Avatar More of You and Your Orb

Now that the shock of having an orb instead of a child has disappeared, you can settle into a routine that fits the both of you. Remember that you have to get used to your orb as much as he or she has to get used to you. You are not an easy person to live with and people do talk about you behind your back.

In order for your orb to understand how to behave around children and other orbs you may to take them out to a soft play facility. Here, kids and orbs of all ages run or hover around in well-crafted industrial buildings that nobody knew what to do with, panicked and then threw some padding on the floors. You can watch from the safety of the coffee shop, with your half-fat vanilla latte, whilst your little one floats in and out of tubes, ball pools and slides. You will also get to listen as other, more smug parents (more smugger or smuggents as they’re referred to) chunter on about how their child managed to get into Cambridge University based on the contents of their last nappy.

Maintain your distance whilst also keeping a close eye on them. This is one of those contradictions that you often see in parenting guides because really, deep down, nobody knows what they’re doing. You want your orb to make friends without you, ironically, hovering about behind them. And you certainly don’t want to one of those dads that follows their orb into the soft play facility and proceeds to comment on every single thing they do, and then convince them not to go down the big slide because it may be “a little too scary” for them. You’ll get a slap round the man nuggets for conduct like that.

Sometimes a float through the park is enough to keep them occupied. With the sun on your back and the fresh air coursing around your orb’s complex series of gas, emissions and chutney, they will appreciate the time you have spent together. Make sure to take plenty of photographs and decorate your orb’s room with memories you have made together.

If they burn a likeness of you into a piece of paper, put it up on the fridge for everyone to see. If they build a statue of you using pasta and PVA glue don’t go with your initial reaction and throw it in the bin; be sure to make a lot of noise about how great it is, put a picture on Facebook and then put it in the garage in the box with the rest of the tripe, or throw it out of the window of a moving car on the way to work the next morning. It’s much funnier that way.

Avatar You and Your Orb

So you’ve taken the plunge and out comes an orb. Well done! Please refer back to my previous post before reading on because we’re British here and we don’t like getting ahead of ourselves (see here: ORBS).

You will be completely perplexed at first but that’s okay, relax! Everyone struggles with their first orb so you are not alone in your endeavours. Gently place the orb on the sofa next to you and carry on scanning this helpful article.

Your orb will still be quite small and easy to deal with. The most important thing is not to treat it like a piece of luggage. Don’t put it in your rucksack or man bag, however you roll in 2019, underneath your gym socks and your eiderdowns. This orb has feelings and whilst it may warm your socks in readiness for your upcoming “stretch session” you will not win any orbular points. Carry the orb in your arms, either out in front of you or cautiously tucked into your side. If you have the correct equipment you can put the orb in a carry case on your back so you have the benefit of being able to use your hands whilst knowing the orb is safe. It will also allow you and your orb to grow closer together because of the contact you share.

When your orb is having a fun time it will glow a warmish, orange colour; this way you know you are doing things right. If at any point they emit a loud shriek like a pigeon in a pair of stilettos then you know something is wrong. Similarly, if they display any colours towards a reddish hue then that is also an indication that you should look at what you’re doing. Occasionally your orb may confuse you further by glowing a purple or lavender colour, the same as Prince’s rain, which will either mean they’re happy but worried at the same time or that they need the toilet. We would strongly recommend keeping some orb bags with you at all times in case they have a little accident. Replacement dungarees are also to be encouraged.

There is a lot to do at first, so much that there is not enough (fake) ink and (fake) paper to cover everything, and you may feel overwhelmed. Remember that everyone learns from their mistakes and you are not the first person to pick up a little mess from the ground because you misinterpreted the colour scheme of your orb.

Love your orb and your orb will love you right back.

Avatar Congratulations! It’s an orb!

Pregnancy, eh? What’s all that about?

I mean we all know what it is about, don’t we? Humans making more humans to fill the spaces that other humans have left. It’s the great circle of life, the wheel of fortune. If we didn’t make more humans, who would sit in all those prams? Who would use them nappies? And, heavens above, who would leave all those tiny Lego pieces on the floor for you to stand on them and wish you didn’t have legs?

Kevin has the luxury of having one tiny chilblain with another on the way. But does he? Research taken earlier today by Professor Reuben does now suggest that Kev and his lovely wife Sarah may just be on the verge of having an orb instead of a human baby. The most recent scan taken by, pft, “doctors” shows a much rounder form than previously anticipated. The subject, Mrs S Hill, has a very orbular shape around the stomach and wombular areas. When I gently placed my hand on top of the orb it kicked, then it hummed and then my palm felt warm. Orbs are known for emitting both humming noises and warmth.

This came as quite a shock to the both of them. Myself and Professor Reuben set out the facts as we saw them in graphic detail, which involved several large sketch pads, a teatowel, three inhaler cups (thanks, Kev) and a dozen bottles of mayonnaise. Within mere minutes both of them were crying with what could only have been joy. Yes, it did mean ruining the surprise of rolling out a glowing orb on the big day although we believe it was for the best. Society has not come far enough to embrace the orbs and welcome them into the playground, the classroom and, most upsetting of all, into our hearts. 

What does that mean for the prospective parents? What do they have in store if they will be caring for an orb instead of a baby? In the interests of stretching out one very basic idea into several posts I have decided to extend this simple premise into a few separate articles of writing. I mean, why not? It’s the flavour of the month. Tune in next time for tips on how to look after their and maybe even your orb.

Avatar The Third Kind of Water

The people have spoken and…

“I demand a third water, beyond simply still or fizzy. Something else. Creamy water, maybe, or extra dry water. Something like that.”

… is what they said. Never let it be said that here at Pouringbeans we don’t give the people what they want. We do, we always do, and we give them it in spades. SPADES!

Without any more fuss, let me present to you, straight from the ever-busy laboratories of Kevindo Menendez…

        Antimatter Water

In an interview with New Scientist, Menendnez said:

 Antimatter Water was been produced at great expense to satisfy the urges of one egocentric numpty. However in the process we created something beautiful. Its impossible to drink, and if you mix it with normal water, they both disappear, so NEVER do that. EVER. It could cause some unknown science stuff… probably.

The article goes on to state that “In 1999, NASA gave a figure of $62.5 trillion per gram of antihydrogen” so we can only gasp in awe at the sheer cost of the singular glass of Antimatter Water that Menendez managed to create.

The glass of impossibly expensive anti-water will be presented to a Mr. C. Marshall, along side a selection of budget waters from Aldi, at an upcoming meeting to discuss the ludicrous installation of additional eyes to Mr. Marshall’s face.

Avatar The dancing monkey

There are many complex and bewildering technologies to master in my new job, but probably none more complex or bewildering than the robotic dancing alarm monkey.

Alarms go off quite regularly, you see. We look after technical things, lots of them, and the technical things are all wired up to an alarm system, so when something goes wrong it comes up on a screen and an alarm goes off. Then we press a button to make the noise stop and see if anything needs to be done.

The alarm could just come out of a speaker. That would certainly make sense. Instead, though, it’s been wired up to an animatronic monkey with inbuilt speakers. He makes the alarm sound, and he dances from side to side while he makes it. By such means the announcement of a potentially catastrophic system failure is made delightfully charming. This is, with no danger of overstatement whatsoever, one of the best things about my job.

If you have a need to make noises in your job, I would recommend getting yourself a dancing monkey. You won’t regret it.

Avatar New beans, please

“One! Ha ha ha. Two! Ha ha ha. Three! Ha ha ha.” The immortal wisdom of the Count.

Here on the Beans, our counting is not done by a furry purple vampire, but by the Bean Counter, an ingenious piece of machinery made from old sofa springs and a second-hand nuclear reactor that we found in a car boot sale. For more than four years now it’s been faithfully counting up our posts and generating new genetically-modified beans and peas as a reward for our performance, while also disgorging between eight and twelve tons of a resinous toxic by-product into the picturesque River Swale each day.

The highly complicated algorithm by which it awards beans has remained the same since early 2014, so it’s no surprise that earlier this year there were calls for an overhaul of the system to better reflect the realities of blogging in the futuristic world of 2018.

The point of the Bean Counter was never to create a level playing field, but rather to produce a playing field with carefully chosen hills and crevices so that we all stand a chance of scoring a Bean each month according to our various blog posting habits. Critics of the existing system pointed out that it was far easier for Ian to score a Bean than anyone else, and that Kev’s time-consuming building projects meant that three posts in a month was an unattainably high bar for him to reach.

I am delighted to announce, as a result, that major engineering works have been completed and the Bean Counter is now operating a completely new set of rules.

  • Kev will now score a Bean if he makes two (2) posts in a month.
  • Ian will now score a Bean if he makes precisely three (3) or four (4) posts in a month.
  • Chris will continue to score a Bean if he makes four (4) or more posts in a month.

Some would say that these new rules should begin operation from this month onwards, and that existing scores should be left alone. Perhaps they should. But I had a go at that and it was really difficult, so the new rules now apply to all previous months as well, causing a major recasting of our historical Bean Counts.

  • Kev has gained six (6) additional beans for months in which he made two posts.
  • Ian has lost ten (10) beans for months in which he only made two posts.

This is deeply and inherently unfair, which is unfortunate but unavoidable without further major re-engineering work that will just be an absolute faff.

Your comments, detailed feedback and outright anger will be welcome in the comments section below, but may not amount to much.

Avatar A smidge of Smidge

It’s been a few years, but Smidge Manly hasn’t been wasting his time. No, since he finished answering all your questions about railways, he’s been turning his attention to the wider world, and very soon he’ll be ready to explain some of its greatest mysteries to you, his adoring public.

His new series, Smidge on Science, is in post-production right now. In it, he’ll be exploring the four key subjects in the world of science: wind, rain, time and cars.

To whet your appetite, and to remind you again of Smidge’s keen journalistic insight and forensic questioning style, here’s an informative and valuable interview he conducted that didn’t make it into the finished series.

Avatar Fracking History: the Georgians

Hello and welcome to another edition of Fracking History, the top-rated infotainment docuhistoriography show here on Beans TV.

In this week’s episode, we’re going to be seeing what we can learn about the Georgians. We begin by drilling vertically downwards some 212 metres into the past, and then turn the drill head horizontally to push through a layer of sediment composed mainly of the late Qing Dynasty until we locate a rich seam of Georgian history.

Our loud, highly destructive machinery now begins pumping a mixture of water, sand and polyacrylamide into history at extremely high pressure. The delay while we wait for results is extremely tense, with our resident geophysical historian, Dr. Cornward Habsburg, nervously checking over his valves and dials. Eventually a thin, dark-coloured liquid begins seeping from the outlet valve, and we have our very first sample of the Georgian era.

What does it tell us about the aristocracy and the ordinary people of Britain in the eighteenth century?

Dr. Habsburg adds a few drops of hydrochloric acid to a sample of the liquid and places it in a centrifuge at a controlled temperature of 76° celsius. The resulting dark residue is then inspected under a microscope.

It reveals Georgian society in all its debauched, vulgar glory. The presence of particularly high levels of carbon nitrates can only be a result of the deeply unpopular Prince Regent openly enjoying affairs with a number of high society women and the early development of the gutter press in the form of short pamphlets and magazines printing salacious gossip.

It’s been a fascinating journey to an important point in Britain’s history and has brought to rich, vivid life a chapter of the past that can be so difficult to accurately reconstruct today. But all good things must come to an end. Join us next time on Fracking History when we’ll be using the latest hydraulic hammer drilling technology to break through a seam of solid, compacted Dark Ages to begin extracting parts of the early Roman era. Until then, goodbye.