Avatar A Breath of Fresh Beans: The hot deets.

The three of us have a podcast, it has a massive regular listenership of probably 4 people, us and Madge. But what do the stats say? Lets dig in and get all the important info on the podcasts thats literally taking up space on the internet…

How are people listening?

It seems that the most popular way people are enjoying the podcast is “Other”, with 5 listens in October, with the big hitters of ‘iTunes’, ‘Pocket Casts’ and ‘Overcast’ bringing up the rear. The ones that really stands out though are those people out there using all the modern tech to listen via ‘played in a new window’. Exciting stuff.

What are they listening to?

Well it appears that there are some classics in the line up that someone out there just cant get enough of. The run down of our “Top 10 Episodes of all time” reveals that our earlier (pre-Chris) episodes are the most popular, as are the last two ‘This way Ups’, which probably do feature Chris…

EpisodeListens
Episode 5: Bananarama Diorama136
Episode 3: The Crystal Skulls135
Episode 10: The trouble with wasps130
Episode 11: Celebration Days118
Episode 4: King William’s War117
Episode 1: Your Mum Loves a Sexy Pony116
Episode 2: Cheery Polar Bears113
This Way Up: Episode 699
Episode 12: Queens98
This Way Up: Episode 594

What else?

In other podcast news, I freshened up the feeds, with proper graphics and new names… names you say? Yes, because ‘This Way Up’ now has its own feed and graphic, at least on iTunes. You can find it be searching for… yes, you guessed it ‘This way up’. I know nobody will, and even we have already heard them all, but you know neatness and all that.

Avatar Down

There’s a button labelled “down”, but it’s not a lift. In fact the button appears to be attached to some sort of horn or flange.

Pressing the button must, therefore, do something down related using the flangehorn.

I concluded that a push of the button would result in large amounts of feathery duck down being sprayed out of the hornhole into my face.

I declined to push the button.

Avatar New Job: Font Specialist

A little birdy, or a small nest of birdies, told me that a good way to make money was not to embrace pyramid and get rich quick schemes but to design things called fonts and sell them for big bucks.

What are fonts though you may ask? It’s a good job I looked it up so you don’t have to because otherwise we’d both be here all day.

‘Fonts’ are the things that people use to show words on computers so when you’re reading it doesn’t look like a book and smell like an old person. Your eyes need books on a screen (i.e. the world net web) in order to cope with the modern world. Fonts are futuristic and sexy, they’re everywhere too. Look around you: check that shampoo bottle, whip out that business card from the tramp you met on the Underground, peruse the label of those trousers that don’t fit well and make you sit like Buster Keaton. They’re all there staring back at you. In fact by reading this post you have some font looking through your eyes and deep into your soul. This font is… *checks* bouncy. I’m not sure what it’s called. Arthur maybe?

So who makes these fonts then? You can’t make them in a factory like biscuits. It would be handy if you could ask some eggheads to whip up a fresh batch in a laboratory yet that still isn’t right. The only way you can create them is with a pen and paper.

I have been working all five minutes and have come up with three excellent examples of new fonts that will be available to purchase shortly after the unveiling of this post for the rather princely sum of £50,000.00 each. Let’s see what will be up for grabs:

  1. Old Man Jones – have you ever wanted to write like an old giffer? Does your handwriting look too neat and young? What you need is Old Man Jones. It turns your typing into a lower-case, simplified version that practically everybody can read.
  2. Doctor Scrawl – I was once told that my writing looked like a long squiggly line with some dots above it. With this in mind, and the notoriety of illegible words on doctor’s prescriptions, it was easy to mash the two together to make everything you write one long line of, “Eh?”
  3. Future Robot Blim – the future is coming and it wants your fonts. Blast off into the distant year 2022 with this highly effective and high-tech biro-stolen-from-the-branch-of-your-local-bank look with a dash of pomposity and a sprinkle of cyberpunk finesse.

Thank you tiny avian friends for dropping this idea into my brain tub and filling my bank with delicious money.

Avatar Lending a Paw

If you’re going to do something nice you best do it standing like a titan.

After helping the doggos earlier on this year with my walk around my flat, which sounds about as strenuous as a trip to Waitrose, I have decided to further the cause and lend a paw to someone who needs my help.

This is Sunshine and he is a star in waiting.

For a blind breed of unknown origin, he has a whole lot of charisma at his disposal. Sunshine or “the Moose” as he has affectionately come to be known (nobody can remember who gave him the nickname although I am still adamant that it was me) claims to not be able to see out of either eye, a fact that still has not been proven. I have asked him several times and he refuses to answer the question.

With all this potential it seemed like a waste to let him hide in the shadows of obscurity so despite handing the task to Reuben over the summer holidays, the task of raising his social media profile has been passed to me. I have begun this with his own Twitter account for “hilarious” posts about doggo things and photos of him looking like a dog, something the internet goes CRAZY for I am reliably informed.

Comments such as, “you really need to get a girlfriend, Ian” and, “what are you doing with photos of my dog?” have been ignored because currently only I can see the greatness that has been under everyone’s noses.

I also feel obliged because, in a way, the Moose is my spirit animal in that he eats just as fast as I do and is forever looking for more things to eat. Who am I to ignore a fellow gluttonous brother? I have promised to myself not to let any of my horrendous toxic masculinity leak into his cheery disposition, nor any of the wonderful photos of his viso/volto. Trying to keep it under wraps has been very difficult especially with the sheer volume of packets of sugar that I keep downing all at the same time.

I gave him a swish Twitter handle and Twitter responded by giving us a pretty generic name. You can follow Sunshine at @TheMoos90645566 for all the moosing around you (that’s YOU) can handle.

Avatar Lost and found

Found: one miscellaneous item (pictured)

This item and/or apparatus has recently been found on the Pouring Beans estate. We would like to return it to it’s rightful owner. If it is yours, please let us know in the comments, and include proof of your ownership by mentioning something that only the owner of this item would know, such as its serial number, commemorative inscription or a description of its bizarre smell.

If it’s not yours, but you can tell us what it is, we’d be equally interested. Thank you.

Avatar A song for Morten

Hello there. Chris here, from the chart-topping band The Papples. Thanks for joining me.

Years ago, when we were hard at work writing and recording songs for our third album, Pop Squared, we made a start on a song about the lead singer of Norwegian pop sensation A-Ha that never saw the light of day.

Well, lucky for you, every dog has his day, and every tired old half-baked Papples idea has its day too. I can now present to you the finished lyrics to a lost classic: “Everybody Fancies Morten Harket”.

Read More: A song for Morten »

Avatar ‘Snakes and Lads’

You know what’s wrong with board games these days? They’re not tough enough. Whilst they are entertaining and enjoyable, informative and fun, maddening and frustrating at times there is nothing about them that gives the impression of tough.

Courtesy of my toxic masculinity, I have come with a new take on an existing idea that will blow all you soft willows out of the water and into the gutters. It will remove your eyes and replace them with hot coals of pain.

‘Snakes and Lads’ follows the same basic formula as its predecessor, ‘Snakes and Ladders’; you have a board with one hundred squares and the object is to get from the bottom to the top first.

You play as Tony, a right hard lad who whilst out drinking with his mates decides that they should place a little wager on who can get to the kebab shop first. His best mate, Tony, who has been sh*t-faced since 7pm is of course well up for this. His cousin, Tony, never says no to a bet and the same goes for Tony, Tony and his dad, Tony (I should mention that you don’t necessarily need six players in total but it does help).

So, as one of the Tonys, you wander through the streets trying to get to the kebab shop. If you land on a snake, you strangle it like the piece of savage meat you are. This however does mean that the time you spend boshing that sod into the next week causes you to fall behind and you go back down to the corresponding square below. If you land on a lad, you go right in for a fight with that sucker. You roll the dice and if you get an even number, you smash ‘im down. If you happen to roll an odd number he gets in a cheeky punch and you stay where you are.

The first to reach ‘The Quilted Slosh’ gets to call all the other players whoopsies and collects a tenner from each of them.

Extra points for those who sit on a steak whilst playing and eat a whole bag of sugar all at the same time.

I have never been more convinced of my genius until this idea.