway, I'd have had to have moved out, the house would have been full to the rafters. Past sins.
Didn't I ever just give up..? I hear you smug non-smokers out there ask. Well duh, yes of course. Multiple times even. Best I ever managed was 5 months. Okay, I felt better, lung capacity shot up etc. But I found the side-effects of not getting my daily influx of nicotine worse - I got stupid. Seriously, my usually turbo-charged brain, able to purr through byzantine curves of logic and inspiration suddenly started to chug. The IQ-blonde stepped out of my head to look for someone else's brain. The horror. So I quickly sparked up a ciggie and waved her back into the neural-car.
Newsflash non-smokers, you are dumber than you could be.
Anyway, long-story short, I gave up giving up, and looked for substitutions. Patches, no, unsocial and a bit, I dunno, foppish I suppose - for want of a better, and more offensive, word. Gum - ditto. I want that behavioural punctuation - the cigarrette-shaped full-stop after a good meal, that break on the balcony away from the kids, that something to do with my hands.
E-cigarettes. Not good for you but better than the tobacco version, by about 1000 times according to the net. It'll do.
I er. well, it's not love exactly, more like need. Don't ever leave, at least not until those clever scientists find something even less harmful.
