So here's what I'm going to do, in lieu of the fact that I have been a very naughty JRME and not blogged at all really this year: a bit of daily postage for the Christmas period.
But to save myself from actually having to think of anything to write, it'll be more an advent calendar of funny clips or pictures or whatever comes to me on the day.
It won't last long. Let's face it, I'm already a day late with this one. The date below may SAY it's 1st December, but it's not. It's the 2nd. I'm already lying to you. I'm so sorry. I only hurt you because I love you!
But if it were still the 1st, I would be telling you this: in a restful day today, I watched a very old man with an extreme shaking disorder attempt to pull apart my car with his bare hands in sub-freezing weather, all because I wanted a new car stereo and he worked for Halfords. Also, a great cack of white nonsense fell out of the sky and scared the cat. I failed to form any interesting opinions about either of these things, so let's just move on to the clip.
In tribute to the rather pleasant young Twitterer and Lego maniac Chris Salt, who now has my Big Train DVD and no better home there is for it too, one of my favourite Big Train sketches.
Happy the 1st!
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Thursday, December 24, 2009
To Summarise The Summary Of The Summary: Boffo
End of the year, end of the decade, end of my twenties, end of the unending tyranny of participating in conversations starting "You know the Millennium? That was TEN YEARS AGO!", end of seeing every cultural artifact created in the last decade given a strict ranking and being told to line up in order like a group of sulky teenagers in a class photo. Because how can I enjoy a film, song, album, game, TV show, flavour, sexual position, hamster breed or random flash of firing neuron without knowing exactly how it racks up in comparison to its bedfellows?
I have nothing against lists. I just can't retain anything in my brain for long enough to compose one. I can't even remember the beginning of this paragraph. In fact, I have nothing against lists.
*tap tap* Is this thing on?
OK, it's Christmas, and so here is a quick last post of the year type affair, to say what things and people have been mostly all up in my 2009 brainspace and that and so! (And if you would like to make a donation to combat syntax abuse at this time of year, please click here. Every penny welcomed)
****
You know what? I just wrote a load of bobbins, but screw it. Basically, if you're reading this, if you're a regular reader, or you've commented, or you've arrived here because you think Charley Boorman is a tit or you're looking for a picture of Steve Holt or any other reason, it's all about you. With this blog and Twitter, it's the first year since 15 years ago with the usenet forums that the internet really became social for me, so from the bottom of my stupid soppy heart, thank you. It means a lot. See you in the new decade, my absolute bloody darlings.
And Merry Christmas to you all! x
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Stone Cold Reminisci-funk
This is a strange time of year for me. The limbo between Christmas and New Year means nothing to a shift worker such as my very excellent self. Life returns to mundane banality and work-work-work with a frosty slap in the face on 27th December precisely, but it's another week before the rest of the world catches up, so you're left in a hazy netherworld where everything seems normal, but the fridge is full of exotic leftovers and chocolate and the TV schedule's gone all weird. Most disconcerting. And on top of all that, New Year is here again, heralding the yearly visit from the Grand Old Duke of Vague Sense of Disappointment With Your Lot in Life. Hey-de ho, though, I am countering the waves of attacks from his soldiers of shame by staying in on New Year's Eve, going to bed before midnight, and generally pretending my name is Nico Bellic and all I need worry about is where to take women on dates so that I will definitely get laid.
And that, my friends, is my first resolution taken care of - more recycling in 2009! Yes, I wrote that last week, but could not work up the energy to think of a cohesive conclusion to my sorry tale, so just went straight on back to the Xbox. I did in the end go to bed early on New Year's Eve, like the crazy muthafucka that I am, but didn't get to smugly snooze through midnight like some kind of emo with a false sense of superiority, because, of course, the rest of the world was celebrating the arrival of the new year with noisy bang-bangs. Oh, and fireworks HONK HONK. So I marked midnight by grumpily rolling over and muttering about how early I had to get up.
Over Christmas, the normal family dinner took a frightening turn when my mother flung down the roast potatoes and announced she had finally had enough of my accumulated crap taking up valuable space in their attic, and that the time had come to clear it the FUCK out. (She didn't say that, but looking in her eye, I knew she meant it deep down in her foul-mouthed heart) This caused both my stomach to fall and my bile to rise, leaving a small black hole in the centre of my being, which collapsed under its own gravity, sucking me, my family, and the whole Christmas spread into an area smaller than a neutron. Or that would have happened, had I had my way. Instead, with a grimace, I mentally adjusted my plans for the rest of the day from hurtling down the motorway in an empty car towards the warm and loving embrace of my Slanket, to crawling around a cold and cobwebby loft, trying to sort through boxes of stuff not quite rubbish enough to count as actual rubbish, but not nearly important enough to be worth carting 80 miles to my already over-stuffed flat-ette. Thankfully, my mother sensed my discomfort at this turn of events, and instead dumped a shoebox full of photos in my arms and toe-punted me out of the door, to distant cheers of approval.
And so, back in the big smoke, and coincidentally in a cloud of big smoke, I found myself in the titular SCR-F. They were all pictures from around my university days, bringing back floods of mostly unpleasant memories, contrasted with a small amount of pleasure that my 18-year-old self looks very similar to my 28-year-old self (I have been labouring under the illusion that I have spent the intervening years gradually getting more repulsive, but happily, I started off with a healthy level of repulsiveness! Heh, that's maybe a little bit too self-consciously self-hating, even for me. Apologies) Anyway, I have singularly failed to keep in touch with anyone from uni, mostly because I am terrible at replying to emails, but also because there were never many emails to reply to to begin with; I did a quite magnificent complete job of isolating myself actually physically inside a bottle of Southern Comfort, mooning over various men. So where are they all now, these beautiful young things I have captured forever on shiny photo paper? Who knows. A bit of googling revealed almost nothing, so my reminisci-funk continues on unfettered.
Where are you, class of 1998 Fitzwilliam College Cambridge (I know, I know)?? Any information gratefully recieved. So my reminisc-funk can be reminisci-sunk!
Oh, yeah. I'm back, baby!
And that, my friends, is my first resolution taken care of - more recycling in 2009! Yes, I wrote that last week, but could not work up the energy to think of a cohesive conclusion to my sorry tale, so just went straight on back to the Xbox. I did in the end go to bed early on New Year's Eve, like the crazy muthafucka that I am, but didn't get to smugly snooze through midnight like some kind of emo with a false sense of superiority, because, of course, the rest of the world was celebrating the arrival of the new year with noisy bang-bangs. Oh, and fireworks HONK HONK. So I marked midnight by grumpily rolling over and muttering about how early I had to get up.
Over Christmas, the normal family dinner took a frightening turn when my mother flung down the roast potatoes and announced she had finally had enough of my accumulated crap taking up valuable space in their attic, and that the time had come to clear it the FUCK out. (She didn't say that, but looking in her eye, I knew she meant it deep down in her foul-mouthed heart) This caused both my stomach to fall and my bile to rise, leaving a small black hole in the centre of my being, which collapsed under its own gravity, sucking me, my family, and the whole Christmas spread into an area smaller than a neutron. Or that would have happened, had I had my way. Instead, with a grimace, I mentally adjusted my plans for the rest of the day from hurtling down the motorway in an empty car towards the warm and loving embrace of my Slanket, to crawling around a cold and cobwebby loft, trying to sort through boxes of stuff not quite rubbish enough to count as actual rubbish, but not nearly important enough to be worth carting 80 miles to my already over-stuffed flat-ette. Thankfully, my mother sensed my discomfort at this turn of events, and instead dumped a shoebox full of photos in my arms and toe-punted me out of the door, to distant cheers of approval.
And so, back in the big smoke, and coincidentally in a cloud of big smoke, I found myself in the titular SCR-F. They were all pictures from around my university days, bringing back floods of mostly unpleasant memories, contrasted with a small amount of pleasure that my 18-year-old self looks very similar to my 28-year-old self (I have been labouring under the illusion that I have spent the intervening years gradually getting more repulsive, but happily, I started off with a healthy level of repulsiveness! Heh, that's maybe a little bit too self-consciously self-hating, even for me. Apologies) Anyway, I have singularly failed to keep in touch with anyone from uni, mostly because I am terrible at replying to emails, but also because there were never many emails to reply to to begin with; I did a quite magnificent complete job of isolating myself actually physically inside a bottle of Southern Comfort, mooning over various men. So where are they all now, these beautiful young things I have captured forever on shiny photo paper? Who knows. A bit of googling revealed almost nothing, so my reminisci-funk continues on unfettered.
Where are you, class of 1998 Fitzwilliam College Cambridge (I know, I know)?? Any information gratefully recieved. So my reminisc-funk can be reminisci-sunk!
Oh, yeah. I'm back, baby!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Like We Won't Notice The Cadburys Gorilla Needs To Drum In Slo-mo Since They Changed The Music
This is how the advertising industry picture the viewing public: Imagine, if you will, a small, idiotic child. Now give him a crayon in the brightest possible hue: "Dolt Blue," for example, or "Yellow Shit-for-Brains". Now make him draw a big, happy, simple face. Just a wobbly circle, two dots and a smudge of jam and dribble for a smile. Now make the child eat the paper, wait for nature to take its inexorable, disgusting course, and the resultant mess will be a fairly accurate representation of the intelligence of the average viewer, according to Mr Advertiser.
And they're right, of course. We're all complete imbeciles when it comes to making decisions about spending our rapidly dwindling cash-monies. I'm possibly one of the most intelligent animals on the planet, and I was duped into spending Five English Pounds on a pointless super-sweet caffeinated beverage and pie of mince simply because the beverage was contained within a cardboard cup which was prematurely seasonally red. Christ, it's still 7 weeks until the birth of Santa! (Sorry, Bart Simpson. No, I don't mean 7 weeks until the birth of Bart Simpson. I... Oh, you know what I mean) And because of this wonderful, magical time of giving to various multi-national behemoths on behalf of your Auntie Maud, the laughing advert peoples are going batshit overdrive and spewing out the Chrimbo ads at a rate of sleigh-bell jingling knots.
They're all thematically very similar this year, excepting of course the pre-Christmas adverts for new and increasingly repulsive and gaudy means of supporting your festive buttocks. I don't really understand how so many sofa companies exist. I mean, who actually gets a new sofa each Christmas? I have existed for a good few years now and I have only ever bought one sofa. And that was with someone else, so that's only 0.5 of a sofa each. I only remember one change of sofa in my entire growing-up period. There can't be a sustainable market, unless there is an insane and terribly rich sub-section of the UK population who would welcome the invention of a sofa vending machine, as featured in a couch gag on the Simpsons (I assume. I may have made that up. Yay, I could write for the Simpsons!) Although saying that, I do recognise the utmost importance of Sitting within a Christmas period. It will be my third favourite verb in December.
But yes - in general all the actual big Xmas campaigns this year have gone for the "Celebrities - they won't be mixing with people like you!" angle, featuring a host of family-friendly, cuddly stars hanging out with each other, and no-one else. I once had a dream - trust me, this is going somewhere, possibly not as inspirational as it could be - that I was allowed access into a hallowed place, a supermarket that only celebrities were allowed to enter. It was entirely stocked with stuff that us norms had never heard of, the slightly gross highlight being coffee-flavoured Marmite. Morrison's have clearly been rummaging around in my subconscious, with Richard Hammond, Denise Van Outen and that gardening fella-me-lad palling about in their local hypermarche. They even know each other's holiday plans. They're obviously all part of some vile daisy-chain of sexual depravity, to which none of us unclean specimens will ever be granted access to.
And over to Casa del Marks'n'Sparks, in the permanent picturesque snowy winter that has never actually happened in British Christmas history. The usual M&S wimmin suffer their usual compulsion to gaily dance around with demented grins on their beauteous faces whenever they're within 10 metres of an M&S product, and the one who always lolls about in her pants lolls about in her pants (despite the aforementioned imaginary blizzard), and they are joined by bloody hell! It's Take That! And Lily Cole. Her presence strikes a bum note in an otherwise generic campaign. Her combination of an 8ft tall body of a nubile wench, Lolita-esque flirtation and startling haunted china doll face, which looks perfectly at home in a high-fashion high-concept fashion spread in Vogue, doesn't sit well in a mass-appeal advert where she's gadding about with Barlow et al, as it makes all of Take That look a) about 500 years old and b) like a load of filthy paedos. And again - no lowlife proletariat scum to be found.
Lastly in this non-exhaustive flick through the ad breaks Sainsbury's, who are admittedly running a festive advert with their credit-crunch normal mum, offering up their shop as the perfect place to buy shit presents for people you don't care about. But fear not, gouty saviour of the children Jamie Oliver hasn't left us. He's teamed up with Ant and Dec to cater a super-douper celebrity party. Oh, but look at Ant and Dec, the lovable fools! They want to serve cheese and pineapple! The evil advert people must really hate the Geordie twosome, as they are cast as absolute flaming morons. The most basic culinary feats dazzle and amaze them. "Look, I'm drizzling!" Ant (or maybe Dec) gibbers at one point, happy as a two-year-old marching into his parent's anniversary dinner and proudly displaying his first, gleaming, solo stool.
Oh, hang on. It's cos they seem like normal folk. They're just like us. Unquestionable cretins.
And they're right, of course. We're all complete imbeciles when it comes to making decisions about spending our rapidly dwindling cash-monies. I'm possibly one of the most intelligent animals on the planet, and I was duped into spending Five English Pounds on a pointless super-sweet caffeinated beverage and pie of mince simply because the beverage was contained within a cardboard cup which was prematurely seasonally red. Christ, it's still 7 weeks until the birth of Santa! (Sorry, Bart Simpson. No, I don't mean 7 weeks until the birth of Bart Simpson. I... Oh, you know what I mean) And because of this wonderful, magical time of giving to various multi-national behemoths on behalf of your Auntie Maud, the laughing advert peoples are going batshit overdrive and spewing out the Chrimbo ads at a rate of sleigh-bell jingling knots.
They're all thematically very similar this year, excepting of course the pre-Christmas adverts for new and increasingly repulsive and gaudy means of supporting your festive buttocks. I don't really understand how so many sofa companies exist. I mean, who actually gets a new sofa each Christmas? I have existed for a good few years now and I have only ever bought one sofa. And that was with someone else, so that's only 0.5 of a sofa each. I only remember one change of sofa in my entire growing-up period. There can't be a sustainable market, unless there is an insane and terribly rich sub-section of the UK population who would welcome the invention of a sofa vending machine, as featured in a couch gag on the Simpsons (I assume. I may have made that up. Yay, I could write for the Simpsons!) Although saying that, I do recognise the utmost importance of Sitting within a Christmas period. It will be my third favourite verb in December.
But yes - in general all the actual big Xmas campaigns this year have gone for the "Celebrities - they won't be mixing with people like you!" angle, featuring a host of family-friendly, cuddly stars hanging out with each other, and no-one else. I once had a dream - trust me, this is going somewhere, possibly not as inspirational as it could be - that I was allowed access into a hallowed place, a supermarket that only celebrities were allowed to enter. It was entirely stocked with stuff that us norms had never heard of, the slightly gross highlight being coffee-flavoured Marmite. Morrison's have clearly been rummaging around in my subconscious, with Richard Hammond, Denise Van Outen and that gardening fella-me-lad palling about in their local hypermarche. They even know each other's holiday plans. They're obviously all part of some vile daisy-chain of sexual depravity, to which none of us unclean specimens will ever be granted access to.
And over to Casa del Marks'n'Sparks, in the permanent picturesque snowy winter that has never actually happened in British Christmas history. The usual M&S wimmin suffer their usual compulsion to gaily dance around with demented grins on their beauteous faces whenever they're within 10 metres of an M&S product, and the one who always lolls about in her pants lolls about in her pants (despite the aforementioned imaginary blizzard), and they are joined by bloody hell! It's Take That! And Lily Cole. Her presence strikes a bum note in an otherwise generic campaign. Her combination of an 8ft tall body of a nubile wench, Lolita-esque flirtation and startling haunted china doll face, which looks perfectly at home in a high-fashion high-concept fashion spread in Vogue, doesn't sit well in a mass-appeal advert where she's gadding about with Barlow et al, as it makes all of Take That look a) about 500 years old and b) like a load of filthy paedos. And again - no lowlife proletariat scum to be found.
Lastly in this non-exhaustive flick through the ad breaks Sainsbury's, who are admittedly running a festive advert with their credit-crunch normal mum, offering up their shop as the perfect place to buy shit presents for people you don't care about. But fear not, gouty saviour of the children Jamie Oliver hasn't left us. He's teamed up with Ant and Dec to cater a super-douper celebrity party. Oh, but look at Ant and Dec, the lovable fools! They want to serve cheese and pineapple! The evil advert people must really hate the Geordie twosome, as they are cast as absolute flaming morons. The most basic culinary feats dazzle and amaze them. "Look, I'm drizzling!" Ant (or maybe Dec) gibbers at one point, happy as a two-year-old marching into his parent's anniversary dinner and proudly displaying his first, gleaming, solo stool.
Oh, hang on. It's cos they seem like normal folk. They're just like us. Unquestionable cretins.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Grizzled-Oh And Whine (Geddit?!)
Here's what I'm all about at the moment:
1. Usually, I am so totally pro-Christmas, if you put an ear to the side of my head and listened to my brain at any point between October and January 3rd, you will just hear the faintest hint of sleigh bells, almost completely drowned out by a child's maniacal laughter. The songs, the presents, the tree, the disgraceful levels of booze, food and Deal or No Deal consumption, the fact that for a month before Christmas I am jangling with excitement so much that even the slightest emotional provocation, good or bad, will have me weeping like a wallowing willow, all that jazz. But this year, I am feeling very...strange. Gloomy. Uninspired. Not quite anti-Christmas, not really bah humbug, not yet "yes, Mariah, I realise that all you want for Christmas is me, and believe me, I would be rushing to your side in that fetid butterfly-infested puddle you seem to permanently loll about in these days if it would shut your mouth up for JUST ONE SECOND", but just not really caring at all about the whole shebang. What, and I hate to channel Seinfeld at such a critical time but sometimes you've just got to go with the lowest common cultural denominator, is up with that?
Luckily, before I have time to really have a good old think about this, the whole season will be over and 2008 will lay before me like a great unfettered field of dreams, bringing with it a whole new set of ridiculous non-neuroses and, if I really pull my finger out, five whole new blog posts.
2. If everyone in Argos followed the very simple rules of product dispersal, it would be a shopping utopia. Is this the kind of feeling the early Communists had?
3. Wait... Is it really wise to compare Argos and Communism?
Having now achieved my aim of writing a sentence (on the internet) no-one in the whole world (on the internet) has written before, I can now take my drooping eyelids and slight nausea to bed. Hooray!
1. Usually, I am so totally pro-Christmas, if you put an ear to the side of my head and listened to my brain at any point between October and January 3rd, you will just hear the faintest hint of sleigh bells, almost completely drowned out by a child's maniacal laughter. The songs, the presents, the tree, the disgraceful levels of booze, food and Deal or No Deal consumption, the fact that for a month before Christmas I am jangling with excitement so much that even the slightest emotional provocation, good or bad, will have me weeping like a wallowing willow, all that jazz. But this year, I am feeling very...strange. Gloomy. Uninspired. Not quite anti-Christmas, not really bah humbug, not yet "yes, Mariah, I realise that all you want for Christmas is me, and believe me, I would be rushing to your side in that fetid butterfly-infested puddle you seem to permanently loll about in these days if it would shut your mouth up for JUST ONE SECOND", but just not really caring at all about the whole shebang. What, and I hate to channel Seinfeld at such a critical time but sometimes you've just got to go with the lowest common cultural denominator, is up with that?
Luckily, before I have time to really have a good old think about this, the whole season will be over and 2008 will lay before me like a great unfettered field of dreams, bringing with it a whole new set of ridiculous non-neuroses and, if I really pull my finger out, five whole new blog posts.
2. If everyone in Argos followed the very simple rules of product dispersal, it would be a shopping utopia. Is this the kind of feeling the early Communists had?
3. Wait... Is it really wise to compare Argos and Communism?
Having now achieved my aim of writing a sentence (on the internet) no-one in the whole world (on the internet) has written before, I can now take my drooping eyelids and slight nausea to bed. Hooray!
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