Wires Made Of Straw
I had a good day today. Guess why.
Wrong.
It was because someone gave me a box full of useful looking cables.
For complicated reasons (mostly involving it being a total mess), we were tidying out the garage and my dad and brother came across some old cables that had apparently got stashed there at some point when no one could think of anywhere else to put them. Among them was a SCART lead, two AV component cables (I'd been looking for some like them; wish I could remember why), four RF leads (which are always handy for various old consoles or possibly for selling with the NESi), an aerial for some old portable TV which I guess I could use... somehow and an adaptor for running multiple SCART devices into one TV.
There was also a rather useful tray thing to hold them all, which'll come in handy because I can use it to store the various tools and bits of gadgetry that I randomly find myself needing and using.
That, ladies and gents, is how sad my life is. Well, how sad I suppose it must seem. Works for me though so, as I and others have often observed, I really don't care about what people think. They can stand around and talk about sport and parties all they want; I'll be laughing at them from my little corner where I sit, surrounded by miscellaneous unidentified cables, reading my Star Trek manga. And then I'll conquer the world.
Anyhoo, in other news, I was thinking about the phrase “the straw that broke the camel's back” today. I'm sure you're all familiar with the meaning. If not, get out more. It makes you wonder where exactly such a phrase came from – why a camel, why a load of straw, why does anyone care? Interestingly, it also seems to be where the phrase “the last straw” comes from, which is another odd one without its original context.
I've now looked it up and have some understanding about it either coming from an old Arab proverb or from a line in Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son (same difference, really) but at the time, I started to ponder its origins.
I reckon it must have come from a story somewhere, since so many things do. A hypothetical book called 101 Ways to Kill a Camel. Probably brought up in Chapter 4, “If Life Gives You Straw...”, though it probably got famous cause it was the first one mentioned on the blurb, which was all most people read when someone gave it to them for Christmas. Probably the same person who gave them Does Anything Eat Wasps? the year before.
Well, I have to go and read an article on a new Fire Emblem game and then chew up a roll for a few minutes before taking some antibiotics. It's kind of a weird system that my brother recommended to me because my ability to swallow pills is, to put it bluntly, near non-existent. Comes and goes. It's weird. I plan on using it as a metaphor for super powers at some point. Not that the characters in The Grey Line are going to get super powers. That wasn't foreshadowing or a slip of the tongue or anything. Just forget I said that.
Incidentally, if I ever write my autobiography (I suppose it's not really my autobiography if someone else writes it but you know what I mean), I'm calling it “101 Ways to Kill a Camel”. No explanations or anything. Only people who have followed my writing from the early days will get it. And this URL will have expired years ago, so you'll have no way to cite your information for the Wikipedia page! Bwahahahahaha!
Wrong.
It was because someone gave me a box full of useful looking cables.
For complicated reasons (mostly involving it being a total mess), we were tidying out the garage and my dad and brother came across some old cables that had apparently got stashed there at some point when no one could think of anywhere else to put them. Among them was a SCART lead, two AV component cables (I'd been looking for some like them; wish I could remember why), four RF leads (which are always handy for various old consoles or possibly for selling with the NESi), an aerial for some old portable TV which I guess I could use... somehow and an adaptor for running multiple SCART devices into one TV.
There was also a rather useful tray thing to hold them all, which'll come in handy because I can use it to store the various tools and bits of gadgetry that I randomly find myself needing and using.
That, ladies and gents, is how sad my life is. Well, how sad I suppose it must seem. Works for me though so, as I and others have often observed, I really don't care about what people think. They can stand around and talk about sport and parties all they want; I'll be laughing at them from my little corner where I sit, surrounded by miscellaneous unidentified cables, reading my Star Trek manga. And then I'll conquer the world.
Anyhoo, in other news, I was thinking about the phrase “the straw that broke the camel's back” today. I'm sure you're all familiar with the meaning. If not, get out more. It makes you wonder where exactly such a phrase came from – why a camel, why a load of straw, why does anyone care? Interestingly, it also seems to be where the phrase “the last straw” comes from, which is another odd one without its original context.
I've now looked it up and have some understanding about it either coming from an old Arab proverb or from a line in Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son (same difference, really) but at the time, I started to ponder its origins.
I reckon it must have come from a story somewhere, since so many things do. A hypothetical book called 101 Ways to Kill a Camel. Probably brought up in Chapter 4, “If Life Gives You Straw...”, though it probably got famous cause it was the first one mentioned on the blurb, which was all most people read when someone gave it to them for Christmas. Probably the same person who gave them Does Anything Eat Wasps? the year before.
Well, I have to go and read an article on a new Fire Emblem game and then chew up a roll for a few minutes before taking some antibiotics. It's kind of a weird system that my brother recommended to me because my ability to swallow pills is, to put it bluntly, near non-existent. Comes and goes. It's weird. I plan on using it as a metaphor for super powers at some point. Not that the characters in The Grey Line are going to get super powers. That wasn't foreshadowing or a slip of the tongue or anything. Just forget I said that.
Incidentally, if I ever write my autobiography (I suppose it's not really my autobiography if someone else writes it but you know what I mean), I'm calling it “101 Ways to Kill a Camel”. No explanations or anything. Only people who have followed my writing from the early days will get it. And this URL will have expired years ago, so you'll have no way to cite your information for the Wikipedia page! Bwahahahahaha!
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
11:31 PM
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