Valerie

Being an irredeemable transport geek, I follow several blogs and social media accounts about both roads and public transport.

One of them recently linked me to an article about a new scheme on the Washington DC Metro system, where indicator lights are being installed outside some stations that tell bus drivers to wait. The idea is that buses will wait when a train has just come in, so people can make the connection from a train to a bus instead of emerging from the station to see their bus already driving away. It seems like quite a nice idea.

Anyway, I’m not writing this because I think you need to know about innovations in multimodal transport integration in the District of Colombia.

I’m writing this because the news article I was linked to is written by someone called Valerie Bonk.

That’s all. As you were.

Toilet attire

As you know, I spend between six and ten hours every day commuting to and from work, because I now live in France. Sitting on the same trains day in day out for that length of time means I have become closely acquainted with the interiors – the pattern on the seat upholstery, for example, and the strangely metallic sound of the chimes that indicate that the doors are opening. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking more and more about the toilet signs.

Every carriage has a few of these, pointing the over-hydrated traveller towards their nearest convenience. I am increasingly concerned by the picture on the sign.

We will leave aside, for now, the obvious issue over the size of the people you can see. Whatever pair of binoculars we are looking through is clearly in need of adjustment, because the left lens is showing us a baby that appears to be almost as tall as the two adults visible through the right lens.

No, what bothers me is this. The baby on the left is wearing a nappy – that much is clear. The nappy is white and the baby is pale grey. We can deduce from this that the baby is clothed, at the most basic level. On the right, we see two adults, who are white all over. But we know, from our recently concluded examination of the infant, that people in this world have grey skin, and there is no grey visible.

The two adults, therefore, are covered from head to toe, and what’s more they are apparently dressed in some horrendous all-over body suit made out of nappies.

This is very inappropriate clothing for travel on public transport – the face covering, for example, is bound to lead to problems if they are season ticket holders because the conductor will need to see their photo ID and match it to their appearance. It is also extremely inconvenient clothing for any toilet visit. They will need to unzip their terry towel gimp suit and somehow extricate themselves from it in order to make use of the facilities, all within the tiny cupboard-sized cubicle on a moving train. Nightmare.

The more time I spend on the train, the more it bothers me that the baby on this sign is one colour and the people are another. You may tell me that I’m overthinking it, and maybe I am. But spending this long on the same trains day in day out will do that to you. I’m just trying to survive in this world, and my healthy fear of grey people in jumpsuits made of nappies will keep me safe.

A strange little lift

Recently I had to visit an office building not far from work on my lunch break. It was one of those really small office buildings that’s just a stack of little offices above a shop, so you go to a door next to the shop and ring the bell and they tell you to come up.

When you’re inside, the offices are tiny, just a room on each floor really, and there’s a tiny staircase that spirals up. There’s also a lift, but this being a tiny building of tiny rooms it is a tiny lift. The kind where you get in and there isn’t really any space for anyone else. It has mirrors on three sides to make it feel bigger but nothing can really change the fact that it’s about the size of a coffin.

Anyway, the point is that I’ve never heard of the company that made the lift. If I had I’m pretty sure I’d have remembered them.

BIG BA… NANAS

(Yes, it’s another stuck at home, covid post)

The virus hit me unexpectedly so much so that my cupboard wasn’t entirely brimming with food. The freezer was, thankfully, yet those perishables and little things you take for granted were already gone. I had to rely on the kindness of friends to drop shopping at my door. They could have flung it through my bedroom window and I would have been fine with that as long as I didn’t clock 4 pints of milk right between the eyes.

I asked for bananas and this is what I received:

Fruit fist

My hands are tiny anyway, they’re not the best for sizing up another item accordingly. These were the biggest, longest, fattest bananas I have ever had the pleasure of being in the company of. Sexual jokes aside (phwoar mate, get your lips round that, that’s the kind of girth ma missus would die for, someone’s gonna be happy tonight, are you sticking with the one or is the full bunch going up there etc. etc.) I found it easier to bite them along the side rather than trying to cut off a full disc. Is that the right expression? A banana disc? Let’s go with that.

Before they were fully ripened, because they turned up solid and green, you could have built a shed with one. You could have someone’s eye out with that. The option to beat a man to death with one was on the cards, if only I hadn’t been self-isolating the possibilities would have been endless.

Let us all say a psalm and remember, if you’re going to start a fight make sure your opponent isn’t in possession of a banana that’s greener than a Ninja Turtle and tougher than Chuck Norris.

War of Science

There is a war on the horizon.

If you squint for long enough you can see them, dressed in their white lab coats, wafting beakers and bunsen burners around like slices of cheese. Science is in the air, an unmistakable smell that burns and pleases the nostrils in equal measures. There are three factions battling for the lauded position of Kings and Queens of Science. It will be long and it will be bloody. Not everyone will make it through, oh yes, there will be casualties. You best call your loved ones now because you’re definitely going to be late home tonight.

Real science has no place here. That’s a whole different category of its own so it’s staying on the sidelines, cheering on the pretenders and secretly laughing to itself about the whole affair. It’s brought a bag of Haribo and it doesn’t plan on sharing it with anyone else. Behind a veil of thin mist, and a long black trench coat, it nibbles on fried eggs and cola bottles without the surrounding crowd realising what is going on.

So who are these people, these candidates of coercion and comprehension? Pull up a beanie and let’s get started:

We Are Scientists

Not only making a bold claim in their band name alone, ‘We Are Scientists’ are also in the running for best album cover ever for their debut ‘With Love and Squalor’. It’s got so many kitties I lost my shit several times writing this post. So there’s a lot of moxie coming from these Californian power pop masters, the only problem is that none / neither of them are actual scientists. The name was chosen after being mistaken for scientists after taking a rental truck back to the depot. Pop music was never the place a ground for things that made sense. There’s no truth in any of this but, damn, can they write catchy as hell songs.
We Are Science

I actually made a bit of a mistake here. I was under the impression that comedian Marcus Brigstocke had a short-lived science program called ‘We are Science’ which lampooned science for laughs. It was actually called ‘We are History’ and had nothing to do with it so they’re automatically disqualified for not being the thing that I thought it was. Bastards.
Nina and the Neurons

Kids TV can’t keep up anymore which is why the BBC and ITV gave up on it in the afternoons and shoved it onto either early morning slots that nobody knows about or digital channels that you can stream at any hour of the day. When Reuben was small, we would occasionally watch ‘Nina and the Neurons’ because it had bright, colourful graphics and was educational in a non-boring way. It also had, because you cannot get past my troubled history of fancying women on TV, a very attractive host in the guise of Katrina Bryan who, with her Scottish accent and being in front of my eyes, kept my attention. After a very quick check on the good ole’ Google pegs, I cannot see any scientific qualifications to her name. This is further cemented by the fact that she played a pregnant lady in a banned advert for Irn Bru where the dad is slowly coming around to the idea of calling his daughter Fanny by drinking the aforementioned drink. She played a character who was a scientist; good actress, bad science. The only things here are japes and sex appeal.
Me and Kev

I got a ‘D’ in my Chemistry A Level.

Kev has a Twitter account called ‘Wrong Science’.

I think we know who won this.

Yes sir, we have no porno-no today

I feel like a bitter disappointment.

BITTER.

At the end of 2018 I was bragging about how we were going to jump on-board that sweet, sweet dusty bandwagon trail and start throwing about porn like it was going out of fashion. Since then despite a few notable graphic and rather explicit efforts it has mostly been a big nen for the last month or so.

I tried to look for some horrible images with which to draw the crowds in. I checked all over the internet and there’s nothing there. All the porn has run away. Unless it is hiding in the shadows I can only presume that there’s none left. Clearly the world was done with the sight of naked flesh on flesh on possibly animal on flesh.

All I can do is offer up this very small picture as compensation. All you filth hounds out there watching, I hope it is enough.

A Menagerie of Filth

As we were all secretly hoping for, and even though the month of February slipped by without any, let’s fill up the last of March with a swift dose of filthy bad boys:

Look at all of that.

I expect there will be droves of perverts desperate for nouveau erotica swarming into our coveted halls.

They’ll take one peek at the troughs on show here and they’ll not be able to contain themselves.

It’s a burden that we have to bear, seeking the numbers and lowering ourselves to unwanted depths of depravity, yet sometimes this is what you have to do to be a success. In order to reach the top of the mountain you have to trudge through the bleak, dirty depths first.

And, deep down, you know you love it.

Four Word Reviews: State of Mind

Ah, Holly Valance. We meet again. We’ve already reviewed the living daylights out of Holly’s first album, Footprints, just a few short months ago. Now, she’s back with her second (2003) album, State of Mind, in a Four Word Reviews first. I cannot even begin to imagine how this came to land on my doorstep so soon after the first.

Read More: Four Word Reviews: State of Mind »