Sigh. Well, what did you expect? When you’re pulling four different posts each month, every month, you will occasionally draw a blank. I’ve been knocking these out relentlessly for years now and you’d think it would get easier, but it doesn’t. You go to your phone to find some inspiration (a photo you’ve taken, an article you’ve been reading etc.) and you come up with nothing. What’s the alternative though? Do “a Kev” and scrape a bean once every twelve months?
People want content. Websites need new content. What would our fans (?) do without new things to read and interact with? We have an obligation as content creators (?) to pull more and more things out of our respective backsides to fill empty space. Empty space is similar to dead air; nobody wants it. They also say the same things about my self-help books.
I did briefly consider other options for this photo. If it were necessary to develop it into something more constructive then I could have:
Pretended to be the owner of the shoe and sent out a request for the other to be returned
Written a ransom note as the kidnapper of the shoe
Created a fake dating profile for the shoe looking for a partner
Another thing (the best thing).
What kind of a person would I be? I need to try harder. I can do much better. For this month I will therefore only be posting shoe-based content. November is the month of shoes. It’s not as if you can think any less of me, right?
They say that dogs look like their owners. But this is plainly not true, because our dog is ginger and does not have a dark coloured beard. Though she does have impressive eyebrows, so at least in that regard we match.
Anyway. Now that I go wandering with the dog on a regular basis I am learning the ways of the dog walkers. You see other people with dogs all the time and it’s not often the dogs and their owners look alike, but they do come in certain easily identified types.
Here are the categories I would put basically all dog owners into.
Retired lady with pampered pooch
These are the politest people and they will always stop and chat, sometimes even if you don’t want to, and will need to know what your dog is called and what breed she is. Their dog will be a beautifully manicured poodle crossbreed called Lucy who has a bow on her pink collar.
Young couple with overexcited livewire
They are very much in love but they aren’t ready for kids yet, so they got a Labrador cross which is bounding around the place like it’s made of springs. They tell you he’s only young and he’ll calm down when he grows up but he never will. One such couple I met a while back had a boisterous dachshund rather than a Labrador, and it was called Simon.
Middle aged lady with any number of greyhounds
The lady is wearing a gilet and a floral headscarf. She won’t stop to chat but she will say something formal and upper crust like “good morning to you!” as she strides past. She has at least two greyhounds or whippets and they too are wearing gilets.
Stressed dog walker with pack on the brink of rioting
She is about 30 and she does this part time. She is wearing a sleeveless puffer jacket and has several full poo bags hanging off her belt. She has five dogs of wildly different sizes and temperaments straining at five leads, and another three or four random hounds running around in the trees nearby. She cannot remember their names and if one of them runs away she has no hope of getting it back.
Skinhead bloke with terrifying attack dog
He is wearing very big steel toecap boots and at least one garment made of leather. His dog is a German Shepherd, or anything else that has the pointy ears of a purebred predator, and is called Zeus. He will not say hello back and he will watch silently and from a distance as his dog stalks other people’s dogs and also any small children nearby.
Large middle aged man with tiny ball of aggression
This man is perhaps 50 and is walking the improbably tiny lapdog that can only have been chosen by his wife. His wife does not walk the dog because it has not been trained and is uncontrollable. He will make a half-hearted apology as his nasty little pet snarls, growls and barks at your dog and pulls at its lead in an attempt to start a fight.
Tweedy country types with indeterminate number of border collies
A greying middle aged couple who are wearing tweed, flat caps and Barbour jackets. They might not be landed gentry but they definitely support fox hunting. They will say hello to you because they were bred to have manners but they would have nothing to say to someone of your social standing if you ever tried to make conversation. Their dogs are beautiful but have no interest in you and will walk past like you don’t exist.
Lonely old man with waddling mongrel
Do not engage the man in conversation. He is perfectly nice but you will be there for three quarters of an hour hearing his life story while his peculiar little dog with a stubby tail and a greying muzzle tries to have a wee on your leg.
Distracted mum with toddler, pushchair and feral spaniel
It is not clear why this family decided to get a dog at the same time as having several small children, and it is plainly making their life more difficult and chaotic than it needs to be, but it’s too late now because that’s what they’ve got. Dad is at work so mum is taking all of them for a walk. The dog is nice but not very well trained and is basically walking itself.
Handsome middle class professional with excellent ginger dog
I realised at the end of the list that I didn’t fit into any of the above categories, so it stands to reason that there must be one more that is suitable for someone like me.
The modern world is one of tolerance and equality, of partnerships and collaboration, and of diversity and open-mindedness. It is a world that many have come to loathe given how different it seems from the pre-twentieth century landscape we all grew up in. I personally am still in two minds about whether it’s gotten better or worse because if I was to side with the latter then I would be throwing myself into the great rubbish tip of cancellation. If I pine for the days of cheap petrol, lad culture and “cool Britannia” (bleugh!) from the 1990s then surely I’m a racist?
Well, no, I wouldn’t be because that’s bonkers but you have to be careful as to what you say and do, especially here on the internet. One false word and my reputation (?) would be in tatters. Consider me? Consider me not, thank you. All this cancellation culture comes from a lack of tolerance, but what I will not tolerate is blatant sexism of the highest order masquerading as a cosy forum for people to interact in.
Recently Vikki was, presumably, looking up things to do with log burners what with us getting one with the house and winter practically dossing around our respective doorsteps. She happened upon this and sent it to me:
A female only group? Chatting about log burners? One which I am unable to participate in because of my gender? Outrageous! Surely this is a hate crime. If you can’t advertise for gender-specific jobs then you shouldn’t be able to advertise FILTH such as this. I’m sure there are hundreds, nay, thousands of male-only groups where they’re all out there discussing the highs and lows of using a log burner, but I don’t want in on them. I want to see the other side of the coin; I want the female perspective and I can’t because I’m a man.
Am I wrong to want to be part of something that has nothing whatsoever to do with me?
Do you often plan to do things and then sort of half do them and come back to them later, in their unfinished state, and wonder why you didn’t bother to finish them in the first place?
Such is the case for me and my review of ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’, another Nintendo DS game that my brother and nieces decided to inflict upon me. I must have originally done my thirty minutes of playing in July because I took some photos at the time. I was clearly gearing up for a post with the details and then nothing; I didn’t write anything else other than some hastily scribbled notes on a random bit of paper from my work bag.
For the uninitiated, ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’ is an American sitcom shown on the Disney Channel about a teenage wizard who undertakes training to be some kind of better wizard alongside her two brothers. It features one now famous person (Selena Gomez who, at the time in my subconscious, I referred to as “that rapping chipmunk”) and lots of people I’ve never heard of. The premise sounds a lot like ‘Sabrina: the Teenage Witch’ but with a family of magic people instead. It ran from 2007 to 2012 but according to Wikipedia will be coming back again soon in a sort of semi-sequel of sorts. Keep an eye out for that everyone.
I am sure that whatever kids were watching this at the time loved every second and begged and pleaded to their parents to buy the tie-in video game so they could continue the, I don’t know, wizarding. It’s the successful formula of young people acting like adults mixed with comedy that Disney has been churning out for the last few decades that will make anyone over the age of 21 throw up in their hands but works because children will watch anything.
Enough of that. Back to me, consider me! The notes that I wrote are as follows:
Picking up coins – why?
Let’s head to the lair?
Sandwiches
Keep skipping dialogue
Floating sarnies – catch game
Bottle on a podium
Smaller than me
Make a *can’t make out what this is, could be cake* – end
As you can see, I was my usual in-depth and very thorough self, going through the majority of the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the gameplay, graphics, history of development and everything else. Ahem. This is why you should never start a job unless you intend to finish it. I get that now.
I am at the point where I don’t have time, not even a mere thirty minutes, to go back to understand this nonsense. I must therefore move forward and count this sham as my attempt at a game review.
After re-reading the notes, I do remember a mini game where you had to assemble sandwiches to serve to customer. When a magic spell goes awry, you have to try and wrangle the sandwiches back into a bag, or a hat, or a bin. It was a fairly average video game, much like the previous one I did, with nothing too bad and it seemed to fit with the property. Not that I’ve ever seen ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’ or know anything about it. If you were to ask me in passing, I would tell you it’s about a teenage girl who goes around collecting coins to stash in her lair so that she can afford to make sandwiches and sell them. Surely some kind of philosopher’s stone would eradicate the need for some of this but whadda I know?
Apparently Selena Gomez has an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion and is the most followed woman on Instagram. Not bad for a rapping chipmunk.
As we dwell on what it is to be human, how it is to act and treat others, and other big questions such as these, occasionally you sit down and decide that all of that can be pushed aside for the moment because there are more important things to consider. I mean, I could wax lyrical about the *checks* state of growing marrows in grow bags for hours on end, but who would really take the time to read it? Would you? I didn’t think so.
What you need is something to get excited about. What you need is a big ole’ bag of news that I can throw over you and you’ll drown in all my tasty, tasty titbits of information. I am doing it right now, as you read this; if you try to swim you won’t be able to from all the bumpy pieces of gossip I am using to weigh you down. You may be gasping for air and I am going to squeeze the life right out of you.
Actually, that sounds pretty threatening, so I’m not going to do that. Have a bunch of announcements instead:
Today is 22 June which means nothing but happiness and joy for the good people of America celebrating National Chocolate Éclair Day. Yes, it does sound completely made up and I would imagine that 99% of the population don’t even know that it is National Chocolate Éclair Day but who am I to stand in the way of our overseas cousins? Let them eat anything they want if it means that we can carry on receiving their Lucky Charms and odd flavours of soft drinks
Famous birthdays today include Meryl Streep, Cyndi Lauper and my personal favourite, Bruce Campbell. Keep on tooting, guys
For my personal announcements, I want everyone to know that I try to be as observant as I can be. I took the recycling out the other day and, crossing the street to the communal bins, I noticed a sock on the floor. Hmmm, that looks familiar, I thought, and carried on walking. A few days later with another bag of recycling, I noticed the sock was still there. It had been ran over by a few cars by then, flattened against the tarmac and grubby with muck. It was only then, striding past it clutching my bogrolls and cereal boxes, did I realise that it was my sock. How it got there, I’m not sure, but scientists are doing their best to reconstruct the series of events leading up to this using fancy sci-fi gadgets that I’m not allowed to touch.
If anyone else would like to announce anything then please do so.
Can you? Can you imagine a girl band? I bet you can’t. I bet, when you try, all you have is a blank space and the feeling of hopelessness when your favourite steak knife (?) is out of stock and you have to settle for second best.
The ‘imagine’ games were a series of shovelware nonsense pushed out by Ubisoft to capitalise on the casual gaming market that was en vogue during the Nintendo Wii and DS era. Don’t fancy your kids shooting soldiers in ‘Call of Duty’ or smashing deities in the face in ‘God of War’? Get them into some harmless touch screen fun on a Nintendo. They covered a lot of bland topics and you can regularly find them taking up space in charity shops and lining the walls of CEX because parents and grandparents bought them in droves and now nobody wants them.
You start by choosing your name and what instrument you want to play. I went with Fluke, cos I’m cool, and bass guitar, because everyone knows that’s the coolest. You also get to choose one of three genres of music to specialise in so I opted for funk. After some perfunctory story about being in a band and looking for a new member, you start practising. When I say “practising” though I mean engaging in a basic version of any rhythm game from the past 20 years. My band is called The Oppress because funk music is very music about sticking it to “the man” and how much he’s holding us all back. Fluke and the Oppress. Yeah.
The song plays in the background and coloured buttons move across the top of the screen. When the button reaches the circle at the end, you tap the corresponding button with your stylus. The closer it is to being perfectly in the circle, the higher the score you get is. You can choose to practise with the rest of your band mates at home or you can perform… in the library?
This, to me, had “bar in the aquarium” vibes. Do music and reading go together? I get distracted when trying to do both but each to their own, I suppose. I was practising the whopping three songs our band had in the library and getting fairly good scores, however the game wasn’t moving forward so I took the girls to the mall instead.
You can buy instruments, new items of clothing and accessories at the mall like a real mall. As my character is a teenager and we hadn’t done any gigs yet I didn’t have a lot of money so I bought a new top and trousers to complement the funk style the band was going for. Still nothing. I went home to speak to what I thought was my brother but was actually my boyfriend who I never see because I’m either at school or with the girls trying to kick out the jams. Still nothing. With very little options, I went back to the library and performed each song until my score was off the charts.
Success! By smashing the songs, I opened up a brand new place to visit on the map; the park. I also earned some decent cash from performing at the library so I headed back to the mall to buy another bass guitar. I needed my instrument to match my new outfit, of course. It was then that my thirty minutes were up and I decided to stop.
It’s not an inherently bad game albeit one that’s so bland you wouldn’t be able to pick it out in a line-up some six months after last seeing it. If you aim for the lowest common denominator then you’re guaranteed to refrain from offending anyone. It blows my mind that someone will have paid full price for this once.
