Personal: November 2005 Archives

Meditation really is good for you and your brain it turns out. I have tried some meditation, but of the Hindu, not the Zen kind. Didn't do much for me, but I didn't stick with it very long. Plus concentrating on the air going in and out your nose really doesn't occupy your mind much. I just kept drifting away. Maybe I'll add it to my New Year's Resolutions.

My sister and I were out on the town last night. We'd decided to see Broken Flowers (I'll probably review that once I've worked out what it was all about) but before then we had pizza. We discussed many things, including QI, the quite interesting show featuring Stephen Fry and Alan Davies. We discussed Mr Davies at length then adjourned to the cinema.

Well waddaya know! Who should be there in the audience but Mr Alan Davies himself!

Clearly our combined psychic powers summoned him to us.

We're going to discuss Chris Morris the next time we meet to see if it works again. Okay, we've already seen him a few times (a Beck concert in Camden comes to mind), but it's for science, you understand.

Updates and related entries
January 7, 2006: Even if it weren't for the planned guest appearances by Chris Morris, I think I'd still be tuning in to watch The IT Crowd: a Graham Linehan comedy is always worth watching.

So I'm on the phone, trying to set up an interview – in French. It's going well. I can understand her, even though she starts our conversation off in German, just to throw me. She can understand me, even though she's French and normally only non-French French speakers can understand me.

Then she hits me with the double-whammy of “Your French is very good” (why, merci beaucoup!) and “You can speak in English if you want” (if my French is good, why would you say that?) then starts speaking in English. So now I'm having trouble “code switching” and can speak neither French nor English - I hate it when that happens.

But then things get worse. She asks me a question and instead of “Yes” or “Oui”, I say “Si”. Normally, I'm pretty much guaranteed to start speaking German accidentally at times like this, but I actually started speaking Spanish. How odd is that, given I'm still on “Week 4” of Instant Spanish? It wouldn't have mattered so much if it weren't for the fact “Si” means something almost completely the opposite in French.

So now I suck in four languages, including English. Brilliant.

If you don't live in SE London, you probably don't get this rubbish through your door:

Mr. Yousaff
International Spiritual Healer God Gifted
Born with this Knowledge
I can give help and advice no matter what your Problem is,
I can solve them with one visit. I can help you with Practical solutions concerning marriage, business and court cases and sexual problems. I can improve your life and I can bring back your lost friends, loved ones and relations, I can make your marriage better and I can give instant good luck in family Problems, I can remove from your life black magic, illness and eliminate habits like Drinking and smoking etc.
Anyone who has these problems contact
Mr. Yousoff Now
QUICK RESULTS GUARANTEED

First thing this guy needs is a magic wand to fix his punctuation and capitalisation. If he can bring back the dead, a full stop shouldn't be too hard. The second thing he needs to do, of course, is decide whether he's Mr Yousaff or Mr Yousoff.

However, my burning question is: “Does Mr Yous(a/o)ff actually make money?” If he fixes everything with just one visit, he must have higher call-out charges than the average plumber, just to break even. And are there really enough staggeringly gullible people to support him? Sure, there's a reasonable number of Africans living here, who I'm guessing are his target market (insert disclaimer about Africa not being a single country, all have different cultures, etc). But they can't all believe this stuff surely, any more than 100% of the locals round here watch Second Sight on Living or the French are a homeopathy-only nation? I could do a vox pop to find out, but that would involve stepping out into the oh-so-cold air. So maybe I won't. (Gosh, what a fantastic journalist I am. In mitigation though, I wouldn't be paid for it and I do have a lot of deadlines to meet right now - all of which will pay me.)

Even if any of them do believe, though, is a psychic sticking his badly phrased flier from the 18th century in someone's letterbox the cultural equivalent of an undertaker driving around town in his hearse, shouting into his loudhailer about two for one offers - that is, possible but not the done thing? I'm sure there's a case study for a marketing mag in there somewhere.

Updates and related entries
December 2, 2005: Remember Mr Yous(a|o)ff? Seems someone with similar thoughts to mine also lives in Lewisham and has referred him to the Advertising Standards Authority! Excellent organisation that they are, they do clamp down on offenders. First off, my congratulation...

I've added flashcards for Week 4 of Instant Spanish to the iFlash page. I am moving faster than that, honest; I just want to make sure that there aren't any typos, before I upload them.

Said entry is also pretending to be written by one of my heroes, Charlie Brooker. How can this have happened.