But what do you really think?

The ever vigilant Brandnewgun pointed me towards this set of responses to a Christian lobbying group by the major parties.

It basically confirmed that I'd be voting Lib-Dem if I hadn't fucked up my voting record when I moved house.

"Does your party consider that marriage, delaying sexual activity and parental responsibility should be prioritised in sex education?"

Labour:"Sex education should be presented in a context that values stable relationships, healthy living and personal responsibility and firmly sets sex within the wider context of health education, religious and moral education, and personal and social development."

SNP:"The SNP believe that appropriate sexual education should be communicated in our schools."

Tories: "Parents can only be reassured on this issue when they have adequate powers at first hand to prevent the permissive approach to sex education which has conspicuously failed our western society".

Lib-Dem: "The Scottish Liberal Democrats want a system of sex education that instils self-respect into young people and challenges them to face up to the complacency and risk taking that appears to be growing in Scotland.
Liberal Democrats support the provision of advice on sexual health in schools but would want to make sure that distribution of contraceptives and, indeed, medication is only carried out by properly trained health professionals."

Which leads me to think that I'd never vote for the Conservatives, the SNP don't want to admit to their policies, Labour are too keen to include standpoints I don't care for and the Lib-Dems are too reasonable to ever be elected.

Don't wanna feel like stupid people

I've spent the last week and a half feeling stupid. Literally.

I've been able to have most conversations on auto-pilot, but any kind of original or systematic thought has gone out of the window. I've had a a discussion with Heron regarding communism where I knew there were things I was missing, but I just couldn't see what. I've had discussions about abortion and couldn't see where I was going wrong. I staggered to the bathroom last night wondering if stupid people felt this way all the time, or if stupid people can't tell that they're stupid and so don't notice.

It certainly gives you a lot of empathy for people who tell you that "X is dull" or "I don't read" or "I avoid politics" because for the last week I've lived on a diet of cartoons and staring into the distance while dribbling slightly. Anything more complex than Samurai Jack left me feeling lost, confused and wanting to crawl back under the duvet. If that's how most people feel when they encounter politics/philosophy/science no wonder the majority of people have no interest in them.

Today I've solved 3 problems that I'd been completely unable to solve since last Wednesday and I feel more alive than I have since Adam cruelly infected me.

I still don't feel entirely up to scratch (hopefully by the weekend - as it is my coughing stopped me getting more than 6 hours sleep last night), but I do feel like life is worth living again.

Aaaaaaaagggghhhhh!!!!

The day after I book my train/rail tickets to avoid the train strike, they cancel it! If I'd just been lazy for one more day I'd have saved £20 and 2 extra hours of travelling!

Tardblog

Possible the most tastelessly funny thing I've seen since Jonny the Homicidal Maniac. And it's all true!

The true adventures of children with learning disabilities can be found here.

Number 13 is particularly funny...

Ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim!

Yesterday Hugh handed me a small pile of CDs containing 20 episodes of Invader Zim. I mentioned that this would cause Sana to haemorrhage internally from sheer joy, so I'm supposed to hand them to her next time I see her. I may just dangle them in front of her nose instead.

Meantime, I spent half an hour copying the contents onto my hard drive - I mean, what's the point of having 60Gig of space unless you're going to make a vague attempt to fill it up? So that's 2.5Gig taken up until I get around to watching it all.

I also discovered that for some unearthly reason my motherboard and CD drive won't communicate using DMA. For the non-technical among you this means that rather than CDs being accessed quietly in the background, the CPU has to transfer each byte by hand - thus causing everything to go slow - literally imn the case of the music I was listening to earlier. This means that either my motherboard is so old that it's not detecting things properly or it's slowly going wrong. Either way, it's a good excuse to replace the motherboard/CPU. I've currently got a 650MHz Duron, which means I could buy a new motherboard/CPU for about £110 that would make my machine about 4 times faster. I should have £110 sometime around 2004. Still, something to look forward to - I'll see if I can upgrade in time for Doom 3!

A Terrible Tale

In a blitz of ultra-efficientness Erin has slogged her way through several loads of washing over the last day or two and brough the pile down to a few items that need to be washed using methods so arcane that I swear the symbols on the washing machine move when you glance away.

This means that there are no dirty socks. You can of course, see the problem here - my sock drawer was never designed to take more than 3/4 of my socks, 1/4 being dirty at any one time. By cleaning all my socks at once (save for the pair on my feet) I've run out of sock-storage space!

What am I going to do now?!?!?!?

This tale brought to you by the "Society To Bring Home The True Horror Of Andrew's Life"