My Navel

Today has been a rather amazing day.

I had to drive to London for an hour-long meeting. Seven hours of driving for one hour’s work seems a little over the top but the drive was well worth it.

On the M4, just west of Reading and on the north-side of the road, is a fake tree. It is a mobile phone mast disguised as a tree; it is relatively easy to spot as it seems to only be half a tree, the top half appearing to have fallen off. Upon close examination the ‘tree’ has three antennae mounted axially along its trunk and the bark isn’t bark, but a smooth sheath printed with bark print. I am usually quite pleased to see this little act of environmental conservation but today I had a big surprise, I saw another. The second fake tree is a little further west and is on the south-side of the road. This new fake tree is of a slightly different design with the antennae standing from the top of the ’severed trunk’ like the part opened weapon of mass-destruction in a Bond movie.

Unfortunately, being at the wheel and without a camera, I have nothing to show for my most wondrous discovery.

The other brilliant sight was of no less than nine tanks.

At first we (I was driving with a colleague, but more of him in a moment) drove past a truck carrying two small tanks; now I don’t know a great deal about tanks so I will classify it as a ‘rather small tank with a thin, short gun on it’. This caused some great excitement and we passed four such vehicles, each carrying two tanks each. I pressed my work colleague (Dave) into tanking a few pictures on his camera, which quite frankly, was a dismal failure. His picture taking skills are second only to the rubbishness of his phone.

This only makes eight tanks though - the other was coming in the other direction and was of a much larger variety, I shall call it a ‘rather large tank with a chuffing great gun’ as is was quite large and had a fair-old weapon to brandish.

This really made my day, nine tanks and two fake trees - what more could I ask for? Oh, some belly button fluff would be good I suppose.

Well, yesterday, I wore the same black acrylic jumper as Saturday - I have no shame. While not as impressive as the first-day’s wear, I did extract a whopping 14mm fluff deposit. While not s substantial as the day before’s offering, being a little wispy and thin at one end, this lint did not disappoint.

Here she is…

Dave also mentioned that the Futurama movie was out on DVD. This really topped my day off with Strawberry jam - I love Futurama and have been waiting for this film for some time. To Play.com tomorrow methinks.

I have a friend with a brain tumour. A few years ago he was operated on and went into remission. Things were good for a couple of years, but recently he went back into hospital in sharp decline. His tumour has started to spread through his brain and his oncologist thinks it is inoperable. It is early days and no-one knows how much time he has at this stage, but the likelihood is that he will not survive the experience.

I have never lost a close friend before. I have lost elderly relatives but you expect them to go sooner or later. You don’t expect people in their thirties to be gone so soon. This isn’t going to be relatively fast like an elderly relative either; as time goes on and the tumour grows, he will change. I can already see the differences, but he is still the same person in there, and if we’re lucky he will stay that way. There is a chance that he will become a different person though and the person I know will be gone before his body gives out.

I don’t quite know how to handle this, it is new territory for me. I guess I will find a way but right now I am still stunned with shock.

Anyway, in an attempt to escape from reality, here is some information about yesterday’s belly button fluff.

I mentioned in my last post that things were shaping up well for the day, that my belly button was gathering lint at a good pace. Well, it didn’t disappoint. I was wearing a brand new black acrylic jumper and it seemed to have fluff to spare. Not only did I pull out a 12mm cone of lint at around 18:00, I extracted a second at bedtime.

I am somewhat pleased at yesterday’s production of navel lint, although my joy is somewhat tempered by the news I heard today. I would have liked to be a little more verbose with this post, but my enthusiasm is a little low.

Yesterday I mentioned that there was a nice gathering in my navel and upon extraction I was not disappointed. Mother-load is a bit of an exaggeration as it isn’t once of the biggest lint-balls my navel has ever produced, but after the last few days of little or no accretion, I am overjoyed.

A full 10 mm of prime grey lint complete with a belly hair coiled through it.

This picture was taken with the close-up lens I am borrowing from a colleague. The depth of focus is so shallow that it is very hard to get the entire lint-ball into focus.

In other news my mobile phone has been playing up somewhat. There are a few broken buttons and the alarm goes off whenever I need to reset the phone - which is about once a day because it is shite- without any means of turning it off or disabling it. My mobile provider is being kind enough to next-day courier a replacement to me, but this does mean I need to get any data off my phone so that the courier can take it away. You wouldn’t think this would be too hard with no less than four methods of wireless communication available to it, but after emailing, uploading to the internet, Bluetooth, wifi and infra-red all failed I am left feeling very frustrated with life, technology and especially the Orange SPV (Steaming Pile of Vomit) M3100. In the end I just gave up and performed a factory reset, hence losing all of the data on the phone - I hope there was nothing I can’t live without.

Before I talk about my own belly button and its fluffy antics, I want to highlight another’s plight. The story of Jessica Collins and her terrible accident makes my recent belly button woes pale into insignificance.

Back at the end of September 2007, when on a working holiday (in Munich) Ms Collins was involved in a car accident. The portion of the seat beat the goes across the lap or belly pushed her navel piercing almost through to her spine. This unfortunate event placed her in intensive care for five days and left her with a wound that has been likened to a bullet hole. Read all about it at BBC News.

I know this is slightly old news but there is something remarkable about this. Ultimately it was a freak accident but that is a tremendous amount of damage for a small bit of body jewellery.

On a slightly different note, my close-up lenses haven’t arrived yet, although the ebay vendor assures me that they have been posted. A work colleague has lent me his x10 lens for the interim and I have a fine collection of fluff that I will photographing with it later.

Until then I have last night’s little wad to share. It still isn’t a great deal but it appears my belly button is well on the road to making a full recovery. I don’t know what happened but it does appear to be gaining strength with each passing day. I didn’t have a ruler to hand to I had to photograph it against the ubiquitous penny.

It is a little more of a wisp than yesterday but it is still under-sized for my average day’s production. Even so, I have added it to the Lint Jar; there is still little to see in the bottom, the two deposits in there so far still look a little lost.

Panic was setting in yesterday; with not a single fibre in my navel the day before, I was checking for lint buildups frequently throughout the day, and cupboard was still looking bare. With my mind circling the dark drain of depression I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see fluff again.

Luckily by around 8pm yesterday evening there was a tiny wisp of fluff beginning to gather. I pondered on the efficacy of whipping it out there and then just incase a stray draft whisked it away to the dusty corners of my house, but I managed to leave it be until bed-time.

Upon extraction I was sorely disappointed as the day’s production of belly button fluff was tiny indeed; a wee wisp of lint graced my finger-tip. I stashed this little piece of fluff in the jar and went to bed content, if not happy. The volume was low, but there was something to show for my day.

Arriving at work this morning, I discover that my close-up lenses still haven’t arrived, so no good pictures of the lint for you. Instead I present a picture taken with my normal, unmodified 18-55mm lens.

No a great image, but the best I can do with the equipment I have at my desk.

I was talking to a colleague who has bough similar close-up lenses and unfortunately he says they are crap. Oh well, we will see when they arrive. I might have to buy an extension tube instead.

Anyway, enough of yesterday’s rubbish bit of fluff, I want to share the most wondrous thing. There is a chap called Graham Barker that has been collecting his since 1984. He holds a world record for the biggest collection of belly button fluff. I have no intention of challenging this man, he has a 24 year head start for one thing, but project harvest is only intended to run for a year.

Behold: Graham Barker’s Collection

I am both awestruck and inspired by this.

It is very interesting that its colour fades over the years. I would be interested to know how the collection is stored, is it kept in the dark?  Could it be bacterial activity? What does it smell like?

So many questions. I might drop him an email at some point to see if he has any pointers.

Project Harvest has been dealt a cruel and bitter blow. Last night I explored the kitchen cupboards for a suitable jar for the collection to reside in; here is what I found.

You can’t really see from the ruler in the image, but this is a nice little jar measuring in at 8cm tall.

But, as you can clearly see from the image, it remains resolutely empty. Upon disrobing last night, I inspected my umbilical cavity only to find it completely bereft of fluff. This is a crushing blow to Project Harvest; to encounter such a setback on the first day of this endeavour calls the future of the entire exercise into question. Could this be the cruel hand of fate deeming that I am no longer worthy of lint deposits? Did it fall out during the day? Was my clothing not fluffy enough? Too many questions buzzing around my head.

I shall cheer myself up with my first posting of…

Belly Button of the Week.

Click for big

If this resounding lack of lint continues I will have to find some guest lint to tide me over during this dry spell.

I am currently contemplating my navel; it often contains a great deal of fluff.

Over the years I have had some great navel pondering moments. These were kindled, at least in part by a particular episode of the Ren & Stimpy Show; the episode was Jerry the Belly Button Elf, I particularly liked the accompanying song, Climb Inside My Belly Button, which I still play at work on occasion all these years later.

As I have got older, fatter and hairier, my own belly button has started to accumulate fluff at an alarming rate. I often pull these little cones of lint from my navel and marvel at their colour, shape and even their very existence.

I have made a couple of abortive attempts at maintaining a site on the interwebs, both of which faltered and died. The main cause was focus; there was no driving force, no one thing to capture my attention. They inevitably suffered from meandering around and simply fizzling out. I needed something I could write about every day, something that wasn’t so mind-numbingly dull that I dreaded doing it, yet something that happened to me every day to act as a reminder. I couldn’t write about my own poo as this has been done with rather great success at The Log Blog. My own urine would simply be a conceptual rip-off. I briefly considered bogies as I am a dedicated nose-miner, but the thought of photographing and documenting this was a little too grim; there were logistical problems too, like where to draw the line between bogies and snot, and those ones that fall out of their own accord in polite company.

So, there I was, sat on the toilet contemplating my navel and mumbling “climb inside” quietly to myself when the brainwave struck. I shall collect, document and comment on my belly button fluff; it shall be called Project Harvest.

Of course, I shall also post a bunch of complete rubbish about my daily confusion about life in general, but this is a blog so it would be remiss of me to do otherwise.

Yesterday I ordered some nice close-up lenses for my digital camera to better document my navel accumulations. I have an idea about where I might find a jar in which to keep my collection. I have even looked up some interesting reference material on the Great Wide Interwebs, which I look forward to sharing in bite-sized chunks.

There will also be Belly Button of the Week as well as Readers Navels (if I can find any readers). I am getting so excited.