The Blah Blahs and the Yada Yadas

Over the past few years, my parents have been urging me to rake up some cash every month, gather it into a pile, and burn it. Rather a weird request, but they were quite gung-ho about it. They even offered to put up the money if I came short. It wasn’t part of some bizzare [...]

Many things have perplexed me throughout life. The Riemann Hypothesis, Marylin Manson and George W Bush, just to quote three examples. (Ok, so I didn’t really wonder about the Riemann Hypothesis, but I have watched two TV episodes around it). But nothing really throws me off as much as fashion… a constantly redefined set of [...]

“Everything that can be invented has been invented” - said the US patent office commissioner in 1899. And over the past century, people have been burying that statement in an avalanche of inventions… around 100,000 inventions on an annual basis. You GOTTA stop and wonder - 100, 000??? Really? What are these guys inventing, for [...]

It never ceases to amaze me how you can find people with radically different problems in life. And life, in its infinite wisdom, chooses to scatter its resources rather unjustly. Bloke A may be running through life looking for something; the same stuff that bloke B might be throwing away by the bucketloads. For example, [...]

Yesterday was a bad day. Little demons with big pointy sticks poked the insides of my skull; Tiny clones of Himesh Reshammiya sat next to my eardrums and shrieked at the top of his irksome nasal voice; my old economics professor popped up like an inebriated jack-in-the-box every time I blinked, just to ask me [...]

Ok, I’ve thought about this long and hard. I think I’ll do it. I’m going to trust you with a secret. But shh… not a word to anyone. Like I just said… It’s a secret. It’s a teeny tiny incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t told a soul. And I haven’t [...]

Entertainment has owned me for the better part of my life. Even when I was a toddler drooling on VHS tapes, my dad had to spend an unreasonable amount of time dragging me away from the TV. And if you think dragging a kicking and screaming Hamish away from a good movie is a walk [...]

I have my hair alright. I suppose I could delude myself that it’s always gonna be there, but only under the influence of REALLY powerful hallucinogens like LSD, mescaline, or Keith Richards. The truth, however, is in plain sight. I’m losing hair like ballot papers from Florida.
Historically, hair loss has been a bad omen. Napoleon [...]

People come to me incessantly, asking about my purpose in life… And if you think it is OK for people to come to you incessantly for something, you obviously have never had people come to you incessantly. And when they start grilling you on the purpose of your life, their primal motive is to make [...]

Well, let me confess straight away. I haven’t written anything here since 1847…. Or maybe it just FEELS that long. Now, I can offer a variety of excuses for this lapse from my part… like being such a bigshot in my company that I can’t afford some time to update the blog… or having a [...]