Ejaculation denied

A collection of things have happened recently, I have learnt to juggle after 4 weeks of practice, the world has started to fall apart and fate has turned against me.

I'll start with a work story, it was a beautiful sunny Sunday lunch time and I had been baking bread, rolls, baguettes and pastries since 9 pretty much non-stop. I had just taken a batch of croissants out of the oven and put them on the rack to cool. It was at that point that a reasonably attractive woman came over with her boyfriend and asked if we had any croissants. My response was "I've just taken some out of the oven actually, how..." before I could finish she squealed with delight and full on snogged her boyfriend who seemed quite surprised by it (not that he was complaining). I was quite taken aback, at where was my thanks, I had bloody made them? Not saying I want that but why does he get all the credit? Me and my fellow bakers came up with a theory: croissant fetish, what else.

You are probably all aware that the world is falling apart, with half of the middle east rebelling against the dictators they have suffered under for years and most of pacific countries being struck by floods, earthquakes and tsunamis. However this timed we faced more, a nuclear crisis. The timing was impeccable, having just completed my section on nuclear power in physics, the crisis in Japan made perfect sense to me. Unfortunately as a scientist, my curiosity struck, part of me wanted a total meltdown or nuclear explosion, having not had a nuclear disaster in my lifetime I wanted to see what would happen. Obviously I don't want people to die or for the world to end, I just wanted an experiment. I am slightly concerned for the impact this will have on Britain's nuclear future, public opinion is at a low point and noone is going to want a nuclear power station near them. These people are morons. Nuclear is clearly the way forward, with no CO2 emissions it is by far the cleanest fuel and resources are not as limited as coal, oil or gas. As for safety, forget about it, the safety procedures and protocols are incredibly extensive, short of a natural disaster they can handle anything. Since Britain and Northern Europe are not near a tectonic plate boundary we don't have to worry about earthquakes, volcanoes or tsunamis. One last nuclear note, my utmost praise and respect goes to the engineers who have sacrificed themselves to stabilise the Fukushima Nuclear reactor, they exposed themselves to massive amounts of radiation to save their country and the future of nuclear power.

I had a bit of trouble sending my work home from school, with a virus still in the works at school I'm not putting my USB stick anywhere one of those USB ports at school without super firewall protection which I do not have (Techno STD style). Resorting to sending it home, I have to go through the long process of signing in, new message, attachments, selecting them, attaching them, typing in my own email address and sending. Thinking it had gone smoothly I turned off the computer and got on with something else. When I get home I find an email telling me it was blocked from sending due to "Sexual Content" because one of the documents contained the word "ejaculation". Firstly, I may have been using this word completely honestly, ejaculation can refer to any kind of sudden movement or outburst. Secondly I was writing a presentation on the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic nervous systems. I'm sure you are all aware that the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) controls all of the bodily functions that require an extra bit of kick (increase in heart rate, increase in breathing rate, temporary digestive halting to conserve energy and any of the Fight or Flight mechanisms). One of the functions the SNS performs is to cause ejaculation, a perfectly reasonable thing to mention in an A2 level presentation. Stupid webmail, might not be able to finish on time now.

I recently refereed the SGS El Clasico, the monumental fixture of Brown House vs Red House (Browncelona vs Real Red House). The report in the school sports tabloid (What's The Story: Sporting Glory - WTSSG) featured my name more than any of the players, clearly I made an impact. Described as "power-hungry" after awarding a controversial penalty, "rulebook-loving" for making the players stand on the half way line for the penalty shoot-out and "the dictator himself" for showing a red card to a player for gross sporting misconduct. I thought I had an excellent performance, anyone who was present is free to comment if they felt any differently.

Now the fate thing, anyone who is bored by displays of emotion, close the window now, it is the soppy bit. There has always been an expectation to see my wonderful girlfriend once a week (excluding Tuesdays, as lovely as they are) be it half a day on Saturday or Sunday or the evening on Friday. Unfortunately in the recent few weeks this has not happened. I have joined golf club at school meaning I am unavailable on Fridays. This isn't usually a problem but when for some reason Saturday becomes unavailable we are presented with a bit of a problem. This week she was busy on Saturday so I made alternative plans for a lads night at a mate's house on Saturday night. I then tried to pencil in a leaving do for a friend at work for Sunday night, exactly when she wanted to see me. My dictator of a mother however forbade me from going out twice in a weekend so I was saved the decision between work friends and girlfriend (undoubtedly would have chosen girlfriend because I am a right sop). So here is the 2nd week in 3 that I will not be seeing my girl and I really miss her, the day night I did see her I was too drunk to register anything anyway. Nothing seems to be working for us so we need to plough on until some kinder times arrive. Moan over.

Referees (football)

After reading a post about referees written by a friend of mine I started thinking about my feuds with referees and how it highlights the fact that I am everything that I hate in others. Mild tangent - I can't stand people who think they are above certain aspects in life that everyone takes part in but I consider myself to be way above starbucks, it is a horrible place that serves horrible coffee at inflated prices to stupid people who are trying to appear like they are vaguely cultured (ie. everyone except me). Does this mean I hate myself? That is a topic for another day.

Anyway, back on track, referees. I am a referee, not only this but I am an incredibly stubborn referee, what I see is what happened and whatever I decide is obviously right. I have been qualified nearly two years, I passed a practical course so already consider myself above the traditionalist theory course-ists. Not only this, I got every single question right on the multiple choice section of the exam and passed flawlessly on my practical exam, even receiving comments such as "wow, when you put that shirt on, you just look like a referee, a proper one."

When I referee I often encounter twats who argue with my every decision, they think they know better and stop at nothing to get in my head, this of course causes me to look for every opportunity to penalise them or even punish them. I am the ref, I am in charge and that's how it is. However, when I am a player I am worse than those who argue with me because I actually know what I'm talking about, putting referees on the back foot. Quite often I am a joy to referee, if the ref is qualified and consistent (I can manage bad refereeing because we are all human but inconsistent refereeing is unforgivable) then we get on well, obviously they get things wrong but you have to accept it. My problem is with unqualified referees who referee by their own rules. An excellent source of these people are school football matches, PE teachers who think they rule the world and A-level students who can't play football but try to help out anyway. One example of this was in a school match against Christ's Hospital, the referee was a right tosser, didn't know the offside rule and couldn't keep up with play. Losing 4-2 with a few minutes left I made a perfectly timed run onto a through ball, outpacing at least 1 defender. I rounded the goalkeeper, thinking this could be my moment of glory before being felled like a mighty oak tree by the goalkeeper. He went right into my ankle with his studs, just outside the 18 yard box. The foul alone merited a caution at least, the positioning and situation demanded a red card. Here came the 'referee', the cards were out, justice would be done. Hang on, that card is yellow, what a cowardly decision! When asked for an explanation he said "he wasn't last man". When arguing against this I said he was, I was in a far better situation to see that he was, he was the only player in front of me. Secondly I was forced to explain that last man is not even the rule, the rule is "denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity" which it definitely was. He threatened to caution me. Got him back though, refused to shake his hand and I always shake hands and apologise to referees I have given a hard time. I have many more examples of poor refereeing, just ask me sometime.

Eyes and Exam results

School has been pretty fun this past week, there have been practicals, football matches and all sort of new and interesting things. My scientific highlight of the week has undoubtedly been the dissection of an eye. (On a side note I feel obliged to clear up the correct pronunciatiation of dissection, it is a word that particularly annoys my girlfriend's dad so I do all I can to spread the truth. Contrary to popular belief it is pronounced diss-ection like in disc or disband, not die-section like dye or dine. Glad I have sorted that, he would be proud of me.) If you imagine an eye I bet you think it is soft and squishy, or maybe gloopy. They are not, they are pretty damn solid and tough. First we had to cut off the muscle around the eye, exposing it completely. Next was cutting into it, although preceeded by lots of pissing about and picture taking:

What else does a teenage boy do when presented with eyes? Back to the DISSSSection, eyes are pretty round and solid. Getting the scissors into the eye was like trying to get into a gobstopper with a fork, difficult. After nearly stabbing through my hand numerous times I developed a clever securing method involving the tweezers, I wish I could show you it. Upon piercing the Sclera (outside hard bit) I was greeted by a bitty black goop from the choroid (membrane that prevents internal reflection) and further goop that was the Vitreous Humour (goop that gives the eye shape). Our quest was for the lens (which was goopy), after finding mine and attempting to look through it I came to the conclusion the the animal that had so kindly donated its eye to me needed glasses. I did manage to read newspaper through it, inspecting a match report between Newcastle and Fulham from November (which ended 0-0), using a piece of an animal eye did not make the report any more interesting. In our school noone uses gloves for dissection, we are men.

I have some exam results tomorrow, needless to say I am quite nervous. It is quite odd being nervous about results, the part to be nervous about is surely the testing itself. Nervousness is a mechanism developed evolutionarily to help us perform better in high stress situations. To start with this hardly helps with academic thinky things as it is more about muscles and can actually be a bad thing in exams. I am hardly going to need all the extra adrenaline, strength and energy to pick up and open an envelope, unless of course they have included a detailed analysis of my mistakes, making it very heavy or have used extra thick envelopes with super strength glue. I, like many of my school comrades am facing a problem tomorrow. The results become available at 7:45am, I have a double free period meaning not arriving at school until 10:11am. Do I pick the results up as early as possible or turn up at 10 and grab them before double biology? A friend of mine will be picking his up as early as possible whereas another will be leaving it until the end of the day. It was only a few minutes ago that I realised that contrary to popular belief, the results will not change depending on when they are picked up. With this in mind I'll take the extra sleep and grab them around 10, unless of course I am too tense to sleep.

Good luck to all those collecting results (even though you needed the luck back in January and need very little luck to successfully open an envelope).