It's been a while again. Blogpology. lol.

What I've realised with most blogs, (and by most blogs I mean the flower backgrounded, Christian family themed ones that serve predominantly to dribble mundane bullshit all over my laptop and surrounding desk area about their weekend in the garden) is that the more that happens in their day by day progression towards incontinence, the more they see fit to tell me all about it in their blogs.

I myself, see a reverse correlation in mine. I've done stuff, so I haven't had the same amount of time to dedicate to considering the really worthless issues that I generally comment on here.

I haven't really posted because I've been busy and unlike the 'Charlotte Family' from Alabama, me being busy doesn't mean I'm going to tell you all about my shit kids new found ability to eat raw potatoes. Mainly because as far as I see it, children are ultimately a bit (or entirely) shit; poorly functioning versions of ourselves for at least a sixth of a century who will ultimately, probably, be left with a radio-active lump of rock and sixteen fingers. But then I'm a cynic. And I don't have children. (Maybe it's wonderful). (But probably not).

What this means is that I have several issues to address and not enough motivation to address any of them at length.

The main one is that the puppet man has had a little trim. He's gone for a much shorter, neater variant of his classic style and I think it works well, not only has he had a shorter back and sides, but he's also gone for a neatened cut about the ear and a shave to match. Well done Mr. Perry. (Followers of my continued interest in the puppet man will know we share a surname).

Point two is also for the followers. A while ago, I remarked on my neighbour. The old boy who had me assist him in climbing into his house as he'd forgotten the keys. Well this week I forgot mine, so I went round to see him. He looked at me blankly while I explained what I thought would be a funny role reversal situation in which we would laugh, contrary to the linguistic barriers and bond as fellow residents of Grosvenor road.

Fuck did we.

His only words were in response to me saying, 'How are you?' and they were 'I'm alive'. He did show me through the house and into my garden where he stood and watched as I spent fifteen minutes squeezing through my kitchen window, a window that is by all accounts, too small for me to easily pass through. Anyway I put my hand in raw chicken, my foot in yoghurt and promptly fell into the sink. I turned to wave thanks, but the old man had gone.

Anyway, I'm going on a spontaneous trip into Europe tomorrow (possibly France, Austria or Italy so I'm not sure how often I will update, but bear with it, eventually I will write something worth reading.)

It seems prudent also to suggest you have a good Easter in case I don't post before then.

Ode to a blogger.

Right. Tuesday, one of my favourites.

I'm back once again (like the renegade master), using the free WiFi in Starbucks and thinking about stupid but interesting things to throw into the void, also known as the internets.

I'd first like to start with a nod of approval to my friend, Mr Will Shaw, who this week got hit by a 4x4 in China. After initial worry, I realised that only Will Shaw could be hit by a car, but insist on completing the last 4km of the run immediately after.

"It will surprise no one that I have absolutely no intention of reporting to a Doctor, nurse or witchdoctor about being hit by a car. I feel to do so would be to destroy the aura of infallibility created by my ‘more machine than man’-esque exit from the scene after being mown down by a 4×4. And I don’t really like making a fuss."

Inspirational stuff. Norfolk LADS til eye die. YEAH.

The next point I'd like to address is something I recently heard our lord and savior, Charlie Brooker talking about. Now normally, I wouldn't comment on anything he'd written because it's entirely unnecessary. If he brings something up, it needed to be addressed. And whatever he says about it is right. But today I feel like adding to his perturbed riflings through the human condition.

The subject of debate is how you treat people in the service industry. Not you personally of course, but like, some wankers, and by extension how your conduct in these situations is a direct representation of whether you are an inherently shitty person or not.

If you phone a help line, and you're angry because there was a logistical error and it's briefly inconvenienced you, apparently some people think it's fine to act like a bellend. Some people even think it's impressive to speak to another human being like they literally just formed in the bottom of the shower at a leper camp, out of the severed remains and belly button smeg of the afflicted.

Some people start talking to Julia at BT like they are well hard because theres nothing she can do about it anyway. It's what she's for isn't it?

Well guess what, Julia likes to eat bon bons in the garden and read books about space. Give her a fucking break.

You know those guys that swear at other motorists because in the little bubble that is their car and by extension their singularly linear existence, it's them that are abusing Julia down the phone. They said goodbye to their ugly wives this morning and couldn't wait to accelerate towards you at a Give Way point, only so they can beep when they get closer and it's apparently your fault.

I like to imagine the terrifying acceptance of doing what other people do as being like broadband. Millions of little beams of lights, carrying quite individual, potentially affecting moments of brilliance careering down a tube, following a direct path from start to finish. Birth, to mortgage, to death.

Alright so along the way you get to feel a little bit better about the impending doom of the path you put yourself on by asserting some sort of superiority complex on Julia who may or may not have had cornflakes for breakfast (Just like you, Fucko) and indeed wasn't switched on at 8.59 in order to indulge whining inadequates for the day, only to be turned off and popped in a stasis chamber overnight.

But what do I know, I just think being nice is better.

On 'lunch punching' and Misery.

Actually, mainly lunch punch. The phenomenon thats sweeping the country at a rate dictated by how quickly I can tell people about it.

It's simple really, but beautiful in it's simplicity.

Step One:  Wait for a friend to buy lunch, preferably something with a high viscosity content. For example a pie or a yogurt.

Step Two: Punch the shit out of their lunch.

And there it is. The 'lunch punch'.

If ever I'm bored or sad, say for example I just found out that I got a bad mark in a university assessment I don't care about, I like to bitterly take it out on my friends by ruining their lunch, and by extension, the key to their ultimate survival in this our lives; the race to a mortgage.

Fuck I love mortgages.

Because I speak really good French, like basically fluent and sometimes I have to help my French friends with talking, I know that the word 'mortgage' roughly translates as 'a measure of death'. Mort means death and gage means measure. See? These are all facts.

Obvious.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day.

So yesterday I went to the beach, because it now looks like summer (Even if the sea is still Baltic). We got in the car and drove in the general direction of Yarmouth. Although arguably the best coast in Norfolk is the Stephen Fry/ Shakespeare in Love bit that's in the other direction entirely we decided it would be more entertaining to drive to the beach called 'California'. Near the Beach called 'Newport'. We'll talk about this in a second.

Actually, Let's do it now.

CALIFORNIA?. Not to offend anyone living there (I can't imagine they have the internet anyway) but whichever twat brought attention to the fact that that pebbled scattered town that smells of fish and misery by calling it that needs a stern speaking to. Ok, so you decide to live on the coast, FINE. You decide to invite some tourists there, FINE. But why, why the fuck would you then name it after one of the worlds most renowned beachey areas? WHY OH FUCKING WHY?
The area of 'California' is covered in a mixture of Chernobyl styled flat blocks and pavement. Grey, oppresive day ruining pavement.
It's like the illegitimate child of Yarmouth and Slough, conceived on a quiet Wednesday night in Club Mercy. Or MOJO's. Yeah MOJO's.

I went to 'California' Norfolk, and I saw the void.

Then I went to Winterton, which was really nice.

Oh and watch this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

It's cool.

Experiment Fail.

Alright, so the daily writing thing has gone awry, BUT instead of mindless chatter I wrote some short stories and entered them into some competitions, which I probably won't win. But at least I tried. Or something.

I felt that instead of continuing to be the hyper critical sofa based writing expert that I currently am, I would submit something that I've made for approval and see what happens. If they don't like it, then they're wrong.

Much as I love arbitrarily assigned marks between 60 and 70, (Which is sadly what degree level creative writing starts to feel like) (No offense directed toward Trezza Azzopardi, shining light that she is.) (I mean this seriously, shes brilliant) But everyone else, primarily Vikram Kapur, who is a bit of a bell chuff, again, serious, applies what is at best an entirely non specific, generic mark scheme in what can only ever be a subjective analysis of formal techniques. Anyway, this rant can only really apply to a few unfortunates, so I will stop.

So today, let's talk about the largest animal you could have in a fight.

Someone I spoke to yesterday insisted she could have a horse in open hand combat. I believe this to be an absolute lie.  For a start, Horses are fucking massive and if they kick you, that shits going to hurt.  More than falling off a table onto your face. Here are some statistics:

Ricky Hatton is capable of delivering a punch with a train weight of 400KG.
A Horse is capable of kicking a bucket off a fence.

So there it is. Categorical proof you can't have a horse. And that the internet sometimes doesn't yield all of the facts that you require of it.

If you ask me, the largest animal you can hope to defeat is a large dog, at a push. Not including animals so docile that they won't fight back. Like a giant tortoise. Which would only retreat into it's shell.

Someone stipulated that you could simply flip the tortoise when I recently brought this issue up in pub chat. My response was that the animal has to participate in the fight, engage. A tortoise would not. And in reference to 'flipping the tortoise' which someone so whimsically suggested, they can weigh up to 300KG. The world record for a dead lift is 504kg so while you could argue it's possible, the man that lifted said weight was 6 foot 3 and 175KG.

The fall out of this is simple, even if you were fighting a giant tortoise (which you shouldn't because it's so placid) you couldn't flip it unless you are Lithuanian and huge.

So there it is, don't shit talk a horse and don't even dare to suggest you could have a badger. I know you were thinking about it.

Shout out to Townley working for the man. The Ladbrokes man.

Sunday Sunday.

Dear Diary,

Today I went to the shops and I bought a packet of crisps and I saw a man walking his dog and I said hello and he said hello back and now I am drinking tea and I like to eat skittles.

So most of the mundane bullshit that I post on here is stolen; the regurgitated version of conversations I've had during the day, the concentrate of my existence. I think actually this might be a bit depressing, that the highlights and sum of some of my days can be distilled and displayed as a list of amusing pornographic film titles, but there it is. Oh Well. At least soon I will finish University and be able to join the ranks of shoes and haircuts (Definitely Brooker, I'm not even trying to play that off as original)  walking to grey buildings, arbitrarily punching in numbers and generally avoiding the idea that one day, they are definitely going to die.

Sometimes people should be reminded (In my opinion at midday and 5, everyday, screamed in Russian over a tannoy in all public places) that if you are unhappy, then you're wasting valuable seconds in what is ultimately a fleeting moment of too often squandered potential. Doing things you hate, because thats what other people do, in the big lump of doomed flesh that you are, is stupid. Irrespective of the infinite religious debates, what if this is it? OK, so if you get lucky and the religious text you subscribe to (Mines National Geographic) happens to be the one divine word and you are saved, brilliant. But if it turns out that that text is just a construct to give millions of other people something physical to believe in, it's probably worth remembering, in 60 years time, when you look back, will you actually care whether it was the iPad 1 or 2 that you checked your e-mails on?

Maybe write a letter to a bank, doesn't matter which, telling it that mortgages can fuck off. (Although maybe I'm just saying that because my phone bill direct debit has bounced so many times I couldn't get a mortgage on a shed.)

All I'm suggesting is a coffee, some nice biscuits and a visit to a bench you don't often sit on. Oh, and maybe read some Nabakov.

Oh yeah, and no-one gives a shit if you don't have an Audi.

Never say no to Panda.

Because today has been uneventful and rather than do anything productive I just ate eggs, I have nothing interesting to say. Except for imagine what Liam Neeson would do if he found you eating his last rolo in a bed with his mother wearing his favourite hat that you just cut eye holes in.

Also, WATCH THIS. It's absolute GOLD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwCWiDfr-fU&feature=fvst