NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

This cannot be! I just saw a stretch Hummer that is even bigger than mine! It was hot pink and about 80 feet long and racked up enough violations of traffic law and god's law to have the driver's license revoked just by turning a corner.

How dare they have one bigger than mine!

If I can no longer compete on size, then I'll have to compete with style. Time to go for a drive in my hot pink Edsel with a purple metallic stripe and a rotting leg on the front.

Luke's Chewie Holds Its Flavour For Hours

He'll Probably Be Dead From Skin Cancer By The Time He's Thirty-Three

Click Go The Joints Boys, Click Click Click, He Broke His Toe But The Bones Did Knit.

Judging from the sounds its been making lately the toe that I thought might not be broken might have been broken at the joint. But it's probably just in the process of sorting itself out at the moment and beating itself back into shape. I'm just glad I haven't had much pain from it.

I Guess It Was A Disaster Waiting To Happen

Gabriel Tells Me It Produces 1.21 Gigawatts

Today I Learned the Meaning of Pain.

Today our lecturer told us about nociceptor neurons which are what our bodies use to sense pain. Or more accurately, they are what our bodies use to create pain for us. Without them there would be nothing intrinsically painful about having your arm lopped off, although I presume that sort of event might be somewhat mentally distressing.

Nociceptor neurons are responsible for two types of pain: fast pain and slow pain. Fast pain is like a quick prick and is easily localized. Slow pain is a burning pain and more diffuse and harder to pinpoint. It is generally accepted that slow burning pain is worse than quick prick pain, but after having experienced a nasty chemical spill in my lap I can report that it is a combination of the two I fear most. There is nothing worse than burning prick pain.

He Likes to Give Leia a Hand

Q Tells Me It Produces 1.21 Gigawatts

We Have the Technology. We Can Rebuild Him With Social Insects.

I just found out that if the word bionic comes from the word bion, then bionic should be pronounced bee-onic. Has anyone told the Six Million Dollar Man this? And I can see all sorts of confusion arising from this. If I pay for a bionic arm will I end up with an arm full of bees? This is a serious problem and I will not rest until I feel tired.

It's Totally Orson, Man!

Those Eyes! Those Horrible Eyes!

Oh My!

South Australia Gets Over a Quarter of Its Electricity From Wind

South Australia is a world leader in wind power. Not that wind turbines are made here, we just install and use them. So I guess it would be more accurate to say South Australia is a world leader in the use of wind power. I just read some interesting information. In 2011 South Australia recieved 26% of its electricity from wind power. (If you want to be technical, a little bit of this was probably sent to Victoria, but I'm happy with the 26% figure and I'm a pedant, so don't sweat it.) The figure was 18% in 2010 and less than 1% six years ago.

As South Australia uses a lot of wind and gas to generate electricity, this means the state will come out ahead once the carbon price is introduced in July. We'll get the same reduced taxes and increased pensions but a smaller than average increase in electricity prices.

The rapid build up in wind power makes me think we might see something similar happen with solar power now that price of solar panels have dropped so low.

My Sister Says I Got a Purty Mouth.

I Soak My Lips In Lye Each Morning To Keep Them Tight.

Report On Not Being Stupid.

So, how did my day of not doing anything stupid go? Rather stupidly I must admit, but at least I ate a non-stupid breakfast. I was actually experiencing a sensation generally known as pain this morning, so I told myself it was okay to do all the stupid things I normally do, so that I would be distracted from that pain. So I read stupid stuff on the internet and I watched an episode of Doctor Who. I also pointed out to a liar on the internet that they were lying. I'm sure that will make a great difference in the scheme of things. I'm sure that person is busy right now travelling around the internet and retracting all the lies they've told. But the day was not a total failure, in a small way it was less stupid than normal. I might try for another non-stupid day on Thursday, or at least a less stupid day than today day.

No Sense Looking for Jesus. He Done Be Missing.

I was driving home and I saw a sign in front of a church that said, "In the puzzle of life Jesus is the missing piece". Well that explains a lot. I went looking for Jesus in history and I couldn't find him. I went looking for him in science and he wasn't there. I even went to Philosophy and asked after him and I got pointed in his direction and all I found was a guy called Confucius saying, "I was here first!" But if Jesus is missing like that one piece of the jigsaw puzzle, well, there not much sense looking for him. In my experience that missing piece never turns up.

I thought I would find Jesus when I looked for him in Mexico since he's in the phone book a lot, but all I found were lots of guys called Hey-soos.

A Non-Stupid Breakfast

I just had a non-stupid breakfast. It consisted of a tomato, a chicken sandwich, and a small banana. Normally I don't eat much in the way of breakfast. I was raised to believe that food is evil and to willingly put food in ones mouth was a sin. Since I'm usually not hungry after I wake up I don't eat anything until I am hungry. That way it's not really my fault that I succumbed to temptation, it's my stomach's. Oddly enough, this belief system has not resulted in supermodel levels of thinness.

Give Your Souls to Jesus!

A Day Without Doing Anything Stupid.

I have decided to spend a day without doing anything stupid. And since to my pedantic mind a day starts at midnight, I have only a few minutes to stop blogging and get to bed. Staying up past midnight would be stupid and quite frankly my best chance of avoiding performing stupid acts is to be unconscious.

I Hope He's Into Erotic Asphyxiation.

Feeling Low

I've been feeling a bit under the weather the past couple of days. I guess it's my own fault for not being in orbit.

Let Zygons Be Zygons

But It's Kind of Appropriate Considering What I Am Going To Do With You When I Meet The Emperor

First You Get the Fish, Then You Get the Blubber, Then You Get the Females

I realise this picture may be a little obscure. Scarface is a 1983 remake of a 1932 movie, Guy With a Scar On His Face. In the remake, Cuba has cornered the world market in sugar and sent prices soaring and Al Pacino's character, an Italian with a speach impediment and Tourette syndrome, sets up a black market operation in icing sugar in Miami. However, once he reaches the top, he loses it all due to taking his own product and developing diabetes psychosis. An iconic image from the film is Al Pachino overdosing on hubris with icing sugar on his face.

I Tried to Thread the Needle, But There Was Camel Gore in the Way.

The past two and a half weeks have really rubbed it in that my ability to think and concentrate is really crap and really nothing at all like back when I was four. In an effort to boost my mental functioning in order to grasp such subtleties as imaginary numbers and 2 + 2 I have altered my diet to turn me back into a mental giant like I was before I started school. Just how mentally gigantic was I? I managed to learn English just by hearing it spoken. Didn't put any effort into learning it at all.

The first step to massive mental enhancement has been to eat less. The idea being that this will boost my alertness by putting my body into survival mode where my senses become razor sharp and ready for the hunt. Unfortunately, this didn't work out too well for me during my morning lecture today, as instead of becoming more able to concentrate on the details of the human nervous system I instead because easily distracted by movement and spent a great deal of time keeping an eye out for mice to catch and eat.

While no mice made an appearance, there was a millipede in the lecture theatre. There are a lot of millipedes up at the uni. If they didn't contain cyanide I could have feasted like a king. Well, like a king that feasts on millipedes. I'm not sure that's the sort of king I should aspire to be like, but still, it would be nice to have the option.

While reducing my food intake didn't really help me this morning, I believe I am starting to experience some benefits now. For a short period of time this afternoon I felt that thing – you know, that feeling that isn't badness – Happiness! I felt happiness! I listened to a song and enjoyed it. I thought the song was bland pop back in the 80's but since I learnt Spanish from watching American movies I now I realise it is bland pop about snorting cocaine. (Rush,rush, got the yeyo indeed.) Then I read something funny and I actually laughed at it. Normally I just get a wry intellectual appreciation from humour. I don't actually laugh out loud. And then the happiness faded from the lofty heights of enjoying a song and laughing at something funny, but I still felt pretty good, as in I didn't feel bad.

Anyway, I'm hungry now and I know I actually need to eat something otherwise I'll end up feeling lousy. I hope eating won't blow this nascent happiness out of the water. (My body is three quarters water.) This middle road I'm trying to follow between eat all and eat nothing is tricky. I wonder if anyone's ever pulled it off?

Love Hurts

She's got Betty Davis Eyes, But He's Got Pharoh Amenhotep II Eyes.

What the hell? Just saw a picture of Billy Joel. Who went and cured him of ugliness? Or does he just look better because the rest of him is approaching the age of his eyes? (That is, 4,000 years old.)

Darth's Dad Was as Irresponsible as J.C.'s

Deception

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to make silk come out of our butts. Honestly, it took me ages to get it right. I have to admit my first web was just crap.

A Little Less Killing and a Little More Straight Shooting Would Be Nice.

The muzzle velocity of the Browning Automatic Rifle depicted in this artwork is about 860 meters per second, which means that assuming we see every round that is being fired and not just tracer bullets, it must be firing around 2,000 rounds per second.  Clearly, if anyone who wasn't Teddy Roosevelt fired that gun they would immediately disarm themselves in a quite literal and bloody fashion. 

And I have to say that Teddy looks quite good considering that he'd have to be at least 70 years old.

Damn You Adelaide Cup Day! Damn You!

It's Adelaide Cup day and all the banks and supermarkets are closed. Why didn't anyone tell me this was going to happen? I have rent to pay and children who need food! Well, my landlords have children who need food. (I'm pretty sure all children need food at some point.) Now I don't know if my not being able to pay rent today will mean those children will go without food, if it does it suggests that either my landlords need to be a bit better organised, or that they are really determined to give their tenants a strong incentive to pay on time.

Somewhere a horse is gloating over my extremely mild inconvenience. But at least it's not as bad as the Clipsal, which is a car race. There are 900,000 square kilometres this state and they have to go and stick the car race in the one small area that has people in it. So very stupid.

Hollywood Was Not As Glamorous As It Seemed

Dirty John Wayne

Today I found out that Dirty Harry, a movie about a Gestapo officer reincarnated in the body of a Los Angeles Detective in the early 70's, was originally written with John Wayne in mind for the lead role. For those who don't know, John Wayne was a science fiction actor well known for starring in Westerns set in an alternate universe where black people don't exist.

Anyway, it occured to me that if John Wayne had been the star the Dirty Harry movies might have had quite a different feel to them:




Now that I think about it, 'Fill your hands!' is probably something you never want to hear from someone with the nickname, 'Dirty.'

Now that I think about it even more it's probably not something you'd want to hear from someone called 'Rooster Cockburn' either.

I Had to Tug Hard

Negging - Used by Males to Lower Women's Status in Their Eyes.

Today the webcomic XKCD ran a stip on negging:

http://xkcd.com/1027/

For people who don't like clicking on links, it is about a man criticising a woman when they meet in order to increase his chance of sticking his pee-pee in her hoo-hoo. As the comic says, it's supposed to, '...undermine their self confidence so they will be more vulnerable and seek your approval.' And that may be true for all I know, but speaking from my position as an observer outside of humanity, what it really seems to be about is status.

You see, like monkeys, most humans are quite preoccupied with status. Many people put a lot of effort into trying to mate with the highest status person they possibly can. But it's not that straight forward. Often people will try to avoid mating with someone who's status is perceived to be too far below their own for fear that it might lower their own status. And to make things really confusing, many people, and I'm thinking particularly males here, while looking for the highest status mate possible, actually find it almost impossible to initiate a mating display with someone whose status they perceive as being higher than their own.

This results in the negger trying to lower the status of his target in his own eyes by criticising her, which then enables him to put on a mating display. Criticism and put downs normally travel in a downward direction from high status to low. If you don't believe me, try pointing out your boss's mistakes to her using the same tone and mannerisms she uses when pointing out your mistakes and let me know how that workplace relationship turns out for you. High status to low status criticism can be a good thing when your experienced boss gives you helpful advice, or it can be a bad thing if she crushes your initiative in order to keep you in your place. When it's done to stick a pee-pee in a stranger's hoo-hoo it is always a bad thing. Constructive criticism involves actually knowing something about the person being criticised.

If the negger can convince themselves their target is of lower status than themselves through criticism, then they are able to engage in a mating display, which may or may not result in a pee-pee being stuck in a hoo-hoo. But if a male cannot convince themselves that their target is of lower status then instead of a mating display, just conversation may result. Some of the differences between a mating display and conversation can be subtle, but they are important and if the male can't perform a mating display his pee-pee is very unlikely to go where he wants it to.

Now this is not to say that negging can't have an effect on its target, it's just that it may not be the only effect or even the main effect. Since criticism tends to flow from high status to low status, criticising someone can make the criticiser seem higher status by association. Or at least it can until everyone reads articles on the internet about it, even articles written by strange people on a hideous green background like this one.

Leprechauns Are Like Reverse Genies. They're Always Trying to Get Into a Bottle.

Failure is All in the Mind. It's Totally Imaginary.

Had my first lecture on imaginary numbers this morning. It went about as well as I imagined it would. I now have about an hour and a half to develop some kind of understanding of the subject so I can get something from my afternoon lecture. Go!

Be Glad You're Not the Tin Dog

This is the first time I have mocked the new series of Doctor Who which started in 2005. Elisabeth Sladen, the beautiful actor in the picture (no, not him, the other beautiful actor) died not that long ago, so my condolences to her friends and family.

Maturity

ME: Well, it's time to settle down to a good solid evening of study.

STOMACH: Go buy me a bag of snickers!

ME: No, I'm not buying you a bag of snickers. I gave you cake today and now I have a headache as a result. I'm not making it worse by giving you snickers on top if it. What do you think I am, stupid?

STOMACH: Oh okay them...mutter mutter...where did I put that fake moustache?

MATURITY: Go buy a bag of snickers and use them to reward yourself for studying hard.

ME: Well that sounds like a reasonable and mature idea. But I can't buy snickers. I might eat them all tonight and that's not what natural selection had in mind when she gave us foresight.

MATURITY: You won't eat any tonight!

ME: I won't?

MATURITY: No, of course not! Not when you're feeling all mature! And you must be feeling mature, otherwise I wouldn't be here.

ME: Well I guess that makes sense. It would be mature of me to buy snickers and then not eat any until it was appropriate.

MATURITY: Good, good, it's settled then. Now go buy me some snickers.

ME: Wait a minute, what about all those other times when I thought I was feeling mature but I actually ended up acting immaturely?

MATURITY: That's because those times you weren't really feeling mature, you were actually feeling childish.

ME: But I remember feeling mature...

MATURITY: No, no, if you were feeling mature, then you would have acted maturely. Did you act maturely?

ME: No...

MATURITY: Then you obviously weren't feeling mature. If you had been, you wouldn't have acted childishly. But now you are really feeling mature, so it's okay, go buy some snickers.

ME: Well, I guess it might be okay if you're sure that I am truly feeling mature now. I do so ever like the idea of being mature and I would feel ever so good about myself if I bought snickers and didn't eat any tonight and only started on them tomorrow in a mature and responsible way.

MATURITY: Oh, I'm sure you'll be just ever so mature! I'm certain of it! This is you maturing and growing and developing as a human being! It's so beautiful, I... I think I'm going to cry.

ME: Oh, I'm so happy! Sniff! I think I'm going to cry too! Okay, I went and bought the snickers. I put them on a shelf in the kitchen. There just sitting there on the shelf, ready for tomorrow. Yep, just sitting on the shelf. Just sitting there, being full of sugar. Delicious, sweet, sugar...

MATSTOMACHTY: Feel the power of the hungry side! HA HA HAHAHA!

Maths is Hard

UPDATE 7th March 20112: Whoops! It looks like I attempted to make a parody of a parody in this post. This is something that is extremely dangerous to do as it has the potential to reverse the polarity of the parody flow. Now that I realise my mistake, I've replaced it with something much less dangerous and probably less funny. I appologise to the original parodista for my heinous transgression.

One! One Fatuous Dick! Two! Two Fatuous Dicks! Wait! My Mistake! One Fatuous Dick, But He's Really Fat!

My next maths lecture is on imaginary numbers. But surely imaginary numbers would be all numbers, wouldn't they? Are not all numbers in our mind? As Shakespeare said, “There is nothing either positive or negative but thinking makes it so.” For example, if you had two rocks, there would be nothing intrinsic about them that would indicate the number two. Except for the fact that there were two of them. But that's not intrinsic! If you think it is it just goes to show how much you've been brainwashed by the number-industrial complex. Or possibly Sesame Street. Specifically, an obsessive compulsive vampire. Look at it this way, if an atom of carbon and four hydrogen atoms come together to form a methane molecule then we can describe it as such because it has the properties of a methane molecule and not the properties of five random atoms. But having two rocks results in no properties of two-ness. If I had a box and I took a rock out of it and handed it to you, there is nothing you could do to that rock that would indicate the number of rocks in the box. There is no way you could know. Unless you cheated, which you probably did by peeking in the box or assuming the box was made of glass or diamond or transparent aluminium or whatever. Or you got all Sherlock Holmesian and were able to deduce how many rocks were in the box from scratch marks on the rock I handed to you or the noise the rocks made as they slid around or the little post-it note on my folder saying, 'Put five rocks in a box. Act like a dick.'

Anyway, the point is the number 2 is not a property of the universe. It's a label we use to help us describe parts of the universe in an abstract way. Of course, since everything comes down to our perceptions, and our perceptions are part of the universe, then for an observer to exist then those observations would have to be intrinsic to the universe...

Oh screw this! I'm off to study maths. Or at least I will pretend to study it. That's how one learns about imaginary numbers, right?

He Hits Hard For Someone 200 Microns Thick

Arrh! The Old Sea Salt's in the Wrong Place!

Adelaide is one of the few large cities in the world that is entirely self sufficient in salt. Some people think it reflects badly on Adelaide that what would be ridiculously overpriced waterfront land in Brisbane or Sydney is a salt pan here, but those detractors will be laughing out of the other side of their laughing orifices once some Bond villian corners the world market in salt. While that's admittedly an unlikely occurrence, it's not completely impossible. After all, the British managed it in India and it took the sauve and debonair James Ghandi, licenced to passively resist, to put an end to it.

Anyway, it just occured to me that the salt pans are in the North of Adelaide, while the new desalination plant and all its briny waste water is in the South of Adelaide. That seems a bit - dumb. There may be a perfectly good reason for doing it this way, perhaps it would anger Gilgamax who would arise and feast upon the carbon of the living to put the desalination plant in the north, but still, the older I get, the more and more realistic the original Sim City seems to be.

Update: After looking into it further it seems that the owners of the salt pans want to turn them into surburban blocks but are waiting for the goverment to flood proof them first on account of how they're salt flats and sea levels aren't getting any lower. It sounds like a reasonable request. After all, if the government doesn't flood proof the area the land developers might not be able to afford sports cars to drive to trendy cafes where they can make little speaches about how nobody ever gave them anything and complain about how high taxes are.

What Happens When You Have a Cockatoo

Movie Review - Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I recently watched the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes and I now realise that was probably a mistake so soon after dealing with the shock of seeing a censored physiology textbook. All through the movie I couldn't stop not seeing ape genitalia. It was quite conspicuous by its absence. And for that matter, there were no ape bums. These were extremely conspicuous by their absence because sometimes ape bums can be quite hard to miss. Can you imagine trying to live life without a bum? No wonder the apes in the movie were annoyed. Everything they ate would have to come out the way it went it. Just thinking about this leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It also explains why people were able to get away treating apes so badly. In our world there are entire organisations looking out for the welfare of apes in captivity. But in a world where everyone would think of them as the poop mouth creatures, well, they might not be so fortunate.

And the laws of physics don't work the way they do in our world. Grown chimps don't do the tree swinging and branch leaping you see in this movie. The reason is gravity. It tends to kill a 60 kilogram chimpanzee almost as well as it kills a 60 kilogram human. There was a scene of chimpanzees leaping down from several stories. They were hitting the ground running instead of the more realistic hitting the ground crunch, snap, and splat. Trust me, when you have a colon as big as the average ape's you don't want to be jumping down ten metres.

People did not seem to know how to interact with or behave around chimpanzees. This was very jarring as a lot the chimps had a vested interest in pulling human arms out of their sockets. People didn't know how to handle viruses either. The occupational health and safety in this movie was about on par with Star Wars.

There is a very good CGI fantasy cartoon about apes escaping from captivity inside this movie, but unfortunately there are humans butting in, trying to convince you that event are taking place in the real world with gabble about gene therapy that can be passed on through generations but which also requires regular injections which resistance can be developed to. Really, it should be one or the other, not both. If they can't be bothered to get things like that straight they may as well have the apes gain greater intelligence by being bitten by a radioactive brain. Sure, a radioactive brain biting apes may seem a bit hard to swallow, but it would have the advantage of making the rest of the movie a whole lot more believable.

Her Parents Installed it When She Was a Hyperactive Child

Ow! I Seem to Lack Suitable Positions.

Ow! I spent mere hours lying on my stomach studying maths yesterday and now my back hurts. Ooh, I knew bipedalism was a bad idea! Now I seem to lack any suitable positions to study in that are actually comfortable. I guess, ow, that I will just have to sit ramrod straight and see if that helps. Although admittedly it will be as straight as a rather odd ramrod, one that's shaped as though it has a curved spine. My spine always seems to be curved whenever I'm standing or sitting up. There must be something wrong with me. My teachers used to tell me to sit up straight all the time, but the only way I could manage that was by strapping myself to the chair and that only seemed to upset them. I asked Father O'Flannery about this and he said that when I strapped myself to the chair I was taking all the fun out of it.

One bright point in the midst of all this spinal darkness is that the toe I thought I had broken on Friday isn't very painful at all and so may not be broken. Fingers crossed.

Quiet please while I cross them.

Oh good, no snapping noise.

If You Think There's Not Mushroom in the Tardis, You're Very Much Mistaken.

Rotting Flesh Victory!

STEP 1: Buy flesh of murdered animal slaves on special because it is one day before expiry date.

STEP 2: At home discover that meat is already rotten.

STEP 3: Eat anyway.

STEP 4: Stench bacteria turn out to be relatively benign and so do not get food poisoning.

STEP 5: Perform dance of VICTORY!

STEP 6: Stare at remaining rotting animal flesh with thoughtful expression.

UPDATE: I have heard that a process called 'cooking' can reduce the risk of food poisoning. I think I'll give it a go. I might spend a few days researching it first though.

The Man With the Golden Plaything

A Fairly Typical Day, Really.

I made it on time to my morning calculus lecture without experiencing car breakage in a downward or any other direction. And surprisingly, even though I had managed to prepare for the wrong lecture I managed to understand some of what the lecturer said. Normally for me I can see people's mouths moving, but what comes out is just so much noise. And I'm not just talking about calculus, I'm talking about everything people say to me. I usually understand people by reading their lips. And no, there is nothing wrong with my hearing. It's just that it takes less effort to read lips than it takes to bother to pay attention to what people are actually saying.

After the lecture I went home because, quite frankly, I find the presence of humans disturbing. At home I tried to review trigonometry but I found the textbook I was using difficult, so I decided to head back to uni early and find a better textbook in the library. Indeed, I found six better textbooks and borrowed them all. I think I may have a problem. I'm addicted to textbooks. I like to rub them against my skin and feel the knowledge entering me via osmosis. And no, I'm not trying to hobble the competition by borrowing all the books. I borrowed these from the education section. They're all high school textbooks. So I'm not hobbling the other students unless they are as dumb as me, in which case nothing I do short of putting gravel in their braincases can make things worse for them.

I spent an hour in the library checking out books and then checking out the books that I'd checked out and then headed out to my afternoon lecture. I walked into the theature and was surprised to see that my lecturer had just given a lecture in the same place he was about to give another lecture in. I sat down and everyone left and no one came in, and an hour or two later I realised that the lecture I wanted to attend had just finished as I came in. Whoops. I got up, started to head out of the lecture theature and tripped and broke a toe. Unfortunately, as there was no one else about, it happened to be my own.

Those Were the Droids He Was Looking For

Feel the parable of the dark side.

A Fairly Typical Start to the Morning, Actually.

I was preparing for my morning lecture when an associate of mine rang and asked if I could come and give him a jump. I checked the time, said, “I'll be there in a flash and then I'll jump you,” and leap into my car. I arrived 22 minutes later and saw my associate's car behind a large gate in his building's parking lot, but couldn't see him. I reached into my pants and impatiently pulled out my mobile phone to call him and received a message that his phone was off. Annoyed, I drove around the front of his building, leap out (I was in a leaping mood this morning) and pressed his intercom button at the entrance to the block of units he lives in, all the while cursing him for not having the decency to live in a house or mud hut like normal person. There was no reply and thus no way to get in. I checked my phone again and saw that I'd called the wrong number earlier, so I dialed the correct number and got a message saying that my phone was out of credit. Then I got into the building by pressing someone else's intercom button and promising the person who answered he could engage in free acts of a biological and frankly disgusting nature. (I told him he had won a free tour of a brewery.)

Once inside I dodged a man looking for free beer, made my way to my associate's domicile and knocked on his door. No reply. I looked down into the courtyard and saw his vehicle, but no actual associate. Confused, I headed down into the courtyard and finally saw him. He'd been sitting in his car all this time but I simply hadn't been able to see him from the angles I had been viewing it. The delay was frustrating for both of us, but I still had time to give him a jump and get to my lecture. I headed out to my car, jumped in, turned the key and found that it wouldn't start. Sigh.

I had my associate push start my car. Then I used it to jump start his. Rather than going to university and begging a random stranger to jump me, I headed home and started charging my battery from mains power. Unfortunately I didn't have an inverter handy to do this, so I simply earthed one terminal and while holding a live wire in my hand I timed myself using the flickering of a fluorescent light and tried to only touch the other terminal of the battery with a live wire when the electricity was flowing in the direction I wanted it to go. It worked exactly as well as you'd expect. Fortunately I was still heavily bandaged from yesterday's accident and so the sulphuric acid burns weren't nearly as bad as you might expect.

That's Not Where Seed Should Go