On my inability to remain conscious during bus journeys -- some problems and digressions: I hate it, hate falling asleep on buses. When I wake up, always at the same point in the journey, I feel like a tramp. All these people around me, genetic freaks all of them, somehow able to resist the gentle rocking motion and soporific rumble of the engine, they've been staring at me, watching my head bounce arrthymically against the window, waiting for me to come awake with a start right on cue just as we pass St Mark's church, realise where I am, and quickly check to make sure I haven't been drooling anywhere embarrassing. Like onto the shoulder of the man who rather rashly assumed that sitting down next to me whilst I was fast asleep could bring him neither harm nor oddly placed stains. That only happened once, several years ago, and is the reason I now ensure that I sit on the starboard seats of the bus, allowing my head to fall onto its preferred side. Which is odd. Most men, when asked by a tailor (most men will never be asked this by any tailor, but we all fantasize that we may, one day, be in a position to be asked) will tell him that they dress to the right. Another of nature's little asymmetries. I wonder if this is also true of men's heads in the context of sleeping on buses. I could find out simply by turning around and observing, but, as I've said, I have a problem staying awake on buses. Meanwhile, much talk (and evidence) of people who can't/don't use paragraphs in their posts. Of interest: Next month the university here is giving an internal let's-see- what-everyone-else-is-researching conference, in which postgrads from various faculties give pop-talks to show what they're doing with all their grant money. I myself am not participating, what with my thesis being a million years late already, but I know a nice chap from informatics who is presenting a joint paper with an also-nice girl from psychology on the ways in which various types of people present their written prose online, and how those are received and interpreted. Not groundbreaking, perhaps, but nonetheless topical. If I'd known at the time, I would have submitted Sinister as a case study. Here is a quote from the abstract: "[...] and we present [experimental] evidence to confirm the popular opinion that long, unbroken, poorly structured blocks of prose are indicative of narcissistic personality-types, concluding that while all other types of prose style are appreciated and/or preferred by different types of reader, the block style is [considered readable] only by the author." You don't even want to see what they have to say about the rest of us. One of the interesting parts is a computer program they developed that, they claim, can analyse a piece of (formatted) text and make a fairly accurate stab at the author's psychological make-up. I'll provide a link once the paper is published online. Flame on. As I travel home I shall ponder what the program might say about my own style, for about five minutes, before I let my head knock against the window and vaguely hope that I don't miss my stop. - M. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+