It Can Hurt if You’re Not Used To It.

…I just realized how disgustingly pornographic that title sounds, but what the hell… I'm leaving it up anyway.

Sunny worked last night, meaning I spent New Years alone. I decided against getting depressed and decided I was going to make the most of it and I actually had quite a pleasant time.

Firstly I had a few podcasts saved up, so I put them on my iPod and listened to 'Friday Night Comedy' from BBC Radio 4, 'The Best of Chris Moyles' from BBC Radio 1 and finished it up with 'The Adam and Joe Show' from BBC 6 music. If you've noticed the theme there, let me just say thank fuck for the internet and podcasting…because in SC the radio reminds me of that scene from 'The Blues Brothers':

"What type of music do you usually have here?"

"Oh, we have both types. Country and Western."

I just don't understand how anyone can actually like country and western. I mean, Johnny Cash was quite good…but today, 99.9% of country songs sound exactly the same. Some guy half-yodels about why he's so depressed about some meaningless shit accompanied by a slide guitar.

Do not even get me started on "Honky-tonk bandonkadonk" or "She thinks my tractor's sexy". If she thinks your tractor's sexy, then she's probably retarded through all that inbreeding and has to wear a football helmet and boxing gloves to bed.

Anyway, I listened to my podcasts while playing a few rounds of Call of Duty on the 360. I must admit that I did feel a little pang of jealously when I checked my friends list and saw that Evan and family were playing 'Lips', the karaoke game. Then I remembered getting sick on Christmas day when the house was filled with hyperactive, over-excited, sugared-up kids and reminded myself that a little piece and quiet is not a bad thing.

After my podcasts finished, I decided to keep the 'British Theme' going by watching the Ricky Gervais stand-up show 'Fame'. Jesus Christ-bananas, that guy is hilarious.

While I'm on the subject of hilarity, let me take a small aside here to define the word 'Hilarious' for the denizens of the internets…because they apparently don't know what it means. You see, a little random websurfing shows that most internet sites think the word 'Hilarious' means 'mildly amusing but incredibly old content that I copied and pasted from somewhere else.'

Ricky Gervais is hilarious…a picture of a walrus looking for his 'buckit' is just slightly funny…but only the first time you see it, get it? Oh, and those jokes that have been around since people in offices used to fax them to each other? Those aren't hilarious, or even slightly funny. They're more accurately described as "A waste of disk space, bandwidth and a URL'

…sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there.

When that was finished I was at a bit of a loose end, but then I spotted the guitar I got for Christmas standing in the corner and played that for about two hours. Have I mentioned how much I love my Mother-in-Law?

After getting "RE: Your Brains" and "The Future Soon" by Jonathan Coulton down pat, it was about 3am so I got into bed…and instantly regretted playing my guitar for so long.

I'd forgotten a lesson I'd learned when fixing the roof: Any repetitive movement that your muscles aren't used to is going to strain them…no matter how gentle the movement is…like, say, twisting your wrist and arm to do that bar-chord.

Yeah, back during my guitar-playing prime I could play the guitar for six hours at a stretch without any ill effects. After playing for two hours last night, my left shoulder and upper arm is absolutely killing me. To the point where I couldn't sleep on my left hand side.

So that's my advice to you all for 2009.

Be careful…it can hurt if you're not used to it.