Unfortunately I lack the monocle.

I go through a yearly cycle, pretty much based on season. In the Spring, I will drink copious amounts of carbonated fluids. In Summer, an addiction to fruit juices of several varieties (thanks for that, Ryan), in Autumn, I put on nothing but smooth Jazz and most nights can be found cradling a tumbler of Spiced Rum and coke (long time readers will know of my love of ‘Sailor Jerry’), and now..

..Winter is coming. Whilst Eddard Stark would grab a greatsword, I must be considerably less manly and grab a cup of tea and a lightsaber (Star Wars – The Old Republic beta, bitches!).

Or to be more precise, SEVERAL cups of tea (and a lightsaber).

Winter is my tea-season. True to my name of the tea-drinking bastard, my caffeine intake goes through the roof, and several cups start to amass around my computer desk as I start to forego meals in exchange for Darjeeling and Earl Grey. Come the middle of December, the volume of my tea intake will rival the volume of blood I currently have circulating.

It was a couple of weeks ago on an always entertaining trip to visit friends in South East London that caused me to have somewhat of a tea-related epiphany. Farlit Morcha and Jo were tending to breakfast, and it being the first in a long time I’d actually had tea rather than alcohol with the two of them, Farlit was understandably uninformed on how I took my silky beverage of choice. I fulfilled his request for information, and moments later was rewarded with a cup of steaming wonder liquid. 

Now, obviously, I love tea. If we haven’t gotten that point across yet, then you really need to pay more attention. Could try harder. See me after class.

The point I’m trying laboriously to get to is that I can’t think of a time that I’ve ever had a BAD cup of tea. This epiphany is what has struck me. Is it just because I love tea? Even in the most spontanious of situations that may require a cuppa in order to calm down, or just soothe in general, I’ve, not within my memory, ever had a bad cup of tea. This brings me to the following question:

Does bad tea exist? Or is tea just a magical substance that instantly fixes everything, akin to the fabled Mana Potion? At first, I thought perhaps tea just released endorphins, offering the associated illusion of that ‘Aaaahhh’ feeling. That said, chocolate is a populate endorphin choice, and you don’t get to be my size without knowing a thing or two about chocolate.

And I’ve had some fucking vile chocolate.

So associated endorphin release is out. I need to do more research to support this ‘Tea is magic’ theory (In my mind, ‘research’ means drinking the equivalent of the Atlantic Ocean volume in tea). That said, I’ve had tea in several environments. At home, where I can lovingly craft a potful of EG, with a slice of lemon and just a dab of honey, compared to in a freezing cold medical room, back in my days of being in the Cadets, serving at a Football Ground on a cold November Afternoon. Styrofoam cups, gushing hot liquid with a tea label hanging over the edge.

It makes no sense. Not a single ‘bad’ cup of tea. 

 

*CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!* (Or, “Dammit, I’ve been playing too much Splinter Cell”)

“Remember, remember the 5th of November. The gunpowder, treason, and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

On this wonderfully grey 5th of November, whilst everyone else was wearing Fawkesian masks popularised by both Alan Moore’s ‘V for Vendetta’ and more recently, hacktivist group ‘Anonymous’, I was busy lurking surreptitiously around various points in the city. Geared in my favourite foxhound jacket, and as an extra challenge by friend Abaddon, a ski mask and Night Vision Goggles, I made my merry way around on one of my walks, accompanying both friend and for tonight, photographer, Malin.

Contrary to popular request, I’m afraid there’s no footage of me doing the pink panther walk, and subsequently no platform upon which I could accompany with the Mission Impossible theme (also by request, one I was not neccessarily happy to fulfil). There is, however, a few wonderful photos that I share with you now. Enjoy.

Apologies for the loading time; a birthday present involved a marvellous new camera. With quality, I’m afraid, comes larger files.

Drink ALL the shots!

What happens when you invite people from the UK, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, The Faroe Islands, Russia, and put them all into a Student Pub in the middle of London?

I will throw fireballs in the air, and will stroll home drunk, at three o’ clock in the morning, singing Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General’ at the top of my lungs.

..but perhaps a little more information is required.

Many know that I’m a part of a World of Warcraft guild that meet up a few times a year for a weekend of drinking and debauchery. That time of year rolled around again, but with friends in another guild by the name of Viri Fortuitus, I was invited/goaded into crashing their meeting, taking part in the city.

At this point, it’s easiest to enrapture you with weekend alcoholic tales in a chronological fashion, for fear of forgetting details otherwise. 

So many phrases I never thought I’d hear.

Click to enlarge.

Give me a motherfucking cuddle!

Men may not talk much about hugging, but I think there should be no such masculine social stigma.

Throughout one of my random walks in London at dusk, I came to realise there is a very intricate science to cuddling. Furthermore, I came to the conclusion that before today, I’ve been quite varying in my embraces, even subconciously.

As far as I can count, I have seven kinds of cuddle, as described below:

1) ‘You’re quite clearly european and into full body contact. I’m English and we don’t do that to strangers, but I don’t want to offend you. I shall observe your customs’

2) ‘OH MY GOD I haven’t seen you in 3 years, how the hell are you!?’

3) ‘I’m so sorry for your loss, is there anything I can do?’

4) ‘I AM A MAN! YOU ARE A MAN. I WILL CRUSH YOU IN MY BROTHERLY EMBRACE AND YOU WILL LIKE IT. FEEL MY CHEST MUSCLES! RAWR!’

5) ‘I love you so very much and I’m just happy to be here holding you.’

6) ‘Lady, I’m not just a big spoon, I’m a motherfucking gravy ladle!’

7) ‘….Yeah.. That would be my erection. My most profuse apologies to your midriff.’

I can’t think of any friend I have where one of these types of hug or cuddle would not be applicable.

…Is it not? Ain’t it? ISSSSSSIITTTTTT??????? FRUITELLA A BADMAN SWEETIE!

I think I’ve done a couple of posts before about colloquialisms and neologistic amalgamations driving me up the wall, but we have a new challenger (which is, ironically, older than I am). I think it says something about my complete lack of any quality resembling ‘cool’ when I see the following and start to rant about it. Time to dive into the sea of Facebook;

• Oliver innit
• 17 minutes ago

• Jess At least someone can spell it right. Nowadays people spell it.. “init”. It annoys me. Just sayin’, hah!
• 16 minutes ago

There’s something wrong that I’m sat here thinking surely neither “init” or “innit” are correct. Upon seeing that, the first thing to pop into my head is “surely the correct turn of phrase is ‘isn’t it’, which of course is a contraction and rearrange of ‘is it not’..” and then I realised that ‘innit’ IS A CONTRACTION OF A CONTRACTION.

Seriously, what the hell?

It’s a contraction that doesn’t even use an apostrophe to signal the contraction of the phrase it’s contraction is contracting! I need to stop saying contraction. Back to to the matter at hand, I can’t blame the modern generation for ‘innit’ as some light research reveals ‘innit’s use as far back as pre-1950′s, but if a contraction is supposed to utilise apostrophes, where the hell do you put it?

I’n'it?… Or the evidently favoured double-n: I’nn’it?

…and what about the general usage? ‘Innit’ being ‘is it not’ is a negatory statement inverted by a questioning fashion, so using ‘innit’ as a default positive notion would be incorrect, surely? Granted it can be considered an invariant tag not unlike the spanish ‘¿verdad?’ or German ‘nicht wahr?’, but that doesn’t change how it’s use as a deliberate affirmative is incorrect, does it?

Good things come to those who mix..

Yes, it’s an abomination. Yes, high doses could kill you, but more likely cause palpitations. Yes, it’s borderline blasphemy, but goddamn if it isn’t delicious. It will get you buzzy and drunk at the same time, and that’s bloody good in my mind.

Presenting the Broken Butterfly, named after the Resident Evil Magnum (“Got some rare things on sale… stranger..”). Click to enlarge.

Hit me with your pet shark? –NSFW–

I can’t stress enough – if you don’t have a working knowledge of Anti-humour, or are easily offended, you should probably not read this post.

..actually screw easily, this post has basically reserved me a ticket to hell.

 

I want to be offended again.

I don’t mean you need to come up to me and offer a slew of insults, mixing both vocabulary and vernacular into a chained sentence of directed filth, oh no. What I mean is that today, I find it incredibly difficult to be offended by jokes. What I would really like is to hear just one joke that would reflexively drop my jaw in disbelief. I truly long to hear a joke that I just can’t laugh at, that results in a sharp intake of breath, followed by stunned silence.

I miss that feeling.

The last time I properly felt like that was a about a year ago. I remember watching South Park, it was an episode where Eric Cartman and Butters hold a PF Chang’s restaurant hostage, by pretending to be Chinese. Naturally, they dress up in what they consider to be traditional garb, and spout things such as “Ching ching chong, we are very preased to meet you! We rike you very much!”. My slack jawed amazement at the level of racism just left me in disbelief, soon leading to what could only be described as an epic facepalm.

The problem is, having been exposed to the delightfully offensive humour found in sources such as South Park or comedians like Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle, is that the sheer offense behind new gags are just stagnant.  Sure, they’ll warrant a laugh, but I miss that “OHHHHHHHHH” factor.

Now, I have a rule about humour. Everything is censored, or nothing is. That said, I’m the type of guy who associates in many circles.  I have a series of friends who, upon a global tragedy occuring, will text me within minutes some sort of horridly inappropriate joke (by way of example, it took exactly 17 minutes after the announced death for my phone to be inundated with Michael Jackson jokes).  Forgive me for what seems horrible, but I was genuinely hoping for some seriously off-colour humour from the recent Japan disaster. No such luck. There have of course been jokes floating around, but nothing that made me question whether I was a bad person or not.

With that, I more recently have turned to what I have known to be the most offensive joke known to man. For those unaware, it is a joke (that I shan’t recite here), called ‘The Aristocrats’. The way the joke works is that each teller (usually stand up comedians) will have their own version. It’s not a joke told to audiences, more a secret handshake on the comedy circuit, where each teller will attempt to one-up the version they’ve heard by making it even more depraved than the version they were told.

‘The Aristocrats’ is what’s known as ‘anti humour’. The punchline is still unexpected, but largely not a pun or humorous reference. The normal setup is that a family approach a talent agent, who immediately rejects them (“I’m sorry, Family Acts are too cutesy.”) A parent will beg for a chance to show their skills, and the talent agent obliges. At this point, it’s down to the teller to insert the most shocking process possible, which in many cases involves sex, incest and scatalogical aspects (I believe it was Gilbert Gottfried that included a version where the father, and I quote, “He was fistfucking a dog, and believe me, when he fistfucks a dog, he really puts effort into it!”). The end of the joke is always the same. A shocked agent sits motionless, and when he comes to his senses, asks “Well.. that was one hell of an act. What do you call yourselves?” I won’t ruin the punchline, even if it’s not already obvious.

This almost worked. I found three variants of the joke, each with their own merits. The Gilbert Gottfried version is considerably offensive, but is pretty standard for an Aristocrats variant. It has your basic sexual perversion in the joke, and tries to offend using incest and beastiality as key factors.

Another version I found that I particularly like didn’t give me the shock I seek, but it was hilarious nonetheless. This version was actually done by the creators of South Park, with an animation of Cartman telling his friends the joke. The reason I like this is because whilst it features what could only be considered standard Aristocrats material, it also moves away from that by introducing to the families act “…and now for our impression of the victims of 9/11!”.. which would shock many. Unfortunately not me. The nicest part about this variant though is that the anti-humour is just stacked on and on at the end. After the anti-humour punchline is delivered, Kyle states “I don’t get it.”, making the situation even more awkward. Then on top of this, the crowning anti-humour gem is inserted, with Cartman, after going through the effort to tell this absolutely shocking joke, proclaiming “Yeah, neither do I.”.

The last version of this joke is done by an internet comedian going by the name of  ’Thatguywiththeglasses‘. Again, it starts off with the standard Aristocrats depravity, but he just builds upon it further and further. The problem is, the joke’s shock value is lost just through bad taste. By the end of the joke, Rottweilers are feasting upon the corpse of the Father’s offspring, Jesus Christ has descended from heaven in order to anally penetrate the family, whilst the survivors of the Holocaust dance to a musical number in the background. Yes, all shocking imagery, but the bad taste and lack of subtlety in the delivery just ruins what should leave me thoroughly wide eyed and slack-jawed in disbelief.

Got a joke that you think would make choke on my pint? Hit me with your best shot*

 

*For those not entirely sure about the title of this post, listen to Pat Benetar’s ‘Hit me with your Best Shot’. It really does sound like ‘Hit me with your Pet Shark’. On the note of misheard lyrics, The Fray’s ‘How to save a life’ really pisses me off as well. The line ‘..and I pray to God he hears you’, just sounds wayyyy too much like ‘…and I paid a guy to kiss you’. Seriously, check it out.

I even have a spinning chair…

(Audio Post for this one coming soon!)

You were on the London Underground this morning. A petite girl with a flower in her hair and a soft smile sits opposite you. She’s tapping her ipod, idealistically nodding along to what you can only imagine is some sort of 80′s synth pop that’s not too abrasive, but chirpy enough to make her tap her foot in rhythm whilst she forgets her surroundings. She’s sporting ‘geek-chic’ glasses and wearing a scarf so colourful it would make Joseph and his eleven brothers envious. You don’t believe in psychics or external forces, but you could swear there’s an aura surrounding her.

Suddenly you aren’t in a cramped train, underground. You’re now in a fabric softener commercial. In this haze of colour and your olfactory senses tricking you into smelling a field of white lilac petals, she sees you staring at her. You blush, as does she, and smiles sweetly shortly before biting her lower lip with a quiver that makes your jeans tighten. You slowly realise in horror that in front of this assumedly sweet girl you’re about to present not just an erect cock. Oh no, you’re going to sport a massive, throbbing, veiny bastard, in a situation from which you have no escape.

At this point in time it’s become clear that you’re so hard, were she to mount you then and there, you would cause irreversible damage. Seriously. The first person who could pull you out of her would be proclaimed the rightful King of England.

I fear I’ve built this situation up a little too much. The beginning of the end to that story is ‘….but not me.’ which now feels horribly anticlimactic, especially after the Pendragonian cock analogy. I’ll continue nonetheless, and I hope you’ll accept my apologies if this isn’t going where you expect.

…but not me. Oh no. Instead of being concerned about the nether regions of my body I just smirked in her direction with a raised eyebrow, causing a look of panic on her face like I was the Big Bad Wolf, and her multicoloured scarf was made from my the fur of my family. The sad thing is, I wasn’t even smirking at her. My recent induction to the Blackberry community renders my usual portable methods of music irrelevant, as I now listen to all my music on my smartphone. It just so happens that when she caught my eye glazing upon her, the March For the Funeral of Queen Mary came on, I reflexively pulled an Alex De Large face (albeit with beanie rather than bowler) and no sooner had I realised what had happened, I didn’t even make an effort to rectify the situation, I just chuckled to myself in a low pitch, which, let’s face it, made the next 45 seconds of the journey supremely awkward for the optimistic young lady sitting opposite me.

As of late I’ve noticed a lot less the radiant beauty of many a London woman, with the exception of the challenge set to me by friends in the form of a mellow Dutchman and a dominating Swedish Mother. What I have noticed a lot more is how a tinge of megalomaniacal tendencies really puts a spring my step (coupled with new trainers that increase my height by an inch).

‘Megalomaniacal’, for those not familiar with the term, it is ‘a psychopathological condition that favours delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence’ – Think of the stereotypical ‘conquer the world’ villain; fluffy cat, spinning chair, “Ahhhhhhh… I’ve been expecting you, Mr Bond!”, you get the idea. A scar here or there wouldn’t hurt either.

For those linked to me on Spotify, you’ll notice a playlist under my profile called ‘Megalomanical Bastard’. This is the playlist I have hunted down mp3s of and have exported onto my Blackberry, for my aural pleasure out and about. That said, the question I pose to you, dear friend and follower,  is “Is it wrong that feeling gleefully evil seems to be more appealing to me than the harmless objectification of pretty ladies in my every day life?”. The hermit in me appears to be emerging once more, and wonderfully maniacal melodies that I’ve dubbed ‘Muahahahahaha music’ really doesn’t do me any favours socially.

That said, It’s probably better for everyone that it was ‘Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary’ that came on my blackberry at that precise moment. I fear the train’s metal structures would have collapsed from the sheer power behind the full on belting of meglomanical laughter, had ‘Messa De Requiem: Dies Irae’ or ‘O Fortuna’ come up instead.

Forbidden fruit.. meaty, meaty fruit. (With guest voice Ryan Williams)



As children, our lives are dictated by parental rule and experience.

By way of example, many a parent has said “Don’t play with matches!” If anything, this makes us want to play with matches even more. So we do. What is an eventuality is that as children, we don’t have the dexterity for handling fire, and our parent’s warning is intrinsically linked with a hope that we don’t burn ourselves. Inevitably, we burn ourselves.

We then pay attention to the applied rule, observing the bad experience, and move on. Of course, this isn’t just limited to matches.

“Don’t run with scissors!”

“Don’t put your fingers in the Wall Socket!”

“If you keep touching yourself, you’ll go blind!”

“Don’t use the cooker without one of us around!”

The latter holds particular stock in what this particular post is all about. No, no, not the one about touching yourself. No amount of experience will stop us doing that. No, I refer to the cooker. Heated either by electricity or gas, you DEFINITELY don’t want to play with matches if it’s gas, unless you like the ‘no eyebrows’ fashion style. More specifically, as we grow older we have much more freedom from these archaic yet frequently observed rules.

Despite living in a house where food is optionally offered, I prefer to buy my own groceries. A fridge in my room means cold beer and or snack preparation is personally readily available. Being considered an adult, paying for my own shopping, and being taller than my cooker, a recent late night snack provided me with a horrid, yet brilliant, epiphany. And I’m not the only ‘adult’ who’s realised it.

I can cook Bacon. WHENEVER. I. WANT.