This is taken from the BBC news website:

Teenager finds bat asleep in bra

A teenager who thought movement in her underwear was caused by her vibrating mobile phone found a bat curled up asleep in her bra.

Abbie Hawkins, 19, of Norwich, had been wearing the bra for five hours when she plucked up the courage to investigate.

When she did, she found a baby bat in padding in her 34FF bra. The hotel receptionist said she was shocked but felt bad for removing the "cuddly" bat.

"It looked cosy and comfortable and I was sorry for disturbing it," she said.

She was sitting at her desk at work when she decided to investigate the strange movements in her underwear.

"I put my hand down my bra and pulled out a cuddly little bat.

Perhaps I should have left it there and given it a good home Abbie Hawkins

"That shocked me very much at the time, but it scuttled off under the desk into the dark. I was shaking from head to toe.

"It looked quite cosy and comfortable in there so it was quite rude of me to take it out.

"When I realised it was a bat the first thing that occurred to me was how did it get in there.

"I felt quite sorry for it. Perhaps I should have left it there and given it a good home.

"I did not notice anything as I put my bra on. The night before I had had one or two drinks and I was getting ready quickly.

"The bra was in my drawer but it had been on the washing line the day before.

"When I was driving to work, I felt a slight vibration but I thought it was just my mobile phone in my jacket pocket."

The bat was captured by one of her colleagues and released.

Boredom filller

I'm writing here, talking to absoloutely no one because I am bored. I have experienced new untold levels of frustration today and I'm surprised that I'm still alive and not had an anyeurism yet from all the straining and screaming that I have been doing. I dunno what it is but everything about the world I'm finding very tedious right now and I have little patience for anything....

I'm in the process of editing the next installment of Dan & Eye with Geoff, well, I say in the process of, but in reality we're still trying to get the files to work in the editing software that Geoff is using. I've tried countless times to play them on my p.c. and we've tried streaming them off Geoff's pc onto the TV through the xbox but the files were in some weird format that is solely exclusive to Sony camcorders.

At present we're waiting for all of the files to convert into mpeg2's so we can edit them but its taking ages. To pass the time we seem to be watching a nature documentary on baboons. An interest fact about the female of baboons species: during mating season their bottom swells to let the males know they're ready for some nookie. Pretty cool uh? I thought that technique was exclusive to human females but apparently baboons are doing it too.

Another interesting fact David Attenborough has just pointed out to us is how the size of an apes brain will dictate the size of the groups they knock about with. The bigger the brain, the bigger the social group. He later goes on to say that forming social groups may have been one of the keys to our evolution as the bigger the social group the greater the need for more effective and advanced forms of communication - leading to the eventual develop of language in humans.

In another species they quite humorously show how they pretty much play psychological warfare with each other, just for something to do. Like the term coined by Satre: hell is other people, for these guys its hell is other baboons. All they seem to use their sophistacted (for apes at least) modes of communication for is to wind each other up and make each other miserable. Ape experts have actually detected similar symptoms of stress in these apes that can be found in humans, such as ulscers. In one instance we see an ape trying to get on with some female, and the alpha leader of the pack just keeps hanging around near by. He's not interested in the female or anything like that, he just wants to put the other male off his game, something we human males often refer to as "cock blocking".

It looks like the files have finally converted now so I'm off to try and edit this mother... So long!

National kissing day (whoopee! - sarcasm alert!)

Apparently today is national kissing day. As sad as this may sound I don't think I've snogged anyone for about 2 years. Yes that is a fucking depressing thought. For those of you who frequently enjoy kissing (you cunts!), here is a list of interesting facts I copied and pasted from article about kissing:

1. Two out of every three couples turn their heads to the right when they kiss.

2. A simple peck uses two muscles; a passionate kiss, on the other hand, uses all 34 muscles in your face. Now that’s a rigorous workout!

3. Like fingerprints or snowflakes, no two lip impressions are alike.

4. Kissing is good for what ails you. Research shows that the act of smooching improves our skin, helps circulation, prevents tooth decay, and can even relieve headaches. (what about loneliness and depression? I bet it could do something about that).

5. The average person spends 336 hours of his or her life kissing. (except for me, who will spend 336 hours of my life fantasizing about kissing).

6. Ever wonder how an “X” came to represent a kiss? Starting in the Middle Ages, people who could not read used an X as a signature. They would kiss this mark as a sign of sincerity. Eventually, the X came to represent the kiss itself. (this is about the only type of kissing I get to indulge in on a regular basis)

7. Talk about a rush! Kissing releases the same neurotransmitters in our brains as parachuting, bungee jumping, and running.

8. The average woman kisses 29 men before she gets married. (and?)

9. Men who kiss their partners before leaving for work average higher incomes than those who don’t. (great, so I'm gonna be poor as well as lonely for the rest of my life!)

10. The longest kiss in movie history was between Jane Wyman and Regis Tommey in the 1941 film, You're in the Army Now. It lasted 3 minutes and 5 seconds. So if you’ve beaten that record, it’s time to celebrate!

A lovely day out

I've just walked my mum and brother back to the coach stop at Uni after spending the weekend here. It was really good to see them, and we had an enjoyable day out yesterday. We went to the La Tasca tapas bar & restaurant for dinner, got a new pair of trainers bought for me, and we went to see Wil Smith's new movie, Hancock, which was a pretty good movie. Then again, I couldn't see a movie about an alcoholic superhero, doing more harm than good when rescuing people so that he's become a menace to the local population, being a bad movie. And suprisingly towards the end it turned into quite a dramatic and sad love story reminiscent of Casablanca... but i'm not gonna totally spoil for you if you happen to decide to go see it yourself.

Then in the evening I sat down to watch the series finale of Doctor Who, which, I have to say, had its moments and probably one of the saddest endings of the program so far when his assistant Donna Noble has to have all memories of him and their adventures together erased... In some ways a more tragic ending than simply killing her off. It also answered the BIG question raised at the end of the last episode with the Doctor's apparent regeneration. Last week, my housemate Sophie and I, spent ages on internet sites and forums looking for any information we could find that could hint at what was going to happen next. We knew Tennant was supposed to be signed on for numerous specials and the next series but we wondered if it may be an elaborate hoax by the BBC to suprise it's audience. Realistically we knew it would be next to impossible to cover something that big up but we had to find out, as personally I would have loved it if that were true. Don't get me wrong, I really like Tennant as Doctor Who, but I would also find it really exciting to suddenly find a new Doctor in his place, even if it was only a tempoary one for this episode.

So as the week went on many discussion were had about what was going to happen, each of us with our own theories. The general agreement was that it was likely David was going to stay and the hand may have some part to play as it has been quite a significant feature over the course of this series. I think Sophie even made quite an accurate prediction, if maybe partly in jest, that through the hand he would create a duplicate version of himself allowing one of them to live happily ever after with Rose!

The episode was by no means perfect though. It still retained much of its cheesyness from the previous episode, plus quite an annoying amount of technobabble as every two seconds a character would reveal some sort of amazing superweapon or gadget to use against the Daleks, with the explanations coming so quick and fast, you may as well be watching the episode in Spanish with the amount of words that were going over your head. And although it was quite funny and enjoyable to see Donna becoming like the Doctor it did seem a bit stupid to me that there was a control panel right next to the tardis that could remotely control the entire Dalek fleet and their reality destroying superweapon.

There was also the issue of the Doctor giving his duplicate self a telling off for commiting genocide and wiping out the Daleks - so what would you have done original Doctor? I can't see you letting them live or offering some sort of deal that would make them back down. In almost every confrontation with the Daleks, or the cybermen, or various other alien foes, he wipes them out and now he's giving himself a telling off for doing exactly the same thing.

But now there's no more Doctor Who until Christmas but at least that gives me ample time to watch all four seasons over again, or maybe I should try and get out some more?

Self destructive habits

I'm writing this seperately to the one I posted moments ago coz it's an unrelated matter... well kinda.

I'm feeling kind of ashamed of myself. A pattern of behaviour has resurfaced recently, it's an old program of mine that I probably picked up during my childhood and over many years of acquiring various insecurities and anxieties, its developed into a very nasty and self-destructive mental complex that I'm having trouble erasing.

It has already cost me much in the past and I feel doomed to repeat it all over again and ruin something just as special. And I know what people might be thinking: "if you are aware of what you're doing, and you know what it is going to lead to, then why do you keep doing it?" I used to get really frustrated with a friend of mine in the past because whenever I used to confide in her with my problems she never acted like she had any sympathy for me, and took it on herself "to be cruel to be kind". I never understood why she was like this and I used to get annoyed with her attitude because I knew full well that had I given her the same treatment she gives me when she wants to unload her problems, she would react in exactly the same way.

But now I'm understanding why she was like that. She used to say the exact same thing I said a minute ago about "why act like this, or become upset by this when you're aware of what you're doing?"... And she's completely right.

I know when my behaviour is wrong, and it's not even like I become aware of this after an event where I have been a little shit, I'm often aware of it at the time. I can hear that voice in my head screaming for a little rationality, asking for a moments pause to heed the opinions of reason and objectivity, but instead I follow the program that is being run by my emotions... No matter how logical and pragmatic I may seem, my emotions and their needs will always take over and lead me on a terrible path of self destruction. It's ended a relationship and caused strains on various friendships over the years which is why I need to knock it on the head before it leaves me deeply unhappy and I end up pushing the people I care about away.

You see it's not enough to continously be apologizing all the time. Anyone can say sorry. I say sorry all the time and I really do mean it everytime but I can't keep it up. I can't keep saying sorry if I go and do the same thing again, it will render the word useless and make it so it has no meaning for me whenever it passes through my lips. It's like telling someone you love them over and over, the word is so big you can only cheapen it through overuse. Saying sorry and asking forgiveness is a big thing to ask of someone as well, if you have to do it frequently for the same thing over and over then what are you saying about what that person means to you? That you would rather continue hurting them and aplogising for it afterwards, rather than actually giving them the love and respect that they deserve by not hurting them in that way again in the first place?

It's time to start learning again.

You may be thinking that I'm being hard on myself. People often say that about me and a friend has made that remark about me a couple of times recently. Personally I see it the other way around: I am not being hard enough on myself.

21 days to go (again)

This past week I've been on one of those "motivation" missions again where I decide its time to get my life in order and I develop a strategy for myself to get back on track and being proactive with things such as my writing. Over the years I have tried things like this so many times to combat laziness and lethargy, and over the years, I've become more frustrated with myself when I fail to make a permanent change and I frequently begin to wonder if I will have succeed in changing myself and my ways for the better.

The plan for change this time involves borrowing two different strategies for combating motivation and combining them together. The first one is what is known as the 21 day principle. According to some, if you can do the same thing everyday for 21 successive days that thing will become a habit and be ingrained into your daily routine. The 21 day principle is often used with people combating an addiction as the task would be to go that many succesive days without whatever it is they may be addicted to. So I'm using the 21 day principle to combat my addiction for doing nothing day to day.

The other thing I'm doing is what I read in an article called Lazy productivity. It takes the attitude that if you're not a particularly productive person (like me), or may only every once in a while and sit down and bash out chunks of work, you will hugely increase your productivity if you just limit yourself to doing 3 simple, and relatively short tasks everyday. So like I said before, I've combined the two together so my goal has been complete 3 tasks everyday for 21 succesive days so that it becomes a bonafide habit.

Would you like to know how well I've done so far?

I failed on my first day... I completed my morning task easy (get up early and do an hour of writing on a feature script at 7am), but the other 2 tasks had to be done after work (no big deal), but unfortunately I put off doing them until late then my housemate, Sophie, returned home from Kent, and had brought another friend Emma around to have some wine... I was halfway through my 2nd task at this point but predictably I stopped. I beat myself up pretty hard about it and had to reset my 21 day counter to zero and start again (well, I say reset, but really I hadn't even completed one day so it just stayed at zero). Oh yeah, it might be worth mentioning that I'm recording my progress using this desktop program called sticky notes. It's a bit like having post it notes, but on your computer desktop. I have three notes up with each of my tasks on then another fourth one which I'm using as my 21 day counter.

On the 2nd day (well, my 1st day again after the reset) I was still feeling bummed out by my failure, and again I became fretful and anxious that I will never conquer my laziness and will be continuously met with failure after failure in my attempts at change... Then I read something in a book that I was reading on overcoming procrastination (one of my tasks that day), and it helped me change my perspective on things. It talked about reslience and the ability to get up and trying again being a character trait diametrically opposed to procrastination, so even though I go through periods of what is typically called "volitional depression" and retreat into negative and addictive behaviours, I'm always bouncing back with new attempts at conquering laziness.
It is quite possible that I may never fully conquer laziness and become a proactive writing machine, but always during my frequent attempts at asserting proactive behaviour for myself, I achieve a lot. As long as I'm always fighting inaction it will in itself prevent me from being inactive.

So I stopped looking at my first day as a terrible failure but instead chosen to see what I could learn from it. One of the things I learnt from that first day is that some of the tasks I set myself were too large and needed to be more specific in their duration. So if I need to read something I'll set a page limit, or with writing something I might set a fixed time limit of an hour. From doing this I managed four completed days before I manage to miss two of my tasks yesterday. Like before I was initially upset about it but then I took a step back and realised that I did achieve a hell of a lot yesterday, even though it wasn't on my list of things to do, such as finishing most of the filming of the Dan & Eye comedy show - that is an achievement.

Today I didn't even have any tasks written down but it doesn't matter. I'm setting tasks for tomorrow morning and I will see them done, and yes the counter may be resetting back to zero again but it's no big deal, so long as I don't stop fighting it, I will make it to 21 days some day.