Over the past two years, whenever I'd enquired about a Uranus picture, I was always told that it would be a pretty "boring blob of light", with little to commend it.

BBC: Uranus image celebrates Herschel - the man and the machine

More than anything else, I realized, it had to be boring to be crazy, to think the same sequence of thoughts and come up with the same set of bizarre conclusions, to voice those conclusions using the same words, several times an hour, day in and day out.

NEWYORKER: The Reptile Garden

You could approach this hangover like David, with a glass or three of water and a vitamin pill, but that would be boring.

FORBES: Drink Some Rabbit Droppings And Call Me In The Morning

For, while previously I saw time as a stretch of terrain that had to be covered, with the future as a distant prospect, hopefully a bright one, and never boring at any rate, now it is interwoven with our life here and in a totally different way.

NEWYORKER: Total Recall