Tab Rates vs. Tab Slates: Week One

Tab Rates

The Man Who Can’t Stop Hiccupping. Look, I know it’s not very nice to laugh at people. Just like I know I shouldn’t smoke, or drink too much, or eat that yoghurt that went out of date last Monday. But really, if you go on a documentary, entitled, ‘The Man Who Can’t Stop Hiccupping’, to reveal to the world that you are a man who is unable to stop hiccuping, then really now. There is something very and undeniably funny about hiccupping.

800th Anniversary Fireworks Display. Woo! I can pretend it’s Bonfire Night and New Year’s Eve and May Week all over again when it’s actually January and Week One and nothing worth smiling about will happen for ages! Though this will lose points if there are no sparklers.

The Wikipedia Game. Hit up Wikipedia. Think of a thing. Any thing. Then think of another thing. Any other thing. Try to go from thing A to thing B in as few clicks as possible. Curiously, easier than you would think, time-consuming, and, of course, well worth the time spent. Of course.

Being Old. This year’s kids are being made offers for A*s. I certainly can’t be sure I’d have nailed that golden ticket, though I almost certainly would gone mildly insane under the pressure. For once, don’t feel the bilious taste of mild panic rising in your throat when you realise, yes, you can claim to have lived through two whole decades now – that’s right, from start to finish – rather, feel smug.

Zap Gordon's Zits. Yes, OK, it's a pretty gross concept. But somehow strangely compulsive – perhaps the same strange compulsion that drives people to zap their own zits between pudgy forefinger and thumb. But leave your face alone – you could leave scars, you know – and go to town on Gordon's. He can't afford a dermatologist, don't you know there's a (his) recession on?

Tab Slates

Better Late Than NYE-ver. I love a good Sunday night at Fez as much as the rest of you. The music is passable with brief flashes of ‘good’ at inspired moments of the night, and the sticks of incense poking out of every faux-Moroccan wall decoration distract slightly from the smell of several hundred sweaty, boozy undergraduates and their various pungent aromas. However, a countdown to the 11th January? An electro version of ’Auld Lang Syne’ as the clock strikes midnight and January the 11th – to reiterate, just another day in January – rolls in? Forgive me if I’m not crossing my arms, grasping the suppurating palm of the person next to me and swinging my limbs to usher in 2010. Because I am not ushering in 2010. It has been ushered.

DoS Lingo. I think the linguistics of supervisor-student interaction would make a fascinating study. They are rarely overtly offensive, but yet manage to make you feel much worse with a few well-aimed, ‘potentials’ and, ‘I know you can do its’ than they ever could if they yelled, ‘you’re shit, you’re shit, you’re shit!! How did you get in?! Just get out!! And take your sodding portfolio with you!!’ They use terms like ‘chronic concentration issues’ rather than ‘profound laziness’ and, ‘low work self esteem’ rather than ‘jealousy of everyone else who’s better than you because you’re not used to being academically-outdone’.

W. H. Smith. I was having A Bad Day. It was sleeting, I’d just burnt my palm on the hob (tip: don’t forget that you’ve left the hob on, stroll into kitchen and try and lounge, louchely against said hob, placing your hand on one of the burning hot plates) and I’d had an altercation with a fat tourist on Market Square who’d stamped one gargantuan, be-cankled foot onto my (slightly) more dainty size-7s. Chocolate was needed. 70p for a sodding Galaxy? I will be buying my pens exclusively from Rymans from this day forth.

Romance. Ugh. When even the seasoned lothario, oh-he-of-insatiable-loins, Mr Russell Brand, is disgustingly coupled up – with I-Kissed-A-Girl-And-Hoped-It-Would-Make-Me-Controversial Katy Perry, no less –  it really makes you lose faith in love, especially when, in Cambridge, RAG Blind Date is the highlight of the romantic calendar.