Category: Awful, just awful

Avatar Mistakes in marketing

Let’s say you own a company. Let’s say you’re involved in JCBs and tipper trucks, shifting muck around. Let’s say you get yourself a nice white van for moving kit about and you get your company’s name written on the back, and maybe a nice photo of some JCBs and tipper trucks in action so everyone can tell what line of work you’re in.

For now we will overlook the fact that you name your company something daft like ”Kellands” when, if sense prevailed, you would clearly have called it something like ”John’s Diggers”.

You have space on the van for a slogan. Something positive and dynamic that tells everyone what your company is about and how great you are.

What slogan will you choose? Think carefully.

Avatar Cafetiere

I was given some free coffee so I bought a cafetiere to brew it up and enjoy the fresh taste of morning brown. The coffee was strong and rich so my taste buds, what little I had left, were in a joyful mood. Reuben tried some and instantly dismissed it. Now whenever he sees the cafetiere in the cupboard he refers to it as “middle class bullshit.”

There is a time for instant coffee and there’s a time to whip out the cafetiere. There’s also a time when you need to take a 600 million pound bag of tea and brew up some dirty black tea for you to enjoy, possibly whilst rocking back and forth in the corner of the room, but thankfully I haven’t quite reached that point yet.

Whilst musing on the wonders of life I came up with this playful little ditty. You can sing it or you can recite it like a spoken word poem:

Cafetiere, cafetiere,
Long of taste and long of flair.
Cafetiere, your juice is fair,
Pour some for your closest frere.
Pour some for Jim, Danny or Claire.

Hint of peach or hint of pear,
Think there’s nothing going on in there?
Au contraire, my cafetiere,
The savoir faire of cafetiere,
The savoir vivre of cafetiere.

Yeah you’re right, I made it up on the spot and that’s what makes life so great. Next time you’re brewing some coffee perhaps you’ll come up with your own song.

Avatar The smart man cometh

Welcome to a story that starts off well, gets a bit bad and then goes all grand mal on your ass before you realise what’s happening.

I’m a nerd. I’m sorry to hit you with that reality but I’m not the cool guy you thought I was. I know that I dazzle you all with my endless tales of motorcycles, bar fights, chicks and umm cool stuff however in reality it is the complete opposite. My nerdity stretches to almost all levels of nerdom (although I’ve yet to play a proper game of D & D and I’m not ready to quite drop my trousers and start collecting Magic: The Gathering cards) although recently, and for the last few years, it has settled in v. game town.

I collect for a huge range of systems. The Sony PSP, the slightly older, less attractive handheld cousin of the PS Vita, has a large library and currently most of the games are dirt cheap. We’re talking cup of coffee and a toffee crisp prices here, people. We’re talking a day ticket on the bus with all the trimmings (you know, some have TVs that don’t work and some have a USB port so you can charge your phone because it’s an electric bus and it’s the FUTURE). There will always be rarer titles as there is for every console and it is here we find me with an idea.

The PSP isn’t region locked meaning you can buy a game from the other side of the world and it will run on your machine. There’s a game I’ve had my eye on that only ever keeps going up in price in the UK so, in a flash of brilliance, I check a used video game website in the US that I’ve used previously. Lo and behold there it is, in stock and about twenty quid cheaper overall. I know there’ll be postage and import tax to pay yet it’s too enticing to ignore. Surely this is a good idea and nothing can go wrong. This is the loophole that will see me through to the good side of the fence. I go to the basket only to be told that the website doesn’t post to the UK anymore.

Sniff sniff, can you smell that? If you can, it’s probably Brexit.

Foiled and a little crestfallen I mull over this for a day or two. Then it hits me, a second brainwave. Twice in one lifetime? When you’re hot, you’re hot! There’s a website where you can order anything from the US and have it sent to a shipping depot in the US, they’ll then reroute it to your address in the UK and sort out the tax and everything else at the same time. This is too good to be true, right? Right?

My fingers are already going, it’s ordered and paid for. I get the notification that my parcel is on its way to the depot. I am the Thriftmaster. Thrifting is my middle name. Bow before me, peasants, for I am both the king of the Co-op and king of the thrift.

I go to create the shipping request. Duties and tax are reasonable, of course there’s VAT and… the shipping method. The cheapest option available is a little over thirty dollars. Taking into account the aforementioned other charges, this will now put the total cost of getting the fucker to my address in the UK ten dollars more than I actually paid for the game.

I wanted to believe that this was a good idea. This will be the last time I try to be clever. For now, I will be sitting in the corner wearing the dunce hat and counting up to ten only missing the seven out every single time I try. I await your lambasting.

Avatar Get out of my mind

Pop music, it’s dumb right?

Not all of it. A lot of it very intelligently made and well put together. There are those out there though that abuse it’s magic and only concoct the worst of the worst to make a cheap buck. Pop music is the house of the lazy songwriter. It has committed more crimes then I’d care to mention (I’m looking at you, ‘Boys of Summer’ by DJ Sammy).

I have recently been re-listening to ‘This Year’s Model’ by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, a lovely bouncy set of new wave poppy rocky songs from 1978. It features two stellar singles; (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea’, a sentiment I think we all share, and the ludicrously good ‘Pump it Up’. Costello is reported to have written the song on a fire escape during a stop in Newcastle of all places. What if he wrote it on my fire escape? Wait, I don’t have a fire escape.

The song ‘Pump it Up’ was later sampled by a sack of arse called Rogue Traders. In classic lazy pop fashion they took some bint they could find (in this case the Australian actress Natalie Bassingthwaite – she used to be in Neighbours because of course she did, she’s from Australia), got her to knock out some half-based vocals and called it ‘Voodoo Child’.

Rogue Traders – Voodoo Child (Video) – YouTube

It features lyrics so banal if you closed your eyes and pointed to random words in a dictionary you would come up with a better one. Would you like an example? Take a sweet glance at the chorus:

“Baby baby baby
You are my voodoo child, my voodoo child
Don’t say maybe maybe
It’s supernatural, I’m coming undone.”

Awful, yes. Catchy, yes. I do believe it has more to do with Elvis Costello and the Attractions more than anything else. If you took away the pounding organs and guitars you’d be left with an empty pickle of a song, a limp biscuit if you will. I only mention this because my brain, in its infinite wisdom, continues to remind me of things like this rather than remembering useful things. When the aliens come and take us all away I will be filed on a shelf of knowledge called ‘Why bother?’ and only called up when they need a particularly spicy pub quiz question.

Whenever I hear ‘Pump it Up’ there is the quiet unsightly ghost of Rogue Traders hiding in the background.

Absolute bastards.

Avatar My new hobby

Last week I was having a nose around a shop full of old bits and pieces when this absolute gem of a book caught my eye. And it was only a fiver! I couldn’t believe nobody had snapped it up.

I’ve never been particularly fashionable, but believe me I am now. My new all-knitted wardrobe of highly fashionable black clothes with brightly coloured puffed up armbands and collars is turning heads wherever I go.

If you’d like me to knit you something beautiful to wear, just say the word and I’ll pick you a pattern out of the book.

Avatar How to play ‘Donyket’

Ahh the card games. The classics, who doesn’t enjoy playing the old favourites like snap, Happy Families or Canasta? Well now there’s a ‘new’ game in town, brought to you by Changlish Chranslayshon & Sons Ltd.

DONYKET! A twist on the old classic, Donkey. DONYKET! Don’t forget to ‘off ers your cards’, you don’t want to be left with the ‘Dondey’ and get called Donkey!

DONYKET!

How to play 'Donyket'

Avatar Bad Ears

My hearing has been compromised for as long as I can remember.

We all know how questionable it is at times because if anyone is going to mishear something it’s going to be me. Matters took a turn for the worse a few weeks ago when the hearing in my right ear went a little bit six-wide.

As I was driving down to Leeds for Christmas I experienced what can only be described as “bad ear” when I could feel something wrong and part of my hearing just disappeared. I could still hear everything although it felt as though some kind of substance was blocking my ear canal. It was a big muffled as though I was doing that thing crappy singers do when they close their eyes and hold their ear to hear their pitch and reach the high notes only Mariah Carey and dogs can reach.

Over Christmas I gently started scooping out the contents and as disgusting as this is to write it’s another thing entirely when experiencing it first hand. Normally I’m quite adept as keeping on top of personal hygiene; during the month of December this must have taken a flight abroad and forgot to leave a note. Waves of wax came out in all shapes and colours. I cleaned my ear with a delicate hand and with no proper medical help until January when doctors returned from their Christmas-shaped holes (I was resolute that I was not going to A & E or calling III because of earwax) I put up with my folly.

There was a ringing too, a constant ringing that wouldn’t go away. Looking back now I think it may have been before all of this, meaning it may be two problems or one problem in two halves.

I did a grown up thing and called the doctors. “I’m sorry sir, we don’t syringe ears on the NHS anymore,” said the receptionist, “it’s not considered to be safe. You’ll have to try elsewhere.” Hmmmm, said a sarcastic voice in my head, you won’t help me but encourage me to look into it myself? Go private? Okay, sure, I’ve got this, leave it to me.

I went to Boots for a free hearing test where they told me both my ears needed to be sorted out. I made an appointment for less than a week later to use a futuristic sucking device to clear out the mess and afterwards it was like that fresh minty feeling you get after you have your teeth cleaned at the doctors… only in my ears.

“Do you want the bad news first?” said the Boots employee, shortly after vacuuming my inner sanctum. Apparently my ears are now free of wax because she can see my eardrums when looking in my ear. The bad news is that some of the wax went so balls deep into my ear that some of it is lying on my eardrum and it’s too dangerous to try and suck it out. The solution? Olive oil ear drops. I’ve been squirting this stuff now for about a week in the hope that it’ll shake loose the wax, stop the ringing and give me my hearing back. If this doesn’t work, I may have tinnitus.

All in all January could have been a lot worse but then again it could have been a lot better.

Avatar Happy times in a sad seaside town

Recently, three extremely silly people went to Bridlington, and spent most of their time avoiding Bridlington itself by sitting in a small caravan and taking it in turns to play a racing game. However, for some brief periods, they did do a limited number of other activities, where those activities hadn’t been closed down for the winter.

You can now look through a photo album recording their escapades in full. Please feel free to add to it if you have your own pictures and/or memories of this very silly time. Here it is!