I sometimes wonder whether my thoughts, idle and unpredictable as they sometimes are, more often than not anyway; do they, these thoughts, ever coincide with yours my many, or few, readers?
What I'm saying here, and getting no answer, is: are you thinking what I'm thinking?
I'm not talking about common thoughts like who came first, the chicken or the egg? Or why did the chicken cross the road? Or if a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one there to see it; does it remain standing?
No ... my thoughts go deeper than that. For example: the Nobel Prize. There's a Nobel Prize for Peace, Literature, Physics, Chemistry and so on. Why is there not a Nobel Prize for colouring-in with crayons? Surely this would encourage aspiring artists to do better in life?
Then there's the Oscars. Awarded to actors, directors, films and so on. And the Emmy Awards and other awards given to so many people in the entertainment world. Why is there not an award for the ugliest actor? Or the worst singer? Or the most boring celebrity on TV? I bet you could think quite a few candidates for these awards.
Then sometimes my thoughts turn to mundane things like life and how we live it from day to day. We can't all be flash, (British word meaning ostentatiously stylish or expensive), with new clothes, fast cars, yachts and private planes. Some of us lead more pedestrian lives and have to go upstairs several times a day and once there forget why they got up for. Well, I now started to right down on a piece of paper why I need to go upstairs. And I make a point of not going upstairs until I have at least three reasons to do so. Sometimes I walk around downstairs with plaited legs, (another British saying meaning legs held tightly together - intertwined), until I can think of another two reasons to go upstairs to the bathroom or wherever.
The problem often is, when I finally get upstairs, I find out I left the piece of paper with the reasons written on it downstairs. That's when I discover a new reason to be upstairs and I get changed.
And that's the thing with mundane daily thoughts that are neither here not there. In which case, where are they if they are neither here nor there? That's another conundrum for you to solve for me.
Then there's the adverts on TV. I understand that the whole purpose of advertising is to get people to buy the product or service on offer. What gets me is when adverts, often in the same segment within a break in the TV program, tend to be contradictory. For example, only today there were two adverts following each other for famous alcoholic drinks. One was for a well known brand of spirits, and the other for beer. They were then followed by a public information advert advising you to drink responsibly or preferably not at all. Who has juxtaposed these ads together? Besides, if there were no alcoholic drinks whatsoever how could people get drunk?
Oh ... and how about cheese? Those of you who are connoisseurs of various cheeses will know that some cheeses like Gruyère, Jarlsberg, Emmental and others have holes in them. They are hard, or semi-hard, cheeses with holes in them. So when you buy a wedge of these cheeses you are in effect buying the holes which are part of the weight you are paying for. Think about it for a minute. You buy a block of cheese. Inside it there are many holes capturing air within the cheese itself. Air has a weight. So when you buy the block of cheese you are in fact paying for the weight of air captured within the block of cheese.
I have resolved this problem, after hours of thinking about it, by only buying these delicious cheeses in pre-packed sliced versions. Because the cheese has been sliced before packing, any pockets of air have been emptied of such previously captured air, and consequently has not been weighed when the packet was sealed and priced.
Spontaneous combustion. That's another thing that's been on my mind lately. You know, people suddenly catching fire for no apparent reason. I was wondering. Can people have spontaneous combustion when in the shower? How does that work? Do they suddenly become alight and the water from the shower turns them off? What if they get out of the shower? Do they set alight again? Must be terrible to have all one's hair singed and wet at the same time.
And walking in one's sleep. We've all heard of that. But do people ever run in their sleep? Or do they bang their face straight into the door or wall and wake up with a nose-bleed?
What if you open a window in winter? Does the cold air from outside come in, or does the warm air in the house go out? I've often wondered about that.
Anyway, these are my idle thoughts that cross my mind time and again. How about you? What does tax your mind these days?
