#oneaday Day 788: From the Depths of the Subconscious

Analysing your dreams can probably tell you a lot about yourself. If that's the case, though, I'm not sure I want to know what my most recent vivid imaginings say.

I dream best in the morning after I've woken up once. At least, those are the dreams I remember. If I wake up when Andie leaves for work and promptly fall back asleep again (which, to be perfectly honest, I usually do) then I'll often have incredibly vivid dreams which, more to the point, I tend to remember pretty clearly. They're certainly not conscious imaginings, because there's no way I'd choose to think of a lot of the things that flit through my mind. Rather, it appears to be a completely automatic process, presumably based on anxieties or thoughts already stuck in my head.

This morning, these bizarre "snooze dreams" were — and I apologise for what I'm about to recount — rather lavatorial in nature. To begin with, I found myself sitting on a toilet in an upstairs hallway of a house. It wasn't my real-life house, though I think it might have been my own house in the dream. Quite why there was a toilet in the upstairs hallway was anyone's guess. And quite why I was sitting on it when the house was clearly playing host to a large party is an even bigger mystery.

Despite the fact I had clearly just had a dump in front of all the passing partygoers — most of whom seemed oblivious to my presence and activities — for some reason (and again, I apologise) I found myself unable to… uhh… "clean up", as it were. I found myself panicking and wishing all these people weren't in my house, screaming at them to get out of the way, but still no-one paid me any heed.

I ran downstairs and found myself in the house I lived in for my fourth year of university. I knew there was a nice, quiet toilet in the back where I could complete my business, so I opened the door. I found a toilet all right, but it wasn't the one I was expecting. Rather, it was in a large, L-shaped room whose walls and floor were all made of ceramic tiles. There was no ceiling to the room, and outside I could see that we appeared to be floating in space. Worse, there was no bog roll here, either, only three circular red buttons next to the toilet.

I left, and the subsequent journey was a blur, but I ended up in what appeared to be an aeroplane bathroom, albeit one with a sloping roof that met the wall behind the toilet, and a large skylight in it. When standing in front of the toilet, I could look out through the skylight, and I saw that we were in some sort of rural area. Outside the skylight, men in peculiar costumes were being shepherded away by strange figures I can't remember any details about. For some reason, I thought nothing of this strange and slightly sinister behaviour, because I had more pressing matters on my mind.

There was a toilet paper dispenser on the wall, so I pulled the handle to dispense some, but the string of sheets went down a small hole underneath the dispenser. When I retrieved the paper from the hole, it was completely covered in a weird black sludge which was then all over my hand. After going "urgh" for a little while, I simply washed it off, finally wiped my arse (noting with some surprise that my underpants had not been soiled despite all the running around) and then woke up slightly worried that I might have shat myself in my sleep. (I hadn't.)

This particular incident follows a long stream of other bizarre "snooze dreams" I've had which include being unable to go through with a sexual encounter because I didn't have the sheet music for it; starting to read the TV Tropes page for my own life and being literally unable to look away from it; and a particularly unpleasant one where I lived in a big house with all my friends and we all suddenly started hating each other for no apparent reason.

My subconscious is fucked, basically. Oh well, at least it keeps things interesting. And the fact I can remember all this nonsense gives me good fodder for when I actually do want to do something creative and imaginative… though I can't see a novel about someone who might have shat himself catching on, really.

#oneaday Day 763: A Question That No-One Seems To Have Asked Regarding RPGs

Here's a stumper for all you RPG fans: exactly how much does taking one hit point of damage hurt?

It's not a particularly straightforward thing to work out, given that hit points are a representative abstraction of physical condition rather than a measurable, uh, measurement. But let's assume for a moment that it is indeed possible to measure one's own hit points. How much, then, would taking one hit point of damage hurt?

The answer to that question would largely depend on what model of hit points you are using. If you're talking Dungeons and Dragons hit points, taking one damage would fucking hurt if you're not in tip-top physical condition. The average "man in the street" sort of person (i.e. not a warrior, rogue, wizard, cleric or what have you) is regarded as a "level 0 human" and generally has something in the region of 2 or 3 hit points, if that. Level 1 wizards often only have in the region of 4 or so. As such, taking one hit point of damage as an average person following the Dungeons and Dragons model would hurt a great deal, putting you potentially up to halfway towards death (or rather, being knocked out, since people don't officially die until bleeding out to -10 hit points in D&D).

Compare and contrast with the JRPG approach to hit points, however, where totals frequently extend into the thousands and, in some cases, the tens of thousands. As a beginning character in a JRPG, you'll often have a low three-figure hit point total to start with, which will progress towards that elusive 9999 (or 99999) as you level up. Assuming that your average person hasn't really levelled up a great deal thanks to a notable lack of monsters (big spiders battled with Hoovers notwithstanding) we can work on the assumption that a single hit point's worth of damage doesn't really hurt a great deal. 'Tis but a scratch and all that.

So, since it's late and my brain is starting to shut down a little bit, let's take this to the next logical extension and consider a variety of horrific injuries to determine exactly how many HP damage they'd do following the two approaches outlined above. We're assuming that the person being injured here is not a Destiny-chosen hero who has been infused by the power of the Goddess/branded by the fal'Cie/chosen by Fate/revealed to be the wielder of the legendary blade Monado but rather, say, that man who works behind the fish counter in Sainsbury's. As such, we'll say he has 4HP in D&D and 150HP in a JRPG.

Getting an electric shock off an escalator handrail — D&D: 0HP, interrupt current action in surprise; JRPG: 1HP electric damage.
Falling out of bed while asleep — D&D: 0HP, lose "Sleep" condition; JRPG: 1HP physical damage, lose "Sleep" condition, afflict with "Embarrassment" (special moves charge slower)
Walking into a coffee table — D&D: 0 HP, maybe stun for a turn, staggering randomly around the room going "OUCH"; JRPG: 1HP physical damage.
Paper cut — D&D: 0 HP, afflict with "very mild bleeding" status, lose 1HP every 500 turns unless the cut heals (use a bandage or roll a D20 every turn, on a number between 3 and 20, it heals naturally); JRPG: 2HP physical damage.
Accidentally grating your fingers while attempting to grate cheese — D&D: 0HP, afflict with "very mild bleeding status" as with "paper cut" above; JRPG: 1HP physical damage.
Stubbing your toe — D&D: 0HP, incapacitate for a turn, remove ability to use vocal components of spells and stealth due to yelling "FAAAAAAAHHHHK!"; JRPG: 3HP physical damage.
Having a cat that is standing on you decide that it needs to hold on tightly with its claws — D&D: 0HP, 50% possibility of affliction with "very mild bleeding" status as with "paper cut" above, movement forbidden (you've got a cat on you); JRPG: 3HP physical damage, afflict with Rooted (you've got a cat on you).
Inadvertently ripping off a toenail by catching it on something — D&D: 0HP, afflict with "bleeding" status, lose 1HP every 50 turns unless the cut heals (use a bandage or roll a D20 every turn, on a number between 8 and 20, it heals naturally); JRPG: 10HP physical damage, afflict with Slow.
Burning your hand on the handle of a poorly-insulated saucepan — D&D: 0HP, interrupt current action, forced shouting of obscenity breaks any Stealth-related effects; JRPG: 10HP Fire damage.
Standing on an upturned three-prong plug — D&D: 0HP, movement forbidden for 5 turns, remove ability to use vocal components of spells and stealth due to yelling "FUCK. Cunt! ARSE! SHIT that fucking hurts. AAAAARGH."; JRPG: 15HP physical damage, afflict with Rooted.
Banging your head on a low ceiling even after seeing a "mind your head" sign — D&D: 0HP, dazed for one turn. temporary reduction to Wisdom and Intelligence; JRPG:10HP physical damage, 10MP magic damage for a blow to the head.
Getting punched in the face by some drunk dude at a bar who thought you were eyeing up his missus but in fact you were trying to read the scrawled sign on the front of that fridge that said that the cheap drinks might actually be a bit out of date — D&D: 1HP; JRPG: 25HP physical damage.
Suffering any sort of trauma to the testicular area — D&D: 2HP (probably won't kill you unless you've just been punched twice by a drunk dude at a bar who thought you were eyeing up his missus, but it bloody hurts), stunned for 5 turns, temporary reduction to Constitution; JRPG: 50HP physical damage, afflicted with "Stop" status as you wheeze and cough in an attempt to recover your dignity.
Getting stabbed in the leg, whether accidentally or deliberately — D&D: 2HP, movement rate halved; JRPG: 50HP physical damage, afflicted with "Slow".
Failing to escape the unwanted affections of an amorous gorilla — D&D: Your adventure is over. You have been adopted by an amorous gorilla as its mate. Any attempt to escape will result in death. JRPG: Perform a badly-executed stealth/platforming sequence to escape.
Getting stabbed in the face — D&D: 5HP (you will likely bleed to an unhappy -10HP death), permanent reduction to Charisma; JRPG: 100-150HP physical damage.
Suffering an apparently successful attempt to behead you — D&D: 14HP; JRPG: 150HP
Getting the smackdown from an angry God/being hit with a planet by the final boss — D&D: 50HP; JRPG: 5000HP
Standing quite close to the epicentre of a nuclear explosion, you know, enough to get a good view and think "ooh, that's a bit hot, I wish I'd stood back a bit more" — D&D: 998HP; JRPG: 9998HP.
Standing in the epicentre of a nuclear explosion — D&D: 999HP; JRPG: 9999HP.

Should you find yourself suffering any of these injuries, though, fear not; for a good night's sleep cures all ills, as everyone knows. Unless you're already dead, in which case you'd better get on good terms with your local Cleric or purchase some Phoenix Down.

#oneaday Day 600: Childish Fancies and The Faces Traffic Lights Pull

When you're a kid — or, more specifically, if you're me as a kid, your imagination sometimes likes to play tricks on you. Or perhaps it's not "tricks" as such, but more a sense of artistic verisimilitude, or other such pretentious-sounding words. In simple terms, my mind liked to imagine that mundane things looked like other things.

Electricity pylons, for example, looked like an angry moustachio'd man. They stood there in the fields and meadows of the English countryside, glowering down at me as I sat in the back seat of my parents' car on the way somewhere. I was always most keenly aware of them on long journeys, particularly the ride from Cambridgeshire to my grandparents' home in the West Midlands. This was a journey of about two hours or so which was largely motorway based, and so there was relatively little to look at save electricity pylons for the majority of the route. (There was also the mass of TV and radio aerials near the town of Daventry, which our whole family knew was where King Graham was from, even though said farm of masts didn't appeal in the King's Quest series even once, disappointingly.)

I don't feel such a strong sense of "alternate identity" with electricity pylons any more. That side of my childish imagination has gone the way of my childhood. But certain things have stuck with me — chief among which is the fact that I genuinely believe that traffic lights look like faces.

No, wait, stay with me. Let me describe it first and if you're still not convinced I'll draw you a picture.

Red lights are looking somewhat surprised, wide-eyed and open mouthed. Red and amber together are still eyebrows raised, but pleasantly surprised — a smile is creeping onto their lips. A green light is grinning with eyes closed — the facial expression most commonly associated with the obnoxiously overused emoticon "XD" nowadays — and an amber light, preparing to return to red, is eyes closed, looking worried — the kind of expression you might pull before driving your pedal car into an expensive plant pot, or something like that.

No? I can see I'm going to have to demonstrate this in a visual manner.

[Pause, while Pete fumbles with Paint.net]

All right. You want proof? Here it is. Traffic lights pull faces. And if I don't convince you after this, then your sense of childish imagination is disappointingly withered, possibly dead. So there.

All right. That may not be the most compelling evidence ever put down on paper (real or virtual) but it's what I saw as a kid and it's what I still see now. I bet there's something weird you look at in the same way. It may not be traffic lights, but I bet there's something.

#oneaday Day 153: Things That Make No Logical Sense But Are Clearly True: Food Edition

Life brings with it a number of learning experiences, and you store these pieces of information away in your dome-like for future reference, ready for subconscious recall at any available opportunity. Some of these pieces of information are, of course, complete nonsense and have absolutely no basis in scientific fact, but you become convinced of them anyway.

And so it is that you, like me, may have come to believe such rubbish as the following facts, which are clearly true. And all food-related, oddly.

Coke tastes better in a can.

It just does. Cans get colder than bottles and stay colder longer than bottles. Plus something about the metal particles makes the Coke taste better than the plastic particles of a bottle. There are people who will say that a glass bottle is the best way to enjoy a Coke, but they are wrong.

Sandwiches taste better when cut into triangles, unless they are bacon sandwiches.

This is also true. Eat a sandwich that has not been cut in any way and it tastes clearly inferior to triangular sandwiches. And don't even get me started on people who cut rectangular sandwiches. There's nothing even a little bit right about that.

Bacon sandwiches taste better when cut into small squares.

The exception to the sandwich rule is the bacon sandwich rule. Try it. Next time you have a bacon butty, cut it into quarters and you'll see that it's clearly better.

McDonalds chips taste better when consumed by the handful.

Milk tastes better swigged from the bottle.

As everyone (who enjoys milk) well knows, having an illicit glug from the bottle is far nicer than pouring out a glass. I fear that some of the Coke Science may be coming into play here.

It's impossible to make a good cup of coffee for yourself.

Make yourself a coffee. Taste it. Put up with it because it's "all right". Now get someone else to make you a coffee. Taste it. Enjoy it. Accept their making you a coffee that one time as acceptance of a non-verbal contract to make you a coffee whenever you want.

Tea only tastes of something if you believe in it.

I don't believe in tea, therefore it tastes like hot water — particularly the herbal teas. They smell great, but I never believe that they're going to taste of anything, so they don't.

Ketchup and HP sauce are opposites, and if they touch each other they will spontaneously combust.

What other reason could people possibly have for putting dollops of each respective sauce on opposite sides of the plate?

You are not allowed to have soup on a hot day.

It's not that you don't want soup on a hot day, your brain tells you that you must not have soup on a hot day.

If a piece of food you don't like touches a piece of food you do like, the food you do like is forever tainted.

This one is actually true. I hate onion — particularly raw onion. Even the slightest hint of a taste of it makes me retch. This includes if a salad once had raw onion on it and said raw onion has since been removed. It leaves a flavour residue that makes anything the onion once touched completely unpalatable.

Cheese sauce can be used as the strongest adhesive known to man.

If you've ever burnt cheese sauce onto a saucepan, you'll know that this is also true.

The most exotic-sounding sandwich on the menu is always the best.

This one is, unfortunately, not always true. Many's the time I've had a chicken tikka sandwich hoping for a gorgeous curried revelation and walked away disappointed, wishing I'd gone for the tuna and sweetcorn.

The dessert that mentions chocolate the most times is the best.

Also not always true, since too much chocolate can lead to becoming completely gummed up with sticky, gooey goodness. And while that can be fun, it can also lead to feeling a bit sick. And no-one likes feeling a bit sick.

If you don't have some sort of sauce on a kebab, you are Doing it Wrong.

Because why on Earth would you eat that shit if it wasn't covered in chilli sauce that can strip paint, or garlic sauce so strong it can be used as insect repellent?

#oneaday Day 132: Sleep Tight

(Aside: "Sleep tight"? What the hell does that mean? For one, it implies you can somehow "sleep loose", which sounds suspiciously like bollocks to me. But I digress.)

Sleeping's a strange thing, really, isn't it? It's something natural and instinctive — so much so that it's pretty much impossible to explain to someone how to do it. I know I can't. I know that I can't even explain it to myself, and the more you think about trying to get to sleep, the less able you are to actually do it. "Trying to sleep" becomes "lying in a dark room with your eyes shut trying not to think about anything and failing".

Because that's impossible. You can't think about nothing. It's actually impossible. There is no way you can completely clear your mind of absolutely everything, because even if you're picturing darkness or a black wall or something, you're still picturing something, not nothing. And your consciousness of the fact that you're not clearing your mind, the fact that you're thinking of something, not nothing, that makes things worse.

It gets even worse when it's late and you know that you actually need to get to sleep otherwise the following day is going to be hellish, especially if you have to get up early. Not only do you have the pressure of trying to clear your mind and get to sleep (and inevitably failing) but you also end up opening your eyes every so often just to check how much time you're wasting when you could spend it sleeping.

Then you realise your phone's by your bed, so you figure a quick round of Bejeweled Blitz/couple of levels of Angry Birds/few weeks on Game Dev Story/couple of attempts at Tiny Wings/an episode of Cause of Death is just what you need to make you drop off. And so you play for a bit, and your eyes get heavy, but then you figure "what if someone's said something interesting or exciting on Twitter?" so you check that, then look at your emails, then possibly send an email or two to people you've been meaning to email for ages but never remember to in the daytime. By now, your brain is full of words and jumping birds and Special Agent Natara Williams and so there's no hope of you getting to sleep any time soon, so you go and get yourself a drink and/or a sandwich and/or a jammy dodger and then repeat the whole process over and over again.

I envy those people who can just keel over in pretty much any context and start happily snoring away. Clearly I need to sleep in a sensory deprivation chamber approximately three miles away from my phone and any other electronic equipment.

#oneaday Day 120: Communal Blogging II

Hello! I am in the pub with good friends celebrating my birthday. As a result, it seems like a good time to take the Communal Blogging approach, where everyone present gets to write a short paragraph. This also absolves me of responsibility for any drunken grammatical errors because they probably weren't my fault. So there. Without further ado, here comes the first paragraph from someone who isn't me.

Aren't kittens awesome. I mean like cats in general to be honest, all fwuffeh and cute and slinky and tired and stretchy and shit. Like I said. Awesome.

Luke is being all kinds of mean on twitter. I think that Amy may destroy him at some point. Sometimes, I worry about Luke. And then sometimes I just don't care.

So Luke just tried to steal Pete's iPhone how rude!?? Honestly I had to resort to telling him off like one of my students, I'm not so sure that I can achieve the standard Q31 in a pub on a Saturday night!!

"What's a lovely curry" said pete and Graham sneezed on Laura, in which she replied "you need to be wiped down" pete then jokingly laughed and called graham a "dirty boy" ..which he liked a little too much.

Thanks pete for a great night. Was also really nice to meet andi who I forgot I met before. Is good to see you happy. Ultimately it's been fun to be around people who make me laugh and who are interesting. Happy 30th.

Absolutely splendid night with my mate pete-not entirely sure what should be written here, but I've had a few pints and honestly life is quite good! Great to see friends grow up, although not too much thankfully-and its nice to have a chat with new people-with a lowest common denominator (that's you pete). Right, should stop- fact from tonight-9 out of 10 people have an iPhone…..if you believe tonight's statistics…

Pete! What more needs to be said? You're amazing. Good job!!

Well, here we are again. It's a Saturday night on the whiskey. Curry has been done (full!) and gin has been given. Why are we here? For wholly celebratory purposes, of course. Unless you mean life, in which case I haven't the foggiest, save to say it doesn't involve a god of any sort that I know of. Music is probably the answer. That or inevitable death. Cheery, eh? Yep, that'll be the whiskey talking…

Well done everyone. Thank you for your contributions. Good night!

#oneaday Day 113: Colonel Gaddafi's Chicken

Very often, drunken conversations simply degenerate into "I love you, I do, you're like my best friend and totally awesome and we should totally do this more often like, y'know?" And that's fine, and to be expected.

But sometimes, if you're with the right people, something magical happens. Fortuitously, the people I was attending the wedding with yesterday happen to be the right people for something entertaining to happen when discussing things.

We were sitting out in the garden of the wedding venue gazing up at the sky and getting frustrated at the security light that kept going off and coming on every few minutes if we sat too still and then made a sudden movement. Some shooting stars were making an appearance every few minutes and all in all, it was a thoroughly pleasant evening.

Long chats such as the group of us had are often called "setting the world to rights" but I'm not sure the vision of the world we ended up painting was in any way "right". Here's the most important things we came up with:

You can wish on bats as well as shooting stars, but bats would rather get on with doing their own thing than grant wishes.
It's easy to Photoshop in a shooting star — in fact, you can do it in Paint.
Mishearing "spy satellite" as "spice satellite" leads everyone to the natural conclusion that there is a madman somewhere in the world planning to release a selection of herbs and spices into the atmosphere, let them burn up and effectively curry the world.
This didn't sound like such a bad thing.
Because it was a secret blend of herbs and spices, "The Colonel" came up.
"The Colonel" was not intended to be a reference to Gaddafi, but the image of him cooking chicken and attempting to curry the world was too amusing to pass up.
Ergo, Colonel Gaddafi is now in charge of KFC.
Gaddafi would use cumin as his weapon of choice to release from his spice satellites — ground, not seeds, to allow for greater dispersal.
Gaddafi also uses bats as spies, and they report back on the wishes people are making.
The bats are somewhat embittered by this and just want to be left alone to get in people's hair and stuff.
Coming soon to iPhone: Colonel Gaddafi's Angry Bats.
The bar was shutting at midnight, so we should get another round in.

There was a twisted kind of logic to the things we discussed. Though it was more "twisted" than "logic", really. Still, it gave us all a good giggle at the time, and that's the important thing.

#oneaday Day 103: I Hear the Ticking of a Clock

Certain things are just naturally irritating or set your teeth on edge. That horrible sound polystyrene packing makes when you take it out of a cardboard box. That accent chavs do when it's clear they very much want to be black gangstas but instead are pasty, skinny white dudes from Portsmouth. The sight of the "roadworks ahead" sign on the motorway.

Or having several mechanical clocks in your room, all of which are slightly out of sync with each other.

It's the kind of thing you tend not to notice until you either 1) suffer from insomnia and find yourself fixating on every tiny little sound or 2) have it pointed out to you and consequently find it impossible not to notice.

Regardless, it's a little bit irritating. And sometimes not entirely understandable either, because surely a clock's a clock and should tick at the same rate. But I had two clocks in my room that ticked unevenly and managed to somehow drift apart from one another, then slightly back in sync, then back out again. This is arguably beyond the laws of physics until I tell you that one of these two clocks has a minute hand which is affected by gravity and thus is not the most useful timepiece in existence when stood upright.

Needless to say, I removed the batteries from one of the two clocks (the not-terribly-useful one) and now have no trouble sleeping through the night.

Actually, that's a complete lie. Mis-ticking clocks weren't enough to keep me awake at night—my brain does an excellent job of that itself. But unevenly-ticking clocks are a genuine annoyance and a public menace that would surely be enough to drive lesser men to distraction and/or violent acts involving hammers.

Although if you live with it for a while, you eventually find yourself getting used to it, the semi-predictable rhythm of the misaligned clocks becoming something comfortable and familiar, the sign that you're "home". If you get to this stage, then suddenly upsetting the status quo by removing one of the clocks could completely throw off the balance of the universe and ruin everything in your life.

All right, it probably won't ruin your life. But when you're presented with something as familiar and regular as the ticking of a clock and suddenly that's not there any more, it changes the whole feel of a room. What once had a comfortable familiarity about it becomes something altogether different—and this is where the context becomes important.

It's particularly noticeable if, say, someone close to you has died, and they were in possession of ticking clocks—particularly misaligned ticking clocks. When that person's gone and the sad business of dealing with their possessions comes up, taking the clocks away is like taking the "pulse" of their room away—it's a sign that they're finally gone, and that room is going to find a new purpose, a new future without them.

Of course, whatever songs like Grandfather's Clock that we learn as children try and tell us, people dying doesn't automatically stop clocks or anything—but those sounds that we hear and take for granted or get annoyed by every day? You'll notice them as soon as they're not there any more.

Hmm. That drifted in an altogether more melancholy direction than I intended. I'm very tired, so on that note, it's off to bed with me!

Day 451

#oneaday Day 102: A Hundred and Two

I Googled the number 102. The results might surprise you. If you're really bored and easily surprised.

The first page of results appears to be largely radio stations. Top hit for Googling 102 is Capital FM in Manchester, claiming to be Manchester's Number 1 Hit Music Station and conveniently ignoring the fact that Manchester is not the capital of the UK.

The second result is the Wikipedia entry for the number 102. I wasn't even aware Wikipedia had entries for individual numbers, but here it is—proof. Apparently 102 is special because it's an abundant number, a semiperfect number (its mother must be so proud) and a sphenic number. It is also the sum of four consecutive prime numbers, the sum of Euler's totient function, the third base 10 polydivisible number and a Harshad number. I do not know what any of those things mean and I'm sure that 98% of you don't either.

Wikipedia also tells us that the number 102 is the emergency telephone number for police in Ukraine and Belarus, the emergency number for fire in Israel and the emergency telephone number for ambulance in parts of India. And, of course, everyone knows that the Empire State Building has 102 floors, right?

Having clicked on a few links on that Wikipedia page, I'm genuinely astonished that there does indeed seem to be an individual entry for every single number. At least, every single number in the immediate vicinity of 102. Isn't the collected knowledge of the human race fascinating?

Well, actually, if you are the sort of person who despises maths, such as my 15-year old self (who regularly genuinely got angry at maths homework, despite the fact it was essentially inanimate and couldn't fight back) you probably don't find the fact that you can look up numbers on Wikipedia that interesting.

So for those people, back to Google it is.

Other radio stations that feature 102 include the stunningly boring-sounding "Town 102" from Ipswich, Wave 102 from Dundee (presumably not quite as good as Southampton's Wave 103), Warwickshire's saucy-sounding 102 Touch FM and Salisbury's Spire FM 102.

Google also brings up the IMDb listing for 102 Dalmatians, which has 2 stars or a rating of 4.4 out of 10 from 7,812 users. Because it's a movie and not a video game, we can assume that this means it is, in fact, slightly below average and not OMG CRAP. The title of that movie always struck me as incredibly dumb, however, because it should surely be "101 Dalmatians 2" if you are Disney and you are making an ill-advised sequel to your ill-advised live-action remake of your beloved animated movie. I guess they thought they were being clever. Perhaps they were.

Anyhow. I hope I've educated and informed you about the number 102. I promise I won't stoop to finding out fascinating fact about a number ever again. Unless I get really stuck for ideas.

Day 450

#oneaday Day 92: Dream On

Discussing dreams is regarded by many as self-indulgent, but then so is blogging, so to the people who whinge and moan about everything I say "RASPBERRIES, GOOD SIR" and bare my bum at them. (Maybe not the bum bit.)

But anyway. Dreams. Weird, aren't they? A statement that surely qualifies for the "Captain Obvious Award 2011", yes, but it's true — which is why it's obvious, obviously. I have, however, come to the conclusion recently that the most vivid and bizarre dreams seem to come not during your big long sleep that you (hopefully) have throughout the whole night, but instead in those brief "snooze" periods you have between alarm clock harassment in the morning. Assuming you use an alarm clock. If not, it's those brief snooze periods you have between waking up and deciding you can't be arsed to get out of bed just yet.

Anyway. Regardless of when those brief snooze periods happen, that's when your brain suddenly decides that the most interesting and/or fucked-up dreams really need to happen. Because, as everyone knows, the brain works best under pressure. Ask any student or journalist with a deadline coming up.

Take this morning. I woke on an airbed on my friend's floor (I do know how I got there, I hasten to add) and considered getting up but wasn't sure if it was a good idea because my phone battery had gone flat and I wasn't wearing a watch. And this being the digital age, of course there were no clocks anywhere to be seen that weren't on mobile phones or on TV-connected things that made noise and would wake up my sleeping companion (who was on a different air bed, I hasten to add, and sleeping off an enormous amount of alcohol that he had consumed over the course of the whole day in celebration of both digits of his age changing) so basically, I couldn't tell if it was late enough to wake up in a suitably sociable manner. You get me? Good.

Now we've established that, I can explain; following the above, I established that it probably was too early to wake up, so I promptly fell asleep again. (Oddly enough, I find it enormously difficult to fall asleep at actual normal bedtime, but have absolutely no problem dropping off again in the morning. Somewhat frustrating and a little impractical.) My brain decided that this would be an appropriate time to imagine going to the fridge, taking out a 4-pint bottle of milk to take a refreshing cold swig from and discovering that it was actually full of egg-fried rice.

"Hmm, seems a bit ricey," I said. The people in the kitchen at the time (whom I didn't see) found this hilarious and we all had a good giggle about it. Then I woke up. Cool story bro.

If dreams are supposed to be some sort of "message", then I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what that was trying to tell me. I drink too much milk? I really fancy a chinese? I'm going to die? I have no idea, but I guess it's no weirder than the time I dreamed about navigating a field made entirely of strawberry mousse.