Stuff, things and other stuff and things

Don't ask me why, but the lyrics to that song that goes "you're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you don't you" popped in to my head earlier.  I thought about it for a second, and came to the conclusion that the singer is an arse.  Let me elaborate....

 

The singer is singing the song directly to someone, that much is patently obvious by the use of the words "you're" and "you".  To then try and claim the song isn't about the person being sung at is ludicrous.  Anyway, from the completely random to the just as completely random.....

 

As some of you may already know, I'm being made redundant in a (at the time of writing at least) 2 days, 2 hours, 12 minutes and 19 seconds.  Which I'm more than happy about.  The thing that's pissing a few people off right now is the fact that we're still here, pretending to work and already the desks are being removed, computers taken to other parts of the building and etc.  We've not even bloody left yet.  Once again Barclays show their usual tact and diplomacy.  Bastards.

I wish I was a station announcer

I passed through Kings Cross earlier this evening (no I wasn't looking for a good time) and was witness to the complete inability of adult human beings to follow even the most simple of instructions.

There were a load of people waiting at the entrance to platform 1, and as the train arriving at said platform pulled in to the station the announcer dude made a (very clear) announcement telling people not to enter platform 1 until the train had come to a stop. Twice. Obviously then a load of people started walking on to the platform. The station announcer might as well have been speaking Portugese. Or perhaps Welsh. Why these people decided to completely ignore the announcement I don't know. Perhaps they were Welsh.

I decided there and then that I want to be a station announcer. Had I been today you would have heard the following from the PA system:

Please do not enter platform 1 until the train arriving has stopped. Hello? Everyone walking on to platform 1, are you deaf or stupid. I said do NOT enter platform 1. As in the negative form of do. I might as well be speaking to myself. Fine, do what you like, see if I care....

I think I'd be good at that job.

Late for work

As I write this I'm sat on a bus heading in the exact opposite direction to the direction I need to head to get to work. To say I'm going to be late today is somewhat of an understatement.

My excuse this morning is that my alarm didn't go off. Although this is 100% true the point is rendered moot by the fact it didn't go off whilst I was asleep in a different town to that in which I live. Of course, my boss doesn't need to know that.

I can get away with this for two reasons. Firstly, I'm being made redundant and don't care enough to be bothered about punctuality, and secondly I have a trusted colleague covering for me should the boss phone the office looking for me. It always pays to have someone who's willing to bullshit for you in an emergency, especially if you can pay them wih crisps and cans of Cherry Coke.

Today's excuse is probably the worst one I've used for some time. My favourite still has to be 'my washing machine flooded the kitchen'. I phoned that one in whilst curled up on the sofa with the girl who'd spent the night with me, drinking tea and generally not giving two shits and a fuck about being in the office. I should have been given an Oscar for my performance that morning. On the phone.

The all time best excuse (which I've yet to use) for being late / not going to work has to be 'I shat myself on the train'. Enjoy that mental image.

Pesky blog software

Hi all,

 

Apologies for the lack of updates - I've been experiencing a few technical problems of late, which basically resulted in a very funny and well written post simply disappearing in to the ether.  Which was nice, and wasn't a total waste of half an hour. 

 

This may help to explain the previous post, which was basically a test.  Unfortunately, as I've mentioned previously, my IT department are bastards, and I can't log in to my blog account to remove it.  Peh!

 

So then, what's happened since my last post?

 

Ah yes, the fireworks party.

 

We decided to have a fireworks party and obviously the women in our social group were not to be trusted with an important task like going firework shopping, so three of us went down to the local explosives shop with some cash, and set about buying the best fireworks we could.  There were two main criteria - they had to be huge, and if possible, they also had to have a good name.  We therefore ended up with fireworks either called things like "Armageddon" or "Criss cross crabs after sweetcorn".  I still think we should have bought "Happy swan after amazing lay" but we had already reached our budget of *cough cough splutter*....

 

So, we returned with a large box of very large fireworks, and proceeded to get drunk and put on a display.  Which was fine, until we got to the point where we decided to launch three rockets simultaneously.  Rocket one went shooting in to the sky, rocket two failed to light, and rocket three decided it wasn't going anywhere, but was instead going to explode in the garden.  Cue the two words you never want to hear at a fireworks party ("Shit!  RUN!") followed by some very swift exits from the garden.

 

I don't know if you've ever seen a large rocket explode from about ten meters away, but it's bloody impressive.  What was more impressive was nobody died.  There was a lovely crater in the lawn though. 

Ignore this post

Nothing to see here, move along

Some people should get out more

I was on a website the other day which had a load of questions fans of 'Friends' had asked someone who worked on the show. One of the questions asked was 'Is Rachel a Green or a Greene?'.

I have a question. Who cares? Why does anyone need to know this? I mean, I know a lot of useless shit about lots of stuff, but even I don't care whether Rachel's surname ends with an 'e' or not.

I'm not being funny, but imagine you have an oportunity to ask the creators of Friends one question - anything you like. You could ask about the writing, secrets from behind the scenes, anything. But no, you ask if Rachel's a Greene or a Green. Idiots.

Iin case you're that demented and sad that you want to know, it's Green, without an 'e'.

I should point out that the only reason I know that is because I checked - I actually do research things for this blog occasionally.

If I really wanted to scare you with completely useless knowledge I could share the things I know about Howard from the Halifax adverts. I won't though, for two reasons: firstly, it's really useless information, and secondly, there's an outside chance that Howard could sue me for libel as at least one bit of information is unverified, although if it's true it's very funny.

The most disgusting thing ever. Ever.

My landlord is selling the house I live in, and obviously has to get surveyors and bearded blokes with self-propelling pencils who know lots about bricks to come and look at the house.  Not a problem, I left my bedroom door unlocked and made sure I hadn't left any money, expensive computer equipment or Class A drugs lying around and off I went to work.  My room's fairly tidy so I've no reason to not let people in there for whatever reason.  I've even had girls in there. 

 

So anyway, the next day I got home and was chatting to my housemate (let's call him "Bob"), who mentioned the previous day had been somewhat interesting.  It transpires that the landlord had come around with the various blokes and a mate of his to look around the house.  They disappeared upstairs to look at housemate number 3's room, and called for "Bob" to come up and have a look.

 

The guys had gone in to housemate number 3's room and discovered it to be slightly untidy.  Slightly untidy in the same way a city dump might be described as slightly untidy.  They discovered the following:

 

• 8 months worth of empty beer cans
• Hundreds of empty cigarette packets
• Carrier bags full (as in completely full and plural) of cigarette butts
• Carrier bags full of vomit
• Carrier bags full of shit
• All the missing plates, bowls, cuttlery, glasses, mugs etc. which have gone missing over the last few months

Also, the mattress for the bed was half on the bed, half off, torn, ripped, burnt with cigarettes....  You can't even see the carpet.

You may think I'm exaggerating in the name of artistic license but I can assure you I'm not.  Seriously, you can't make this up.  I live with Sidcup's own Mr Treebus. 

I'm off to be sick in a plastic carrier bag....

Formatting

Oh, and sorry for the shite formatting below - this is exactly why I don't
use Hotmail unless I really have to....

Oh Christ, that's the wrong jar!

Bloody hell, can you believe I've been writing this thing for two years?
Jesus....

BTW, I've been having problems with my Email so if this has been posted
multiple times I apologise, it's really not my fault. Anyway.....

I'm going to try and make more of an effort to write more regularly on this
here blog, as I fully acknowledge I've been a bit lax recently. I would
come up with an excuse, but it's mainly because fundamentally I'm a lazy
bastard. I'm also going to try and write more than a couple of hundred
words in each post.

That said, it's not always easy - not having a TV doesn't help as I now have
to actively go and find out what's been going on in the world, as opposed to
flicking to Sky News. I suppose this could be useful from a "getting
information from more than one source and making my own decisions about
what's true and what's media bullshit" perspective, but as I already
mentioned, I'm a lazy bastard so I'll probably just get all my news from Sky
News online. Oh, and Popbitch, natch.

Anyway, enough, on with todays post.

I was making a chilli last night, and as always I laid all my ingredients
out before I began to make sure I had everything I need. One quick dash to
the corner shop to buy some rice later I had everything required. I checked
the various spice jars were sufficiently full and decided the cayenne pepper
jar was running a bit low. Luckily I had a refill, so I emptied a refill
packet in to the jar and carried on preparing dinner.

Everything was going fine until I started adding the various spices and
peppers and things. I'd already added two large forkfulls of lazy chillis
and a good amount of hot chilli powder, and decided to add some hot paprika
and the cayenne pepper. It was only after I'd added the cayenne pepper that
I noticed the cayenne pepper jar still seemed a bit empty. It was also
around then that I noticed the hot paprika jar seemed more full than I
remembered it being.

Oh shit, thought I, I know what I've done here.

I had managed to add the cayenne pepper refill to the wrong jar, and then
proceeded to add a LOT of the stuff thinking it was paprika, and then some
more based on the usual amount of cayenne pepper I'd use.

Needless to say the chilli was awesome, if a little hotter than I usually
would make. My co-workers aren't impressed though.

Taking over the world

I was watching Independence Day the other day and something occurred to me - the aliens who want to take over the planet always fly down to Earth and take us on, and we have tanks and nukes and shit, which inevitably destroy the advancing alien hordes. Oh, and Tom Jones works too.

The thing is, surely it would make more sense for the aliens to destroy the moon. It's undefended for a start, and would be fairly simple for an advanced alien race to destroy.

Once the moon was destroyed, all the aliens would need to do would be to sit back and watch us get destroyed by floods and hurricanes and things, and then when we're all dead pop down in their spaceship with a flag and they've got themselves a planet.

It would make a shit film though, obviously.

Table for one

It's been a strange night - I'm away on business in sunny Leeds and, unfortunately, due to unforseen circumstances I ended up on my own instead of out with some friends.

I lived in a hotel in Leeds for four months so I'm quite comfortable sitting in a hotel bar having a beer on my own and watching the telly. For some reason drinking alone in hotel bars is acceptable (I'm doing it right now).

The thing is, hotel food is shit and overpriced, and the Leets Marriott is about twenty seconds away from two of the best restajurants in the city. So, I decided I should go have a decent meal as the company are paying.

The thing is, I've never gone to a restaurant on my own before, and it kind of strange walking in and asking for a table for one.

To be fait, the maitre d' was fine with it, found me a table (right next to the biggest group of people there just to highlight my sadness I'm sure) and I had a fantastic meal and some lovely wine.

This, I've decided, is a good thing - firstly, it shows that there's nothing wrong with eating alone and secondly, it puts me in good stead for my trip around the world when eating alone will become commonplace.

It was also nice to sit and have a lovely meal withbout having to make small talk and worry about whether the other person or persons were enjoying themselves, or whether they were sneakily ordering bottles of bollinger when I wasn't looking.

Oh, and the sea bass was excellent.

Getting sweaty

I was thinking the other day - how is it that your skin is waterproof, which is obviously very ueful when you take a shower for example, but sweat can get out? Is it just me that finds that somewhat odd?

Also, how come when you open your eyes underwater your head doesn't flood from water coming in through your tear ducts? Or through your ears?

It's all very strange.

This needs some thought, and maybe some investigation on wikipedia.

My IT department are bastards

I got in to work last Friday to discover Facebook has been blocked at work.  I'm distraught.  I don't have the internet at home (long story) so I'm now restricted to using Facebook mobile, which is fine for checking who's poked you and for sending / recieving messages but that's about the limit.

 

I've just discovered they've also blocked blogger.com, which is inconvenient, although not the end of the world (the fact I'm posting this and am at work is evidence that they can't shut me up!).

 

It's so pathetic - they've made us all redundant so we're basically just working out our notice, and now we've got nothing to keep us occupied in any slack time / breaks - there's only so much enjoyment to be had from flicking rubber bands at people making coffee in the little kitchen across from my desk.

 

I can obviously understand why they do it, but that's not the point. 

 

Anyway, I need other things to do.  So far I've come up with:

 

• Sculpting things out of blu-tack, or, in the absence of blu-tack, bogies.
• Forwarding my phone to the emergency phone in the lift for shits and giggles
• Writing blog posts
• Thinking up ways to kill the IT department (I'm thinking goat poison in their tea)

Notice how none of the things to do involve work?  :o)

Toast

So, toast. I can't believe I've been doing this for nearly two years and haven't dedicated a post to toast already.

Toast is, of course, amazing. I could quite happily live on toast with peanut butter (and tea or milkshake), although I'm not sure how healthy that would be.

Most people think toast is a relatively new idea, but it has in fact been around almost as long as man. It's steeped in history is toast, and in fact has been pivotal in some of the most important moments in history to date.

Many people believe Marie Antoinette, Queen consort to Louis XVI, once said "let them eat cake" in response to news that there was no bread for the poor to eat. This is, in fact, erroneous - there was in fact a cake shortage, and the actual response was "let them eat toast".

Toast is also key in the history of Nazi Germany. "The night of the long knives" in 1934 is a somewhat misleading name for the assasination of the SA on Hitler's orders. Although it is true that around 85 people were murdered, the event should really be called "The night of the burnt toast", as it was burnt toast that enraged Hitler so much that he deemed the slaughter of Kohl's SA necessary.

I could give other examples but we'd be here all day.

Nowadays of course, toast generally appears in popular culture as opposed to mass murders (although I'm sure Harold Shipman liked the odd round of toast), generally in comedy (Red Dwarf, Peter Kay etc.). Even so it doesn't seem to get the recognition it deserves. Which is sad. Next time you're enjoying toast, remember how special that bit of warm bread is.

I'm off for some toast....

Leaving, on a jet plane

I have no problem with flying, other than the food and the lack of stuff to do on a long flight, natch. It's a perfectly safe way of travelling.

Obviously things do go wrong occasionally, and I'm sure we're all familiar with the standard crash position of head between your legs. Most people think tht the crash position is supposed to stop you coming to harm, but that's not actually the case. Apparently (and I have no reason not to believe this is true) the position is designed to protect your jaw so your body can be identified by your dental records. Which is nice. It's definitely something to talk about next time you get stuck next to a nervous flyer on a long-haul flight.

Madness I tell you, madness!

I was about to write something but before I do, something else just popped in to my head - if Holland is the Netherlands, does that make Dutch towns Nether Regions? Hmmmm.

Anyway, moving on (quickly) - people say that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, but I'm not so sure. I went drinking last Friday with a load of people I'd never met before other than through chatting to them online. That to me seems like the first sign of madness - I was fully expecting to be given some robes and a suicide pill before the end of the evening.

As it turned out it was a great evening - I got to meet some very nice people and chat about bees, which is always the mark of a good night. Ok so I fell asleep on the train and ended up with a fifty quid cab fare home but these things happen.

The thing is, I basically learnt that by grabbing life by the balls you can have a lot of fun.

So, whether it's badger baiting with David Attenborough, poking sharks or throwing rocks at wasp nests, just get out there and do it, before you miss your chance. Otherwise who knows what you'll miss out on.

Next time on 'stating the fucking obvious....'

Wasps

It's a lovely day, I'm sat in the garden in the sunshine the morning after an almighty pissup that saw the best part of an off-license consumed by about seven people. We've tidied up, done the washing up and got the barbeque back out for a nice healthy breakfast of burgers, sausages and more lager.

Of course, days like this are always marred by one of the most pointless creatures on the planet (no, not Jodie Marsh) - wasps.

Just what is the point of them. They fly around, trying to go for a swim in your pint and stinging people for no apparent reason. The little shits. Bees I don't have a problem with, they pollenate flowers and make honey (for more information on this see Eddie Izzard's 'Unrepeatble' DVD), and spiders catch flies and make gravy. Wasps however should all die.

Mind you, it wouldn't be summer without them would it, and you can always get them pissed on Vodka and watch them fly shakily across the beer garden. Which is always good for shits and giggles.

Badger badger badger badger

I went to a wedding yesterday, out in the sticks at some golf club or other. It was a lovely sunny day and a good time was had by all. Even the groom.

A few of us had to leave early (ish) as we had a bit of a drive and a Metallica gig today so we jumped in the car and headed off down one of the country lanes back towards civilisation and a lack of golfing slacks. As we came around a corner we saw something fairly large in the road. Too big for a fox it took us a couple of seconds to process what we were seeing, and then all three of us in the car shouted in unison "it's a fucking BADGER!".

We've all always wanted to see a real badger, and there it was, jogging across our path! It's only taken 29 years but I can tick that goal off my 'things to do before I die' list. Happy days indeed

Social networking - killing social lives?

I'm currently a member of three social networking sites on the web - MySpace, Facebook (poke!) and Fridaycities London, which you probbaly won't have heard of but that doesn't matter because you can only join if you're invited. Fridaycities is more like a forum than something like Facebook but you have a profile and stuff like that too.

The amount of time one can spend interacting with people in various ways on these sites is quite scary - you can easily rack up a good few hours an evening - especially if a decent topic of conversation comes up on a forum type site like FCL.

The thing is, it's so easy to spend huge amounts of time on these types of sites that you could potentially end up spending more time interacting with people online than actually interacting with people down the pub. Which is sad.

I would head down the pub, but I've got to check to see if anyone's poked me on Facebook....

I'm back

Yeah yeah, I know. It's been far too long since I last posted, but you get to read this shit for free so you can't really complain if I don't write for a few weeks can you? No.

I guess part of the problem is that my creative talent is currently being stretched across a number of outlets - there's the blog, the email I send out to my work colleagues every week, a website that I post on fairly regularly, the pub.... Lame excuse? Probably, but apparently I'm Emo, which I suppose would at least explain the apathy.....

So this week I've been looking after my brothers cat, and it's been a complete nightmare. I've looked after cats before and had no problems, but my brother's cat, Hector, is a complete bastard. Seriously, I'm ready to kill him - I've already considered giving him away to the first person that wants him. I've compiled a list to show what I mean:

Hector's crimes

• Crying every time I shut a door behind me for some peace and quiet / to eat dinner
• Biting me
• Biting my girlfriend
• Malting (whilst sitting in the bath)
• Drinking my milkshake from my glass
• Putting the laces of my converse in the milkshake after I stopped him drinking it
• Headbutting my hand whilst I was pouring out his food causing me to spill biscuits all over the floor
• Trying to eat my sunglasses
• Shitting on my brothers' bed

Yes, that does say shitting, not sitting.

So, if anyone wants a free Persian Blue please let me know, I'll stick him in the post.