What I Should Be Doing

When I was a child I was, at first, convinced that when I grew up I was going to work as a space cowboy. It seemed like an ideal life: rounding up space cattle, eating space beans and flying through space on a jet-powered horse called ‘Rosie’. I don’t remember the exact point that life took my dreams and put them through a chundle mixer and told me that was a silly idea but it happened and thus I never got that ranch, those chaps or that hat.

Present day sees me sitting in an office living the giddy life of an office man. I mean I’m not chasing away space thieves trying to steal my space butter yet that doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is that this is not what I should be doing.

An evening in the company of one Kevindo Menendez opened my eyes to the world that is just beyond reach. They say that you never quite know what you’re good at until you give it a try, which obviously means that deep down I have the required skills and expertise to be a washing machine repair man. I already have the small, girlish hands for those tiny electric whatnots and for squeezing into those hard-to-reach areas. I look good in anything that’s not a shirt and tie. I can drive now so even if someone needs a washing machine repaired in New York (not that New York, the one in Tyne and Wear) I can step up to the challenge.

All I need now is some business cards and I’m up and running. They won’t have a picture of a crab on them but, by the beard of Graham Norton, they will announce to the world my real calling in life!

Great idea

A little while ago I went to a place called Southend, which is like a town, but it’s next to the sea, so it’s a kind of sea-town. It’s not actually in the sea, but it’s, like, right next to it.

Anyway, they have a thing called a “pier” which is like a long thin extension of the ground that lets you see what it’s like to walk on the sea without getting wet. I used the “pier” to walk a long way out on the sea and look at what Southend looks like from the middle of the sea. Normally that view would be difficult to look at because I’d be swimming and the water would get in my eyes.

If you stand in the middle of the sea and look at Southend it looks like this:

I started wondering whether this novel “pier” concept could be used in other situations too. Here are some of my “pier ideas”.

Mountain pier. A pier extending outwards from the peak of a mountain, so you can see what it’s like to walk flat from the top of the mountain instead of going down. You could then look at what the mountain looks like from up in the air next to the mountain.
Space pier. A pier that goes upwards instead of outwards, maybe not from Southend, so you can walk into space and look at earth from outside the atmosphere.
Desert pier. A pier that goes over the desert because the desert is very hot so if you could walk on a pier instead you wouldn’t burn your feet on the hot sand and also it would be a bit higher up so there might be a nice breeze.
Underwater pier. Like a pier on the sea, but under the sea, so people who want to walk in the sea instead of on top of it can have a nice flat surface to walk on.

Railways with Smidge Manly

Railways! What are they, anyway? In this incredible new documentary, TV personality Smidge Manly hopes to find out.

You can watch it online here or on the Pouring Beans Productions Vimeo page.

Pointless Purchases of the last Six Months

I mean, come on now. There was no way that I could keep purchasing things that I couldn’t use nor needed in any particular way. This blatant frivolity had to stop at some point and that point is now.

That is until after this post. This will represent the last of the ‘Pointless Purchases’ posts because what with having a car now and being a proper human, I mean adult, I don’t have any spare money to be frittering away on unopened video games, no matter how much they’ll fetch in a couple of years time. It’s best to go out with a bang though; give ’em something to remember you with.

So here’s what you’ve been waiting for; amiibos. Nintendo’s controversial answer to Skylanders and Disney Infinity which would take too long to explain all the why’s and the how’s. I own 22 of them in total. All you need to know is the following:

1. In order to use the amiibos you need a Wii U, the successor to the highly successful Wii console. I don’t have one of these so they all remain in their boxes.

2. You can also use them on the updated versions of the 3DS handheld consoles. I do own one but it’s still sealed in its box.

3. Even if I tried to use them with the 3DS I couldn’t. They have been specifically designed to only be used by taking them out of their boxes, and I don’t want to do that because I think they look nice in their boxes.

Take a deep breath, take a bow and leave the stage. It’s all over now, baby blue.

I will miss my pointless purchases.

Progress report

Mr. Chang, the shady Chinese businessman financing Pouring Beans Productions’ new documentary film, has now seen a rough edit of “Railways with Smidge Manly” and discussed with me some changes that are still necessary.

Clearly the public are clamouring for the release of this important film, and any delay is going to be met with considerable impatience, so to help tide us over until it’s ready to go, here is a look inside the editing process. This is, in its entirety, the list of changes that I made, explaining Mr Chang’s instructions in full.

Wobbly –> red train pat etc. Vertically. + coming out of station at CP
–> –> –>
Platform-train tighter or clip inb. ? straight to speech on 2nd shot
Barry rustling – filter out?
Timetables – wind noise – change for station
Voiceover still not good (headphones)
Longer gap or music between good email and people we met.

I hope this sheds some light on the philosophical and ethical issues with which we are wrestling in trying to perfect our artistic vision.

My secret tragedy

I haven’t told you about this before, but it’s about time I did. When Kev visited a couple of weeks ago we ended up talking about it and my terrible sadness was impossible to disguise. I can’t live this lie any longer.

A while ago now, I was engaged to be married. We were so happy together, so perfect for each other. I couldn’t imagine anything could come between us. I was her man and she was my bear. (She was a grizzly bear, you see.) But on the day of our wedding, just minutes before the ceremony started, she left me, running away down the street in her bridal dress. I was distraught.

You may find this hard to believe, but thankfully Kev has stepped in and provided the following sketch of that fateful moment, so you don’t have to think very hard to imagine it. In those days, as you can see, I looked a bit like Jeremy Beadle, so all in all this is a chapter of my life I’d rather forget.

Unusual Superheroes: The Car Man

I have a mild infatuation with comics and Kevin’s favourite, the graphic novel, but I have to admit that I was completely bamboozled by the superhero commonly known as ‘Car Man’.

From what I can gather his special powers appear to consist of being handsome, oozing broodiness and the ability to seduce both men and women. He likes to walk around without a shirt on on hot summer days and stir up trouble. I expect he’s one of those troubled superheroes that keeps cropping up, with a tragic back story that is only hinted at rather than fully explained. That’s why he keeps dancing. Why does he keep dancing? He’s troubled. You see, it makes perfect sense.

His misfortunes continue when he struggles to hold his drink down, a bit like me after a pint and a half of cheeky dragon, and fails when trying to emulate his hero, Tyler Durden, from the popular book and film ‘Fight Club’ during his own fight club. The Car Man cannot live with himself knowing he sucks at the one thing that should ultimately prove him as the manliest man alive and thus gets shot by some bint on a staircase. In his final moments, the Car Man wishes he had better super powers because broodiness cannot stop a bullet. That’s why I always walk around with a pan lid strapped to my chest.

I don’t think that children will ever want to be the Car Man because he’s not fun like Spiderman or has gadgets like Batman. Ultimately he will struggle for mass appeal which is why you won’t see me with his confused, sweaty face on my lunchbox.