Pointless purchase of the month: Chris edition

Normally when we take a look at pointless purchases, it’s Ian who’s been pointlessly purchasing things, and I’m one of the smug onlookers who gets to decide whether to just feel superior or whether to mix the feeling of superiority with a bit of heckling. Today’s different. Today it’s me that’s spent my hard-earned London pounds on something useless.

Here we are, then. Thanks to the fan club mailing list, I offloaded some cash to pre-order this highly collectible limited edition picture disc vinyl of Flood, They Might Be Giants’ biggest album, which has been released to mark its 30th anniversary. It turned up in the post this week.

The B-side has frames from the music video for “Birdhouse in Your Soul” on it, so when you play the record it animates.

This purchase is particularly pointless because I do not have a record player. I cannot play this record. Nor do I need to; I’ve got Flood in my iTunes library and have had it for years. This is just for me to look at. I might even frame it.

Also, it’s yellow. I like yellow things.

2020 State of the Beans Address

Good day to you all. Thank you. You’re very kind.

My name is Sergeant-Major Professor Lord Sir Elbert Louche, KBE. It is a great privilege to join you here at Fairburn Ings visitor centre for the sixth annual State of the Beans Address. Please could I request that you do not feed the ducks until the formalities have concluded, and also please don’t feed any of the crispy Peking duck to the ducks. The RSPB are trying to avoid another Mad Cow Disease type incident with their mallards.

James Earl Jones is Amazing

Do you know who’s amazing? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not you or I. Nor I. No, neither of us is amazing. You can show me all your achievements, medals, awards and dissertations but you will never be as amazing as James Earl Jones.

This will be difficult for some of us to understand (i.e. Chris) due to the fact that some of us cannot watch films for fear of exploding. That said, James Earl Jones, or JEJ as he is known to his closest friends and family, has also has a stuperbulous career on both television and on stage, so you’ve got no excuses some people. He is a huge talent and has played everyone from a man covered in black plastic to a huge lion and even read all 27 books of the New Testament in ‘James Earl Jones Reads the Bible’. I know now what everyone is getting for Christmas…

I have a ton of respect for James because he’s always been there in lots of things, lots of things I have enjoyed which is a rarity these days. I almost fell off the sofa though when I paused a film he was in and this came up:

Immature, juvenile, yes yet also immensely satisfying and hugely enjoyable. I think James Earl Jones looks even cooler with walrus tusks. Walrus tusks or sticks of chalk coming out of his nose. He can pull off any look, he’s that good an actor.

December Done Right

It’s too late to turn back now. We’re all going to be smothered in Christmas in three weeks’ time so we may as well accept it and get on with our lives. When I say get on with our lives I mean buy as many presents as possible from the internet in the hope that they arrive in time. I know what you’re thinking though, there is something missing and you can’t quite put your finger on it. There’s the tree in the corner of the room; it looks lovely, almost perfect. It isn’t quite finished, is it?

What you need is something to seal that deal in that wigwam, you know the one I’m referring to. How do you tart that tree up in a timely manner without breaking the bank? You need Kevindo Menendez’s Pork Baubles.

‘Pork Baubles‘

Hand-crafted from the most sensuous part of the pig, the eyelids, Kevindo Menendez’s Pork Baubles are what are missing from your Christmas; a dozen mouth-watering spheres of sweaty, meaty goodness generously licked with the mystery of our seventeen individual spices. Guaranteed to lighten and brighten up the most abysmal of trees, you can hang your Pork Baubles straight out of the packet and, on the big day itself, put them in the oven to accompany your Christmas dinner.

‘Pork Baubles’

With one or two of these in his mouth, Dad won’t be tempted to interrupt with another of his terrible jokes. Grandma won’t believe the taste sensation going down her throat. Mum can use the leftovers to throw at unsuspecting cold-callers trying their luck around the festive period.

‘Pork Baubles’

Don’t bother with another tiresome turkey, keep your dull as damp donuts gammon in the freezer and don’t even turn the oven on if all you’re going to do is try to feed me parsnips again. Do us all a favour and purchase Kevindo Menendez’s Pork Baubles.

‘Pork Baubles’ ‘Pork Baubles’ ‘Pork Baubles’ ‘Pork Baubles’

Fill up your trolleys and your stomachs. It’s got the Kevindo Menendez guarantee! Available in both the freezer and Christmas decoration aisles at all good local supermarkets.

Pointless Purchase of the Month

You know what? It’s been far too long since I’ve annoyed everyone with my huge stack of tat and as it is overdue, and I still have a quota to make up, let’s take a look at what I have been throwing my money away on. Take a gander at this juicy goosey:

In the top left-hand corner we have the original gameboy classic ‘The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening’. I didn’t buy purchase this recently, this is merely to amplify the ridiculousness of it all. I bought this in 1994/5, I opened it, played it and loved it like one man can love some plastic on a tiny grey and green screen.

The one next to it with the nifty black cover is the deluxe edition released some years later. I acquired one of these because I needed it to help finish my collection. It’s pretty much the same game but with some extra bits thrown in and parts of it in (very limited) colour. I haven’t played this one yet. I should also mention that I have a digital copy of the game downloaded to one of my 3DS consoles, which I have played through.

In the same month I bought the deluxe edition I also bought the two below it, which are the remastered, re-imagined, re-done whatever you will for the Nintendo Switch. It is exactly the same game albeit with fancy graphics and souped up music. I finished it in under five hours because I have the game committed to memory. So you can really feel the punch I bought the standard edition and the limited edition version, the latter of which I haven’t opened yet and probably won’t do. You know, because that’s me through and through. I bought them on the date they were released at full price.

So now I own (including the digital one) five copies of the same game, one of which may stay in its house forever and one which I won’t bother using because I have it downloaded ready to play whenever I want.

Oh and look, I got a free cleaning cloth for buying the limited edition boxed copy. That was well worth the money. I’m also keeping the cleaning cloth sealed.

Five

It’s here! Many years late and all the more welcome for it, we now present The Official Book of London 2014, “#Chris30”. It is of course from the fateful time Kev and Ian came to see me in London for my birthday, and Kev wasn’t very well, but we still played dinosaur golf anyway.

It’s a rollercoaster of long-forgotten birthday emotion, featuring:

The invention of Smidge Manly
The David Craig Face Clock
Book #selfies
Tit tetris (titris)
Chris’s chunky ass
Sadsack’s sick sack

You can read it right now on the Books page or, if you don’t want to go via the Books page, you can read it by clicking exactly here.

Creamtober

As we casually slide into the middle of October, I expect it’s fair to say that everyone is too busy off enjoying ‘Creamtober’ to read this post. I will, however, carry on as it will give them something to read once all the cream-based fun has ceased in the dark and dingy recesses of November.

Whadda ya mean you’ve never heard of ‘Creamtober’? Keep your voice down, you don’t want to alert others to the fact that you are not right on the fashions. Let me run you through the basics.

‘Creamtober’ was started back in 1981 by Baron Von Creamschteiner. He decided that there were not enough occasions where the joy of cream was celebrated so he invented an entire month of it. Everything in and around ‘Creamtober’ was about his unhealthy obsession with the silkiest of dairy products. It had to be clotted, sour, whipped, poured or squirty. There were so many options that people went absolutely crazy for it. The entire milk industry went very quiet for the next few weeks as cream sold out in practically every shop in the surrounding area. At first the word was out around his home land of Bavaria before spreading into the outer reaches of Europe, Australia and eventually the USA. Now each year three billion people spread the word and life the live of the Creamtobians.

How does one join in? That’s easy; grab some cream and you’re halfway there. Grab three hundred more tubs of cream and fill your fridge to the brim. Each and every time you open the fridge pour as much cream down your trash hole as you can. Do it until you feel violently sick and then leave it for an hour before repeating the same process. You need to cram as much cream into your body as you can each day for thirty one days. You will know the others who are taking part because you will see them in the street, clothes struggling to fit around their obese bodies, unusual lines underneath their eyes and little lines of white liquid dribbling from the corners of their mouths.

At the end of Creamtober you add up how much you have managed to consume over the month and send the results to the grand high emperor of Creamtober (see the address on his website, he lives in Blackburn, Lancashire) who will publish his results. If you have managed to top the charts with your cream-based exploits then you win a year’s supply of cream.

It also means that you can then move onto the next festive month: ‘Novemb-cheese’! Whadda ya mean you’ve never heard of ‘Novemb-cheese’? Okay, sit down and let me give you the rundown on the basics…

Middlesex – The Myth

I spend a lot of time pondering things. Not the important questions such as ‘where are we going?’ and ‘why haven’t you got a proper job yet, you ape?’ more of a sort of middle ground, the kinds of dregs that search engines have where they sigh when someone asks ‘how many cakes are in a baker’s dozen?’ or ‘where did I leave my keys?’. I don’t believe that anyone is currently wondering where Middlesex went, other than me that is.

What was once a huge, bustling place is now a nothing. It’s a pimple. It’s a memory. There was once a time when everything came from Middlesex. It sat at the top of the hill and rolled blocks of cheese down at all the other counties, because it could. It was a bit of a back-handed compliment due to the fact that they were handing out cheese for free yet sending it at such high speeds that it was causing accidents and injuries; if you got hit by a huge wheel of Edam then you were not going to work for the rest of the week, that’s for sure.

So where did it go? Did it disappear in the mists like ‘Brigadoon’ and it only reappears one day every year? That would be incredible. Imagine walking around the shops munching on a bacon sandwich only for Middlesex to magically appear right in front of you. Wouldn’t that be special?

I think it’s only fair that the people get to know what happened. It is a story that will take all of my psychic powers to deduce, for only a tale like this can be told through the sketchy paranormal scientific field of psychokinesis. In my book I will shuffle through the wheat fields of the mind, dredging up the where, the why and the who. Maybe even the odd what. Possibly even a few wag-pasties. Yes, that is a real word because the internet said so.

Also this book has more sex than the entirety of the ‘Fifty Shades…’ trilogy. Not the kind that you want but it’s still sex, right?

You’re welcome, by the way.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Absolutely superb