Avatar Newsboost – Bag For Life Binging Bad For Britain

The simple bag for life has a simple idea; it is your bag and you have it for life. There is nothing else about it. It doesn’t want to make your life any better apart from helping you to carry your shopping and occasionally maybe a child or a small dog if they can fit. So what could controversial MP Tub Barsley possibly have against them?

He could have a lot against them is the correct response. He has so much against them that he’s practically turning all his beef into a portion of spaghetti bolognaise that could feed seven elderly relatives for the duration of Lent (unless they have happened to give up meat, tomatoes or pasta for it). Mr Barsley has recently published an article damning bags for life because whilst good in theory they do not live up to expectations.

“People buy ’em all the time,” he writes, “and they clearly have good intentions but they never get used. You’ll find ’em at the back of cupboards and wardrobes or under carpets and hiding in trees rather than in your hand at a supermarket. They’re not convenient enough to carry around. We could easily point the fingers at the people who forget to bring them shopping but I would never accuse anyone in my constituency of such a thing. It’s much easier to blame an inanimate object, and for that reason I urge everyone to boycott bags for life.”

One person who doesn’t share the same view as Mr Barsley is Geraldine Ambicott, a voracious young gardener from Milton Keynes. Geraldine has developed an obsession with bags for life and has been known to purchase up to seventeen at the same time, even if she does remember to brings hers with her when she is shopping. Those suffering from this affliction are known in the community as ‘Baggers’ or ‘Bag-nep-pollops’ in Wales.

“I just like them. I feel compelled to pick them up and rub them against my ankles whenever I get the chance,” Geraldine explains, “On my last count I had around three hundred in total. The staff at my local supermarket now refuse to serve me if I am holding, clutching or drooling over a bag for life and I don’t blame them. I know I have a problem; I just wish that someone could sit me down or tie me to a chair and help me. I don’t think Mr Barsley is fair with his comments; bags for life are helping the environment and that can only be a good thing. It’s just chumpos like me who give them a bad name.”

The most publicised Bagger is pop sensation Quinze who declared last month that she owns five outfits made of bags for life and has been known to wander around Asda at 2am putting jars of peanut butter between her legs.

Avatar Best Laid Plans

Every man has a dream.

The great thing about dreams is that they can be as big or a small as you would like them to be. As long as they are relatively realistic then achieving them is just about putting your mind to it.

A man came to me at the weekend and told me his dream. He said that what he wanted most of all was a small herd of goats to keep at the coast so that they could enjoy the sights, sounds and marvels that the English coast do so well, and that when he feels like a jaunt to Scarborough or Filey he can share the experience with those very goats. I told him that such a dream was easily obtained and that he should immediately set about putting his affairs in order.

When a man has a dream though sometimes it just doesn’t go far enough.

Having set about the events so that the man could have his coast goats I then pondered the idea myself and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough. It would be nice to have some goats hanging about in Whitby, waiting for me to take them through the whale bones and then across the bridge for fish and chips, but how about a little bit more? What if I had goats not only at the coast but across the whole country? What if I could stop in for a cup of coffee at Costa and high five a goat on the way out? What if a goat would tell me when the bus was running late, or pass me a small pot of porridge when I’m running late for work? It would cost a lot but what about coast-to-coast goats?

Of course I did not reveal my plans to the man because he might steal them as I had stolen his idea. As well as this, his original idea would be besmirched by my much better plans and I am not prepared to besmirch my fellow man. He will eventually learn of my objectives and he will have to come to terms with them as the rest of you mortals.

Avatar Time for a Sing Song

What with April peeking around the corner, desperate to blast us all away with Easter-based hilarity, let’s take a moment to enjoy the last day of March with a wonderful ditty.

Part-written in turn by Reuben, but mainly by me, let us present to you the marvel that is ‘Barry The Chinchilla’. If you can remember the ‘Woman in a Tabbard’ song from the Big Breakfast then you should sing it along to that tune.

Barry The Chinchilla

Barry the Chinchilla
He bought a big gorilla
Used to play for Aston Villa
(His) favourite colour is manilla
Likes to dance along to ‘Thriller’
Wrote a play with Arthur Miller
Once was flattened by a pillar
Was an extra in ‘Godzilla’
Drinking pints of sarsaparilla

BUT

(Poor old) Barry the Chinchilla
Wicked Audrey was his killer
Bumped him off with cordless driller
(Finished off by his gorilla)
Then she went after Priscilla

(No more) Barry the Chinchilla
Nor his sister, sweet Priscilla

Avatar Box Memories

The human memory is an unreliable tool. Things that you think you remember can be twisted and exploited because people are unreliable and easily influenced. If, like me, you know how superbly atrocious your mind is you learn to record everything or at least as much as you can in the written form. This is starting to feel like a lecture…

And it’s not. The boxes in the corner of my room have bore witness to many a stimulating conversation over the years and sadly the pen and pencil work is starting to fade. Before all these “ideas” are lost to time I thought it best to record them for posterity here, of all places, so we can revel in their warm fuzziness. You may also be able to help remind me just what the fuck they mean. In no particular order I present ‘Box Memories’:

1. Women’s werewolf rights
2. No HAT, no HOLMES!
3. Jam flaps
4. Flip reverse my sandwich
5. Chris = Biggy Bam
6. Adjacent apples on the shelf of life
7. It’s not what we do, it’s the way we do it
8. Epic nonny
9. Steam hot prayers (that was Tom’s stag do, I remember that)
10. I say it, but I don’t mean it
11. I had big boots that day for sure
12. NEW PAPPLES ALBUM = 15% and rising
13. Anvil hands
14. I’m gonna hit you with the fist of gratitude. SLAP!
15. It was too lonny gone ago…
16. RED WINE = MAN WINE. ROSE = GIRL WINE
17. My moustache is off the scale!
18. Apples for thought
19. MAN LIKES HIS DRINK
20. I’d like a BIG FAT January
21. Gourmet = small and shafted
22. “Sock Lions”
23. … it will make your face bleed with smiles
24. Get your warranty out of my chude!
25. I dream of having a database of moods
26. I need a rocket
27. HAIRY ON THE GO!
28. Total toilet
29. 30 = dead (how nice)
30. Banh-kuok (rolled bread, french bread, bread)
31. Big nay
32. Plentingtons = plenty of things

There’s also a faded flame that appears to say ‘Uncle Now’ and of course the now infamous Michael Jackson test.

Question: Am I dead?

If your answer is yes, you are Michael Jackson
If your answer is no, you are someone else

Avatar Neil Armstrong gets a Time Machine (using a Time Machine)

Here at da beans we do like to consider everything before we make our minds up. There is absolutely no point in rushing in with an idea or an opinion unless it has been thought through with a considerable degree of certainty.

Still, this kind of logic is nothing when faced with the abstract mind of a child. Who’s child? My child.

This child does not obey the laws of anything other than what I tell him, and quite possibly his teacher. That said there is still a realm of “eh?”, a dark corner of his mind that does not allow anything in that refuses to conform to that happy rainbow of “surely not”. I bore witness to such a thing recently which was documented in my notebook, which was as follows:

“Neil Armstrong… gets a time machine (which he can only use once) to travel into the future to get a better time machine to make him famous. Then the world blows up.

Note: if you get a time machine go back in time and destroy him!”

I have looked at this page in my notebook on many occasions, and indeed I was there when he was talking about this, and still I am baffled as to what it actually means. Any help that anyone can throw my way would be very gratefully received.

Avatar Newsboost – Toaster Terror Trauma

The world was plunged into confusion and terror today as it was revealed that a growing number of toasters are using desperately violent measures to make themselves known following a decline in toasted-based breakfasts.

The growth in the “healthy breakfast revolution”, which has seen people more inclined than ever to sprint to work with some sort of energetic biscuit soiling their mouth, has pushed the standard staples of breakfast, such as cereal and toast, to one side and off the edge into the bin. There is such a large range of yoghurts and seed bars, and with 2014 containing less time than ten years ago people just don’t have the time to sit down and heat up bread anymore. The result has seen toasters become not only redundant but sad and a little bit cranky.

Toast hasn’t been this unpopular since 1959, in the year that saw bread publicly state that it, “hated everyone” and that “the world would be better off without humans”. Bread retracted this statement some days later but it had a lasting effect that wouldn’t see toast recover until some years later. At least back then you could argue that this was self-inflicted; the modern world hasn’t been particularly kind to toast. So much so that a large group of toasters has organised an attack in the West Midlands.

Toasters from in and around the Birmingham area have barricaded themselves in a local Wetherspoons and are threatening to singe the ears of several cats caught earlier this week unless their demands are met. So far these appear to simple: more toast, less not toast, more crumpets and bread buns and perhaps a waffle here and there. An official spokesperson for the toasters is yet to comment, although we would imagine that what he has to say would be indecipherable.

The local police have had to call in a specialised Toaster Sheriff, Sherilyn Lucas, to enter into talks with the toasters to smooth over the tension and hopefully come to a satisfying, or snackisfying, conclusion without the need for burnt kitty ears. Let’s hope that it’s less toast fur and more toast her for doing a sufficient job. Only time will tell if these puns are actually funny.

Avatar Obsoletus Redundantus Technologus

Obsolete technology.

There, I said it. Obsolete technology is everywhere. The human race is such a wasteful set of single-minded simpletons, desperately trying to find the newest innovation to make life that little bit easier. You wake up one morning and someone has invented a quicker way for you to put your socks on. By the afternoon they’re wafting around a gizmo that brings eggs to you at work when you scan your debit card on a moist towelette. At sometime after 7pm your phone has a larger memory than you do and is more likely to be offered a loan by your local bank than anyone at your office.

I do feel sorry for obsolete technology. It sits around charity shops feeling very sorry for itself. The amount of times I’ve walked past the British Heart Foundation only to see an array of VHS video tapes pressing themselves against the window, like wonky pets at an animal shelter, lusting to be taken home and played. And I really want to. My generation was brought up on 3.5 inch floppy disks and video rental shops. Sure they invented the compact disc in 1983 but nobody cared about it until the nineties. Pressing a VHS into a video player and having that hearty clunk sound before the screen screamed into whatever nonsense you have chosen to borrow for the evening was a great sensation. Now all you get is a silent hand giving you the finger as your I-pod breathlessly plays one of six hundred billion albums you have downloaded onto it.

There’s nothing wrong with modern technology. Indeed I wouldn’t be able to type this post without the Mac on my lap. What needs addressing though is thoughtful ways of discarding things that aren’t really necessary anymore. For instance, floppy discs. Sturdy little fellows that they are; couldn’t they be used as coasters? I mean the coaster industry, if there is one, could surely allow a little space for recycling. In the place of tiny cardboard circles depicting pictures of hamsters rolling tobacco you would have small, sexy squares. House building companies could erect sheds made of Betamax tapes. They could unreel all the unsold cassettes of Steps singles and use the tape as loft insulation. Who says you can’t buy your wife a bunch of Nokia 3310s instead of a bunch of flowers for her birthday? They’re just as pretty.

The present is often overlooked for the future. I say we must look to the past in order to create the future. The present demands it, and so do I.

Avatar The Barrage of Flaps

I have been commissioned to write a new period drama for an as yet untitled new channel on the television. I think it’ll sit somewhere neatly between Nat Geo HD and the God Channel. Having watched and been forced with a ped egg pointed at my throat to sit through what the twenty first century considers to be a period drama I have ultimately decided that even though it may have costumes and big frilly wigs it also needs a bit of… well the letters haven’t been invented to write the word out yet but for want of a better word let’s go with pizazz.

You can’t just hire Hugh Bonneville and except everything to fall into place; I learned that the hard way when it came to the shooting of ‘Soiling and Soliloquies’ in 2012. No, what you need is a wonderful idea at heart, an original idea that’ll whack those Johnnys between the eyes and scoop up the awards as well. So we come to ‘The Barrage of Flaps’. It’s a 17th century period drama but, for some reason, the 1980’s have travelled back in time to poison not just another decade but an entire century. Betwixt the poverty and the heartache and historical accuracy there will be Wham playing on a jukebox in the background, everyone is wearing Casio watches and teenagers hassle strangers with Slush Puppies and Sony Walkmans.

I think it’s when they have a synth fundraiser for some orphans in episode four, and Axel F turns up at the last minute to offer his support, that most people will start crying.