Avatar Further culture in the workplace

You might recall that, in years gone by, I made attempts to introduce a little high-minded art to the banal surroundings of a toilet at work, first with a renaissance masterpiece and then with something a little more abstract. More recently, an unknown colleague of mine got in on the act with an artwork of a different kind.

Well, once again the joyless drudges from facilities management have noticed something amiss and taken action. There can be no pleasure and no enjoyment. The A5 picture frame in the men’s toilet is not there to hold a picture, it is there to be empty, and so they have emptied it.

Not to worry. I don’t give up that easily. We have been through realism, abstract art and pop culture. I decided it’s time for the postmodern. Time for meta-art.

I present to you my masterpiece.

This, I think, has two really great positives.

  1. It makes a bold statement about the banality of a world where the corporate system can only tolerate the existence of a picture frame if it is empty, and asks, in the cultural desert of the workplace, is the frame itself the only art that can be permitted?
  2. It is the same colour as everything around it so they might not notice it for a long time.

Once again, the game is afoot. Let’s see how long this one lasts.

Avatar YouTube promo

Hey guys, Face Uncle back to rock your world.

I’ve been trying out some new things on my channel, based on comments and questions from YOU in the discord. They’re some pretty wild ideas and I’m all for it.

Here’s a little teaser for my upcoming video, which will be uploaded at the usual time of 4.00pm on Friday. Every Friday.

I’ve really gone through the looking glass here, guys, and I’m hoping you’ll join me for the ride.

There’ll also be some YouTube shorts showing all my usual outtakes and there are TONS so be sure to keep an eye out for these.

Don’t forget to like, comment and subscribe!

Avatar We are all last minuters

You run a remarkably successful (?) website. You need to come up with content every single month to entertain the millions (?) of punters who keep turning up for laughs (?).

Okay, I’ll stop there.

If you ever needed proof that despite our best intentions, we all normally earn a bean by scraping something up on the last day of the month then here it is:

I did a screenshot with an even longer list but I think I may have deleted it and/or it got lost in the hundreds of baby orb photos I’ve taken since September.

Hey, we’re all human. Coming up with new and entertaining ideas is hard when you lead such busy lifestyles such as ourselves. I’m not going to beat myself up over something as trivial as this. I’m going to listen to the weird whistling sound the radiator in the dining room makes now that we’ve had a new boiler installed and smile.

Avatar Cloves? No idea

The world is full of mysteries. There are so many things that we still don’t fully understand. I personally struggle to understand a lot of things. Sometimes it’s easier to make up your own ideas than taking the time to read a book and get the jist. That’s 50% of parenting anyway, making your kid believe that you have all the answers.

Oh, you expect to get them from me? Don’t be silly, I can’t answer your questions. Who do you think I am? I’m no science master like Kevin, all I’ve got are my street smarts and the money maker (aka my viso / volto).

That’s all I got.

Have you ever considered cloves? What they are? Where they come from? No, me neither. Cloves are a thing that is and you have to accept them regardless. The sooner you do the sooner we can all move on.

You still want me to explain them? Go on then.

You might think that cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae Syzyglum aromaticum, but you’d be totally wrong. They’re really toenails from donkeys that have been “lightly spiced” with effervescent apples and fervent aggression. Put it this way; have you ever put a clove in your mouth and felt happy? No. No you haven’t, and if you have then you’re a liar.

Cloves are made bitter to suck the very life out of you. There’s all this talk of helping with looking after your teeth and improving the flavour of your cooking and it’s all nonsense. They want you miserable and they will stop at nothing to turn you into a brittle, chafing dish of a man. They taste of misery squared. Do me a favour and steer clear of cloves.

Avatar Dog name taxonomy

Pets accrue nicknames like boats attract barnacles; we know this instinctively. Names evolve and grow organically as time goes on. But has anyone ever tried to pin this process down using science?

Until today, no. Enter Christopher J. 5156, scientist, to bring order to this world. I have methodically pinned down the names we use for our brilliant dog and charted their evolution to show how two original terms – “Fizz”, which is the dog’s actual name, and “dog”, which is what the dog actually is – have evolved into the names we now use for her. (Nobody ever calls her Fizz.)

Read More: Dog name taxonomy »

Avatar Calendar expansion pack delivery

The unprecedented girth of this year’s Pouring Beans Calendar has caused many of us difficulty, as we found that only eleven months would fit into the calendar’s patented display case. Thankfully, help is now at hand.

Your delivery of an official Pouring Beans Calendar Patented Display Case Expansion Pack Deluxe™ will take place shortly, and provides more space than is required even for the 2026 Calendar’s pages, which are printed on the same stuff they use for invitations to a coronation.

You will shortly receive:

2x Brick Corner 1x2x2, white

2x Brick 1×6, white

3x Brick 1×8, white

You will additionally receive any nitrile O-rings (20mm diameter) that you may have previously requested as part of the same package.

We recommend inserting these pieces as a new layer in the Display Case, and removing one layer of flat pieces, to obtain the optimum space for your 2026 Calendar. The additional pieces may be stored on the back of the Display Case and brought back into use in future years if Phil at work decides to order even more absurdly luxurious paper than this. However, we are now confident that, whatever arrangement you decide to settle upon, your Display Case is now capable of adapting to any calendar thickness eventuality.

Yours sincerely,

The Pouring Beans Calendar Customer Fulfilment Team

Avatar Phrase phase competition – Jan

Language is in a constant state of fluidity.

There, I started with something sensible for once. You know when you’re racking your brain and you realise you’re full of old expressions, catchphrases and adages that you’ve picked up along the way? Where do they all come from? How does someone uttering a sentence once suddenly become a phrase used hundreds of years later?

These days, it all comes from the Internet and lasts roughly about as long as the little orb’s attention span on a bad day. What is hilarious and prevalent one day is cringe and desperate the next. We need a more solid approach to this. Our lives are filled with throwaway matter so let’s bandage up 2026 by trying to create a brand new expression / phrase / something. I’ll be running a competition over the next few months and all being well, with the usual helpful contributions from Chris, we should be able to craft something exciting.

This month, we have five stunning entries to tantalise your verbal taste buds.

  1. Silicon valley, tin can alley – when someone loses all their wealth and is reduced to nothing but poverty
  2. Whatever next, Timothy? – a general expression to say when you don’t know what to say, even if there’s not a Timothy nearby
  3. I lost my hat on the treadmill of life – response to a question where you want to avoid the real answer and need to leave quickly
  4. Cough it up, wank bread – a work in progress (insults are hard)
  5. Sometimes you make the crinkle, sometimes the crinkle you make – when you want to sound wise without displaying any proper evidence of this

There we go. I await your feedback. I’ll also be taking any nominations in the comments section so if you have something you say to yourself that nobody else does, and you wish to share it with the world, then come on over like Shania Twain and let us know!