Karlology Blog Week 1

Karl's first foray into blogging kicks off with some discussion about physics, medicine, and intelligent broccoli. We also get a photo of Karl's infamous boiler that he continues to moan about.

September 8th, 2008

Hello. I’ve got to do this blog thing to help promote me new book Karlology. The book is all about me learning new stuff and is out on October 1st so I think I’ve got to at least keep up this blog until then.

I don’t know if I’ll update it each day cos if nowt happens in me life that is worth telling you, what’s the point. I hate day’s when nothing interesting happens. I suppose that’s when I’ll call me mam to find out what she’s seen on the telly that I could tell you about. She’s got some channel I haven’t that features hour long programmes on weird stuff. The other night she called to tell me there was something on about odd pets which featured a cat with two heads. She said the owner had given them a name each which I said is pointless. I always thought that was odd with Chang and Eng (the first siamese twins). I think one name would do. The amount of unnecessary junk mail they must have both been sent must have been mental.

I asked me mam what the cats names were. She didn’t know but I heard me dad say if the owners were Korean they’d call it ‘a meal for two’.

Anyway, this post was more of a test thing to see if the blog works. If this message gets posted I suppose that’s something I’ve learnt to do today.

September 9th, 2008

Read a bit about a machine they’ve built underground in Geneva. I think It’s something to do with scientists trying to recreate the Big Bang. I read about it in one of them free newspapers you get forced onto you when walking through the streets of London, so it wasn’t that much of an in depth article. For something so important you’d think it would be front page news but it wasn’t, it was just crammed on a page next to a story about some woman who used to be in the TV programme Brookside who was snapped kissing some bloke in the back of a London cab. I wasn’t even aware this machine had been made. I’d of thought when something as major as this is being attempted that I’d have got some note in the post asking me if I’m happy for them to go ahead with the experiment. I got something from the council asking me if I was happy for next door but one to have a sky light put in, yet nothing on this.

Here’s a picture of it.

It annoys me to think that we’ve got the people to build this and yet I can’t find anyone who can fix my boiler.

September 10th, 2008

Alright

So, we’re still here then. The scientists turned on the Big Bang machine this morning. I treated last night like it was gonna be the last night of my life. I had a trifle and didn’t bother washing up.

I watched breakfast news on the telly to see them turn the machine on, but after a couple of minutes they decided that it wasn’t very interesting so went to the showbiz woman to talk about Victoria Beckhams new haircut. And that was that.

I looked up a thing on the internet this morning called Stendhal Syndrome after a mate told me about it. It’s this weird thing that happens to some people when they look at some art or something of beauty or hear some nice music. If they have a touch of Stendhal they get dizzy, have hallucinations and fall over. I wonder if this Stendhal thing happens more or less these days. We almost expect everything we see to be beautiful now. I think this is why I prefer to look at odd looking things as they are more rare. I was doing a voice over recently where there were some free grapes on offer and all of them had been eaten apart from one that was a bit of an odd shape. Which goes to show that our eyes have got more fussy and we want everything to look perfect. Even a grape. Look at Venus de milo, (below) years ago she was classed as a good looking woman, whereas now, she wouldn’t even get to be an extra in Hollyoaks.

By the way, there was a problem with the email address for sending in facts, but it has now been fixed so keep sending them in. There are some smart ones. The one about how eskimos kill a wolf is good.

Right… last nights washing up to do.

September 11th, 2008

IS THERE ONLY SO MUCH EXCITEMENT?

I believe you can only have so much excitement in a certain space of time. Yesterday was quite exciting because they turned on that big bang machine and I didn’t know what the outcome was going to be. But it’s now on and nowt happened, and the excitement has gone and hasn’t returned since.

I don’t know how long excitement can last either. I’m guessing it’s something in your head that wakes up a bit when you’re in a new situation, but then it gets bored eventually and you need to find something else to get the excitedness stuff excited again. I think that’s why sometimes when people get married they split up a few months later, it’s cos they never get that high they got from their special day again. I suppose this is why Suzanne is still with me after 12 or 13 years, it’s cos she’s still waiting for something special to happen.

I’m not a fan of excitement anyway, as my excitedness normally comes with a worry. A scientist I met ages ago told me we need excitement in our lives, and this is why people turn to crime or dangerous hobbies. I told him I didn’t do anything to get me excited. He said he didn’t believe me, and after a long chat he found that my dangerous thing is cleaning the windows in our flat, cos I have to hang out of the only window that opens (four floors up), to clean the others, due to them being painted shut. He said ‘There you go, that’s when you get your excitement.’

I told him I only clean the windows about three times a year. He said “clean them more often then.” I’m going to do them this afternoon.

September 12th, 2008

What is going on!

Everything seems to be getting more intelligent. A few years back I read about how bacteria is getting more advanced and how the friendly bacteria that you can buy today will be so much more friendly in years to come that’ll you’ll actually be able to have a chat with it.

When I was younger, all bacteria was bad, but that isn’t the case anymore. I’m sure it’s just cos we live in a time where political correctness says you can’t tar everyone with the same brush, even bacteria, so we call some of them friendly. Maybe scientists are thinking by getting the friendly ones on our side , they’ll fight the bad bacteria like a germ version of Star Wars.

Anyway, I’m telling you all this cos I looked at some of the facts you’ve sent and I read the one about broccoli having an IQ of 2. I had a Mensa test last year where I found I’ve got an IQ of 83 which I thought was alright until today when I was in Sainsburys supermarket in the vegetable aisle faced with a big pile of broccoli. There must have been about 100 chunks of the stuff in total, which meant I was looking at something as a gang, had a better IQ than me. It was no longer just a pile of broccolli, it was more a broccolli university. I got back home and looked on the internet to check if the fact was true, to find that some chunks have since been found to have an IQ of 10. Now either the tests have got easier or they are advancing way to quick. It’s gonna get to a point when you can’t call a vegetable a vegetable.

All of this has made me think, maybe this is why we are advised to eat five pieces of fruit and veg a day. It’s so the stuff doesn’t takeover.

Blog back on monday.