Author: Ian “Air Travel Regulations” McIver

Avatar 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:

  1. The baby didn’t have the “right” hair so they put a wig on them?
  2. Someone in IT added fake hair to the existing picture of the baby to make it look more “appealing”?
  3. 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?
  4. 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?

Avatar 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.

Avatar 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.

Avatar 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.

Avatar Classic photo

If you happened to be living under a rock you may not have noticed a certain anniversary of a certain album last year. An album everyone, and I do mean everyone, has heard of from the year 1999. Can you remember the year 1999? What a time to be alive.

Pop music was yet to turn a corner from fabricated bands and artists put together by middle-aged men in suits to everything auto-tuned to within an inch of its life and sounding like they all came from the same computer programme. Yes, as you can see I’m an old person. I can’t say I preferred it when “bands” like Steps, A1, 5ive, Backstreet Boys and all the others invaded your ears through the radio but at least they had a bit of personality and a distinct style. These days I struggle to hear the instruments in modern pop music.

Anyway, back to 1999 and everyone’s favourite Dido. Even I with my angst and my Clash liked a bit of Dido. She may have pronounced ‘I’ as ‘ah’ in every song (“ah won’t go, ah won’t sleep, ah can’t breathe…) and struggled with a tempo anything faster than what can only be described as plodding however there was something about her songs. They were breezy, easy to sing, and plodded so hard even your dad liked it. This prompted everyone in the known stratosphere to buy a copy of her album which is why you’ll find it in most charity shops.

Cut to last year and the 25th anniversary of ‘No Angel’. A milestone. A wonderful thing. I was reading the description when I got to the bottom and squinted.

Dido is a singer. Is she photographic? Of course. So what’s a classic Dido photo? Did I miss that part of her career? Did people walking around with a photo of Dido shaking hands with Prince Charles? Dido playing with friendly gypsies? Dido squatting over a bin? I tried googling it and was directed to an article on Wikipedia about the first queen of Carthage. Please can someone post some classic Dido photos so I know what I’m missing out on.

(Thank you for reading this. I am very tired and struggling for WORDS.)

Avatar 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.

Avatar Generosity (apples)

Blessed as we are to be alive in the year 2025 so that we can witness, ummm, the release of the Lego Gameboy after all this time. Praise be, we are blessed.

We’re also blessed for a number of reasons which I won’t go into here. That’s too boring. What isn’t boring is talking about apples, right?

Right?

Last year after we moved into the house, we noticed that one of our neighbours further down the street would regularly leave a box on a little table with a sign saying, ‘help yourself’ or, ‘free to a good home’. In said box were apples and sometimes pears. I took a couple home and they were delicious, all the more delicious because they were free.

Fast forward to a week ago and there’s a knock on the door. Our next door neighbour held a bag of apples in her hand, handed them to me and said, “if any pears from our tree happen to drop in your garden, take them. They may need a few days to ripen but otherwise they’re fine to eat.” Unbelievable generosity. I had ten free apples in my hand and carte blanche to gorge myself on pears. Pear gorge? Pear gorge.

Fast forward to Friday afternoon. I’m still making my way through the apples when there’s a knock on the door. The husband of the neighbour from the previous week hands me a black bin liner containing roughly twenty-five apples. Twenty-five! I have to ask.

“Does every house on this street have an apple tree apart from us?”

The neighbour laughs. “Possibly. Before the houses were built, this was an orchard. There are some houses that have plum trees, pear trees, cherry trees, all kinds of fruit.”

Out of all the fruit in the world, what did we get with our lovely house? A f*cking gooseberry bush. Nobody wants gooseberries. They’re about as versatile as a quince. I also now have to find some way of consuming twenty-five apples on my own because Vikki is more into strawberries and other berries. I’m not being ungrateful, I am super pleased to have free fruit in my fridge, and *somehow* I will chug my way through all dem apples. Look at me and be inspired.

Avatar Retirement thoughts

Now that we’re all middle-aged, there’s the lingering prospect of all the good stuff that you hear about but don’t get to experience until you reach a certain part of your life. Want some examples? How about pains in parts of your body that don’t make any sense (“I never use my little finger so why does it feel as though a lynx is trying to slash its way out of it?”), confusion when entering a room (“wait, wait… I was here to find the… banana, was it?”) or perhaps feeling out of touch in every possible way (“when did people stop using Netscape?”).

It’s inevitable. Though we may joke about being right on the fashions, it’s been some time since I was anywhere near the fashions; I’m barely in the same postcode let alone being right on them. Sigh. Can’t be helped.

There’s no time to sit and ruminate on how unnatural it feels looking through a Reddit post or ask why everyone dancing on Tiktok is going to destroy the human race, there’s so much to do before then. I’ve got to pay off the mortgage first, which means working until I’m probably in my 70’s given that the retirement age keeps going up. There’s also raising my second child (I’m reliably to blame for that one) which is about to begin any day now. Oh, and I still haven’t finished the garden. I think the gooseberry bush is dead.

When the weight of responsibility gets on top of me, I drive a hundred miles out of my way and stop to look at this view. Why? Because one day, I am going to buy it and build my dream home on it.

Now I know what you’re thinking and, you’re right, it is very small. Too small in fact. You have to think outside the box because otherwise your dreams will never come true. The Japanese have been getting by with very tiny pod or capsule hotels for years now. Here’s how it’s going to look:

  1. The bedroom or, more accurately, the standing bed. I think it’s asking too much for the entire building my house will stacked against to turn 90 degrees to the right so that I can have a flat surface, so I will have to get used to sleeping standing up. I’ll nail the pillow to the wall and utilise a slim sleeping bag for maximum space efficiency.
  2. The toilet or, more accurately, the cereal box in the corner. Nothing else will be able to fit in that space except perhaps an A5 lever arch file, and I can hardly three w’s in that now, can I? It’d go everywhere.
  3. The sitting area or, more accurately, the only space left to do anything. I don’t know where all my video games are going to go. I guess I’ll have to put them in storage unless by the year 2055 I’ll have super cool VR goggles where I can play them all using my brain impulses so I can probably lie in my “bed” and play them there, leaving the sitting area for entertaining guests. A snug flat screen TV in the top left-hand corner, a kettle for hot bevs and a shoebox as a coffee table? It’s all coming together.

I’ve got it all planned out. It’s going to look incredible. The only problem is where Vikki and the baby are going to go. I guess I’ll have to purchase the flat on the other side so they can stay there.

That’ll work. For sure.