Hello, Christmas

So christmas is actually here now.  I've pretty much escaped the constant year round hyperbole by sequestering myself away; hiding in a part of the household that has no television access.  This ensures I see only what I've searched for (bar the occasional popup) in the search engines of the infinite abyss.

It also means I've missed out on looking at all the cool toys kids are getting now.  I've always been a fan of the marrying of mechanical and electronic, and without a doubt, the current generation of cheap plastic crap is far superior to the cheap plastic crap I was bought.

With the exception of steam locomotives, and the difference engine, dynamic mechanical engineering leaves me somewhat cold.  I can see the beauty in how a petrol driven engine works, but actually diving headfirst into the bonnet is something best left to others.  There's just so much oil.  And none of it comes from whales.  Such a waste.

However.  I can also see why a human cannot love a computer in the same way they can love a car.  A car, or my personal preference, a steam loco, has a definable soul.  Interestingly, this soul is rarely defined by how well something works, or its' physical presence within the universe.  It is defined by how often it doesn't work, and how 'fun' (liberal usage, here) it is to repair and 'get the old girl going again.'  Let me stop for a second and say, computers behave in exactly the same way.  They break for no reason, and take a lifetimes' commitment to maintain, yet they do not have a soul.  (Some, and I'm inclined to agree, argue that computers have the devils own soul)

I suppose this discrepancy could be placed upon our reliance on mechanical engineering we have in everyday life; that is not to say computers aren't important, of course they are - but we don't sit inside a computer, and trust our lives in them.  The engineering projects that have character are steam locomotives that force steam and noise upon you, and blunder their way through landscapes in a frantic attempt at running from its' own coal store, lest that catch fire and burn everyone horrifically.  Or the enormous bridge that spans such a length that we rely on our rudimentary understanding of physics, instead of our other blind faith, (Dog, anagram) to get us safely across.  We hope and pray these things deliver us safely across, and, ultimately, our lives our in their hands.  We attribute these things a personality, because temperament explains why they sometimes kill us.  Oh, she (the car, train, bridge) was pissed off.

No my friend, you forgot to fill up the radiator.  That's why the engine exploded.

Computers are elegant things.  There, I said it.  They do not blunder, they do not agitate.  They sit still, some will make a racket, some will sit quietly, but they are motionless things, doing just an incomprehensible job as the humber suspension bridge, but not drawing focus to themselves.  They may not have a soul, but they're elegant.

At this stage I come back to my first lines.  What kids have now, are small, crappy plastic toys that go someway between marrying movement, in the form of basic mechanics, with rudimentary computers.  This is cool.  This is a convergence of technologies that has been around for fifty years, but has never been so widely available, and, crucially, so cheap, that it could be marketed for £3.50, with free p&p.

In other headlines, as per my own at the top of this post; christmas is here.  It's extremely interesting to see how things change as you grow up.  I don't mean the philosophical - christmas isn't fun when you have to buy presents - kind of thing; I mean the literal, physical changes.  Christmas is shown as being a no-change time period.  People talk about what they do every year, whether it's a sherry at a certain hour, (the mean average time for this appears to be before 9am) a certain foodstuff eaten till explosion warnings sound mid-brain, or a certain game played by everyone that comprises the family.

I pray to Ogd (anagram) that I can shake things up next year, and be somewhere so far away, that they don't even celebrate christmas (the heathens!).  Maybe I'll enlighten a small part of the world as to the true meaning of capitalism, oh sorry, I mean christmas; by showing them a real, ten mile wide carbon footprint created by my present wrapping, and aforementioned useless-plastic-crap buying.

Of course christmas is actually about spending time with friends and family, while everyone has a government sanctioned rest period, and I already have a ton of friends in Japan to spend christmas with; so after a day at school I can rock up at the nearest watering hole, and have a few drinks on foreign shores.

I am so desperate to go there, that I have everything planned in my mind.  Luckily, I hate plans, and if I ever step into a plane, I'll forget I ever made any, and make it up as I go along.

At this point it is customary to see top 10's for everything as well.  This is in response to our need for reflection, and at this time I reflect that I have a degree (the worth of which will be ascertained in the future, but the fun in acquiring will never be forgotten), I have no job, it is six months since chenzi left the country, I have a teaching qualification, and I have no direction.  Okay, so the last one was somewhat forward-looking. Four of the last six months have dragged by so slowly, that I found myself looking.  Not staring.  Staring implies an area of focus.  Looking implies that there is something to see; at which point I can strike up a conversation about how I am not actually looking at anything, and that in of itself is a fascinating topic.

Two of the months passed by so quickly that I'm glad I chronicled them here.

And that's what christmas is.  A time for giving and receiving useless rubbish, eating and drinking too much, meeting people, and remembering the past year.  It is nothing more, but certainly nothing less.