Dom Davis (The Blog)

Aero have introduced a new Aero Biscuit. It is, according to the advert, a combination of chocolate, bubbles and biscuit and, they go on to say, can be found in the biscuit aisle. The reality is that it’s a disappointingly small bar of cheap tasting chocolate and nondescript biscuit that left me wishing I’d just bought a normal Aero. I suspect part of the diminutive size is to allow each bar to be “only 99 calories” which makes it sound healthy but in reality means you have to eat at least 3 for them to touch the sides.

Whilst trying to locate the Aero Biscuits to give them a try (they’re not in the biscuit aisle of Morrisons by the way, they’re in with the rest of the chocolatey snacks) I was reminded of Fruit Clubs. Cheesy though it was the fact still holds that if you want a lot of chocolate on your biscuit then join their club. Whilst this suffices for a lunchtime chocolatey snack the reality is that we shouldn’t be pissing about with chocolate on our biscuits at all. No, you start from a chocolate base, add small pieces of biscuit, a few raisins and call it what it is: a chocolate bar. Thank you Yorkie. There are, of course, lard issues that need to be taken into account, expanding waistlines and the fact I look more pregnant than my wife, which is why I’m not partaking of a Raisin and Biscuit Yorkie on a daily basis but I still maintain that if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit stop fucking about and get a Yorkie

So last night I dreamt I was wondering around my old office at 100 Liverpool Street. This is the main office of a major investment bank so security is tight. No problems, I just took the stairs, went up two levels, through an office with lots of suits looking at my bright yellow trousers and light blue top, up some more steps, then down another set into the server room. Getting into one of the server cages was done by simply hopping over the bit of the fence that was a bed, then I had to be careful with the bouncy floor that I didn’t disturb the carefully stacked DVDs…

At no point did my subconscious brain go WTF? it was quite happy to accept all of this (plus more) as utterly normal. My conscious brain, distressingly awoken by the alarm, took hold of the fading fragments of the dream and simply went “er… riiiiight…”

The outcome of yesterday’s hospital appointment was they needed to do more tests to see if there is any medication I should be on to prevent gout and future kidney stones.

One of these tests is a 24 hour urine test. This involves me collecting all my urine in a large 1 gallon container over a period of 24hours and returning it to the hospital.

Most people, apparently, perform the test on Sunday, returning the sample on Monday as this avoids unpleasantness like having a container of your urine under the desk at work for the day. This is most likely going to be the tactic I employ, although it does rather depend on The Zozos day off.

It does beg the question: How many gallons of piss does the path lab get on an average Monday?

I have a quantity of Apple machines at home, many of which talk to each other. Somehow one of them managed to get itself stuck trying to download a rented film that we’d ordered and watched on another machine. This was quite annoying as it was my main machine and every times iTunes started it would whinge about not being able to download this film. There appeared to be no way to stop this from happening and a brief Google later revealed I’d need to email iTunes support. No problem, an email was duly fired off and, as it was the weekend, I forgot about it.

Monday I was greeted by a long missive which included lines such as:

“Thank you for being so patient as we have had a higher volume recently, But I would like to make you aware that I will be personally taking care of you till all your questions have been answered, so please do not hesitate to reply to my email as I will be here.”

The email also introduced the support member helping me, a reiteration of the problem as they saw it and the actions taken to fix the problem. It was signed off:

“Dom, thank you for your patience and for being an Apple iTunes Services customer. We truly appreciate your business. It was my pleasure serving you today.”

Can’t really fault them for their friendliness. Not going to complain about how long it took them to get back to me as it was a weekend and they did apologise profusely. I didn’t fire up my machine that night so I didn’t know if the problem was sorted but it would appear my support representative was eager to help me. Tuesday I received and email saying:

“I wanted to send a quick note to see if you are still experiencing any difficulties with the iTunes Store. Resolving your issue is important to me, so please don’t hesitate to reply if you need any further assistance.”

Also included were the hours my support representative was working that week should I wish to talk to them and the line:

“Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.”

Maybe it’s me being British or something, but I’m beginning to feel a bit like my support guy is being aggressively helpful. I really hope they use email templates and don’t need to type all this every time they’re blessed with helping someone. Still, not wanting to cause my support persons stats to slip I email back thanking them for their help and telling them my problem is now resolved. Admittedly I hadn’t checked but they’d done the needful on their side and I could always make another persons day by raising a new ticket and giving them the opportunity to help me. The response was:

“Dear Dom,

You’re very welcome.

Nothing makes Apple happier than to hear that we have pleased our customers. I hope that you continue to enjoy the iTunes Store.

Dom, it has been my pleasure serving you today.”

You can’t fault the service, but perhaps they want to dial down the friendliness and dial up the sincerity for the UK audience

So with the profusion of .me domain names I hatched upon an idea for a service that would allow you to create throw away email addresses which would forward to your normal email address a configurable amount of times before just trashing any further emails. This would allow people to sign up for services without having to worry about spam in the future. I would call this service: fuckoffandstopbothering.me – now how do I monetize this?

This morning, while having a shower, I
Noticed very prominent blue veins on my left arm and hand. They didn’t last long, but given the amount of painkillers I’ve been eating of late I thought I’d better have a quick google just to make sure it was nothing to worry about. The first page I came across made mention of lupus. Now, I’m no doctor, but I do watch House and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt it’s that it’s never lupus

OK, serious WTF moment. There is a mother with child and what I’m assuming to be grandparents sat on the train. The kid is female and I’m going to guess under 5. She’s currently playing with one of her purchases from Norwich and asking if she can open them. The purchase in question: nipple tassels. I know this because the container says “nipple tassels”. Who the fuck buys a young kid nipple tassels?! And if I’ve misunderstood and they’re intact mums (or, god forbid, grandmas) who the hell gets their nipple tassels out on the train for a kid to play with? I mean seriously, come on people!

It occurred to me today that, as far as music is concerned, I’m a bit of a polyglot. While the vast majority of my music is in English (or just instrumental), there’s a load of other languages in there too, including:

• German – The Germans seem to be very good at Industrial, most famously with Rammstein. I’ve even got tracks sung in German by the German sounding Hanzel und Gretyl who are in fact American. Everything just sounds harsher in German
• Spanish – Nowhere near as many tracks as those containing German lyrics, but there’s a fair few tracks, mostly from South American bands (Brazil seems to spawn the odd seriously heavy outfit every now and then). While I can speak pidgin German thanks to much of the music I listen to I have no idea what most of the Spanish is.
• Latin – For someone into fairly extreme music I seem to own a fair amount of classical music. Oh, and Enigma. All of which amounts to quite a few tracks.
• French – Less numerous still and mainly due to one artist: Jean Michelle Jarre. There’s a sprinkling of French words in other tracks, mainly from the 80′s it seems.
• Romanian – Not so odd if you think about it. One track (well, three, but two are remixes). A guilty pleasure that I’ll let you work out for yourself to spare me the shame
• Russian – Ironically enough this is thanks to Rammstein, a German band. One track that I’m aware of, and that only has it in the chorus. There is also the mad take on Korobeinki (the Tetris theme tune) done by Eisenfunk, although that is instrumental
• Elvish – Lord Of The Rings Soundtrack. ‘Nuff said.

I think that’s it (I’m not sure what languages the Gladiator Soundtrack uses, but I’m guessing I’ve got them covered). I also never know if The Cranberries break out the Gaelic or not, or if that’s just her wailing a bit.

If we’re really going for it the album Zoolook, by Jean Michel Jarre includes samples of some 50 different languages (most distorted beyond recognition), including some very bizarre ones, but that feels a bit cheaty.

Oh, I also have one album that has a Greek title, but that’s just Ministry dicking about. Everyone just calls it Psalm 69.

It’s less than a week before Christmas. The Christmas Spirit is in full swing and yet there is a dark underbelly that I think everyone has overlooked. Yes, I’m talking about Santa. On the surface a jolly old fat man who flies about in a sleigh on Christmas Eve distributing gifts for everyone, but scratch the surface and look at little deeper and there are some big question marks.

Lets pick on the obvious first. We actively teach our kids never to accept gifts from strangers and yet here is a person that your children don’t actually know save through reputation and stories offering gifts if the child sits on his lap. Do we raise an eyebrow? No, we take photos. In most cases we even pay for the privilege. Now, I don’t want to case aspersions here, but if a random old bloke told your son or daughter that he’d give them a gift if they sat on their lap would you let them? Didn’t think so.

More sinister, however, is hinted at in songs about Santa. Apparently he has a list, one that he checks twice when ascertaining if you’ve been naughty or nice.

Now lets just assume that someone has found a laptop on a bus. On the hard drive of this laptop are the movements of… oh, I don’t know, everyone from a local primary school. A document contains a long list of names, activities, times and dates. There would be uproar. News outlets would be banging on about the paedophile stalker and the police would not stop until they’d found the culprit citing grave danger for the children at the school.

With Santa we’re talking about an old bloke with the very same list covering every child in the country. Should we be worried?

Finally, that list also, one assumes, covers the adults in the country too. Now I’m not an expert on UK and EU law but doesn’t this fall foul of the Data Protection Act? I don’t know, perhaps being a foreign establishment Santa doesn’t have to conform to the act, but if he does who do I write to in order to find out what information he has on me?

So Santa, all round good guy who gives people gifts on Christmas… or dirty old man who bribes you to turn a blind eye?

I’m pretty sure I’ve complained about the various euphemisms in use for Christmas already (being on a bus in the middle of the North Norfolk countryside makes checking these things problematic) and I know I’m not alone with the backlash against this. We have adverts for “The Holiday Season”, “The Party Season” and people wishing us “Happy happy!”, although to be fair they only do this the once as there something very persuasive about beating someone to death with their own self righteousness. All this extreme political correctness has spawned new, tongue in cheek expressions, my favourite of which is: Winterval Religibreak (not, unfortunately, something I can claim credit for). I will, of course, be sending out my standard, extremely PC greeting sometime soon (something I do every year) which, hopefully, I’ll be able to amend so I don’t upset everyone in the southern hemisphere (my friends being the largest group of pedants on the face of the planet). In the meantime if my use of the word Christmas causes you moral outrage please feel free to leave a comment below so I can delete it unread