Monday 14th November 2005

My darned film, Things To Do In Denver When You’re Drunk, is long finished but continues to cause problems.

The difficulty is that I’m distributing copies of the film to both the UK and the USA and the two nations use different video standards. America uses a system called NTSC, whilst here we use the, superior, PAL. This means that if you film something in PAL, it can’t be shown in the USA without first converting it.

Now this is a simple click-of-a-mouse procedure, but requires such mammoth computing power that my Apple has now been huffing and puffing over it for 17 hours.

17 HOURS!

I don’t know if this will work. I’ve got a gut instinct that it wont.

On a more positive note, the UK copies have been burnt onto DVD, put into nicely designed sleeves, and posted off to some TV folk in London today – which marks the completion of the project in part.

But it’s essential for people in Denver to see it so I definitely need to get a US version done but it’s proving impossible so far. I might just have to send a UK copy and see what happens when they try and play it. It might just look a bit dodgy on the screen.

No – that would be too easy. I don’t think it would work at all.

It’s very, very frustrating.

Anyway, it’s my problem, not yours, so I’ll keep quiet on the matter until it’s resolved. Let’s lighten the mood and have an update on the brand new ‘Grossly Inappropriate Behaviour That People Turn A Politically Correct Blind Eye To’ section (see yesterday).

I was walking up Bold Street today and passed three teenage school girls sat on the step by the Halifax, each eating an open portion of chips. As I was passing, an old man stopped and started saying something to them. I could just about make out that it was “Give us a chip, girls!�

I looked around, still walking, and saw that he was indeed taking a chip from a girl who’d kindly, if awkwardly, obliged him by holding out her chips for him to dig into with his dirty fingers. The girl, understandably, looked very uncomfortable.

This is grossly inappropriate behaviour for dozens of reasons. Aside from the more pervy ones, i.e. this old heap was clearly using the chips as an excuse to talk to teenage girls, it’s also beyond comprehension that any sane (he wasn’t mental from what I could gather) person would approach any other person and ask for some of their chips.

As with yesterday, AT WHAT POINT TO PEOPLE DECIDE THEY’LL BEHAVE LIKE THIS?

WHEN!!!

I honestly don’t believe it’s a slow slide into dementia. I think there comes a day when they decide that asking for chips off of strangers, young girls or not, is absolutely fine and to Hell with anyone who thinks it’s wrong or rude.

Please report G.I.B.T.P.T.A.P.C.B.E.T. (catchy!) that you see when out and about by using the Comments section below.

After the Bold Street chips incident, I was in Evil Tesco’s doing some grocery shopping. I decided to buy some eggs and, as ever, scanned the shelves for the priciest, most guilt-free variety.

I’ve never bought battery farmed eggs, but now I’ve moved on from even free-range ones. I tend to now only buy eggs from chickens who live on their own exclusive health farm. They lay them in the Jacuzzi, between treatments and yoga classes.

Today’s not the first time that I’ve noticed that eggs come in different sizes, medium, large, and extra large, but for the first time I wondered why?

I understand that chickens lay different sized eggs, and that it might be a rip off to fill some boxes with large eggs, other boxes with small eggs, and then sell them for the same price. It would also lead to people opening the boxes and checking the size of the eggs before putting them in the basket, which is impractical.

But what I don’t understand is; who buys the medium sized ones? Who looks at the large ones and thinks ‘No, mustn’t go mad. I’ll be happy enough with medium sized eggs.’

Has anybody ever seen served a boiled egg, been asked if it was okay, and said “Yes, lovely, thanks. Although, if anything, it was very slightly too large. Although by a barely distinguishable margin.�

And more people eat eggs fried than boiled. Has anyone had a plate of fried eggs on toast put before them in a café and said to the waitress “Hang on, these are a bit wide aren’t they?�

Perhaps the medium eggs are there for old people who occasionally get egg-bound. They WANT the large eggs but think “Better not. Not with my back-body. I have enough trouble as it is.�

I don’t know why I dwell on things like this but they do tend to pre-occupy me. Maybe it’s the first signs of a sad decent into mania? Today, I’m innocently considering why people might buy medium sized eggs (why not ‘small’? You never see ‘small’ eggs advertised. That means ‘Medium’ is the smallest you can get. That means they’re not medium at all) and the next I’m shuffling around with my trousers down asking for free chips from teenage girls like a big perv.

Such is life!

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