Archive for September, 2011
Luck; does it exist or not? It’s a very good question especially for a Monday morning. Rather than complaining about coming back to work (always a good start) or moaning about traffic (it’s getting harder and harder without an actual car) an idea popped into my head. Out of all the characters I have ever watched, read or heard about who is one with the least amount of luck?
It was obvious really. I mean who else could it be other than Luke Skywalker from the original Star Wars trilogy?
Luke’s life is a plethora of mishaps and unfortunates. Starting from the beginning he is born at the beginning of a massive change of events prompted by the death of all the jedis, his mother dies, he is forced into hiding then separated from his sister, he lives a dull and monotonous life on a barren planet helping his crotchety uncle and aunt farm weird things and drink blue liquid. Things should turn around by now right? But no.
Then Luke meets an old man who turns out to be the best friend in the world and allows himself to die, then he follows him around as a voice which personally I would think would have made me believe I was going mad. He falls in love with a woman which turns out to be his sister. He gets beaten up my a snow monster on the planet of Hoth. He is bullied by a small green man with a stick and Frank Oz’s voice. He loses his arm in a fight with the second most evil man in the universe, who just so happens to be his father, bring back years of abandonment issues.
His other best friend gets encased in carbonite and then when he is rescued starts going out with his sister. Luke finds out the only way to become a full jedi is to kill his dad. He gets electrocuted severely by the Emperor then watches as his father dies right before him. At the end of it all he has gained a sister and a brother-in-law (practically) and his only companions are his two camp droids.
I’d say that must easily be a winner.
September 26th, 2011
In the sprint towards the festive season you may be wondering what to get people you know and quite possibly love. Buying things is very difficult and the choice on offer now is so colossal that it makes you want to shave cakes for fun. So, you need a helping hand to point you in the right direction. There’s no way you’ll get this level of service from anywhere else.
Let’s start with Uncle Johnny Wing-Wang. Uncle J is a hard cracker and doesn’t like anything other than football and food. He’s a bit of a fat bastard but nobody says anything, you know because it’s gone on for so long it’s silly to bring it up now; the time for that was 1987. What kind of a present is going to a) impress him and b) make his chubby face squish a smile out one end?
You need this… a loaf of crusts:
There are people who do like crusts, I can vouch for them. Imagine an entire loaf of bread with only crusts, gathered up from all the crust-hating fops out there in the world. Fresh and seething with resentment for not being eaten. The perfect gift for a couch-dwelling chunder-faced gremlin. Stick that up Uncle J and it’ll shower rainbows over his life for decades to come.
Available now for the small price of £8.99.
September 25th, 2011
Less than five days and I find this lying on my bed…
Dear Mr McIver
Thank you for your kind remarks regarding Weetabix & Ready brek.
Your comments really are the best endorsement we could have (did they actually read my letter?). Naturally, we would say how good our products are but to have that belief confirmed by a satisfied customer is most gratifying. We will keep up the good work!
Once again, many thanks for taking the trouble to contact us. It was great to hear from you. Please accept the enclosed (1 x £1.00 voucher), sent with our compliments.
Yours sincerely
Weetabix Food Co
The quick response time is very impressive. The comments seemed sincere and connected to what I sent to them, even though they didn’t really make light of the overall strangeness and my relationship with Mr R Brek. He won’t be happy when I break the news to him on Monday. Still, a thoroughly positive result.
If only I could have a camel that fired lasers.
September 24th, 2011
Let’s have an update of today so far.
Today started very early, in fact it began at the beginning of today. Today around 12.00am I was stood in a club jigging about like a possessed pogo stick on a washing machine because it was the very last night of Stonelove in Digital. That doesn’t mean anything to anyone else but it was a little bit sad-inducing. Today continued a little further, involving more swaying and air-punching and drinking, until approximately 3:30am where I retired to the floor of a dark room and was stirred just after 7.00am this morning by a tiny man.
The tiny man was deposited at a public centre for tiny people. I received good news from the man who I often see on the bus, who having spoken for over a year at irregular intervals I still do not know his name, whereby he confirmed he had finally got a job after endless months of searching. His journey only lasted five minutes yet it was long enough to convey my hearty congratulations.
Just after 9.30am I believe I may have been misinformed by the connection between drinking a lot of water and a high metabolism by a member of staff in the coffee shop on the corner. Nonetheless I bought a dark swirling cup of juice and headed to work where a buffet for a member of staff leaving for another job greeted me. I resisted for the first hour and a half before tucking into a selection of mini sausages, mini sausage rolls, onion bhajis, slices of pizza and various cakes.
I ate so much I didn’t need a lunch, so I left the tins of food in my drawer and went for a walk doing a few chores along the way. I narrowly avoided the chuggers around Grey’s Monument (that’s a real word) and bought some bottles of water for my boss who isn’t feeling very well. I looked for a particular song on my i-pod however the random shuffling was against me; I was met with a plethora of catchy numbers as a compromise.
Currently I sit at my desk wearing shades to draw attention to myself. How about that?
September 23rd, 2011
Good afternoon and welcome to another fine edition of Eating on a Budget.
This week we look into the firm, fine and frisky line of soups on offer for the general public. In particular has been singled out the minetrone soup from the Soupreme range.
At first glance it looks like sick yet reach further into the soup and more amazing pallets come into view. Through the murky red liquid appears little strands of noodle, then more vegetables, like mariners clutching to marshmallows for dear life in a raging sea. At once my face is shocked by the inclusion of taste; this meal, if you can call it that, is delivering on more fronts than was originally thought.
As with the beans and sausages this was tackled without the aid of bread and so, spoon in hand, I devoured the beast whole with a satisfying smacker of my lips at the end. Satisfied, hmmm, well the hunger had left my building but it was still rapping on the window looking for loose change. Not that it wasn’t filling just the experience fell short of what I was looking for.
Still, the price was superb; for less than 40p you can go through what I just went through. It gets a thumb and a half for good measure – 6 out of 10.
September 22nd, 2011
It’s been far too long and I love too many products without sending another piece of correspondence to spread the madness. Cap your peepers at this little sweetheart of a letter:
Dear Weetabix Suppliers
How do you start a letter such as this? Where do you begin to convey how much you like someone’s product? Is there a perfect beginning, a way to build up to it or should you just launch into the superlatives? Well that’s my nonchalant start out the way.
Your products are amazing. How’s that for a superlative? I eat Weetabix every morning because it tastes excellent and there’s no other cereal I would prefer to eat, that is apart from Ready Brek. On occasion I do like to have a bit of Ready Brek, especially on cold mornings. I even went so far as to turn my previous box of Ready Brek into a person. So every day I come into work Mr R. Brek greets me with a cheeky smile. You might think that’s a step too far but I say it’s not enough! It’s never enough. As soon as those chilly mornings start coming back closer to Christmas I am going to bag me a box. Whether or not that one gets turned into a person I’m not sure. Perhaps Mr R Brek would like a friend or a companion; I haven’t thought that far ahead…
But anyway a big fat YES to anything Weetabix-related. I even noticed that you can get bitesize Weetabix and you can bet a stack of napkins that I am going to invest the next time I find myself in a supermarket.
I’ve drawn a little picture of Mr R Brek to accompany this letter. Please pass it around to anyone who might be interested.
Yours Faithfully
Ian McIver
September 21st, 2011
This month Des’ree unfortunately has taken a turn for the worst. Yes, she is involved in yet another law suit with another artist sampling her music without asking for permission. It’s just not on and so, in her absence, we must turn to her stand-up on occasions such as these.
Ladies and gentlemen allow me to introduce chart-topping eighties starlet, Yazz! I don’t need to go on about how amazing she is because unless you’ve removed your ears you will already know so without further ago let’s listen in on the Yazz Help-’em’all Hotline:
Caller #370: Hi Yazz, big fan of yours. I was looking for a little advice if it’s not too much trouble. I love to bake and when I’m not cleaning chimneys or dusting wildlife I’ll do a little mix and a stir and whip up a batch of lemon merangue pies. The only problem is my oven; it’s decades old and takes forever to cook anything. I once had a pineapple upside-down cake that took three years to bake properly. Right now I have some cookies in and they’ve already been in for thirty minutes. What do you think I should do?
Yazz: (Hold on) Hold on (Hold on) Hold on (Hold on) oooooooooooooooooo, (Hold on) Hold on (Hold on) It’s won’t be loooooooooooooong yeah!
Caller #370: Oh that’s excellent. Thanks Yazz!
Helping others can be beneficial for yourself and for others around you, especially if you punch people in the face when you’re in a bad mood. So order up a fresh round of sneezes and keep those calls coming in.
September 21st, 2011
September 20th, 2011
That’s me. Yeah. You can scorn with your piercing, angel-like eyes but deep down I know what I did and I am more than comfortable with it. There is not one drop of guilt in this frail old body, no sir. I was like a boxer and I pummeled those socky wocks good and proper. You would have done the same, possibly, probably, about fifty or so years ago. Maybe.
I wear a lot of socks, who doesn’t? With wearing comes tearing, so the saying goes, and I have come across a lot of holes in my time. Nobody likes holes. I refuse to back down when it comes to holes. I refuse to admit defeat and move onto the next pair of socks, so what did I do? I looked those suckers in the eye and gave ’em what for. That’s right.
I took one of their kind. I took one that had a hole in itself and cut that sucker up to pieces. Then I sewed the remains to the insides of the other socks with holes and all the while I was laughing, laughing, laughing like a happy chicken. It was a lot harder than I thought it was however I persevered and in the end I came out with some odd-looking socks. Yes, I now have some strange-looking apparel for my feet. Luckily they spend most of their time in shoes so I don’t need to make excuses.
If only I could mend shoes, now there’s an idea…
September 14th, 2011
In preparation for the forthcoming Papples album I have been working on some new material. It’s been a hard process, especially with the second half of the Paps being so far away, and one which has taken its toll on my fragile little mind. I had a strange daydream where I imagined that within a woman’s face I saw another face and that I decided that the face within the face was the face of a woman who I should be going out with.
So, in the dream obviously, I ditched the woman with the face and went looking for the woman with the face within the face. When I eventually found this particular woman I relayed the story to her in a musical format, plucked sheepishly and played ever so badly on a ukulele. Then when I woke from my daydream I started writing some lyrics down to describe this event.
It’s a shame the lyrics weren’t very good though. In their broken down, half-arsed way they show potential. I hope to harness that potential like a sloth and whip it soundly to bed:
You wouldn’t believe the journey I’ve had
It’s been a long time coming
My face is a little jumbled so I hope you don’t start running
It’s a curious story of sorts
Let me dabble in your thoughts
I’m looking for a thesaurus
I’m not quite ready for the chorus
I was seeing this girl, she was freckled to the max
This was important, I’ll keep to the facts
One day I looked into her eyes and missed and hit her cheek
And tracing lines between the spots I couldn’t help but peek
There traced was a face
That was your face
Your face was on her face
It had to be a sign
CHORUS
Your face on her face
It was unquestionably yours
Your eyes under her eyes
I shouldn’t say anymore
How do you find a face
You’ve seen on another face?
It’s a Herculean task, make no mistake
I’ve powered through cinemas
Supermarkets and streets
I’ve sieved the shops and churches
At the expense of my feets
Every nightclub in the area I have scoured
Every bouncer overpowered
I get thrown out a lot for knocking on the ladies
“I’m just handing round a drawing man
Not trying to make babies!”
CHORUS
I picture you in fragrant meadows
Red dresses and silk
Hiding under brollies, sipping Irn Bru
Napping under quilts
The fact that I have found you
Despite all of the odds…
Actually now that I get a good look
If I’m being true
I was expecting something more
Give us your number and I’ll get back to you
CHORUS
Little known fact: This post contains more ‘faces’ than any other post ever posted.
September 13th, 2011
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