Are you Common?

Look at you.

Who are you? What do you do? Are you common? I know that it is not very politically correct to ask this question however it needs to be asked. I know that I am common, mainly from the state of my shoes, but also because I eat like a duck with two mouths and I’ve never paid more than £20.00 for a plate of food. I am safe in the knowledge that I am common.

How can I be sure of this though? Is there a test I can take?

Of course there is. Following on from the raging success of my Cake ‘Appropriate Girlfriend (short skirt, long jacket)’ questionnaire now comes the ‘How Common are you?’ questionnaire, mainly based on the lyrics of the popular song ‘Common People’ by Pulp. Depending on how many of these metaphysical boxes you tick (because I don’t know how to ‘do’ boxes on here) dictates how common you, as in you, are. Take a squint at these.

Have you ever:

Rented a flat above a shop?
Cut you hair?
Got a job?
Smoked some fags?
Played some pool?
Pretended you never went to school?

Based on these, I can tick five out of the six boxes. I have never officially got a job and instead make my money by spinning pennies for sailors down at the socks. Do we still have docks? Yes, we still have docks.

That’s what I do. How common are you?

Mrs Miggins thinks big

What’s that crafty (and also hugely desirable) old property tycoon up to now?

Last we heard of Mrs Miggins, some years ago, she was fitting out her properties with those chrome fittings and understated (yet ostentatious) gardens. But the other day I was in Farringdon when I stumbled across the fateful property where we first encountered her.

75 Farringdon Road: 25,000 Sq Ft of Exceptional Office Space

It looks like the house where I, or possibly Ian, it was never really made clear in the lyrics, first fell for Mrs Miggins, has been pulled down and is going to be replaced with some stylish offices instead.

My first thought, of course, was sadness: sadness that a place that meant so much to me, or possibly Ian, had been swept away in the blink of an eye to further expand the Miggins real estate empire.

But then I thought no, let’s embrace the change. I propose that we immediately put in a bid to rent some office space there for the official Pouring Beans offices. We’ve been working from home much too long; it’s time we established a base for ourselves. And there could be no more appropriate address than 75 Farringdon Road. I’m ready to chip in my fiver.

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.

Seagull Competition: Results

It’s been a long time coming and the tension is almost too much to bear. A couple of months ago, we asked the Beans Massive to tell us what a Llandudno seagull was thinking back in May 2017 when he was photographed thusly.

It’s taken a while to select a winner, principally because of the difficulty of locating this exact seagull and then establishing a way of communicating a question about its internal thought processes from nearly two years ago that it could understand, and then interpreting its answer. It has also proven a bit tricky to get it to select a prize.

Big Frank’s Global Domination – The Music Biz

So what do you do when you’ve already conquered the chips, graphic design, computers, cycle hire and boat hiring services worlds? What else could you possibly need to include in your empire to satisfy your desperate need for a domineering monopoly over the rest of the world? You want to stick your dorsal fins tightly into the music business, that’s what.

Not just any music business though. You need to enter the Southern California hardcore scene. We have all seen Big Frank and he is clearly obsessed with thrash metal, speed metal, hardcore and the like. If he’s not punking out on the roof, spitting at pigeons and throwing pork pies at strangers then he’s working tirelessly to move the hardcore scene forward with his enduring work ethic.

Let us not forget that this was the man who started Nemesis Records and who put out the first Offspring album. Big Frank began as a tea boy and worked his way up all the way to the top, grinding his teeth with local bands such as Fisticuffs, Mental Eric, Cracked Vase, Hate Your Mum and What a To Do before moving to producing some of the tastiest albums of big hitters like Vaynes, Syck Syck, Death Hands and Cheryl’s Anus.

To put everyone else to shame too, as well as doing all of this he is a full-time tattoo artist and looks after sick and injured animals. I mean I may as well give up now, there is no way I can ever compete with this man. He must work 26 hour days. Big Frank is clearly a glutton for punishment; what a guy.

The next time you’re getting neck pains from rocking too hard, I hope you’ll think of Biggy F and his overwhelming contribution not just to music but also to the world. You think long and hard, sunshine.

Designer diseases

I’m starting a new business venture and this is your chance to get in on the ground floor. Here’s the pitch.

Designer diseases are going to be the next big thing. Here’s how it works: influencers are everywhere now, filling up Instagram with their poses and getting lots of sweet corporate sponsorship on Youtube. What they’re missing is the human angle, something to pull on people’s emotions. Enter the designer disease.

We will offer a full 360-degree customised bespoke personal consulting service where we will offer a choice of designer diseases and infect the influencer with their choice of ailment. We then provide the tools and resources for the influencer to splash their horrible illness all over the ‘gram, soak up the sympathy and massively up their likes.

Already, Kendal Jenner (is that one of them?) has signed up for a package we’re calling “The ‘Roids”: painful hemhorroids form a distinctive grape-like package that’s visible through lycra and gymwear. We suggest using pile cream as a stylish but challenging form of face paint.

Are you in? I’m going to need $15,000 for a 5% stake. This is going to be huge.

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.

A life in furniture

Living above a bed shop, you’d think that the item of furniture most at risk of overwhelming my life would be beds. But no: here in the London Borough of Royksopp, it’s sofas we’re drowning in.

As you probably already know, my domestic co-habitant, Steve “Stevey” Stevingtons, is immensely and sickeningly rich: certainly a millionaire, possibly close to Jeff Bezos levels of financial liquidity. So it was that, a month ago, he splashed out on a new sofa to replace his old one. It was a real beast of a thing, a mo-fo so-fa to seat five, with a cornery bit and a separate footstool thing. Absolutely glorious. But as soon as it arrived we both saw the problem: as spacious as our living room is, it’s not big enough for two sofas to be practical.

The old sofa was moved to the balcony for a while, which is also vast, but that was short lived once it got rained on. Steve was forced to dispose of it and for a time we were back to a one-sofa arrangement, until it became clear that the new sofa – hand-stitched in a small village in the Alps and delivered by helicopter at a cost well into six figures – had a saggy ass in one of the seats.

The Stevingtons dynasty are not known for tolerating shoddy workmanship, least of all drooping upholstery, so the new sofa was broken up and this week a third, identical sofa arrived in its place.

I am pleased to report that seating arrangements in the penthouse are now entirely buoyant and without any saggage in the ass or any other region, and I am hopeful that this sofa-saturated period has finally drawn to a close. Thank you for your time.