"Lies, damn lies, and stastistics."

I actually thought I would not waste time this morning, I would get work done and do my maths, but I can't use the statistics software, as it seems to have been designed for the exclusive use of mathematicians and their counterparts in hell.
I have done some maths, but some is not a lot, and for the most part I am wasting time and Helena is trying to tell me all about Lebanese food.

I think I may wander over to Anathema, my country... it seems to be doing quite well for a country that is less than twenty-four hours old. It is described as left-wing utopia, which I shall never cease to be happy about.

Yesterday, at the poetry day, Simon Armitage mentioned something I meant to write about last night, but forgot. He called it an ice-breaking party game, but I thought it might be more that that. It's very simple. You take a bunch of people and give them all a match. One by one, they strike the matches, and each person has to tell his or her life story in the time it takes for the match to burn down.
I'd like to try it. I'm sure our resident pyromaniac would love it.

I think I'd like to be productive and get work done, but circumstances conspire. All the work I have to do - that English Lit essay, my history, and the maths - doesn't wt to be done. In other words, the files are at home on my hard disk, or the bloody software refuses to work.

This entry is too long for one made so early in the morning. I need sleep and lots of it.

Careers advice

I don't think I'm going to inflict a huge update on the unsuspecting world, at least not tonight.
My mother wants me to start revising for my mocks now. I take her point, as I probably won't get anything done at Christmas, but still... I've never liked her attitude towards me. Her two great fears are complacency and writing.
In other words, she's terrified I'll become complacent, which is something I understand but don't like. She knows I've never screwed up an exam in my life, and yet she has no faith.
The other area in which she has no faith is my ability to make my own career choices. She's right to have no faith. I think she knows deep down that I won't be a doctor, can't be a doctor. I may be slightly scientific, but she knows and I know that that's not enough - to be a doctor you have to have a vocation, you have to want it more than anything else in the whole world. I'm not saying Pedar is dissatisfied, but he sometimes says that if he grew up like me, he would now be holed up somewhere teaching English Literature.
To go on, my mother's latest tack is to try and persaude me not to pay much attention to the careers guidance I'm given, because it's not trustworthy. This, in a perverse way, gives me hope. My careers advice and the aptitude test report thingit are not going to tell me I should think about medicine, they're going to tell my strengths lie in writing, and she knows it. If there were any chance they would tell me to be a doctor, she'd be all for it.

Anyway. Enough depressing stuff. M*A*S*H pilot tonight! Yayness!

Drawback

The one drawback of broadband internet access - people keep calling you.

Pilot

Ah.... the M*A*S*H pilot. I always thought it had a slightly different air to the other episodes of the series. It's the only ep with a pre-credit bit, so we get to see the extended title sequence and hear Radar shout "Wait for it!" for the first time. I thought he should have shouted "Wait for it!" each time, but it's just a thought.
Somehow it seems like an alternate M*A*S*H ep - the same but different. Hawkeye's hair is longer - yes, trust me to notice that detail - and Trapper's is shorter. They seem to be the familiar double act, and they do successfully get Frank sedated every hour while they hold a party and raffle. Come to think of it, nearly all the gags are set up during this first episode - Radar's clairvoyance, Hotlips, the sex and alcohol... in fact it's only Klinger who isn't there. Even the touch of darkness appears when Hawkeye explains to the general - General Hammond, how ironic - that he can't be arrested, he's needed.
Of course, Hawkeye and Trapper aren't arrested, and their reputations as top flight surgeons are established.

But the best part has to be the ending. The last moment of the episode is a rather fantastic aerial shot of Hawkeye and Trapper handcuffed to each other, pulling at each other, with their cries being drowned out by Suicide is Painless...

[Just to be clear, they handcuffed themselves to each other. Nothing like starting a show the way you mean to go on]

Amazon

For some reason, I'm reading my complete order history on Amazon.co.uk. Apparently I have orderered a total of about thirty items over a period of three years. How odd. All thirty items save one have been addressed and shipped to me, and all thirty items save one have been books.
I'm actually surprised at them, because I ordered the M*A*S*H book with the really long title yesterday with a delivery estimate of three weeks. However, it appears the book was dispatched this morning and should be here tomorrow. God bless the internet.
At least it gives me something to look forward to tomorrow.