Another Round Goes To Mr Brain

More inconvenience snow this morning, just a light dusting by the time I left for work but promising to thicken, then turn first to slush, then ice by evening in time for my homeward trek

On the ironical front, as I was walking from Bagel Boys (my breakfast sandwichmonger of choice) to my office I was running Joan Armatrading's Down to Zero in Mr Brain. This is a trick I learned when I was a poor student before the advent of the Walkman: The ability to reproduce album-long music works to order in my head. I may not be able to play music well, but I can damned well remember it almost note perfect. Another useless skill.

These days the playback often starts itself when Mr Brain is not under load, like some sort of demented mental screen-saver, and to say the walk to my office lacks brain-taxing stimuli would be akin to saying that Operation Iraqi Freedom presents a challenge. The entertainment kicked in:

Oh the Feelin' when you're reelin You step lightly thinkin' you're number one	I made my way across the road and started down the slight incline towards my office building. Mr Brain busily unloaded all the routines for algebra, bicycle riding and sundry carpentry skills into backing storage to increase resources for high fidelity and low humour at my expense.
Down to zero in a word leavin' For another one	I began to cross the through-building cross street to the car park on the left while page faults in the old grey matter caused swapping of Conversational Gambits; Young Women For Use On and the discriminators for sweet, sour, left and right to long-term archiving.
Now you walk with your feet back on the ground	The road was snowy, but not too bad. I adjusted my grip on my sandwich while I temporarily lost the ability to use a telephone and play Monopoly. Certain depth perception routines were also deemed "not necessary" and filed.
Down to the ground Down to the ground	I stepped up onto the curb, missed my footing and crashed down to the ground, down to the ground. The playback was interrupted by one of those "needle dragged across the record" sound effects and I was temporarily incapacitated as Mr Brain madly reinstated a usable working set1.

I was able to maintain some remnant of my manly pride by the fact that as I went hurtling groundward I managed to adjust the angle of my morning coffee so that it didn't spill all over me and freeze me to the sidewalk, but all in all this one has to be filed under the "finest hour - not" heading.

1. "Working Set" is a computer term for a bunch of resources that a process needs to work. Yes, this is an attempt at geek humour, not readily accessible to the general public. No, geek humour isn't funny in the accepted sense of the phrase² ↑
2. Causing laughter, raising spirits, imbuing a sense of wellbeing and so forth