You may recall that yesterday I talked about some software to reorganise my iTunes music library and I used the analogy of a shed or spare room, a little cluttered, half-piles of stuff, bit untidy and needing a good sort out? Well that is exactly what this software is supposed to do. Although now, having run it overnight and for most of yesterday I see that the results on my music library are roughly akin to the impact of allowing two rutting stags loose in aforementioned shed, after calling each of them a bit of a girl and questioning the moral rectitude of their mothers! Chaos – complete disaster! Piles of poo everywhere, bits of blood and guts sprayed liberally around the landscape and any semblance or organisation now shot to kingdom come! I have quite a few compilation albums, greatest hits collections and so on. So it has taken each song, worked out which album it originally came from, created that album and shoved the song in there. So now, instead of “Now that’s what I call music 50” I have 25 albums each with a single track, each by a different artist. Oh, and for most of THOSE albums it hasn’t found the right artwork! So let my lesson be a warning to you – never use a thing called FixTunes . I think they meant FuxTunes! And what really gets my goat is we actually PAID for this crap. I’m going to write a letter. It will probably be very long, but have in it lots of very short words (although I may choose to jumble the words a bit, remove a few, change some others, disassemble all sentences into their constituent nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs etc and then spit them out with acute unawareness of any sort of common sense. So, to start, “Sir dear, software shit your is. Arse your up it stick. Load what a of wank. “

Maybe this is all punishment for something bad I did in a previous existence? Maybe I inflicted some terrible ill on humankind and this is Karma (I assume not of the chameleon variety) putting things right. I do sometimes get a weird feeling that I have lived before. Not Déjà Vu, more complex than that. For example just occasionally I could kill for a cigarette, I need the hit, I know what it feels like to take the first drag after a long wait for a roll-up. But I’ve never smoked in my life. Not once. So there is no way I could know these things. And I’ve described them to a smoker before and told I was spot on with what I was saying. So, a smoker in a previous life then. Someone who caused immeasurable suffering to the people of this fair isle and who’s spirit is destined to forever inhabit the bodies of those prone to misadventure, unreliable network access, dodgy software and a “Chinese Woman Opposite” with a knicker exposure fetish. Got it. I must have been Sir Walter Raleigh – he of the alleged tobacco, potato and chopper bike fame. Come to think of it, we had some spuds the other day that were decidedly dodgy. Now this makes sense - I mean, he would be destined to an endless life of torturous misery; think how much damage has been done by cigarettes, either in terms of national health or even such things as increased costs on the fire brigade and the inflated costs of sofas which now all have to be retardant! Still I suppose it is all part of the rich tapestry (now dutifully fire-proofed and certified to British standards of spark retardancy) of life. And don’t get me started on the evils of the potato! Vegetables that grow eyes? THAT’s not natural! Hell they come from the same family as Deadly Nightshade (the clue there is in the name... Deadly!) and if ingested in sufficient quantities (well, green spuds anyway) they contain poisons that can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches and even paralysis of the central nervous system. It’s true. It says it on the interweb. What’s more, and follow my logic here, if Raleigh (or whoever) hadn’t introduced potatoes to Britain then there could have been no potatoes to get blight in Ireland, no famine caused by lost potato crops, no mass migration, especially not to America and probably Americans would still be galloping around on horses, eating Bison, living in Teepees (I watch QI – I know the difference between a Teepee and a Wigwam) killing each other with bows and arrows and adopting silly names like Flying Red Bull and Makes Noise of Heap Big Flatulence. Which seems to me to be a far better way for them to carry on that they have been doing of late! I shouldn’t come over as so racist. I do like some Americans – Marge Simpson, Stewie from Family Guy, Bambi...

And whilst I’m paddling round the subject of potatoes, like a signet caught in a whirlpool, I’m reminded that my step father once grew blue potatoes – honestly. No kidding. If you don’t believe me, ask him. He’ll tell you all about them. For hours. Best have a wee before you start the conversation. You don't need to listen, just nod in the right places. It can be a good time to do other mental activities while your brain isn't fully engaged - maybe the world's biggest suduko puzzle, or perhaps solve a couple of complex mathematical equations that have been bugging you since childhood. Point being, any conversation with my Step Father requires only physical presence, so daydreaming is encouraged, and in fact more conducive to your ongoing sanity. People have gestated babies in the time it can take him to tell a story. And carrots were originally purple. Don’t believe me? Here – have a look at this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1991768.stm - there you see! We’ve just bred the purple out in favour of the expected orange colouring. Sometimes you can still see a faint purple tinge at the top of the carrot where the leaves sprout. And THAT my friends is called genetic engineering – breeding one trait out and one trait in. Its just that we have been doing it for hundreds of years instead of in a lab over a matter of weeks. Same difference though. Nobody questions whether or not orange carrots are supposed to be in the food chain. Who know what damage they are doing! Hell, the purple colour could contain a chemical which, upon prolonged exposure, would protect us from cancer, the common cold – or maybe give us superpowers! Think of THAT next time you make a stew or eat a slice of carrot cake and go all prim and proper on whether or not we should clone sheep. Don't you think THEY have been modified over the years to produce either the best wool or the best chops? I had better rest my case before I start on global warming!