Foiled by Burglars (Plus Cookies)
THEME: THE IT CROWD
R.I.P. I hope you've gone to a better place.
Happy Friday!
Exactly one week ago to the minute, as I was happily noshing down a restaurant pide, the house where I was staying was getting done over by burglars.
I lost a couple of cheap laptops and a more expensive smartphone (that I used as a camera and for learning Welsh).
This was a right royal pain in the ass for me and genuinely distressing for the owners of the property, who came home from holiday in Chile to find their back windows ripped open and their pants, papers and personal property strewn all over the floor.
I felt like a bit of a shit guard dog, to be honest.
But it also reminded me that burglary is a job pretty much like any other.
Burglars are usually professionals, the police told us. They'd probably been watching the house for weeks and knew exactly when to strike for maximal take-home and minimal fuss.
This made me feel slightly better.
I suppose burglary is just another predetary occupation that sensible people would protect themselves against - in the same way that I protect myself against invasive advertising online by using an adblocker. Police are to burglars as regulators are to libellous newspaper editors or rate-fiddling bankers.
I'm not saying burglary is good and noble porfession, I'm just saying that it's probably no worse than many others. And when you put it alongside the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, manipulating foreign exchange markets or distributing salmonella-tainted peanut butter - it's probably not so bad.
In many ways, burglars probably consider their profession a victimless crime. The property I was staying in at the time had comprehensive contents insurance, so any stolen goods could be replaced at zero cost and only mild inconvenience. In some odd way, I feel like I've been made complicit in an insurance scam. (The fact that I was a visitor and not covered is an unfortunate detail.)
Liberal moralising aside, here are four lessons I've learnt from my little experience:
Store your valuables in the bathroom or the kitchen. Neither were ransacked. Bedrooms were most thoroughly turned over.
Back up your data every day. There's no excuse with every web giant and their dog offering free cloud storage that will sync your data as you edit (at the cost of your privacy).
Those timers that switch on your lights randomly are probably worth the investment.
If in doubt, keep all your money in artwork and impractical musical instruments. The burglars got my piece of crap laptop, but they missed out on a £2,500 cello. Suckers.
Inexplicably Popular on the Blog This Week
Palestinian Jokes: No Laughing Matter (2011)
There’s a Arab proverb that says: “I laugh, therefore I exist.” This piece is nothing more than a collection of jokes from Palestine, proving that they do – still – exist.
My personal favourite:
A boy asks his father for two shekels for a return bus trip to a checkpoint.
“One shekel should be enough,” his father says, “you’ll be coming home in an ambulance!”
(No) Laughing Matter: If you ever get the chance to watch the full film, do!
Thanks for reading! Now what?
Immediately: peanut butter and date cookies.*
Tomorrow: I'm giving my wee talk on the use of psychedelics for productivity and pleasure. Hopefully, I'll post some audio from the AlterNatives Festival next week.
Then it's into the cauldron of my first ever writers room for Foiled - six comedians in a room tearing our scripts to pieces and (hopefully) putting them back together again, but with (even) more funny.
And somewhere in among all that activity, I need to source a new laptop!
Yours with mouth half-full of cookie,
mpf
* Two tablespoons of peanut butter, a few dates and (half) an egg. Mash, blob onto a baking sheet. 180 degrees. 10 minutes. Nom.
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