My new friend Jacob.

Like most folk in the day and age, I get a serious amount of spam sent to me on a daily basis. Since this morning, sixty new messages have clogged up my spam filter. Every week or two I poke and prod through them. Gmail tends to be quite good at sorting this stuff out, and the messages in my spam folder tend to be just that, spam. But I worry that I might miss something. I slipped up a month ago and lost eighty million in the Ghanan lottery, that won't happen again.
So, a few nights ago, I scrolled down through my spam filter. I scrolled past claims to improve my vision, offers to help with my baldness and my one chance at earning a law degree online. I scrolled past private messages from nearby girls interested in ME, the five worst foods to eat for belly flab and pre approved credit cards.
I stopped at one from a Mr. Obi Jacob. The subject line was beautifully simple:
PLEASE READ THE ENCLOSED.
I figured "Let's give Jacob a spin, see what he has to say for himself" and opened it up.

Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
FBI Headquarters In Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

Attention: Beneficiary

Fuck. This can't be good.

This is the final warning you will receive from me. This notice has been sent to you in many occassions/ several times but you ignored it.

 You see? This is why I should go through my spam more often, and so should you.

I have warned you so many times and you decided to ignore my e-mails because you believe we have not been instructed to get you arrested, if you fail to respond back to us with the payment details below, then we would first send a letter to the MAYOR of the city where you reside and also direct the bank to close your account until you comply with our directives. Note that all your properties will be confiscated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We would also send a letter to the company/organization you work for so that they could get you fired until we are through with our investigations because a suspect is not supposed to be working for the government or any private organization.

They've not even told me what I've done yet and already they're threatening to rat me out to THE MAYOR of my city. The MAYOR of  Edinburgh. The-, wait, does Edinburgh have a mayor? There's a Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. The man's 91, will he really care that much? Unless my crime was kneecapping the Queen herself I think he'll be throwing your message in the Royal Spam filter, Jacob. And as for notifying the company I work for? I haven't pulled a sickie since starting there, two and a half years ago. Some time off would go down nicely. You'll have to do more than that.

Your ID which we have in our database have been sent to all the crimes agencies in America for them to upload you in their website as an internet fraudsters and a terrorist (suicide bomber). Also to warn people from having any dealings or friendly communication with you anymore. This would have been solved all this while if you had gotten the CERTIFICATE ENDORSED AND STAMPED as you were instructed in the e-mail below. I, ROBERT S. MUELLER III, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wish to inform you that there is no more time left to waste because you have been given enough grace therefore you have been mandated to comply immediately you read this e-mail if you don't want to be arrested. As stated earlier, to have the document endorsed and stamped without any delay, you must adhere to this directives to avoid you from blaming yourself at last when we must have arrested and sentence you to life imprisonment. Note that all your properties will be seized and bank account will be confiscated too.

 You're going to report ME as an internet fraudster? ME? Eh, hello, kettle? This is pot. We don't want you coming to our golf games anymore.
The rest of the paragraph is a little incomprehensible. I skimmed it. If I missed anything important, I'd appreciate being informed. I'm on the lam, here, like.

As a good Christian and a Honest man, I decided to see how i can be of help to you because i would not be happy to see you end up in jail and all your properties got confiscated because your information was used to carry out a fraudulent transactions. I called the EFCC NIGERIA and they directed me to a private attorney who can help you get the process done and he stated that he will endorse and stamp the document at the sum of $98 only and i believe this process is cheaper for you. You need to do everything possible to get this process done today or tomorrow because i have been informed by the ARREST WARRANT ISSUANCE DEPARTMENT that the warrant of arrest has been prepared against you and once is being signed by me as the FBI DIRECTOR, then the arrest will be carried out in the next 48hours. from our investigations, we learnt that you were the person that forwarded your identification to one impostor/ fraudster in Nigeria when he had a deal with you about the transfer of some illegal funds into your bank account which is valued at the sum of $10,500,000.00 only. You failed to comply with our directives/instruction, and that was the reason why we didn't hear from you. As i have already been notified about you getting the process completed yesterday and right now the WARRANT OF ARREST has been signed against you and it will be carried out in the next 48hours as strictly signed by the FBI director. We have investigated and found out that you don't have any idea when the fraudulent deal was conducted with your information's/identity and right now your ID is placed on our database as a wanted person. I believe you know that it will be a shame to you and your entire family. Also it will be announced in all the local channels that you are wanted by the FBI.

Now there's a paragraph. Finally, Jacob swings in the save the day.  He's willing to get in touch with his... friends in the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to help me out? How'd Nigeria come into this? Jacob, are you yanking my crank? He's asking for $98 to clear my name. $98? It'd be worth robbing a few cars and torching an orphanage most weekends if my man Jake can clear my name for under a hundred quid.
Oh, wait, I had to do this "today or tomorrow"... last Friday? And if I didn't, Jacob himself, the newly elected FBI Director (he got a promotion within the space of a paragraph), would issue a warrant for my arrest. After that, I'd be arrested within... 48 HOURS? Fuck! Better finish this quick.
At least I now know my crime... kinda. A Nigerian fraudster has transferred ten and a half million dollars into my account. Well take me outside and put me in the stocks. No, wait, announce it on local TV! Oh, you were going to do that anyway. Keep 'er lit, Jacob.

Note: All the crimes agencies have been contacted on this regards and we shall trace and arrest you if you disregard this instruction. You are advised to make the payment for the signing and stamping of the document today, failure to do that will attract a maximum arrest and finally we shall apply for litigation against you. Thereafter, you will appear in ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT COURT OF WASHINGTON D.C for terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking charges. Be warned, do not try anything funny because we are monitoring you  from our satellite.

MAXIMUM ARREST. Is that an actual term? Am I dealing with Robocop or something?
It's at this point I figured that something fidhy might be going on. Besides threatening me with "Maximum arrest", Jacob then goes so far as to warn me not to "try anything funny" (Shhh.) and then lets me know that they're monitoring me via satellite (which explains why I mooned the sky every 2 miles on my jog tonight).

Meanwhile, I pleaded on your behalf so that this agency could give you till 07/20/2012 so that you can get this process done. Bear it in mind that this is the only way that i can be able to help you at this moment. But if you fail to comply you will face the law and its consequences once it had befallen on you. You will have to make the payment through western union money transfer with the below information then Send the payment details to me as stated below.

  You pleaded on my behalf? Jacob, you're the fucking director of the fucking FB fucking I. Surely you could do more than plead. You know, I think you're pulling my leg. I think, THINK I'll not bother replying to you and cobble together a blog entry out of this, maybe get a couple of hits.

That said, if you do wake up beside some dead hookers anytime soon, you might wanna take down the following, fill it out and send it off to my man Jake. And wave your willy at the clouds every chance you get, he's probably watching you right now.

NAME: OBI JACOB

ADDRESS: LAGOS, NIGERIA

TEXT QUESTION: BETTER

ANSWER: BEST

AMOUNT: $98

SENDER'S FULL NAME:

SENDER'S FULL ADDRESS:

DIRECT PHONE NUMBER:

MTCN: 

Wee bag.

About two weeks ago, a Wednesday I think, I was hovering about the shop floor as I worked out in Cameron Toll shopping centre. An old man, mid seventies but in good shape, approached the front desk. I was just back from my lunch, my next appointment hadn't turned up so I walked over to him to see if I could help. He asked me if I'd be able to fix his glasses as the lens had fallen out. I smiled, lent forward to see the wreckage in his hand and told him I'd see what I could do.

I like fixing glasses. It's not hard, the only reason I can do it and you can't is because you don't have very small screwdrivers and screws. Good vision is handy too, it can be pretty tricky fixing your reading glasses if you've no glasses to help you see them in the first place. A few optometrists don't like this. I know of one or two who feel this kind of task is below them, that they've better things to do, maybe, but I like it. Tightening a screw, bending a side back into place or replacing a nose-pad, it gives me a few minutes of... peace. Serenity. I like, as well, going back to the person with their glasses, newly in one piece again, and telling them that "they'll last a few more battles if they have to". I like it when they offer to pay and I halfheartedly put my palms towards them and tell them not to bother, that it was "nothing major" or maybe to tell them to put a few coins in the next poor box they see. People who don't offer to pay for repairs I don't like. They get my mean squinty face as they turn to walk out (they don't ever see my mean, squinty face, but I'm guessing the back of their heads feel sore).

This repair was a little more difficult. This man's supra cord had snapped. Supra cord is what's used to secure lenses on what we call 'supra', or semi-rimmed, frames. If you've ever seen glasses or sunglasses with just a frame along the top of the lens, there's a very fine cord running along the lower edge of the lens too. It's kind of like fishing reel, invisible to the naked eye. 

Did you really need this picture? Fine, so let's zoom in on the cord.

You can't zoom in on the cord, I told you it's INVISIBLE.

If the cord is broke, and it can snap for a number of reasons, we usually rethread it, put in a new one altogether. I went back to the lab area of the shop and went looking for some replacement supra cord. I found about ten centimetres worth in a wee, see through, plastic bag and had the man's glasses fixed three or four minutes later. I handed them back to him, told him the try them on to make sure they still fitted nicely, pointed my palms at him as he offered to pay and advised him to buy a Big Issue next time someone offered him one (to balance out the Universe).

Back in the lab (I had to put the pliers back where I found them or Colin, who wasn't in that day, would hit me with the leg of a chair), I saw the wee bag the cord came in again. I picked it up and looked at it. I'd seen bags like this before. Lots of bags. But this one, hmm, this one looked useful. At the time, a wealth of uses came to mind.

Right now, I can only think of two. Firstly, I could store buttons in it. I imagined my nine spare buttons at home, from various suits and jackets, strewn across the bottom of my DIY/sewing/wires shoebox. This bag could bring order to the buttons. This wee bag could make my shoebox a better place to put things.

The second use, which I now realise isn't very useful, is for matchsticks. It's a resealable wee bag, matches would stay dry in it, I could go snorkling and light a cigar afterwards with no problems whatsoever. I now realise that, while I could indeed store matches in the wee bag, I'd have nothing to strike them against.

There were other uses at the time, I swear, but they all elude me right now. I took the wee bag. I put it in my wallet and there it stayed until today.

You want to see the wee bag, I know you do.

There you go. A wee, see through, resealable, plastic bag. There's ten million of them in the world today. But this one was going to be special, this one was going to make a difference.

Now, as I look at it, I can't find a use for it. I forgot that I threw out all my spare buttons (all nine) when I moved flat. I don't snorkel. I'm thinking of throwing the wee bag away.

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you, and the rest of the internet, this is so that if I ever get ran over by a bus (or shot, if I'm in Dublin) and the police go looking for ID in my wallet and find a wee bag folded up in a credit card slot that at least ONE OF YOU can convince them that I wasn't a crystal meth addict and that I just had a soft spot for a wee bag.

No meth for me, thanks, I'm high on LIFE.

Trip to America IV: Where was I?

Got a little side tracked, there.
Anyway, here, let me go look at my pictures folder and see where exactly in America I was when I finished my last post.
Oh yes. So we'd gone up and down the state of California. We kicked about the town a little more and, a few days later, my parents hit the dusty trail back to Ireland. 

Few photo opportunities first, we're a ferociously good looking family, y'know.

Ferociously.

I stayed on with Donal and we got down to planning out trip to Vegas. I've said it before. America's a big country. Ireland can easily be covered with one decent sized map. America, no chance. So we'd to sit down, google stuff like there was no tomorrow, load maps onto me kindle and figure out the best way to Vegas while taking in Area 51, Death Valley and where the Undertaker lives.

Paul Bearer lives two doors down.

We tipped over to Costco, which is like Lidl on STEROIDS. The place sells six packs of RUM, washing machines and flipping CANOES. We already had a canoe, so w bought a pallet of water, enough cereal bars to feed eighteen bullocks for the winter and an extra tank of gas. Got up early one morning and headed south towards Los Angeles.
We turned north onto the 14 and then the country really opened up. This country... fuck me. I've never seen road so straight. They go on and on until, well, until you can't see any further.

The gallon drum of gas (I'm calling it 'gas' for this whole series, calling it 'petrol' when discussing America seems a bit wrong) in the trunk (or 'boot') didn't seem so silly all of a sudden. You could break down and be easily seventy, eighty miles from anything. You take a wrong turn, you could end up down some canyon with no reception, an empty tank and a fierce thirst. Respect the wilderness, folk.

Donal paying respect.

Anyway, we got a little lost at one point. End up in California... City (which is much less glamorous than it sounds).

We pricked about a little more, figured out which way was North, ended up driving half an hour at a time just to find a roadsign to tell us what highway we were on and found our way again. Next stop, Redrock Canyon.

Fucking Hell. One of the driest places in the country, but mother of mercy, it was impressive. Shut up until I load a heap of photos onto you.

Seriously.

Fucking.

Hell.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Photos are horrendously poor at showing the scale of these things. Not just the beauty, but the... hmm... the feeling. The dry heat. The moment you turn a corner and realise how easy it would be to get lost, how people must've ended up here on their way across the country hundreds of years ago. How not everyone would've made it. If you didn't have water with you, you wouldn't make a day. If you put a foot wrong, you tumbled down a 45 degree slope and cracked your head off a rock.
This didn't happen. After an hour of taking artsy photos of stones we got back in the car and continued north.
We stopped, early enough, in a town called Ridgecrest. It was four, maybe five o'clock and we'd a lot of driving yet to do. We decided to leave it for today, finish the drive tomorrow and find a place to stay for the night.
Ridgecrest, as my brother pointed out, felt a little odd. It's on the southern perimeter of the China Lake Naval Weapons Facility. The China Lake Naval Weapons Facility is 4,500km in area, just larger than Kerry (if you're Irish), Suffolk (if you're English), or 110 Skyrims (if you're me). The streets are lined with hanging banners with people's faces on them. Closer inspection reveals they're all fallen soldiers, young men and women who left their town and never came back. Every second billboard is an advert for hypnotherapy centres or sleeping clinics. This town had issues.
With any other town a good 100 miles down the road, we stayed there anyway. Found a nice wee motel who were willing to take us, stocked up on wifi.

Sweet, glorious wifi. A man can go mad in the desert if he doesn't have enough wifi.

And took a wee trip around Ridgecrest. We watched the Hunger Games in a cinema that looked like it may have shown Citizen Kane the first time it came out and not recieved a lick of paint. We took pictures of trucks.

Three yellow trucks in a row (and my brother in the Passat), you try not take a picture of that.

And then this one was just hilariously big. You could rear a family in that thing.

And called it a night. Lots more driving to do the next day.

Beetroot juice.

(Gets a little vivid about bodily functions towards the end, you've been warned.)

With my running not as good as it was earlier in the year, I've been trying a few things lately to put a spring back in my step. I bought my barefoot runners, started doing new roots and I've started two different juices. One I've used before. It's a cherry concentrate drink I've used before. Full of antioxidants and nitrates and voodoo. Supposed to be good after a workout. Who knows? I just want something to drink after a run, it's more fun when it's cherry flavoured.

The other stuff I'm slugging, as you've probably read above, is beetroot juice. Not concentrated, just pure juice. A paragraph in a running magazine told me that folk who drank it for a week before a run did 10% better than folk who didn't. And paragraphs never lie. Look at that one up there, it's all the stone cold truth.
Beetroot juice, in case you didn't know or can't imagine it, is FOUL. It's purple salty pirate sweat. Putting 140ml of it down my throat every day for the last week has made it the longest week of my life.
Also the back of the bottle has a warning. It warns that it may discolour your pee. May discolour your pee. There's no 'may' in the matter, I've been pissing flourescent pink for five days now. And that's not the only thing...

Anyway, I set out this evening for a cheeky wee saunter about Edinburgh. Didn't make it easy on myself, the first ten minutes was all uphill. I laid into it, beetroot juice coarsing through my veins. At the top of the hill I did a lap of Charlotte Square, came back along Dean's Bridge, and ran down past the Western General. Was doing pretty well, to be honest, had an easy 4km under my belt in just over 20 minutes. Had seven in my mind, but just before the six mark I got a sharp pain in my shin and stopped. Not a major issue, it sorted itself out after a bit of walking. Still an improvement over my last few runs. Also, I was still a fair distance from home, so I'd be able to cool down a little, maybe do a few sprints.

ANYWAY, I should also mention that I spit when I run. I hate spitting generally, but I get a lot of phlegm in my mouth when I run, so I need to clear it out. Wherever possible, I spit out onto the street, into a drain or maybe a hedge. I do not EVER spit when I'm not running. It's horrible. People who do disgust me. At least burst into a sprint before you spit, I'll let you off then.

Right, this is going somewhere, trust me. So I was finishing up on my run, about five minutes out and I needed a spit. I really need one. My mouth had, eh, filled with phlegm. I hocked up a bit more to make this worth my while and, as I took a corner, I let loose.
PHLEUGH.
On front of three people I spat the biggest* gob of beetroot juice coloured phlegm I've ever seen. On front of three people, I essentially coughed up blood and ran on like a madman.
If you're having trouble imagining this, here you go:

So when you hear about the zombie outbreak in Edinburgh, you know what really happened.


*and only

Fast, not furious.

Okay, I've good news and bad news.

It's about my running. I lost my way in April, there. Almost stopped running altogether. I'd other things on my mind. A lot of travelling, moving flats, tons of good movies in the cinema. Joss Whedon alone took a good 10 hour chunk out of my April. No regrets, though. But I got back into it. Bought new minimalist runners (that I'm still breaking in), got a magazine or two to give me ideas and back onto the footpath I went.
So.

The good news is I've gotten my 5k time down to a fairly consistant 25 minutes. Sometimes less, rarely more. Today was 25:06. The fastest EVER is 12 minutes 37 seconds. And that was on a track. A FLAT track. Wuss. He probably had the wind behind him and all.
Anyway, that means nobody in the world can claim to be twice as good as me at a 5k run. YES.

The bad news is 5k is about the limit of what I can do right now. I tried to push it to 6 this evening and I nearly collapsed in a hedge at the next set of traffic lights. Going too fast, I think. Heat ain't helping either. If I wanna get back up to me tens and twelves I need to, sigh, slow down.
Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

A brief sidestep.

Right.

This past few years I've become less and less religious. I've questioned it more and more and, finally, I came to believe that the world we live in is the only one we have. As I've lost faith in religion I've come to love science more.

I love how a carbon nanotube the width of a hair can bear the weight of a car. I love how Norman Borlaug is credited with saving A BILLION LIVES by traveling the world genetically modifying crops to grow better in harsh conditions. I love reading about how we'll no longer need blood donations in the future because, well, we can just brew some up. Science is fucking brilliant. Science gets things done.
Science lets Cathy Hutchinson. who's been paralysed for 15 years, drink her morning coffee without a carer.

Sorry, religion, we're through.

Trip to America III: Leaving Los Angeles.

That building I couldn't remember last time. It's the Santa Barbara Courthouse.

It was built at a forty degree angle.

Now that I google it, I remember it being very impressive. Santa Barbara in general is impressive. One of America's most expensive places to live, it has a very Spanish/Mexican theme to it, with bright white buildings, palm tree and sandy beaches. I won't lie, it's f'king paradise.
We tipped out to the area my brother stays and studies in. He's up the coast a little in a place called Goleta, more specifically Isla Vista.

 

Again, paradise. A day or two later, we went further. Donal had a car rented, so we went up the Route One towards San Francisco. California is a lonnnng state. We drove up the One for a good four or five hours without getting anywhere near San Francisco. The scenery changed dramatically.

From paradise:

Hey, it's a slightly different picture.

 To the Old West:

To what looks like Ireland on a sunny day:

And to what Ireland usually looks like half an hour later:

Scottish people, replace 'Ireland' with 'Scotland', I can't please everyone.

Anyway, we drove up and down the state that day. Was fun. On the way back we swung by a town called Solvang for something to eat. It felt a little... odd. Didn't take any photos (it was dark, go google it) but it's a town set up by Danish folk back in the day. It feels like you could bump into Hans Christian Anderson. So we arrived in this... Danish wonderland and went for something to eat. What did we have? Meatballs? Strudel? Ehr... Danish Pastries? Did we bollox.

We'd a Chinese.

Donal blinded the staff with his shirt while we ran out on the bill.

Right, hold onto your hands. Part five's coming up soon and you'll NEVER GUESS what we got up to next so DON'T EVEN TRY.