Seagull competition

Look at this thoughtful chap.

He’s perched on a lamp post on Llandudno pier, gazing out to sea. Down below, fat tourists wander around with sticky donuts and runny ice cream, but from his vantage point, the sound of waddling morons dies away. He hears the wind whipping at his sleek feathers and the call of the other gulls circling above. He sees the sun glimmering from the rolling peaks of the slate grey Irish Sea. He is deep in existential contemplation.

The question is, what is he contemplating?

That important question is not just about probing the philosophical leanings of a Welsh sea bird. It’s also your route to a big, big prize, which may or may not be fish-based.

If you think you know the answer, and you’d like to be in with a chance of winning the Luxury Mystery Prize that might have been selected by a seagull, then leave your answer, answers or both in the comments below.

As the seagull himself would say: squawk!

Here is a thing

The other day Ian sent me a text asking something about the new Beans editor, and I didn’t know the answer without having the editor in front of me to fiddle with. What I needed was a new post with some words in it. So I opened the Beans, made a new post, and started typing some nonsense to fill up the screen.

I just closed it when I’d seen what I needed to see, but next time I came here, my nonsense was still there, faithfully saved for me by the kindly Beans. At first I thought that was just because of some kind of auto-save function, but then I read it and realised: no. This was no automatic save. The Beans had seen what I had typed and recognised it for what it was. Sheer poetry. It calls to mind the most uplifting words in the English language. So, rather than keep it to myself, I have chosen to publish the words I wrote below, so that you can enjoy them too.

I have chosen to title this, simply, “Untitled”.

Rum te tum

Boo be doo

Lal la laaa

Hoo be hoo

Rum pum pum

Habadeehee

Lumpy pumps

Trumpy flumps

Grumpy sumps

2019 State of the Beans Address

Good evening. Gentlemen, please, be seated.

My name is Sergeant-Major Professor Sir Elbert Louche OBE, and I am delighted to have been invited back for the fifth consecutive year to deliver the annual State of the Beans Address, this year held for the first time here in the glorious humidity of the glass dome at the Center Parcs in Hebden Bridge. Please could I ask delegates not to use the water slides during the speeches.

My colleagues and I at the University of the Internet have been doing science at Pouring Beans all year long, and have taken cell samples from the inner membrane of the website which, by bombardment with gamma radiation, we successfully mutated into a genetically modified single-cell website that looked exactly like Pouring Beans but which generated its own blog posts several times a day. All the blog posts featured pictures of tabby cats. This promising line of inquiry will be pursued further in 2019.

In the meantime, we have collated some statistics on the Beans and I am pleased to announce that, for the first time since 2015, we are able to report an increase in activity. 2018 saw a total of 91 new posts, up seven on the previous year, and 1,870 comments – very nearly double the number posted in 2017. This is very pleasing, even if it is all just inane chatter between Chris and Ian.

There follows a breakdown of activity per member.

Ian

Ian wrote 42 posts, earning him a full 12 beans. This was a year-on-year increase by five posts, and he equalled his perfect bean score from 2017. My research team have nominated Ian for a special Commendation Award, which they printed off in colour and which features some snazzy WordArt.

Chris

A total of 48 posts in 2018 puts Chris seven up on his previous total, and he too earns a full 12 beans, beating his 2017 total of eight beans. He last had a perfect run in 2015 and he is feeling pretty damn smug.

Kev

As an “associate member” of the Beans, Kev is a second-tier user of the website and not seriously expected to match the post totals of his more committed counterparts. However, he did make seven posts, one more than in 2017, and my research team and I agree that this should be recognised as a Good Effort.

In summary, then, 2018 shows every sign of being a turning point in the fortunes of the Beans, arresting the decline in post and comment counts that had been accumulating since 2016. It is with delight that I can announce that all members are having full biscuit privileges restored in the communal kitchen areas. Chris, as the Winner of the Beans 2018, also takes home this stylish Blankety Blank chequebook and pen. Congratulations to him.

Cooking new beans

So, here’s a thing that just happened.

I logged in to the Beans and there were lots of updates pending, and because I’m a helpful sort of chap, I said yes, let’s run those updates. The updates have installed WordPress 5.0.2.

You may or may not care about that, and certainly when it finished doing its clever whizbottery I was, at best, nonplussed. But it turns out that one of the things that has changed is the editor where you write new posts. It is different. It is more different than anything you’ve ever seen. Right now, while you’re reading this, you don’t believe me, and you’re thinking that it’s just a box where you type stuff and it can’t be that different.

But you’re wrong.

It’s so different.

There isn’t even a box.

If you want to figure out how to make it do stuff, there are some words here that will explain things. I bequeath you this important document to assist you on your journey of discovery.

Good luck, comrades. Good luck as we march onwards, to face our destiny, toward the brave new beans of 2019.

Healthy eating

Christmas is over and we’ve all eaten a bit too much. Too many roast potatoes*. Too many chocolates. Too much cake.

What you need is something healthy. Something full of nutrition. Something light and fresh. And thankfully, I have just the thing. Presenting the Pouring Beans 2018 Burger and Salad Special, a meal that superficially looks like burger and chips but which cunningly includes a generous helping of lush, healthy greenery. Enjoy!

Salad (with burger and chips on the side)

* I’m being silly, of course. There is no such thing as too many roast potatoes.

Four Word Reviews: ‘Til Their Eyes Shine

I started these reviews when I got sent a Wang Chung album as a joke, and Kev and Sarah had just reviewed a Papples album in this format, and I thought it was a fun thing to do with a CD I’d been sent. Then more CDs started arriving. But I never thought we’d end up here. The CDs that arrived were just crap albums, and I would write reviews of how amusingly bad they were. Until now. Now I’ve been sent… I mean, what is this? It’s called “‘Til Their Eyes Shine: The Lullaby Album”. It’s a 1992 charity compilation of slow, snoozy numbers by female artists that will supposedly put a child to sleep, though for my taste half are too lively for that and the rest are too disturbing.

Am I being punished, somehow? Is this horrendous mush the price I pay for some indiscretion I committed? I don’t know. I just know it was awful.

How to use a cash machine

Many of us Millennials (I think we’re Millennials, are we Millennials?) have trouble using old-fashioned things. We do everything digitally now. Personally I get all my sleep done using an app and I have a monthly subscription that delivers all my food through my Smart TV. So it can be a bit of a challenge for us Millennials (Jesus I think we actually might be Millennials) to get to grips with the analogue world.

Old people and market stall traders use “money” in place of digital bank transfers and contactless payments. If you need some “money” you can get it from a cash machine. They can be bewildering if you’re under the age of 60, but don’t worry, they’re quite easy to use once you know how.

Here’s the correct procedure.

Locate a cash machine. It will look like a sort of retro 80s video game machine embedded in the wall of a bank.
Familiarise yourself with the layout of the machine. Designs can vary but they will all have some common features: a screen with control buttons down each side; a numeric keypad; a heavily fortified metal letterbox; and a little slot with a flashing green light.
Insert your contactless bank card into the flashing slot. The machine is old and needs to actually make contact with it, but will give it back later.
Look at the screen. It will usually ask you to wait, because it’s old. Eventually you’ll be asked for your PIN number. Try to remember this. It’s what you had to use before you had a contactless bank card.
The screen will now ask you how much “money” you want and whether you want a receipt. Use the buttons next to the screen to appease its desire for information.
A beeping noise will announce the return of your contactless bank card. Retrieve it from the slot when it is slowly regurgitated.
The machine will now make whirring noises and, after an interval, the quantity of “money” you requested will be thrust out of the fortified letterbox.
You need to still be standing at the machine if you want to actually claim this money. If you have absent-mindedly walked away as soon as your card is extruded, you will not get the money.
If you stupidly walk away before the money appears, you will hear a loud beeping sound coming from the cash machine as you walk away, and you will spend a few seconds thinking it sounds like the sort of beeping sound a cash machine makes, and wondering why a cash machine might be making a noise like that.
You will only realise when the beeping noise stops that it’s the sound of a cash machine trying to tell you you’ve got it to dispense some of your hard earned cash, £30 to be precise, and then idiotically absconded before the cash dispensing happened, leaving thirty of your precious sheets wafting in the breeze in a crowded shopping street.
As the horror of your stupid, moronic actions finally dawn on you, you will turn around, just in time to see your thirty quid being removed from the machine by some middle aged woman whose face is a picture of nefarious glee, scarcely able to believe her luck that some brainless fool has just put three shiny tenners in her hand.
You begin to run back to the cash machine, but the crowd of shoppers slows you down, you can’t get through, and meanwhile the woman has melted into the crowd, anonymous in a black coat in a sea of black coats, a bit shorter than average, lost below the heads and hats, and – probably wary of the fact that whoever just used the cash machine can only be a few paces away – is more than likely now darting for cover to make a getaway. She could have gone down a narrow alley on the left, or into one of the shops.
By the time you get to the cash machine, she’s gone, and you’re £30 down, you absolute tool.
You absolute tool.

Unexpected

I was at someone’s leaving do last night.

I’ve only been in this job a little while so I don’t know him very well, but a works leaving do is a thing everyone goes to regardless of who it is or how well they know them. You turn up and have a drink and laugh about people you work with who are currently out of earshot at the other side of the bar, and then at some point you get 30 seconds with the actual person who’s leaving so you can say things like “good luck” and “it’s been really great working with you”. You know how it is.

At about 11, not long before he left, I bumped into Jon (who is leaving) and got 30 seconds with him before he was whisked away by someone else. “Good luck”, I said. “It’s been really great working with you”.

The normal thing at this point is for the person who is leaving to say something like “yeah, you too” and “I’ll probably see you again at someone else’s leaving do before long”, and then you laugh heartily, and then your 30 seconds are up.

That’s why I was very surprised when Jon went completely off script and said “keep writing those Mr Smith books, they’re fucking hilarious. You’ll have to send me the next one if you do any more.”

I didn’t have a reply ready for this highly improbable situation, so I floundered for a moment without knowing what to say, and then my 30 seconds were up and he was whisked away to another little group of people, waving and enthusiastically thumbs-upping me as he went. Presumably it was their turn to say “good luck” and “it’s been really great working with you”.

I doubt any of them had ever read the adventures of Mr Smith. But then, I didn’t think Jon had, so maybe they had. Maybe everyone has. I don’t really know what to expect any more.