Because I really needed to waste valuable thinking power on goggling at the very concept of After the Rapture computer games.

Soldiers battling demons? Sounds like Revelations meets Buffy to me. No swearing? Good grief.

I’m planning on watching that documentary that’s going to be on Monday night about the new Neo-Con Christian Fundamentalist Right Wing colleges currently churning out the next generation of American politicians. Oh. Wait. Did I just miss it?

My new Lumicycle lamps arrived. Yay! I now have a lovely silver lamp that will take my 35W without blowing up — my but the machining on the new ones is nice — and a 15 LED lamp that I shall try out just as soon as I can face going out late enough for it to be properly dark. Even at 1am the sky is still fairly light at the moment.

Just waiting now for my order to come through from SIS, although having had some rave reviews of that Nocté stuff I’m wishing I’d delayed my order to add some of that as well. The PG is giving me a hard time about lack of sleep interfering with my body repairing at the moment (more on that elsewhere later).

Watched an interesting documentary about the original The Omen last night. Much was made of the putative curse. Talking about it with Lucifer later (he does make good coffee — at least, whichever minion does it for him makes good coffee) he didn’t disagree with Frood‘s and my conclusions that it’s entirely possible he would put a curse on such a thing, both for the jollies and for the extra publicity. There’s also no point in him doing it with the new one because the old one did it already.

He doesn’t really like repeating himself. There’s a long story there, a tale of thousands of years of pent-up frustration that has now petrified into bitter resignation and a sort of Buddha-like calm about the whole thing. Morningstar is an angel too after all.

Just making a note to myself of these DoWrap things. I have fancied one for a while, and the only place I have seen them mentioned other than a recent C+ thread is Asteroid M, where yours truly is, while not exactly persona non grata, at least not entirely welcome.

Science in Sport Nocté. I’ve heard of Rego but never bothered with it. My major problem with most of these things is that they contain too many carbs. Sadly, these days I’ve become ever so slightly obsessed with amino acids, so anything that starts talking about amino acids has the same effect on me as an “eat what you like and lose a dress size” diet has on the sort of woman who thinks that a Special K pedometer is a useful training tool.

The Morningstar and I were discussing The Omen the other day, and the date of its premiere.

I had this email, if you’ll remember, from some idiot telling me I was dark and mysterious and powerful and he wanted to learn how to be like me and so to confront his inner demons. I replied that I’d recommend a visit to Lucifer, only I suspected that the Morningstar would skin him alive and turn his brain into silly putty. So next time I was passing I inquired as to whether this particular moron had seen fit to come begging for the secrets of Hell.

He hadn’t, as it happened, apparently owing to some rather cowardly opprobrium over some youthful vices. Thought he might not get out again.

However. There we were, sipping the darkest, oiliest, most exquisitely aromatic espresso one could ever imagine, standing on the edge of Dis and gazing out across the tortuous, tormented landscape. The sunset was really rather beautiful. One simply does not get colours like that on the earthly plane.

“So,” I said. “Are you making an appearance for the premier?”

“I had considered it,” said Lucifer. “Red carpet, adulation, the delicious taste of conceited celebrity worship. It’s all very me, as you know. But I don’t do trite, darling. Trite is for the lesser demons. I’m ruler of Hell. It doesn’t matter how expensive the suit or knowing and supercilious the smile, it would be so damned trite. Sweetheart, it would be like putting a fish with horns on the back of the Lotus.” He lit a cigarette. I think it was Turkish. It smelled of spices and had a faint undertone of charred skin.

“Besides,” he continued. “You know that whole 666 thing is a mistranslation anyway. Gematria is all very well if you live with your mother, wear a snorkel jacket and still consider spaghetti hoops the epitome of haute cuisine but this is the age of the internet. These days primes are the thing. Why bother with a boring number like 666 when there’s the Sieve of Eratosthenes to play with?”

So, no. I don’t think he’ll be making a personal appearance, although a minion or two might turn up and I think people who worry about that sort of thing will be managing to have a crappy day without any help from him.

Maybe Beelzebub will. I don’t think he’s got anything better to do today, although he was talking about putting his running shoes through the wash.

My right knee, which I creamed so thoroughly bunny hopping Shackleton down at Elie a couple of weeks ago, is now too painful to go for my Monday swim. It hurts when I put weight on it with the leg twisted, or when I do breastroke kick, and I don’t think I’m up to doing 40 lengths at crawl pace so today I am resting it.

I can still run, though, and cycling isn’t painful as long as I go easy on the leg braking, so that’s not so bad.

Scotrail have done the singularly crap thing of failing to provide any trains capable of getting a cyclist into Edinburgh for 0830 on a Saturday morning. How Frood and I are supposed to get to the start of the Edinburgh – St Andrews is beyond me. We’re not bloody riding there — we’re already looking at 20 miles more than everyone else just to get home, and the Ottery one has never done a century. It would be a bit much to expect him to ride the 50-odd miles into Edinburgh beforehand.

Access 2000 is so much more of a pain that the previous version. I’m on my third solution for adding new data using a combo box, and I’m still getting errors (type mismatch in this one, no matter what I do). It was so much easier before.

The Sustrans route up the side of the A91 between At Andrews and Guardbridge sucks chunks. Not wanting to go the off road way we started on the road but after a rather close shave with an angry Jaguar X-type, we moved onto the (at the time) decent looking track alongisde. It wasn’t 2m wide but the surface was good.

Within quarter of a mile it had become a 1.5m wide pavement partially obstructed by bushes, When we were on the approach to Guardbridge we were confronted by 6 inch dropped kerbs at every junction. Back onto the road we went.

And to think folk wonder why I am so impolite about the so-called ‘National Cycle Network’.

Finally: people. Just… people. Grrrr!

I’ve never been all that bothered about bras. But recently, with all the running I’ve been doing, support has become more of an issue than it once was. It’s possible to get away with a bra bodge when road cycling because there’s not much in the way of high impact.

Running, however, is a completely different matter.

Some of the regular readers to this site may remember the great ‘Dad’s 60th Birthday Fiasco’ in which yours truly, possessed of as much dress sense as a nudibranch on a military goth kick, had to find something to wear.

For this event I bought a bra. I went to a Proper Shop and was Measured By Ladies.

Now just remember that for years I’ve been shoving my boobs into any old thing: as long as there weren’t too many wrinkles and it stopped my nipples poking out through thin t-shirts it was fine by me.

I was therefore somewhat shocked when the very professional ladies, equipped with measuring tape and everything, proclaimed my bust size as 32DD.

DD?! That’s Page 3 material, that is.

I questioned their results. Demanded a retrial. A second opinion. I was duly measured again. What I had thought were 36C or possibly 38B breasts turned out to be 32DD. So bizarre was this turn of events that even certain certain friends thought I was joking when I related the fact. Mind you, Munky was the one who described me as a bloke with boobs, so I suppose the thought of those boobs being a DD cup was a bit difficult to reconcile with the ‘bloke’ part of the equation.

I mention this because all my sports bras have been 36C. Well, they didn’t have too many wrinkles and they weren’t too tight around the back. However, equally they did not give adequate support for high impact activities. I had thought this was the style — No. this is what you get for buying bras the wrong size. They are, apaprently supposed to be tight across the back.

It is difficult to get high impact sports bras when one has a ‘fuller bust’. However, I have found the solution.

Gels, I would like to recommend the Shock Absorber B109. Impact level 4. It doesn’t make you look like you’ve got a giant suasage strapped to your chest; and, while it does have the ample coverage of a horse’s chest armour, it does the job very, very well. Not one inch of movement did I detect while hurtling along the rocky, twisty track down by the beach.

There’s a certain statuesque, Valkyrie-like solidity about it that is very reassuring. I don’t feel one jot of worry about getting saggy boobs when wearing that to go running.

I think I shall have to get another one.

So I’m finding myself somehow sidling into planning my diet (no, this is NOT a get into your bikini diet) based not only on whether foods are protein or carb and alkali or acid forming; now I’m somehow considering the GI as well.

I’m fairly sure I didn’t agree to this. I haven’t got the spare brain capacity to worry about whether I’m about to eat a pork chop in the middle of an insulin spike, for fuck’s sake.

Plus it seems that no one can agree where to draw the line between moderate and high GI. I’m happy to stay, mostly, off the high GI foods — they make me feel bloated anyway. That’s why I only eat green bananas. Maybe that’s what I should do. Ignore the stupid lists and go on what my body tells me.

My body tells me that the maple syrup on toasted plastic bread I had yesterday was pretty high GI.

Oh, incidentally. Ythy? Got some stupid advert advice for you. According to the Warburton’s ad campaign, their bread is “scientifically proven to control kids’ hunger.”

So there you go. Bet you didn’t know you needed to eat special bread tested by scientists to make sure it stops you feeling hungry, or that there are breads that don’t stop kids feeling hungry.

I’m currently reading Waste Management – The Duty of Care – A Code of Practice. It’s actually more interesting than it sounds, at least if you have any investment in when waste stops being waste.

There’s this bit on page 12 that transported me straight to the opening sequence of Hardware:

Holders should take particular care to secure waste material attractive to scavengers, for example, building and demolition materials and scrap metal… Waste holders should undertake regular reviews of the waste in their possession to ensure that it has not been disturbed or tampered with.

Because otherwise the Mark 13 will get you!

They won’t let me join the TA. I emailed them and asked.

Apparently, apart from being a tad too old, missing an eye is a real issue. The personal weapon issued is the SA80, which ports to the right, so lacking a right eye means I would not be able to use my issued weapon.

I would not have been able to get into any of the armed services ever.

This makes me miffed. There’s nothing I hate more than being told I can’t do something. It makes me want to stomp into an army recruiting office and accuse them of discrimination. I may be 33 but I’m a damn sight fitter than many 18 year olds. I may be a girl but that’s never stopped me doing anything. And I may be missing an eye but what’s wrong with a Kalashnikov? Other employers have to make efforts to accomodate people with particular needs (I am NOT disabled) so why shouldn’t they?

What do left handed people do, for fuck’s sake?

Come on. It’s not like the TA is an elite fighting unit. I’ve seen Spaced. It’s full of accountants and fat men with Robot Wars obsessions playing at being Arnie on weekends. I can do that.