The Face Update – Round Four

Hello and welcome back to my face.

It has been almost six years since the last update on my face and a lot has happened since then.

Actually, that’s a bit of a lie. Other than finding more grey hairs, more wrinkles and some weird lines appearing to the sides of my cheeks, it’s pretty much business as usual. My face keeps going on and on, and there’s not much you can do to stop it.

The photo I took isn’t great and I’ll have to apologise for the lack of fidelity; those lines keep appearing on all my photos, must be something to do with the lens. Let’s catch up with my face:

Original Eyes – due to the recent addition of the Orb, they’re now running double, sometimes triple time. The strain is much more visible and in order to stay awake, more coffee has been input which results in bigger pupils and the chance of accidentally smashing a plate has increased sevenfold.
Looking (tired) Eyes – even the original Eyes need to take a break every now and then. The LTEs are there to make me look dazed and confused.
Confused Eyes – when even the most simple of tasks is way beyond me, such as finding a pen that works or opening a door without hitting myself with it.
Inexplicably Happy Eyes – used for when the Orb gets to spend some time with grandma and grandpa. You look all weepy as though it’s so difficult to leave him behind and then whip out the IHEs when you’re reversing out of the driveway at 30mph.
Spare Eyes – when all the other Eyes have been ran into the ground, I’m going to need a pair to get me back to the eye hospital to get more installed. They only last 24hrs but they’re worth it. You gotta have a spare.

I haven’t really felt the need to add any new pairs in ages. The fluctuations in the market, along with the ever-increasing price of eyes, has forced me to rely on most of the same ones from 2020. I do feel sorry for the Original Eyes who every day shoulder such a huge strain for the rest of the face. If I can find the time, I’ll send them away to a fancy spa for the weekend for rest and recuperation.

Thankfully there hasn’t been much need for eyes other than your day-to-day activities. If I was asked to, I don’t know, start planning a party for Dua Lipa I’d have to refuse; I don’t have the eyes to spare, Dua, ask someone else.

Jeez. Every Tuesday.

Can we be serious, please?

I need you to all listen to me very carefully when I say this. I am deadly serious.

I need you to understand that there is a time for nonsense and there is also a time for being serious. I am the most serious I’ve ever been without crossing that line and turning into Serious Ian again (nobody wants that).

If we’re to start this new year fresh then you’re all going to have to give me enough time to eat my oranges.

I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t want you running into my house with whatever gibberish you need to tell me; it can wait. I need to take some time to eat my oranges.

Whatever you need to tell me, put a pin it in and try me the next day. Whatever job needs doing, you’re going to have to give me some extra time to get it finished. I’ve got oranges to eat and I won’t let anyone get in my way.

There. I’ve said it. Don’t get upset because I’m telling everyone the same thing. My oranges come first.

Newsboost – unused material (part two)

I think I deserve credit for not diving into this straight away after unleashing this hotch potch of box-ticking nostalgia bait. I waited a whole *checks* four months before phoning it in again. You’re welcome.

I also deserve a hearty pat on the back for writing a ‘quick post to earn a bean’ post nine days before the end of the month. I’m breaking all the rules of convention. What a trendsetter I am. You’re also welcome (God, this is exhausting).

We need some kind of awards ceremony to celebrate how great I am not just at being me but also being me in written form.

Anyway, enough of that. Let’s dive back into 2014 Ian to see what was going through his mind:

An apple a day keeps the cold-calling telemarketing away
Giant butt sea castle
Torch eyes tours
Dyslexic spelling error sky writer message
Nuclear fallout – beetles and lens solution
Learning to write with toothpaste is silly
Sugar cube igloo
Snake shoelaces. Worm shoelaces?
Bulldog clips rep is misguided (?)
Fruit tennis
Return of the icing sugar squirrels (this one still makes me laugh)
Napkins have feelings too, you know
Bog roll binoculars
Public trampolines
New type of screwdriver

The rest of the ideas from this page were so good they were used in the Twitter feed because they’re all crossed out.

What a great time was had by all.

ABOFB 40: Slogans

Continuing our ‘peek-behind-the-curtain’ theme, this week we let you in on our discussions as to whether the podcast needs a slogan. After 25 episodes we finally named the podcast and 15 episodes later, in this 40th and final episode of series 4, we actually use it for the first time. In this episode we…

Bounce around some terrible slogan suggestions
Have some practice starts to try them out
Get distracted by Tigers
Fail to come up with a slogan

Anniversary (M-me)

July was a very important anniversary for me. It officially marked my twentieth year up in the North-East of England.

I forget the actual day, some point in July we jumped in a van and drove almost hundred miles into the distance. That doesn’t matter anyway because we’re already way past that point.

Why didn’t I mention it sooner? I was planning on writing this last month and never did. As a prolific writer of bobbins posts, you think of and store one or two things you plan to do in the future. I may have even been planning to do this a lot earlier. Part of me wanted to go all out and wrangle some people together for a party. That would have been nice.

But it never happened. July is a busy month for most people what with the summer holidays, Kev’s birthday, Independence Day, National Fried Chicken Day, National Lipstick Day any many, many more. Trying to shoehorn a sort of important but not really party into all of that would have been exhausting and I doubt many would have been in attendance. Besides, I was too busying wearing so many different types of lipstick that it slipped my mind.

Will I remain up here for another twenty years? I suppose so, what with another tiny person on the way. I’d rather not be putting everything I own (which is a lot more things than 2005 Ian) in a moving van and driving to another part of the country. People barely tolerate me here so there’s no way they’d want me down in *checks* Wells-Next-The-Sea? Is that a real place? It’s on a map but it doesn’t sound like a real place.

Everyone LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! Okay, now stop.

ABOFB 39: An Oral History of Pouring Beans (ish)

In a slight change to the usual episodes, today we have a self aggrandising look back over our voluminous body of online work under the Pouring Beans name. Everyone does these thing on nice round numbers or important dates usually, but not us. No Sir. Basically we read our own stuff back to ourselves. We discuss:

Why is it called that?
How did it begin
Some McIver poetry
Remembering is fun

‘Frog Detective: the entire mystery’ – mini review

Before the time comes when I have to (metaphorically) throw all of my interests into the loft because of the upcoming childingtons, you won’t be too surprised to note that I have been playing video games.

A lot of video games. I have been pursuing a life of video games because what else would you do in your early forties? Build a shop? Eat some yeast and submit a two star review as it, “wasn’t what you expected it to be”? Complain about the diversity of umbrellas? Take up yodelling? I don’t want to do any of that.

What I want is to live out my dreams of being a detective. I want to solve crimes and make a name for myself without leaving the sofa. Thankfully, there are now a multitude of games that allow you to do that. I chose ‘Frog Detective’ because I had heard it was funny and it was short.

You play as the titular Frog Detective, the second best detective in the land, second best to Lobster Cop. He’s a very busy boy and currently at the top so you’re doing your best to keep up. What follows is three very short vignettes where you “solve” three very short crimes. The reason that important word is in inverted commas is because there’s not really a lot to solve.

The game is played in first person. When you speak to other characters in the game, the camera zooms back to a third person perspective. You get given the case when the supervisor, travel to where you need to and start interviewing everyone. It’s not a game to be taken seriously in the slightest. You’re not a hard-boiled gumshoe here, you’re a happy-go-lucky frog with a magnifying glass. All you need to do is keep talking to people to find out what they want and then go get the item they need. It’s more of a fun fetch quest simulator than anything else.

Luckily, the quality of the writing is what saves the game from being forgettable shovelware. Everyone is a weirdo. You get an intro which shows you all the characters you’ll be meeting when you start the episode. You’ll meet a sloth who is convinced his island is haunted by ghosts, an invisible wizard whose celebrations have been wrecked by an unknown menace and a supposedly sheriff-less town that’s hiding a terrible secret. Every character has an unusual quirk which results in conversations that go places you’re not expecting. At one point I had to find out which kind of dancing a monkey preferred so I could tell the person that fancied her this important fact so they could impress her at a contest. I found an (I think) antelope floating in a hot tub who demanded some food and when I tried to give him the pie I found on the floor he insisted on having a fresh one. When you write it down it sounds like nonsense, and also when it plays out in front of you it’s also complete nonsense.

You can finish all three episodes in under two and a half hours. At the end there’s a secret sneaky bonus game that you unlock which is fun for a while. It’s a very simple game at heart; you won’t find any mind-bending puzzles from the likes of ‘Broken Sword’, ‘Monkey Island’ or ‘Grim Fandango’ here (I know I made the same point in my ‘Lord Winklebottom Investigates’ review but they’re the most recent point-and-click games I’ve played).

If you see it on sale then I would thoroughly recommend it because it’s very silly and guaranteed to make you laugh.

Logical Dreamscape: that Rachel Stevens dream

Right, it’s about time we find out what’s going on here.

For too long I have wept in the shadows from the trauma of that Rachel Stevens dream from some twenty-seven (possibly) years ago. I need to take the bull by the horns and try to interpret what my brain was trying to tell me at the time in my life. I was young, hormonal, somewhat deranged, floating in a puddle of filth.

When I need explanations I turn to the friend we all need; dreamdictionary.org. Let’s have a brief recap as to what happened:

“I’m somewhere on Garforth main street when I meet Rachel Stevens from up-and-coming pop group S Club 7. She’s a little bit alluring, somewhat flirty but mainly pushy. She’s very, very pushy.

She takes me up a flight of stairs to a fairly plain corridor with only one door and a wooden chair outside. She makes me sit on the chair and goes into the room behind the door. When she emerges, she has a plate of salad and a fork in her hands. She then proceeds to angrily eat the salad making constant eye contact with me throughout the whole experience.”

I hope I haven’t misremembered what could be a pivotal turning point in my life. Anyway, let’s turn to the dictionary for an insight into the troubled mind of a teenage youth.

First, let’s pick out the main points:

Street, celebrity / singer, woman, stairs, corridor, wooden chair, salad, anger

Now let’s see what the dream dictionary says:

Street – walking along on the street could imply our current life’s path. Take note of what is around you and write down all the symbols because it may have hidden gems that might help you out (I don’t remember anything).
Celebrity – this represents our own desires to be noticed or unacknowledged potential that needs to be explored.
Woman – According to Jung, a man dreams of his anima; the feminine within the masculine psyche that needs to be integrated. In dreams a women represents wisdom, love and protection.
Stairs – there is nothing for stairs.
Corridor – there is nothing for corridor.
Wooden chair – when we dream of a chair it symbolises our need to take it easy. You need to take a break from you busy schedule and rest. You are working yourself to the bone and this dream is your unconscious tell you to calm down.
Salad – there is nothing for salad, there is nothing for lettuce (I remember there was a lot of lettuce in that salad).
Anger – there is nothing for anger, I also tried looking for ‘rage’.

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

So, by meeting a celebrity woman on a street it meant that on my life path I wanted to be noticed. I don’t think Rachel Stevens represented wisdom, love or protection because she was so enraged with my very presence. If I was doing GCSEs or A levels around that time then the idea of taking it easy would make sense. Wanting to be noticed too does make sense because, shocked as it may be to hear this but, I wasn’t very popular during secondary school.

Huh. Maybe there is a little truth buried beneath the absurdity of it all.