Notes #Whatever.

I’ve started watching the complete episodes of House because I missed it when it was shown on the TV. It’s scaring me witless and I don’t know whether I’m going to last the course. I like Dr House a lot because in some ways he reminds me of one of my own personality types, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that he reminds me of one of the roles I play when I’m disgruntled and cynical and don’t give a monkey’s toss what anybody thinks of me. It’s the environment that gives me the chills. Doctors are doing things to patients which doctors did to me recently, and some of which they’re going to do again. And it reminds me that hospital beds are the most uncomfortable beds to be found anywhere and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they don’t want you to be occupying them any longer than is absolutely necessary. I don’t need any persuasion.

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I was reading today about the shooting incident at the Walmart store in Washington State. I read how the gunman was ultimately shot dead by a casual shopper who just happened to have a loaded side arm in his trouser pocket. I mused on the fact that the shooting could not realistically be described as self-defence and that the only person who died was the gunman. Being European by birth, upbringing and inclination, I found the whole thing extremely bemusing, and eventually could only arrive at one bottom line: It seems to me that America is slipping off the rails and somebody needs to get a grip before it’s too late. I understand that Americans will probably disagree with me and claim with a modicum of justification that America is none of my business.

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I saw a woman walking along a street in Uttoxeter today. She was wearing a plain denim skirt with a plain denim jacket. Her legs were bare and her shoes flat. Her hair was a little unkempt and she wasn’t pretty, and yet for some reason beyond the grasp of my analytical faculty I found her compellingly attractive in a perfectly respectable, non-lascivious sort of way. She stared at me for a long time as she was walking and I wondered whether she, too, found me unaccountably compelling in a perfectly respectable, non-lascivious sort of way. Eventually I settled on the greater likelihood that she was wondering what the hell I was looking at. One has little choice but to be realistic at my time of life.