Allergies And Ipods

In true - real? honest? actual? literal? - househusbandnot style, am sitting at home waiting for someone to come and service the boiler. As I was staring aimlessly out of the kitchen window waiting for the kettle to boil, I noticed a man in full white anti-germ suit entering the block of flats over the road.

Having recently seen 28 Weeks Later, I got to wondering what particular deadly virus he was there to clean out, this drama somewhat tempered by a really annoying Observer supplement on allergies and kids that I read yesterday. Maybe the suited up bloke was just going in to see his nephew who has a severe nut allergy. (Apparently some people are allergic to tomatoes. I don't see how this works since tomatoes - although the devil's work - are just a big round glob of water aren't they? It would be like having an allergy to cucumber or apples. Are some people really allergic to water nowadays? Although I read somewhere that the water in and around London is so full of stuff that it can act as an effective contraceptive for women if drunk regularly. Maybe that's a myth, because people are still having kids nut allergy-full or otherwise. )

Mind you, one of the many pieces of informal research being conducted here at hhn HQ is the long term effect of things on people. Stuff like diet coke, and Starbucks coffee, and dry cleaned clothes, and ipods, and mobile phones, and rom coms (to which mrs househusbandnot is clinically addicted). All those things we have only been exposed to for a few decades and no-one really knows what effects they might have on us long term. (Funding for this research is limited btw, but I will be bringing the results to you one day.)

Have also noticed a lot of ladybirds around this summer. Are they going to take over the planet?

In other, not entirely unrelated news, my mate *&^ came over last night to sort out my itunes. In the process he downloaded pretty much his entire cd collection onto my computer. Amazing that this can be done so easily and quickly. I now own his hours of collecting and listening and living and loving of music, all at a click or two of a few computer keys. Which reminds me of my marketing idea for ipod, which would involve swap station (iswaps?) where you could take along your music-stuffed ipod and swap it for a week with someone else's, and have a whole new library of music to listen to for that week. I guess there would have to be matches to the sorts of music you liked, and also the actual amount of music you had on your ipod. It would be kind of annoying to take along your ipod with 10,000 songs and leave with someone else's which only had I Love Music 54 on it. I like this idea. It is kind of pro-individual choice, and sort of social networking and personal, and pro music. Although Styx is on an interesting why have music all the time gig at the moment, arguing that this whole move towards having access to as much music as possible all the time on the smallest possible gadget doesn't give anyone any space or real time to sit and actually enjoy music. It is more about the collection and storage than the actual pleasure you get from it. He has a (typically obtuse but interesting) point. I sometimes find the transition from listening to music and not listening to music difficult. One minute you are wigging away, the next you are taking off your earphones and saying good morning to everyone in the office and sitting down and turning on your computer and trying to stop wishing you were in a band, or on the road or at Glastonbury or something. And I'm not sure that greater access creates greater pleasure- although am deeply looking forward to tucking into *&^'s collection in the coming weeks.