There are times when I have the horrible suspicion that I'm not part of the same world as other people. This is one of those moments.

See, I've resisted Facebook because I've read about it, heard about it from other people, and decided that it really isn't something I need to occupy my precious time with, not when I can be doing something constructive like looking out of the window at fireworks exploding in the distance. But over the last two nights I've been told by two different people about how I should join, one because she doesn't have enough friends on it and one because she's terribly enthusiastic about it.

It's late, I'm a bit depressed - I don't want my team to be the one that gets into the League for one season and then gets relegated the next, after all - I nearly inadvertently despatched myself by leaving the oven door open for the ten minutes after I put my pizza in it, and now, with the fireworks apparently over for the evening, I decide that I'm going to have a look at this Facebook thing, and now I'm looking at the first page on the edit profile thing and it's asking me which gender I prefer and what I'm looking for. And it feels wrong. It feels the complete opposite of everything that I am. And I know I shouldn't care and that my priorities are almost certainly all wrong and that I'm out of step again, but, well, there y'go.

I find the 'Deactivate your account' button. I offer up as my reason for deactivation "This seems horrible". A screen pops up to tell me that I can reactivate my account at any time I like. Facebook: you'll never leave!

Important notices

FAO: The controller of BBC2

What I'm going to do, right, is I'm going a big warehouse with an enormous pole in the middle of it, and I'm going to drug you, drag you off to this warehouse, chain you to the pole and then kick you in the head. Except before I kick you in the head I'm going to hold up a big sign saying "NEXT: Me kicking you in the head", and then afterwards I'm going to ask you if me holding up a big sign saying that I was going to kick you in the head made you more inclined to stay around for being kicked in the head. And then I'm going to kick you in the head until you agree that's it's a stupid, pointless idea.

FAO: The controller of BBC 6 Music

And when I'm done with that, I'm going to do the same to you, except instead of the head-kicking/sign business, I'm going to play a recording of George Lamb bellowing at you until your ears fall off, or until you admit that suggesting that this perma-hollering dullard "has a rare combination of wit, warmth and passion for music" is a lie and that being "really proud of the talent who work with 6 Music like Stephen Merchant, Russell Brand and Russell Howard" suggests that you know absolutely fuck all about anything, whatever comes first.

FAO: Whoever wrote the headline "'PC' Emu returns to screens" in the piece of crap free paper the woman opposite me on the train home was reading

Same thing, except that as well as playing George Lamb bellowing at you, I'm going to hit you repeatedly over the head with a wooden false arm until you satisfactorily explain in which way Emu wasn't politically correct. It was Emu! Emu! For fuck's sake! He was on the end of Rod Hull's arm and attacked everyone! The only person who was treated unfairly by Emu was Grotbags, and she was evil is such a moderate that quite frankly I think she was in on the whole thing, like the Washington Generals of witchdom or something. Being "PC" had absolutely fucking nothing to do with it.

I have the nits.

I am 31 years old. I managed to get through primary school without getting the nits. I managed to get through secondary school without getting the nits. I managed to get through my mum having various children in the house without getting the nits. I have done all sorts of uncling without getting the nits.

In the past, there are times when I have had lots of hair. For example, when I was a student, I became so distrustful after a couple of ropey haircuts of the barbers' in the town I was being educated in that I would only have my hair cut when I returned home, which led to my carrying around quite a lot of hair (never a good look for the porky young gent). At no point did I get the nits. Recently, I've been getting my hair cut more frequently than ever, to stop the grey bits about the side becoming too prominent and the thinning bit on top from being too apparent. And I now have the nits.

(On reading this here leaflet - really must get my scanner out at some point - I discover that nits are the spent egg shells rather than the things flitting about in my hair. I didn't know this before because I've never had them, and thus have not had cause to find out.)

I'm fairly certain that I know where I got the nits from. I shall not elaborate, but will note that the low rates of infanticide in the UK reflect extremely well on the nation's parents, and that if those two did drug their kid to death, I reckon we should probably go easy on them. And that I'm never letting any of my cousins' children near me ever, ever again.

I went out this morning to get some stuff to put on my hair in an attempt to eliminate the nits. Despite suspecting that it was going to be terribly embarrassing and that I was going to be made to feel like I had the clap or something, the woman in the chemists was extremely helpful and provided me with the right stuff without smirking. I applied it this afternoon and it seems to have had an effect, as I'm not nearly as itchy as I was; I'm not sure if my remaining itches are nits or nit-related paranoia. I keep going through my hair with the comb every few minutes and haven't come across any little black things for a while, although I have been encountering some resistance; I'm not sure if those are the eggs or just my skull getting in the way.

As if to mock me further, I can hear the sound of people having fun from one of the flats below. I suspect that I probably wouldn't have been doing anything vaguely fun this evening if I wasn't, basically, a disease, but I can't help but feel that they're really rubbing in it. And goodness knows what I'm supposed to say when I return to work on Monday. "Good weekend?" There's not really a worthwhile answer to that one, somehow.

Space dictators from the future

I was slightly disappointed that the tube strike was called off early, as I was rather enjoying it. I like the idea that apparently everyone in London except for me is reduced to a seething mass because they can't get on a tube train, despite almost certainly spending much of their time complaining about how unpleasant it is to have to take the tube, and that their journey to and from work being slightly longer than usual is somehow a staggering insult of spitting on your wife proportions.

(I am, of course, assuming that people's moods are accurately reflected by the piece of crap free papers and their headlines prominently featuring words like 'anger', 'fury', 'misery' etc, despite this being London, where people being angry, furious and miserable are the norm. See also everything from a supermarket being closed for a couple of hours up to and including a large-scale terrorist attack being described as "chaos".)

Naturally, taking my usual route home tonight rather than the tube-free emergency backup route that I've been using for the last couple of days resulted in me getting home about five minutes later than I have for the rest of the week. However, this was made up for by a fellow in my stalled carriage having a quite tremendous beard, like a 19th century Russian aristocrat's or something. This reminded me of another disappointment of the last few days, that I haven't seen an utterly spurious statistic about how much the strikes were costing being reported unquestioningly. "Business leaders estimated that the strikes have cost £40 million", I've failed to hear anyone say; I probably don't listen to the news enough. And I'd worked out a clever parody about how much men with beards are costing the economy - reduced spending on razors and associated products; time spent stroking their facial fuzz; time spent by other people wondering if they or their partner would look more attractive if they had a beard; resentment from colleagues unable to grow one without looking as if they have a dirty face - which I was going to estimate at £25 million, and suggest the political assassination of David Bellamy as the way forward. Maybe next week, then.

I've been trying to write something about Coming Down The Mountain, a programme described by the BBC website as "original and poignant" and described by me from the 20 minutes or so of it I managed to watch before I felt that I'd rather poke my eyes out than sit through any more as "about as good as the sort of playlet that we came up with in GCSE Drama lessons, bearing in mind that I was completely crap at GCSE Drama, and that when in GCSE Drama we were asked to get into groups, all of the kids who were good at drama would shun me and get together with other people who were good at drama, and understandably so, and as a result I like to think I know a bit about embarrassingly badly plotted attempts at drama featuring excruciatingly awful dialogue about how difficult it is to be a teenager, and no matter how many scenes of teenagers smoking and drinking and touching each other on the nipples and that you put in doesn't make it any better than a particularly bad GCSE Drama playlet", but I can't really do it. I'm sure this used to be much easier.