Category: Not very good

Avatar PSA – don’t eat the oreos

Everyone loves delicious oreos.

Mmmm, right? Nobody can resist the tasty taste of oreos because there’s something for everyone. Love biscuit? Got you. Love squishy things in the middle of biscuits? You’re covered. Love ripping things in half to feel superior over something for once when you’re trapped in a horrific existence where you’re in control of nothing? Also this!

There are, however, flavours of oreos that should not exist and this is one of them:

Whatever you do, don’t eat the ice cream flavour oreos.

I found these being sold for cheap and my curiosity got the better of me. They look okay, let’s give these a go, I thought. I was so very, very wrong.

When you first put one in your mouth everything seems okay, nothing out of place here. It’s the aftertaste that really kills the entire experience. The closest thing I can compare it to is it’s as though you’ve swallowed a blueberry vape. Someone turned the vape juice into a solid and stuck it in an oreo.

It’s disgusting. You have been warned.

Avatar Giddy Strider’s Fields

I am a huge fan of the band The Long Blondes.

They only managed to release two albums in their lifetime before breaking up (if you don’t count the early singles collection of course), which is a damn fine shame. They’re on regular rotation at home and in the car.

You know when you think you know the lyrics to a song but then when you’re singing along you’re missing words out? Such was the case recently when playing one of the singles from their first album, ‘Giddy Stratospheres’. It’s a catchy song about breaking up with someone because they’re boring and dragging you down; lovely stuff.

Not wanting to appear foolish, I decided to look up the lyrics to see if I was singing the right words. Heaven forbid that someone should hear me and think I was some kind of fake fan! The horror!

Unfortunately the first effort that came up appeared to be AI giving it a go and, well, see for yourself:

If you sing it this way, it sounds as though the guy’s girlfriend won’t take him to somewhere called Giddy Striders Fields. Perhaps it’s his favourite place for a kick about with the lads? Maybe he likes riding the horses at the weekend? Who knows.

I don’t think I’ll be able to sing the right words now given the sheer lunacy of AI and their attempt.

Avatar How do I get my parcel?

We came home the other day to find a parcel had turned up. The driver had left it on the doorstep right in front of the front door.

Inside the door, we found a little card that the driver had pushed through the letterbox.

It said they had left the parcel in the safe location “front step”. Then, further down, it asked how do I get my parcel?

In answer, it said they would return to deliver it tomorrow. So we left it on the step until the next day. But the next day the driver didn’t come back and they didn’t deliver our parcel.

The next suggestion was that we go to www.yodel.co.uk to choose a new delivery date or arrange to collect it from a depot. When we visited the website it asked for the parcel number, but the parcel number was not on the card.

In desperation, we called the Yodel hotline and explained that the card didn’t tell us the parcel number. The operator asked for our postcode instead. We gave them our postcode. They said the parcel had been delivered. We explained what had been written on the card and that we were following their instructions to get it.

At this point the penny dropped. We didn’t need to arrange a delivery, said the operator. We just needed to collect it. So we went back out to the doorstep to collect our parcel, bringing the Yodel card, one item of photographic ID and a utility bill to prove our name and address. Now we have our parcel.

We opened it. Everything inside was wet from the rain overnight. We’re sending it back.

Avatar Perfect for all the family

Do you like sport?

Do you like families?

Do you like ball-based sports?

Then you need sport balls!

This unbeatable set includes:

  • A football, which is 8cm in diameter and made of foam, so cannot be used to play football
  • A basketball, which is 8cm in diameter and made of foam, so cannot be used to play basketball
  • A tennis ball, which is 8cm in diameter and made of foam, so can be used to play tennis if you don’t mind the ball not bouncing or travelling far enough because it has the wrong weight and ballistic properties
  • A baseball, which is 8cm in diameter and made of foam, so cannot be used to play baseball

Perfect for all the family!

Avatar How to speak British

You might think you know how to speak the language of Great Blighty, but just because you picked it up as a child doesn’t mean you’ve fully grasped its intricacies. Thankfully the internet is full of helpful advice for those trying to master British English, and in this post I’m going to round up some of the key findings for you.

Food

Every guide seems to begin with food words. In Britain, eggplants are called aubergines and zucchini are called courgettes. Then we have some more useful translations from YMT Vacations:

WordTranslation into British
ChipsCrisps
BeerJar
CheetosPuff snacks
DoritosDoritos
Slices of cured hamRashers

Vogue add that flapjacks are “not pancakes”, though they have no information about what flapjacks actually are.

Nouns

What do you call that thing? If you want to avoid just pointing at something, you need to know its name. Thankfully Vogue knows a lot more about what things are called.

WordTranslation into British
ToiletLoo
ElevatorLift
UniformKit
PregnancyUp the Duff

Quintain Living helpfully throw in some more common nouns that you might require. Don’t make the mistake of using the words on the left if you want to avoid being laughed at.

WordTranslation into British
KissSnog
ManBloke
Toilet paperBog roll
Police officerRozzer

On that final point, YMT Vacations also helpfully share their understanding that the common British term for a police car is “jam sandwich”.

Idioms and phrases

If you really want to speak like a native Britisher, you should sprinkle some common Brit-sayings into your conversation to convince the locals that you too are from Fair Albion’s green and pleasant shores. Vogue have soaked up the culture and offer the following extensive list.

WordTranslation into British
WeirdDodgy
CrayBonkers
GrossGammy
UglyButters
DatingCourting

YMT Vacations don’t know many common phrases, but they do know that if the weather is bad you should say it’s “blowing a hooley”.

We will give the last word to Quintain Living, though, who recommend avoiding the heavily Americanised phrase “go away”. Instead you should tell British people to “sod off”.

With all this advice you should have no trouble fitting in to British society and you’ll be the King of Downton Abbey in no time. Pip pip!

Avatar Cloves? No idea

The world is full of mysteries. There are so many things that we still don’t fully understand. I personally struggle to understand a lot of things. Sometimes it’s easier to make up your own ideas than taking the time to read a book and get the jist. That’s 50% of parenting anyway, making your kid believe that you have all the answers.

Oh, you expect to get them from me? Don’t be silly, I can’t answer your questions. Who do you think I am? I’m no science master like Kevin, all I’ve got are my street smarts and the money maker (aka my viso / volto).

That’s all I got.

Have you ever considered cloves? What they are? Where they come from? No, me neither. Cloves are a thing that is and you have to accept them regardless. The sooner you do the sooner we can all move on.

You still want me to explain them? Go on then.

You might think that cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae Syzyglum aromaticum, but you’d be totally wrong. They’re really toenails from donkeys that have been “lightly spiced” with effervescent apples and fervent aggression. Put it this way; have you ever put a clove in your mouth and felt happy? No. No you haven’t, and if you have then you’re a liar.

Cloves are made bitter to suck the very life out of you. There’s all this talk of helping with looking after your teeth and improving the flavour of your cooking and it’s all nonsense. They want you miserable and they will stop at nothing to turn you into a brittle, chafing dish of a man. They taste of misery squared. Do me a favour and steer clear of cloves.

Avatar Gorilla the (money) spinner

Hey everyone, it’s time to sing a song. A lovely song with lovely lyrics where everyone can have a great time, like those classic songs of the 1940s about losing your watch down a sewer grate or looking for milk in all the wrong shops.

This is a song about purchasing a fake gorilla.

“I want you all to know, I want you see to see,

What this terrible absence is doing to me.

I need to find something special for my garden,

I need to find something brash, oh, beg your pardon.

I wandered round and round, ’til I finally found

Something deeply profound.”

“There it was, sitting, waiting for my presence,

There it was between foxes, hares and pheasants.

Animal jumble bumble, humble though I was,

I was thoroughly pleased until I saw the cost.”

Wait, wait, stop the song.

Thirteen hundred pounds? For a gigantic plastic gorilla? What kind of insanity is this? I can’t afford that. No wonder there’s a thin layer of dust all over its back; it’s because nobody wants to splurge that much on something so decidedly useless.

I’m sorry, everyone. I promised you a heartfelt song and what I delivered was gorilla vitriol. You’ll have to find your good cheer and mirth elsewhere.