Explanation

You might be aware that Gripes has been asking readers to submit questions for her to answer (Brave woman. Let me assure you the likelihood of me ever extending such an invitation myself is practically nil). Anyway, she has answered the first batch of questions and invited more (a *very* brave woman) and I submitted some further questions, but thought some of them might need to be clarified a bit by way of illustration. So below are some of the questions with my answers to them. Once again I think I might be revealing the weird workings of my mind.

Is there anything that makes you sing a song in your head any time you see/ do it?

Probably the main time is when I use the “remember me” function when I log into things on the internet. When you put in your user details you can often click a box labelled “remember me” and whenever I do that the words “I will remember you, will you remember me” go through my head. The words are from a Sarah McLachlan song called “I will remember you”, funnily enough. I do actually think this is slightly odd by the way…

Are there any celebrities that you irrationally hate?

Oh yes… except that it is entirely reasonable. Brian McFadden (the chap from Westlife - if you don’t know who he is then you’ll have to google him yourself because I refuse to provide a link to him). I don’t know what it is about him but he really, really gives me the creeps. I can’t think of anyone else that I have the same reaction to, but there is just something about him that if I see him on TV etc I am just creeped out by him and would very possibly change the channel.

Do you have any conspiracy theories?

My latest conspiracy theory *lowers voice* (I have to whisper this because it involves the people who are behind blogger) is that google is trying to take over the world. Don’t get me wrong, I think google is a good search engine and so on, but consider the evidence... If you are on the new blogger then you have to log in using a google e-mail account. So first of all they force you to use their product (previously you could just create your own user name and password and your e-mail address didn’t have to be a google one), then once you have logged in, if you carry out any searches using the google search engine you will see that your e-mail address is at the top of the screen, so basically they can track everything that you search for on the internet and know that it is you who is doing it (you can of course log back out of your google account if you don’t want them to track you, but the default is normally that you stay logged on as you).

Then if you send and receive any e-mails via your google e-mail account, and why wouldn’t you use that account because it is so convenient what with them having made you sign up to it and log into it every time you want to blog, they give you targeted advertising based on the content of your e-mails. Also, if you have a google toolbar you can click a button and it will search all the files on your computer - and then it will also know everything that is on your PC.

So they are potentially tracking your every movement while you are online. They could find out where you like to shop, who your bank is, what books you like to read, what your hobbies are, what area you live and very possibly your actual address. Plus much more. People may think that the government is a bit big brother-ish but google wins hands down as far as I am concerned.

Suffice to say I rarely use my google e-mail account and try and remember to log out of google when I have finished using blogger.

But if blogger/ google take affront at this and want to shut my accounts then just for the record, I do think it is entirely fantastic.

Do you have any talents that not many other people have?

Not particularly, but I am fairly ambidextrous. I am right handed but can actually do a lot of things with my left hand *raises an eyebrow* and would probably use my left hand equally as often as my right hand. So I often write texts with my left hand, I eat with the cutlery the other way round to most people, I would often open a jar etc with my left hand and I do all sorts of other stuff with my left hand too *winks*- but I would still say I am right handed. My handwriting isn’t great and I do sometimes wonder if it would have been better had I been writing with my left hand all this time. I might try that some time and see what happens.

Do you have any special powers?

I think my main special power is one that I have mentioned before, which is my ability to mesmerise children. Young children just seem to find me kind of fascinating, which I think is because of the tone of my voice. I still find that very weird but also quite amusing.