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.

The right way round?

I am at my best a pedant and at my worst a twat.

Have you ever been walking around a shop and something catches your eye for the wrong reason? With the Orb now here on planet Earth it means that any casual shopping either doesn’t exist or can only take place if the grandparents take him for the afternoon. I love my Orb but he’s not old enough to comprehend that sometimes boring chores need to happen. You get them out the way and breathe a sigh of relief. It’s all over. Game over, man. It takes so much longer with a trailing Orb. You take up way more space with a buggy or a pram.

There we were, looking for a new Christmas tree in every garden centre and kind of shop that would sell them. Once it’s done you have a tree that’ll last for a decade (no more flopping around trying to decide what size constitutes as “too high”) and you can get on with your life. Trying to get there can be a long and treacherous hike though; be sure to pack for all weather types.

I can feel my eyes glazing over underneath the artificial lights. My lizard brain screams, “get the one with the thing and the other thing and get outta there,” and I want to agree with it but there are so many options to consider that I shrug it off and carry on browsing. You can’t make a split second decision when fake trees can reach upwards of hundreds of pounds. What if we make the wrong one?

I’m walking past the lighting section in a particular store and I see it. “Wait, what? Nah that can’t be right. That has to be wrong, right?”

Shouldn’t it be ‘rechargeable octopus table lamp’? Why is the Natural History Museum collaborating with Dunelm? Who would buy such a thing and why do I care so much?

Does it really matter? Hardly. With Orb life being the only life there’s very little else going on. If you want thrilling stories and sexy adventures then you’ve come to the wrong place. I have nay nonny no nay none to my name. What I do have are questions about grammar on the boxes of table lamps.

Welcome to middle age. Population: us.

The world according to Tad Kensington

I am so busy right about now.

You don’t know how busy I am. I am literally the busiest I’ve ever been. When you two both have jobs and kids then you’ll know how busy one person can be; super busy cubed.

Anyway, I decided to leave all of that behind and go for lunch with my good friend, Tad Kensington. I hadn’t seen him for a while and I required some advice about work. I need to have more of a presence in the office, I need to stand out in a good way for once rather than having all that attention for giving everyone insulting and disgusting nicknames. In my defence, I paid for all those name tags myself, and when HR told me they weren’t going to reimburse me, throwing that table through the window was clearly “justified” despite what the judge said.

Tad Kensington knows a lot about “presence” and making a name for yourself. Over a very brief one hour lunch he gave me enough tidbits to set me up for life. I made a promise that I wouldn’t divulge everything, not just anyone can be Tad Kensington after all, however I don’t think he’d mind me passing on a few pearls of wisdom to those less fortunate.

Let me enlighten you. Let me show you the way:

Eat a banana whilst pissing at a urinal. It shows you have control and that you mean business.
Always keep an inch of coffee in the bottom of your cup and throw it on your rival whenever you see them. Hot or cold, it’s still humiliating.
Business cards are for wimps. Get your details printed on sharks and hand them out. Nobody will forget the guy with business sharks.
If you can’t be the tallest man in the room then be the widest.
Wear another pair of trousers underneath your regular trousers. Nobody will know except you, and that’s where the magic begins.
End every sentence with an ellipsis so no-one can interrupt you.
Set fire to a £5.00 note every day to remind yourself that burning money is stupid.
Ensure you only eat meals with capital letters, and do so loudly.
Ask maintenence to build a fake stud wall in your office so you can amaze people by punching your way through it at the end of the day. That’s a game changer.
If you can’t hear what people are seeing then you’ll never taste it.

I’ve practically guaranteed myself a promotion at work and I can’t wait to hear how you’re all thriving in your respective workplaces based on this guidance.

Also, you’re welcome.

Dog Botherers

Hey! Hey you! You with the dog!

Whatcha doing with that dog? Are you bothering it? Is it that awesome that you can’t help but bother it and want to spend time with it? If that’s true, then you need to join the ‘Dog Botherers’.

You shouldn’t feel ashamed about your behaviour. There are thousands of awesome dogs out there. They’re sat with their owners out in real life which is great but sometimes you can’t bother them because they’re doing their own thing. That’s upsetting.

At ‘Dog Botherers’, we don’t mind if you bother our dogs. Our weekly meetings are designed for people like you to bother dogs in a safe and friendly environment. Come meet like-minded individuals over a hot cup of friendship and a generous plate of fun biscuits.

If you like dogs, bothering your dogs and bothering other people’s dogs then ‘Dog Botherers’ is the place for you.

Book now! It’s no bother!

Fake baby hair?

In the last few weeks we have had all manner of visitors to chez McIver to see the newly-hatched Northern Orb. My parents and brother turned up last week a little bit late after somehow getting sidetracked at Scotch Corner services for 45 minutes (don’t ask).

They were kind enough to bring all manner of presents, including a few essentials for the Orb. My brother handed me a packet of nappies and said, “look at the kid on the front of that.”

Oh, I said, umm what’s going on with his hair? That doesn’t seem natural.

Apparently my nieces had been laughing at this image for a while because of the hairpiece. It clearly doesn’t look right and, like that old picture of George Jones from the office days, the more you look at it the funnier it gets. This then raises the question as to why it looks so wrong? Is it:

The baby didn’t have the “right” hair so they put a wig on them?
Someone in IT added fake hair to the existing picture of the baby to make it look more “appealing”?
The baby isn’t real and AI generated the whole thing, bringing a level of unreal hair not seen since the days of old men on Saturday night TV in the 1970s?
The hair is real but it looks SO real it makes it look unreal?

I’m torn between 1 and 4. I want to believe someone exists with such exquisite hair that it can’t exist and people won’t accept it exists because of that level of perfection.

What do YOU think?

Wilmot’s week

I know you’re all excited for next week and I could hardly contain myself so I’m writing the post early. Wilmot’s week is dedicated to the adoration, worship and general appreciation of the great Gary Wilmot. It’s a chance to really kick back and enjoy yourself and all of the joy that Wilmot has brought to the world. The best part is that it happens completely at random meaning you have to stay alert (and download the app) to ensure you don’t miss out on any of the celebrations. Sure, it’s next week yet it could also be the week after that, the start of next month or around your birthday. Wilmot’s week takes no prisoners. It’s completely unhinged.

Recently I have been pondering what wor Gaz could do next with his startling career. He’s already an accomplished singer, presenter, actor and entertainer; what’s left? Open a restaurant, one themed around terracotta jug western hoedowns or rats that look like footballers? No, that would be silly. We need something sleek and modern. We need a Gary Wilmot video game.

It can’t be something cheap like a mobile game. It has to go all the way, multi platform and nothing but the best. I want to see Ps5. I want full scale Steam trailers showing all the exquisite gameplay on offer.

I was hoping it’d be a disgustingly violent first person shooter however i was told by his manager that this wasn’t the kind of image they were hoping to portray to the general public. We’ll therefore keep it nice and cosy, set it in a warehouse and have Gary as some kind of, I don’t know, eccentric warehouse manager. He can have a tea cosy on his head instead of a hat. Then when you finish the level he’ll tip his head to one side, whistle and say, “It’s time for a brew!” That’ll make all the grandma’s chuckle with delight.

To make it as accessible as possible it should be a puzzle game. Everyone loves puzzle games, right? The same as everyone loves detective TV programmes set on boats featuring washed-up pop stars? So wor Gaz has to help you sort out items in a warehouse. We’ll get a custom made soundtrack from the Papples and soon we’ll be hoovering up the awards.

It will take some doing, the hours will be long and arduous but stick with me and we’ll really make a difference. Now all that’s left to do is a quick check to make sure nobody else has…

Well, f*ck me then.

Newsboost – Chris catastrophe continues

News just in! Reports are claiming that, after the Chris Marshall / Mecha Godzilla collaboration in August, a new concoction has been sighted in an industrial estate in the South of England.

Some bright spark decided that it was time to splice the Chris DNA with children’s 80s stop motion animated favourite Bertha, resulting in a sight that will either warm your heart or frighten you to within an inch of your life.

The Chris Bertha (or the awkwardly-named Chrertha) was spotted churning out items earlier on this week. The types of items varied greatly from garden gnomes and beach balls to jumping kangaroos and inflatable plastic bears. Once the Chris DNA had properly taken over however it decided to make a hugely illustrated and highly detailed map of the A282 as well as some interesting recipes involving avocados.

“This is the worst news I’ve ever heard,” spat news correspondent Harsh Blenchley, “you don’t see it? You don’t see the monumental disaster on the horizon? Do I need to spell it out to you? Do you even English, my friend?”

After ten minutes of this, she finally explained herself.

“Everyone knows that Bertha is capable of manufacturing anything in the world. She was the original 3D printer. A complete original. That kind of power mixed with the monstrous C-Marshall DNA could easily be used to disastrous effect. If you installed a time machine and a matter transporter into Bertha then she’d be able to go anywhere, at any point in time and make anything she wanted. The world would be on its knees.”

Ms Blenchley could see the big picture even if the rest of us couldn’t.

After the information was reported to the local police, a raid was planned on Tuesday morning. Officers burst into the premises only to find a few empty boxes and a windmill money box.

There were rumours that the C-Marshall strain of DNA was being used in some unscrupulous experiments in Korea and China, although they have remained unsubstantiated until now.

Needless to say, if the Chris Bertha has been moved to a new site, and a time machine and matter transporter been added to it, then we’re all doomed. Stay tuned for more details.

Tired (again)

As we can all tell from my last post, even without the statement at the end, I was, and still am, very tired. What started as a brief joke message to my brother turned into a rambling post on here about all sorts. This was not what I had intended to do. I was going to set some time aside for another Chris open source DNA newsboost post only suddenly it was 11pm before the end of the month and I had to scrabble around for something quicker and easier instead.

Everyone knows that looking after babies is exhausting. That still doesn’t prepare you for how exhausting it actually is. It’s a new level of exhaustion not felt in a very long time; to think I used to get a bit rowdy if I lost as little as half an hour’s sleep on a weekday. Oh, what a fool I was.

The good news is that despite some major changes to preparing baby formula bottles and some minor stuff, a lot of it remains the same and muscle memory is keeping me afloat. I am a happy state of tired, one that means I struggle to remember which way to clean the cheese grater so that I don’t shred the sponge but one that knows it is all worth it because of who it’s all for.

Perhaps with all this weariness we’ll return to 2007 Ian, writing nonsense poems about shoes made of bonfires and random articles about haunted sesame seeds. That all remains to be seen and I apologise in advance if it does happen.

Pouring
Beans

Author: Ian “Air Travel Regulations” McIver