Well now...

I don't really want to write this. It's not that it's upsetting or anything, I just have no desire to blog for some reason. But I'll do it anyway. Because Spara's updated his blog (which I can barely look at as it causes my computer to splutter) and instead put something vaguely interesting rather than "ooh woe, absinthe gives me a hangover". Get over it, you drunk! I only had one hangover in my entire life (and it was probably food poisoning after I ate a potplant... what a party that was!) and I did not complain. Oh yeah, even when my skull has shattered and been put back together wrong, my moral highground doesn't waver.

Let me tell you about Lewis Hall. Lewis Hall is... well, to be blunt, a guy I know. He's a "friend" of my dad. In the sense he's a completely idiotic dickhead my dad can't seem to get rid off - rather like Blackadder and Percy. And, well don't think I'm bigging myself up here, he considers me an intellectual threat. More to the point, he considered me an intellectual threat when I was seven. He got the impression I despised him. And I didn't. I didn't give him enough thought to despise him, and he was kind enough to bring food around like some pagan offering to a god. Despite the fact he has a full life (compared to me anyroads), he seems desperate to hang around my parents. I know of one occasion where he drove to our neck of the woods and just went around the block in circles until someone was home. It's more sad than creepy and I have endeavoured to be as polite and friendly as possible to the guy. I'm a real softie due to my shoddy emotional empathy (oh, Johnny Howard, why? WHY??!), so I think it's the least I can do.

But, anyway, on Friday he comes round with a DVD he's burned - the Rolling Stones film. My dad likes the Rolling Stones, but not a real obsession. Lewis though uses this as a basis of all communication, as if we can only think in terms of Mick an Keef. Anyway, I put it into the living room DVD player... and it spits it out, saying it cannot be read.

This is by no means unusual - like most technology in my house, the DVD player has a personality. It chooses seemingly at random at what it wants to play. Thirteen episodes of Torchwood seemed to be the final straw, and after Planet of the Ood decided to put a bouncer into what would and wouldn't play. Sometimes it would change its mind. Twice.

Anyway, I go to the dining area with the DVD player there (oh, what decadence) and try it there. The machine switches off and smoke starts pouring out it... which is by every means unsusual. So, as I look at the DVD player doing its very best impression of the Torchwood Hub, I demand to know what the hell is up with this disc? Lewis reveals he got it from Mexico and hasn't tried it out yet. I reveal he's blown up my bloody DVD player. He laughs like a stoner. My dad however can tell I am, how shall we say, not happy with this.

I try and prise the top off the DVD player and slide out the disc. Lewis continues to giggle at this, despite the fact that basically he's screwed up our little lifestyle - apart from everything else, the ex-DVD player was the one that played everything the proper-DVD player wouldn't. This means we basically cannot watch any DVDs or even TV in the kitchen area. On a Friday Night. At the end of Book Week (far more important than Vashta Nerada for librarians believe you me). With Double the Fist on.

Lewis looks at me and with that wonderful monosyllable "So?" pretty much makes me snap.

Literally.

Snap.

I held up his precious DVD betwixt my thumb and forefinger and I began to squeeze. After seven seconds it splintered into four irregular shards. Not saying a word I dropped the shards atop his greying curly hair, turned and left to tidy up the remains. In the next room I hear the conversation rather awkwardly return... mostly on the fact I had taken the Leatherman (a sort of swiss army knife with a very sharp knife attachment) with me and was not in a happy mood.

Lewis left shortly afterwards.

I stress it was his attitude that pissed me off. Blowing up DVD players by accident, well, that's life. It refused to play Robin Hood anyway. I could cope with that. But he just seemed to think that wrecking a chunk of my home was a source of amusement. And this is a guy who my dad told me, minutes before entering our house, was throwing empty beer bottles onto the railway line. Not very mature behaviour for a schoolteacher, huh?

So. We now have a new DVD player. One that works 100%. And has black buttons marked in black on a black background that light up black... and we have a set top box. Similar black marked in black. We can now watch ABC2. Not that there's anything wrong. Bar the ability to see a few jazz concerts and Double the Fist a day early, I'd call it an expensive and pointless paperweight.

Well, quite. I can't think of a moral or a point to this. Except it amazed my dad who took great, great pleasure in retelling it to my mum... with a couple of additions like me trying to slit Lewis' throat, force feeding him the broken DVD, and literally throwing him out the front door with a litany of death threats based upon a speech from Tom Jones (not the singer, the book).

Yeah.

I've nearly finished my manga picture of Empire of the Daleks ("Is that poofter supposed to be the Doctor?" my dad sneered goodnaturedly of my Manga-Coburn Doc).

The only other really interesting thing was me finding a youtube vid of a strange stage musical that begins with Captain Jack Harkness finding three Movellans in his bedroom dancing to KLF's Doctor in the Tardis... and joining in with a camp display that would put Paul Darrow and Kieth Allan to shame.

And there's no answer to that, is there?