I think I'm losing my mind

I deleted four hundred emails today.  To see if I still feel.  I focussed on the plane.  The only thing that's real.

Oh what have I done?  My dear old friend - I guess I must have now become so tired that I can't distinguish my life from a Johnny Cash cover song.  Another day like this and I'll be popping out to Reno to shoot a man.

However, aside from that the day was placid.  I slogged through the work that had accumulated, struggling to find hope and calm in the day, and failing.  Then to relax I came home and tried to install Ubuntu on my laptop.  I certainly know how to relax.

[I have 9.04 on my netbook, and that happily connects to the internet.  I had 9.10 before, and it just wouldn't work properly; the network connection never worked, until I got onto the command line and started poncing about with pppoeconf, which a dullard like me shouldn't be dealing with.  I should be sitting there, while the computer just works.  Which it doesn't.  Silly computer!  Eventually, I got it to talk to the internet, but that was an hour of my life eliminated.  Oh well.]

After that, I started watching Sexy Beast, but the sight and sound of a sweary Ben Kingsley was too much for me, so I began to relax by watching a Brendon Burns DVD.  This was very sweary, so when my girlfriend came back in the door I turned it off.  If she had found out that my greatest achievement today was to lie on the sofa in my pyjamas, watching a bald man swear, she might have had something to say.  Lucky she won't ever read this and find out.

Earlier today, I found out that a comedian called Jason Wood had died.  After reading a bit about him, I realised that I'd seen him doing a set in a bar in Ashford, Kent, seven years ago.  In front of a drunk man who couldn't even speak.  Ah, those were the days.  I think that was the same night that something terrible happened to my trousers.  We won't go into that.

He did a great bit about Starsailor being overly depressive, and then singing "Daddy was an alcoholic" in a Vegas showtune style, and then a pissed-up version of David Grey singing "Babylon".  And compared with a dirty old man doing tricks with balloon animals, and a man in a shell-suit shouting, he was something memorable.

And then I never heard of him again.  It turned out he was a celebrity on Strictly Come Dancing in its first season, and since the comedy night in the club in Ashford was cancelled a few weeks later, I imagine he never performed there again.  And if he hadn't died this weekend, I don't think I would have heard of him again.  Which is a shame, and possibly shows that I should have gone out more in the intervening years, or that I should have watched more television.

My loss, I think.  What a wonderful chap, and gone now.  I wonder if in years to come, somebody will remember a chap with a well-trimmed beard, making jokes about Beatles Rock Band in a badly decorated basement in Hong Kong.

So tired now.  Cannot even recognise names.  I should go to bed.