Sinister Portuguese Santa is nearly four metres tall and has a penguin surgically attached to his arm. Sinister Portuguese Santa will sit you on his knee and ask you what you want.
What do you want?
Author: Chris5156
Underneath my car
We are truly living in the future now. In the past, when I’ve taken my car to the garage for one reason or another, the mechanics have done things to it and given it back to me, and it looks the same. I just see the shiny outside of the car and not the rest of it.
Well, no more. My new car came with a service plan and yesterday it had its first annual service. And now, apparently, the annual service doesn’t just mean that the car gets checked over and serviced inside and out – it also means that the mechanic takes a video of the underside of your car while it’s up on the ramp so you can see the bits of it you can’t normally see. Then they text it to you and it’s there for you to watch on a special website for ever and ever.
Obviously, I found this thrilling, so I’ve set the video to some music and invite you to join me on a voyage of discovery as we travel… underneath my car.
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!
* 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.
