It occurs to me that life is good. Much better, in fact, than the 'good old days' which as far as I can tell, weren't that good at all (although I imagine that back in the good old days, there were still old people who reminisced wrongly about the even better, older days).
So, here are nine things that are definitely much better than the good old days:
Toilets
Start with something obvious, why not. Toilets used to be rubbish in the good old days. They were buckets. Or holes in the ground. And they were often in a freezing cold outhouse. And they stank. In the good old days, you certainly wouldn't want to sit on the bog checking Facebook on your iPhone for long. Which brings me nicely to...
Smartphones
Phones in the good old days were really really dumb. The only game you could play on them was a really rubbish version of swingball, only worse because the cord was really short and they tended to break if you hit them with stuff. You could talk on them, I suppose, but you couldn't, say, put a blog post onto the www with them. That conveniently leads me to...
The Internet
Oh the internet is absolutely fricking awesome. Back in the good old days, if you wanted to see a hilariously captioned cute kitten, you had to start by finding a kitten! And then you had to make it do something awesome, capture the (several) moment(s) with your pinhole camera and then develop the film and make up your own hilarious caption. Or hope to hell that one turned up on the clumsily linked TV...
Television
Oh my god, television was shit in the good old days. It was tiny and fuzzy, badly acted and sounded like it was made of baked bean tins. Now, it's HUGE and colourful and has explosions and boobs and swearing and even though we have reality TV, we also have The Sopranos and The West Wing and Dexter and that's at least 900% better in my view! And what else can you do with your telly?
Video Games
They didn't have video games back in the good old days, did they? Billiards, maybe. A few card games, perhaps. But there aren't many opportunities to shoot the living shit out of fourteen year old American kids with high explosive, hollow point rounds spat out of your awesome mini-gun at 200 rounds per second in the average game of Snap. EAT HOT LEAD, YOU SPOTTY LITTLE MOTHERFUCKERRRRR!
And we can pretty much thank Science for video games!
Science
How cool is science? There's so much more of it now than in the good old days. They didn't have String Theory or the Hubble Telescope in the good old days! Where would you see amazing pictures of deep space? The internet, maybe? No, wait! It's the good old days! They don't even have robots. Even giant ones...
Transformers
This one doesn't even need an explanation, does it? Transformers are brilliant. None of them in the old days. You just had to play with rocks!
Rock Music
Put simply, rock music rocks, an the heavier the better! It's so much more awesome than all the other music. In the good old days, you'd never burst an eardrum listening to crackly old doo wop nonsense or crooning bollocks. Now you can experience the internal injury of your choice by turning up the volume! And it's all okay cos we can fix you...
Medicine
Medicine was really crappy in the good old days. If you went into hospital, chances are you weren't gonna come out alive. And people died from 'wasting illnesses' and bloody hankies. And now people live twice as long as their great granddads because we can cure or mend almost anything. Cos it's not the good old days any more!
Thank God, huh?
Monday, July 11, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
The Bodies Are Piling Up
Yesterday, there was a small collection of corpses on the driveway:
While my more rational side tells me that these are trophies left over from Dexter's latest killing spree, my slight less rational side insists that this is what happened:
While my more rational side tells me that these are trophies left over from Dexter's latest killing spree, my slight less rational side insists that this is what happened:
Saturday, July 09, 2011
WHOMMMM! (or 'A Beginners Field Guide To Lightsaber Pretensions')
It's a well known fact that if you hand a long, thin object to a man, he will almost certainly wave it around making a 'whommmm' sound. Men who don't do this suffer from a mental illness called 'having no soul*'.
The world provides endless opportunities for pretending one has a lightsaber and I present here a brief selection of ideas for beginners:
In The Home
The home is an excellent location for practicing your lightsaber skills, with many many items that can be used.
The hoover attachment is a good choice as you can easily make out that you were simply engaging in household chores if you are caught at it. The downside of this is that you might end up actually having to hoover in order to maintain your cover.
Meanwhile, in the garden there is a huge assortment of bits and bobs for you to choose from. Here, I have picked the parasol from our patio set. This has the dual advantage of extensive reach and shade from the hot sun!
DIY Stores
Not much can match the DIY store for lightsabering opportunities, which will allow you to combine your interests in power tools, laser based fencing and, indeed, actual fencing.
You might not think that the shelving and bracket department would provide much in the way of lightsabers. But you'd be wrong.
Plumbing yields a fantastic array of long, thin things for you to wave about. The longer, the better, I say!
Car Parks
Even the humble car park can afford an unexpected opportunity to 'whommm'.
Here, I came across a discarded fluorescent tube from a strip light, which made an excellent lightsaber!
Garden Centres
Oh, the hated garden centre. How we dread the moment when our significant other declares that it's time to pay a visit to the land of petunias and terracotta pots. But never fear, my friends. There are a myriad of lightsabers here, too!
In this picture, an unconventional twirly, metal garden stake, commonly used for growing flowers up becomes an unconventionally twirly lightsaber, commonly used for chopping bits off stormtroopers!
And look how much more fun this ordinary looking broom has become. These things are totally wasted on the likes of Harry Potter!
Eating Out
Lightsabers can be found in the most unlikely places. The most boring of dinner dates can be made more exciting with the addition of a lightsaber.
Look at this chip. Now look at it again, because it's not a chip, it's an awesome miniature lightsaber!
Not even posh restaurants are immune to the lightsaber influence. One word: Breadstick!
I hope that this article has helped you see that no matter where you are, you can make the place at least 109% more brilliant by pretending you have a lightsaber.
If nothing else, just remember these three words:
Lightsabers are everywhere!
( * This is also sometimes known as 'not liking Star Wars'. Unlikely, I know, but some poor people really do suffer from it. )
The world provides endless opportunities for pretending one has a lightsaber and I present here a brief selection of ideas for beginners:
In The Home
The home is an excellent location for practicing your lightsaber skills, with many many items that can be used.
The hoover attachment is a good choice as you can easily make out that you were simply engaging in household chores if you are caught at it. The downside of this is that you might end up actually having to hoover in order to maintain your cover.
Meanwhile, in the garden there is a huge assortment of bits and bobs for you to choose from. Here, I have picked the parasol from our patio set. This has the dual advantage of extensive reach and shade from the hot sun!
DIY Stores
Not much can match the DIY store for lightsabering opportunities, which will allow you to combine your interests in power tools, laser based fencing and, indeed, actual fencing.
You might not think that the shelving and bracket department would provide much in the way of lightsabers. But you'd be wrong.
Plumbing yields a fantastic array of long, thin things for you to wave about. The longer, the better, I say!
Car Parks
Even the humble car park can afford an unexpected opportunity to 'whommm'.
Here, I came across a discarded fluorescent tube from a strip light, which made an excellent lightsaber!
Garden Centres
Oh, the hated garden centre. How we dread the moment when our significant other declares that it's time to pay a visit to the land of petunias and terracotta pots. But never fear, my friends. There are a myriad of lightsabers here, too!
In this picture, an unconventional twirly, metal garden stake, commonly used for growing flowers up becomes an unconventionally twirly lightsaber, commonly used for chopping bits off stormtroopers!
And look how much more fun this ordinary looking broom has become. These things are totally wasted on the likes of Harry Potter!
Eating Out
Lightsabers can be found in the most unlikely places. The most boring of dinner dates can be made more exciting with the addition of a lightsaber.
Look at this chip. Now look at it again, because it's not a chip, it's an awesome miniature lightsaber!
Not even posh restaurants are immune to the lightsaber influence. One word: Breadstick!
I hope that this article has helped you see that no matter where you are, you can make the place at least 109% more brilliant by pretending you have a lightsaber.
If nothing else, just remember these three words:
Lightsabers are everywhere!
( * This is also sometimes known as 'not liking Star Wars'. Unlikely, I know, but some poor people really do suffer from it. )
Friday, July 08, 2011
Where's My Cake?
The other day, I made a fruit cake. It had cranberries in it and it was delicious.
The next day, I made a cup of tea and decided to have a delicious slice of cake with it.
But could I find the delicious cake? Not on your nelly.
Although she denies it, Dr K had hidden the delicious cake from me.
Where do you think the delicious cake was?
In the cake tin? In the whimsically cat-shaped biscuit jar? Maybe in one of the two Tupperware boxes next to the excellent purple kettle? Nope. None of those places.
I even looked in the fridge. If I can't find food, it's often because Dr K had put it in the fridge. My delicious cake, however was not in the fridge.
When I eventually found it, I was very impressed with Dr K's (alleged) cunningness. She had (allegedly) hidden my delicious cake in the last place I was likely to look. In a ryvita tin.
Fortunately, my cake was far more delicious than ryvita and it complemented my cup of tea perfectly.
The next day, I made a cup of tea and decided to have a delicious slice of cake with it.
But could I find the delicious cake? Not on your nelly.
Although she denies it, Dr K had hidden the delicious cake from me.
Where do you think the delicious cake was?
In the cake tin? In the whimsically cat-shaped biscuit jar? Maybe in one of the two Tupperware boxes next to the excellent purple kettle? Nope. None of those places.
I even looked in the fridge. If I can't find food, it's often because Dr K had put it in the fridge. My delicious cake, however was not in the fridge.
When I eventually found it, I was very impressed with Dr K's (alleged) cunningness. She had (allegedly) hidden my delicious cake in the last place I was likely to look. In a ryvita tin.
Fortunately, my cake was far more delicious than ryvita and it complemented my cup of tea perfectly.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
A Terrible Disease
Recently, the following internet meme has been making it's way around Facebook. At the time of writing, an enormous number of people around the world have set it as their status!
Look, here's my Facebook feed:
If you click in it, you can see that not only four people have it as their status, but that at least two others have admitted that they suffer from it!
This seems to be a big problem, so I did a little bit of research.
Apparently the first case of Darren Morrissey was diagnosed about 35 years ago in a hospital in Devon. It started as quite a small irritation, but has got bigger and bigger and, in recent years has become a very large problem for it's sufferers indeed.
During my research I discovered the following public awareness poster:
From what I know of Darren Morrissey, I would agree that the advice shown on this poster is sound. Wash your hands. You don't know where he's been!
"Set this as your status for an hour if you or someone you know suffers from Darren Morrissey, a horrific blight that afflicts over 132 people around the world. He is incurable and very contagious. By setting this as your status, you can show your support for all those people affected by this terrible, debilitating disorder. Many people won't set this as their status because they are basically twats."
Look, here's my Facebook feed:
If you click in it, you can see that not only four people have it as their status, but that at least two others have admitted that they suffer from it!
This seems to be a big problem, so I did a little bit of research.
Apparently the first case of Darren Morrissey was diagnosed about 35 years ago in a hospital in Devon. It started as quite a small irritation, but has got bigger and bigger and, in recent years has become a very large problem for it's sufferers indeed.
During my research I discovered the following public awareness poster:
From what I know of Darren Morrissey, I would agree that the advice shown on this poster is sound. Wash your hands. You don't know where he's been!
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Colours
Look at this:
It's a colour wheel. Pretty, isn't it?
Now I'm sure you're looking at my colour wheel and wondering what the hell is going on with that outside ring. I mean it's just the same as the one next to it, but with more segments.
Well, I'm about to give you a crash course in the womenfolk and how they see the world.
You're welcome.
Here is another version of the colour wheel:
I know, I know. It looks exactly the same as the one above. I know that.
But apparently, when the womenfolk look at it, they see lots of different colours in that outside ring, with names like 'lavender', 'cerise', 'cyan', 'lilac' and all sorts of other ridiculous names.
I call it the 'lady ring', which sounds a bit ruder than I intended. It seems that the womenfolk have lots of rings, even bigger than this one. But men can't see them.
Here are two photographs:
The one on the left shows the world as it really is, as taken by an ordinary camera. The one on the right, however, has been taken by a state of the art 'lady cam' developed by Nikon, with a special vagina shaped lens that allows us to create an impression of what the womenfolk see. Look at how it's all technicolor and rainbows and pretty flying unicorns!
Science has yet to explain why men can only see a tiny fraction of the colours that the womenfolk see. I suspect it has something to do with genes. Or hormones. Or because men don't got a vagina.
It's a colour wheel. Pretty, isn't it?
Now I'm sure you're looking at my colour wheel and wondering what the hell is going on with that outside ring. I mean it's just the same as the one next to it, but with more segments.
Well, I'm about to give you a crash course in the womenfolk and how they see the world.
You're welcome.
Here is another version of the colour wheel:
I know, I know. It looks exactly the same as the one above. I know that.
But apparently, when the womenfolk look at it, they see lots of different colours in that outside ring, with names like 'lavender', 'cerise', 'cyan', 'lilac' and all sorts of other ridiculous names.
I call it the 'lady ring', which sounds a bit ruder than I intended. It seems that the womenfolk have lots of rings, even bigger than this one. But men can't see them.
Here are two photographs:
The one on the left shows the world as it really is, as taken by an ordinary camera. The one on the right, however, has been taken by a state of the art 'lady cam' developed by Nikon, with a special vagina shaped lens that allows us to create an impression of what the womenfolk see. Look at how it's all technicolor and rainbows and pretty flying unicorns!
Science has yet to explain why men can only see a tiny fraction of the colours that the womenfolk see. I suspect it has something to do with genes. Or hormones. Or because men don't got a vagina.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Flyfoot
I have a recurring problem with my feet.
You remember my feet, don't you? They're strangely brown.
Anyway, my problem is this: flies keep landing on my feet when I'm using my computer.
It's very annoying, particularly when I have bare feet. I don't know why they keep landing on my feet, but you can guarantee that if there's a fly in the house, it's hiding under my computer desk and just waiting for me to take my socks off.
It's not even like my feet are especially smelly (although they are a bit brown). Dr K's feet are way smellier than mine (although less brown). I think the flies just want to piss me off. They may be in cahoots with the evil cabal of evil who's stated aim is fuck with me.
I suppose that I'll just have to wear socks when I use my computer!
You remember my feet, don't you? They're strangely brown.
Anyway, my problem is this: flies keep landing on my feet when I'm using my computer.
It's very annoying, particularly when I have bare feet. I don't know why they keep landing on my feet, but you can guarantee that if there's a fly in the house, it's hiding under my computer desk and just waiting for me to take my socks off.
It's not even like my feet are especially smelly (although they are a bit brown). Dr K's feet are way smellier than mine (although less brown). I think the flies just want to piss me off. They may be in cahoots with the evil cabal of evil who's stated aim is fuck with me.
I suppose that I'll just have to wear socks when I use my computer!
Monday, July 04, 2011
Dazza vs The Lie-In
So this week, I'm on holiday. My plan is to bum around a lot. And have lots of lie-ins.
Here's how the first lie-in of my week off went:
7:00 - Dr K leaves for work
7:05 - Rochester sits on my back while Dexter meows in my face.
7:10 - Dexter starts a fight with Rochester. On my back.
7:15 - Rochester vomits on the bedroom rug.
7:16 - I give up on my lie-in, clean up the vomit, throw the cats outside and watch the Karate Kid instead!
Here's how the first lie-in of my week off went:
7:00 - Dr K leaves for work
7:05 - Rochester sits on my back while Dexter meows in my face.
7:10 - Dexter starts a fight with Rochester. On my back.
7:15 - Rochester vomits on the bedroom rug.
7:16 - I give up on my lie-in, clean up the vomit, throw the cats outside and watch the Karate Kid instead!
Sunday, July 03, 2011
The Day Dr K Tried To Kill Me
Dr K tried to kill me today. Her weapon of choice was walking.
"Let's go to Woodchester Park," she said. "It'll be nice!"
And it was. It was very nice. Here are some pictures I took to show just how nice it was:
A lovely forest path. In the forest.
A delightful lake.
The rather splendid Woodchester Mansion.
What these pictures don't show is the sheer horror of the 'red' route that we took. The never-ending, always-uphill, stinging-nettle-strewn, muddy, red route.
There was a blue route, which was a mile and half, on which there were no hills. And there was a yellow walk that was a respectable three and a half miles. No hills of note on that either.
And then there was the Red Walk. Which went on forever.
I swear that we were walking for days. Maybe even a week. And at least 75% of it was uphill. Through nettles. And mud.
When we finished it, we consulted the map in the car park and discovered that we had just done the seven mile walk.
It's not that it was seven miles. Well, it was... But that wasn't the big problem. The big problem was that we hadn't consulted the map beforehand, so we had absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We just arbitrarily elected to follow the red arrows. And because the entire walk was through dense trees, we had no idea how far we had left to go.
And then there was the sign that promised us a bench at the top of what I'm pretty sure was the highest hill in the WORLD!
Bench, my arse. There was no goddamn bench. Just more goddamn nettles and mud and hill!
Anyway, when we got back to the car, my legs fell off and Dr K took me to a pub for a dirty burger.
So, as a wise man once said: "All is well."
"Let's go to Woodchester Park," she said. "It'll be nice!"
And it was. It was very nice. Here are some pictures I took to show just how nice it was:
What these pictures don't show is the sheer horror of the 'red' route that we took. The never-ending, always-uphill, stinging-nettle-strewn, muddy, red route.
There was a blue route, which was a mile and half, on which there were no hills. And there was a yellow walk that was a respectable three and a half miles. No hills of note on that either.
And then there was the Red Walk. Which went on forever.
I swear that we were walking for days. Maybe even a week. And at least 75% of it was uphill. Through nettles. And mud.
When we finished it, we consulted the map in the car park and discovered that we had just done the seven mile walk.
It's not that it was seven miles. Well, it was... But that wasn't the big problem. The big problem was that we hadn't consulted the map beforehand, so we had absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We just arbitrarily elected to follow the red arrows. And because the entire walk was through dense trees, we had no idea how far we had left to go.
And then there was the sign that promised us a bench at the top of what I'm pretty sure was the highest hill in the WORLD!
Bench, my arse. There was no goddamn bench. Just more goddamn nettles and mud and hill!
Anyway, when we got back to the car, my legs fell off and Dr K took me to a pub for a dirty burger.
So, as a wise man once said: "All is well."
Saturday, July 02, 2011
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