Why? This is why.

During my Interweb adventures recently, I came across a strange thing. One of those single people, waxing lyrical about how amazing being without a lover is. It would seem this person considered being in a relationship pretty much equivalent to death. Why would anyone want to be with the same person for months, years, or, worse, their entire lives? While I was glad this person was so happy with their state of affairs, I felt it might be worth exploring that question. Why would anyone want that? Well, in my case, here follows just a couple of reasons.

Because she couldn’t step on an insect for any amount of money – she could not live with the guilt. Because she loves to run for the sheer love of running, not for competition, not for ‘self-improvement’ (ugh), but for fun. Because there is nobody she won’t see the best in – a skill with empathy unmatched by anyone else I’ve ever known – a skill I’ve learned much from. Because even after 16 years, I still want to jump her bones every single time I see her. Because she loves me for (or in spite of) the silly things I spend time and money on. Because she saved me from all the other lives I might have lived without her. Because when our daughters are grown, they will look back and consider what their mother did for them, and what she instilled in them, and they will be overwhelmed with gratitude.

Service. Or lack thereof.

You might have noticed a minor interruption in content this last month or so. Well, you see, my laptop developed a fault some time back. Problem with the screen – couldn’t see anything but flickering static when online. Since I bought the thing from a leading retailer I’ve been forking out money each month for a sort of insurance thing where they would fix anything or replace that which proved unfixable.

So, off I pop to hand the thing over. Turns out it’ll take nine days before I get it back. That’s quite a bit longer than expected, but maybe they’re busy. I hand it over and leave, muttering a little under my breath.

Nine Internet-free days go by. By now the number of funny cat pictures I’ve missed must be astronomical. The previous day (that is, after eight days), they figured out that the laptop is still under the manufacturer’s warranty so they need to return it to them to fix –they can’t touch it. Eight days. To figure that out. So that’s another week to wait. And the monthly payment turns out to be wasted money because we would’ve got this anyway due to it still being covered by the manufacturer.

We wait another week, through gritted teeth. We head on in. It was picked up yesterday. So once they knew it needed returning to the manufacturer it took six days to arrange a pick up. So that’s 14 days so far, and now they’re telling me it shouldn’t be more than another five in a tone that suggests I’m expected to be impressed by this. The pleasant person behind the counter telling us this didn’t seem to understand why we found this surprising and frustrating. Where in the world would this be considered decent service?

We finally get the laptop back almost three weeks after bringing it in. We’ve learnt a few things in that time. We’ve learnt that we are cancelling the payment we’re currently making in case anything goes wrong. As the laptop is junk anyway, we’ll be glad of an excuse to get a new one. And we learnt that there is a major retailer of electronic goods and services that will have to manage without any more of our money. Not that that’s likely to bother them much, but even a minor protest is still a protest.

Operation Don’t Die: Update.

So, since this year got underway it has been markedly more difficult to get out of the Christmas period of excess (I had December off, see). I’ve not gone back to how I was, but the weight loss has slowed down, and perhaps even reversed just slightly. If I exercise a little more will power, I could probably maintain this weight without too much trouble. The problem is, I could still do with kicking off a bit more. While I might be able to fasten the top button on my shirts now, I still resemble a grown up ginger Chunk doing the truffle shuffle when shaking my shaving gel in the bathroom mirror. Work still to be done, then.

Less of a man and loving it.

2012 included one of the weirdest experiences of my life. Having decided that we were not going to have any more kids in addition to the two daughters we currently have, I made the decision to have a vasectomy. 33 is probably quite young to do it, but we are sure in our convictions. Once we’d made our decision I paid a visit to my doctor to get the procedure booked. He asked if I’d considered sticking with less permanent forms of contraception because I’m a bit young. I convinced him of my determination to not have more children and he booked me in for an initial consultancy. Then he told me I was a fat bastard and to lose some weight (but that's another blog).

So Rach and I turn up for the appointment a little later. We had been preparing ourselves for some difficult questions (the worst I could think of was what might we do if through some terrible tragedy we lost both of our kids but the both of us were still alive – would we regret the vasectomy then?) but nothing of the sort happened. It was more like ‘So, having a vasectomy? Right-o, here’s how it works...’ She talked us through it fairly matter-of-factly, going through how I’d need to prepare (by shaving), what would happen on the day (needles, snipping, difficulty sitting afterwards) and what I would need to do afterwards to be sure it had worked. Well. She looked me square in the eye and she said: “You will need to ejaculate as much as you possibly can.” You see, to make sure it worked, you need to clear out the, um, plumbing, so to speak. You get 16 weeks before you need to submit a sample, and then again at 20 weeks. And both of them need to be completely sperm-free. A ball-park figure is at least 50 times before the 16-week point. So for 4 months it was my solemn duty to become completely sex-obsessed. Not a great stretch, I’ll grant you. But initial thoughts of sending oneself into knuckle-shuffle oblivion soon sour in the cold light of day. It didn’t take long to become, frankly, a bit of a drag.

But I get ahead of myself. That was afterwards. First came the operation (no pun intended). We arrived at the surgery and I went in while Rach took the kids off to play. After sitting around in a small waiting area for a while, I was called in. In the room was a nurse. She was older than me, probably mid to late forties. I’m not sure if her being a different age or gender would have made the prospect of getting my cock and balls out in her presence better or worse. “So, had enough kids?” she asked. Yep. Two’s plenty for me, thanks. Then in comes the doctor. A silver haired, confident fellow, he gave the impression of experienced competence. So, on the table, lie back, think of England, jeans and boxers round your ankles, so these two people I’ve never met can closely examine my bits and pieces. It seems my preparation is inadequate, because the first thing he does is grab a bic and give me a quick additional shave. At least his hands are warm.

Next come the needles. Needles in the bollocks. Or at least in that general area – to be honest I was too busy quietly freaking out inside my own head while staring at the ceiling to remember exactly where the pricks were felt. Numbness, and then, incision time. The next bit involved hands down the weirdest sensation I have ever felt. There was no pain, but you could feel it. And it was uncomfortable. The best way I can think to describe is a bit like going to the dentist. Not that a dentist would ever do this. And if yours does, they need reporting. What I mean is that when you have a tooth out, your mouth is numbed so there’s no pain, but you can feel your tooth being loosened and pulled – you can feel the pressure on your gum. Well, I could feel my tube being pulled, unravelled and cut. First one, then the other. Eventually it was done. It didn’t take long, but every uncomfortable second seemed to drag on interminably.

A few pieces of gauze to hold against the two incisions and trousers up. Another female nurse in her forties has a look. Before today I would have put money on my getting my dick out in close proximity to three complete strangers getting me reported to the police. As to recovery, well, there is no pain, but there is a great deal of discomfort and sitting becomes something you do with a great deal of care. Lifting and having your kids jump on you are both pretty much out of the question. But this is over in a matter of days, not weeks, and then the fun begins. Well, it’s fun for a while, but, as mentioned before, the pressure to jizz over and over again rather takes the fun out of it pretty quickly.

Not long after the procedure there was a frightening few days where I found a few lumps and hoped fervently that it was just these granuloma things. Looks as though they were ‘cause they eventually went and I’m still breathing. The long slog finally over, the time came to produce the samples. There is something uniquely depressing about getting it on with a small plastic cup, but get it on I did. Twice, in fact. Thrice, in fact, thanks to the hospital sending the results to the wrong medical practice originally. Still, it was confirmed: I am spermless. Shooting blanks. Unable to make babies. Hoorah!

Driving: Bad for blood pressure.

I’m not the world’s greatest driver. Hell, I’m not even the best driver in my family – that would be my wife. Sometimes I misjudge distance or speed and come out in front of people when I shouldn’t, I get nervous when traffic builds up, or I find myself driving through somewhere unfamiliar. When I was learning, my instructor once said to me “You’re not a natural driver, are you?”

But. I do try not to be a dick. I try to be a little considerate. I try not to be idiotic. Take the recent snow, for example. I do think people went a bit over the top due to a bit of the white stuff. But some roads were pretty slippy. So you try to take care – avoid particularly difficult roads, instead of brakes go down the gears to slow down, pull off in second, high gear to go up hills, low gear to come down. And yet, time and again, you see cars attempt to get up hills while revving the throttle in first gear. Surely they know lower gear means more power, which means more spinning on the snow? So you can’t get up. What do you? Retreat and find an alternate route, right? Apparently not. For some, the correct course of action is to try again coming at the hill faster, with more power. I know I’m not the only person to wonder what on earth these gobshites think they’re doing.

But some mild annoyance at some shit driving in the snow is nothing when compared to the incandescent fury caused by the widespread lack of indication. It’s just basic manners. You’re not the only fucking thing on road, you know? At a roundabout or junction there are usually other cars, cyclists or pedestrians who would really like to know where you’re going. As the Government enjoy nannying us so much (“Don’t forget to wash your hands”, “Don’t drink too much”, “Don’t forget your five a day”) it should start an initiative around the considerate use of indicators. They should call it ‘Flick the Stick’.

So if you’re near a roundabout and you hear a muffled scream of “CUUUUUUUUUUNT!!!!!!!!!” I wouldn’t worry – it’s probably me shouting at the non-indicating spasm in the car in front.

Things change.

You can’t stop the arrow of time. Things, people, societies, they all evolve. Things that used to be a good idea don’t remain a good idea forever. That’s why religious texts look sillier the more we learn. The things in the Bible, in the Koran, the things those on the fanatical outer fringes of religions (or death cults, to put it more accurately) believe are, in the cold, scientific light of day, obviously nonsense. It isn’t the fault of the books, the religions or the people who wrote them. They are merely products of their time, attempts to understand and describe their Universe as best they can. But, things change. Most of us know it wouldn’t be right to stone an adulterous woman to death. Most of us know that homosexuality is not something to be reviled. Most of us know that the Universe is billions of years old, not thousands. Those that don’t tend to be strongly religious. Funny, that.

I apologise for any offence I may cause Americans now, but your Constitution is not immune to this. The 1787 US Constitution is the shortest written constitution and this reverence accorded it is so embedded that to suggest it is flawed in any way is akin to heresy. Mostly it works fine, and is a beautiful example of a set of articles that can be used to successfully govern a large number of people. When the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, I doubt they looked at their muskets and foresaw the utterly terrifying array of fully automatic weaponry that is so easy to purchase nowadays. Of course, they knew very well in 2008, when it was confirmed that the Second Amendment applied to any fucknut on the street who wants a gun. The pressure from the NRA and the fact that pointing out that sometimes a gun is a dangerous thing is political suicide might have had something to do with that.

I’m not saying the US is alone in worshipping old Constitutions – we are very fond of our own 1215 Magna Carta, more than five-and-a-half centuries earlier than America’s, but viewing it in a glass case isn’t tantamount to a religious experience. If people are allowed to carry guns, other people are going to get shot. It really is that simple. The much-celebrated right to bear arms is defective in a modern society, and if you want people to stop getting shot, you need to retract that right, at least partly. Gun crime is almost unheard of here. It has been much reduced in Australia since a change in law was adopted following a tragic shooting incident in 1996. The sad truth is many, many more people will have to die before anything changes. But hey, an outdated civil liberty applicable to a different age is more important than life, isn’t it?

Operation Don’t Die: Update.

So, it’s been about four months since I declared my intention to not be such a bloater, and, mostly, progress is still slowly being made. A couple of stones have been lost (not sure exactly how much), resulting in less hideous chin and less bulbous belly, and the positive comments continue come my way. Hurrah! I did tweak it recently, because it got rather boring – I now give myself the weekends off. So the progress has slowed, but is still being made. No longer king of the toads. More like a prince. There is still work to be done though – I’m aiming for at least a minor functionary.