Avatar Phrase phase competition – May

You don’t need me to tell you what’s what.

You know I swan up with very little fanfare and whip out a couple of blinders. It’s only a matter of time before we go global and, I don’t know, Margot Robbie is having afternoon tea with Timothy Shallamoose and they’re saying our catchphrases between the sandwich and cake course.

Let’s whip up a storm:

  • Shat in a pampers! – it feels good saying it out loud. Try it the next time you accidentally hit your thumb with a hammer
  • You get the lentils, I’ll get the bleach – always use responsibly, to check if someone is actually listening to you
  • Park it where I can see it – possible sitcom zinger, used by sitcom mum to keep sitcom kids in check
  • Claw ’em, core ’em, floor ’em – a personal phrase from the one and only Tad Kensington. It’d take too long to explain it (so see below*)
  • Put your potatoes away, I’m not interested – it depends on the context

Now that we’re almost halfway through the year, next month will be a ‘best of the best’ showcasing all the gold we’ve dug up so far.

I personally can’t wait.

(*When you really want the razzle dazzle for that big presentation, you have to prove to people that you’re really willing to go that extra mile. First up is the clawing, getting your nails into them, showing them who’s boss and that you won’t let go without a fight. Second up is core ’em, strip them bare right down to their very being. Not to humiliate but to unearth what the person really wants. To get right to it and understand what’s going on. Once you’re there, take to the stage to bring it home. Floor them, floor them all so you’ll walk away with a smile and your commission several times over).

Avatar Phrase phase competition – April

We’re back again, like a lingering distant family member you’ve not seen for over a decade who now won’t leave you alone because he or she needs investment for their new business idea; lemon shorts.

Phew. Glad I changed my number after the first eleven missed calls.

Can we keep mining that rich seam that resulted in March’s gold? Let’s see:

  • Take that language and fold it up, turkey – sassy comeback for some sassy character you’ve been saving for a rainy day
  • Sweet Petunia! – an exclamation that suits every single situation you could possibly imagine, also makes you look really smart
  • Leave the beef on the bench – telling your co-worker that the stapler war they’re engaging that tool from the other department with isn’t worth their time
  • Double denim venom – when your friends don’t understand your fashion sense
  • Comma comma hashtag, whaaaat? – you know you’re the comic relief if you’re coming out with gems like this

I bet there’s one in there that you NEVER thought you’d ever see again. You know what? You’ve only yourself to blame because I had forgotten it until you mentioned it. Ha ha!

Anyway, keep all your suggestions (or any suggestions whatsoever) coming in. When we reach halfway through the year, I’ll bring forth the best so far into some kind of mega poll based on feedback received.

Yah boo sucks.

Avatar Phrase phase competition – March

This time I tried much harder. Promise.

Another month in the pot (?), another round of potential life-changing phrases to waft past your glorious eye holes. I can see that you’re all gleaming and desperate to know what’s what. You can guarantee that whatever I’ve got, it won’t be handed to you crimsonly, that’s for sure.

Could you be anymore excited? I doubt it. Here’s five more word lines to baffle your friends and influence your peers with:

  • Control Alt Discreet! – something to whisper when you’re trying to keep a low profile and someone accidentally steps on a clown horn
  • You got your set squares all mixed up, Sigmund – catchy catchphrase for mid-tier US sitcom. Laughter track provided where required
  • Smift me all the way to the bank – a made up word handily inserted into a sentence most people use on a daily basis. You can decide what it actually means
  • May angels lead you in and devils drag you out again – cool guy phrase for when you’re about to blow some mother away, possibly at the end of a film
  • Fox me up, fox me RIGHT up – a solid exclamation for when your friends decide to drag you on a night out to cheer you up and you want to look your best

As we can all agree, the calibre of this month is a hundred times better than February. I believe I’m on a bit of a roll and I still have a few tasty morsels put aside for April, you lucky, lucky people.

(Although between you and I, the word ‘grapefruit’ snuck its way into another one of these for some reason. What is it with me and grapefruit?)

As always, if you have any of your own suggestions send them my way and I’ll consider both it and you.

Avatar Phrase phase competition – Feb

Given that it’s three days away from the end of the month, I realise I could or should have posted this earlier in the month. Gah, what does it matter? As long as it gets shunted into February thats all that matters.

Here we are then, back to take on another batch of future zingers (not fingers, spellcheck) for the human race. Who knows, in a few years time one of these phrases might be doing the rounds. And where did it originate? Right here, baby, where all the action’s going down. Yeah.

Another five efforts to moisturise your eyes, your minds and your pockets (?):

  • I’m going to tell you what I told Eamonn Holmes, <insert anything> – I still stand by this, it’s a superb expression and soon will have its day in the sun
  • Gosh golly grapefruit! – an exclamation to express shock or surprise. Might be a bit too middle class
  • Out the way, grandad, I’ve got bitches to feed – a work in progress
  • Suck my magenta, and then some – could be an insult but also could be misconstrued as a sign off for some hip home decorating TV programme (although you’d never catch Anna Ryder Richardson spouting language like that)
  • Life has so many pieces, like a jigsaw. Make sure the box you have is big enough to hold all of them – wistful, knowing, definitely feels as though it should be up on a wall with, ‘Live Laugh Love’

A middling series of musings thats for sure.

I er promise I’ll try harder next time.

Avatar Phrase phase competition – Jan

Language is in a constant state of fluidity.

There, I started with something sensible for once. You know when you’re racking your brain and you realise you’re full of old expressions, catchphrases and adages that you’ve picked up along the way? Where do they all come from? How does someone uttering a sentence once suddenly become a phrase used hundreds of years later?

These days, it all comes from the Internet and lasts roughly about as long as the little orb’s attention span on a bad day. What is hilarious and prevalent one day is cringe and desperate the next. We need a more solid approach to this. Our lives are filled with throwaway matter so let’s bandage up 2026 by trying to create a brand new expression / phrase / something. I’ll be running a competition over the next few months and all being well, with the usual helpful contributions from Chris, we should be able to craft something exciting.

This month, we have five stunning entries to tantalise your verbal taste buds.

  1. Silicon valley, tin can alley – when someone loses all their wealth and is reduced to nothing but poverty
  2. Whatever next, Timothy? – a general expression to say when you don’t know what to say, even if there’s not a Timothy nearby
  3. I lost my hat on the treadmill of life – response to a question where you want to avoid the real answer and need to leave quickly
  4. Cough it up, wank bread – a work in progress (insults are hard)
  5. Sometimes you make the crinkle, sometimes the crinkle you make – when you want to sound wise without displaying any proper evidence of this

There we go. I await your feedback. I’ll also be taking any nominations in the comments section so if you have something you say to yourself that nobody else does, and you wish to share it with the world, then come on over like Shania Twain and let us know!

Avatar Poetry corner – Guzzle

Hey, all you hip cats and righteous moonbeams, it’s time for a little lyrical medicine courtesy of Poetry Corner.

If you’re looking to let off some steam then this is the place you for. Take a load off.

Here with a creamy piece of beatnik bebop is Trancient Prozac and his poem

Guzzle

I guzzle. I am the guzzler. You can’t stop me.

When I guzzle down my perilous maw,

You really don’t know, you can’t be sure

If it’s ever coming back because of how black

The back of my maw can be.

When I guzzle, you’ll think I need a muzzle,

It goes all over my mouth and hands.

I’m drinking too much like it’s going out of fashion,

A red burping cannon, taking all yo fresh rations,

Right down my maw of tranquility.

Gasp at the gastro intestinal puzzle

That forms the basis of my sweet guzzle.

You don’t need a degree in food expertise

To squeeze the kind of wheeze from these balconies,

But if you can embrace the nurturing bustle

Of a pint of gravy right down to the nuzzle,

I’m sure that with practice you too can hack this

And be one with the almighty guzzle.

Avatar Ouroboros DVD review

Huh.

Have you ever read something that made so little sense you skipped over it, only for your brain to react much later with an almighty, “you what?” that left you mildly stupified?

I know, that’s a very niche situation. Let me try and explain.

I was reading some reviews of films on CEX. I do this on a regular basis because they’re rarely about the quality of the film itself and contain such poor punctuation and grammar it makes me feel slightly better about my own poor grasp of the English language.

I saw the review above a few days ago and had to come back to it to try and work out the logic (if there is any).

Did he buy it and then get it again? Does he mean that he bought it digitally but because it had such a profound effect on him, because it was such a wonderful and thought-provoking work of art that he purchased a physical version to enjoy forever? Perhaps it’s supposed to be a story about time travel:

“I bought this dvd (present), because i liked it (past), and thought it was brilliant (still past) so I got it (back to the present).”

Who’s to say? You could go round and round and never fully understand the true meaning. I guess we’ll never know what *checks* stewardle was talking about. If only I’d gotten to him earlier. Ten years is too long.

Avatar Nicknamenews

Approximately one billion years ago, when he briefly ran his own website that heavily featured the letter Q, our very own Ian Mac Mac Mac Mac McIver published a list of all the names by which he was regularly known, and for a man still in his late teens the list was hugely impressive.

I never thought of myself as a chap with a lot of nicknames (a term indicating a familiar name for a person that is not their official or legal designation, and which is short for the more descriptive “Nicholas Name”), but recently a series of new ones were bestowed upon me (thank you Bex and Zeb), with promises that they would all be used, and it caused me to count up how many I have now accrued.

Please enjoy this potentially exhaustive, and certainly exhausting, list of the nicknames that can be used to address me. If you can remember any others then please do chuck them at the comments section.

From family and related areas

  • Kipper
  • Kissifer
  • Pififer
  • Christopheles

From school

  • Marshall
  • Monobrow
  • Christopheles J. Bartholomew
  • Mackshall

From friends of various denominations

  • Captain Numbers
  • James
  • Topher
  • Virginia Woolf (not used very often)
  • Criss Crimz
  • Crich5156

From work

  • Chris B
  • Crispy
  • Chuckles
  • Charlie Chuckles

Newly added this week and now available for use

  • Chris Army Knife
  • A Swing and a Chris
  • Chrispy Kreme
  • Chrismas Cake
  • Going the Christance
  • Long Christance Relationship
  • Chris Congeniality
  • Chrisalis
  • Chris from a Rose
  • French Chrissing in the USA
  • The Chrisard of Oz
  • The Ipchris File
  • No More Christer Nice Guy
  • The Long Chris Goodnight
  • Christal Maze
  • Chris and chips
  • Chrission Impossible
  • Chrississippi
  • We Built Chris City on Rock and Roll