The Most Important Meal Of The Day

I guess everyone has their morning routine. Mine involves having a bath, making a cuppa for me and my missus, pouring a glass of orange juice, taking my missus her cuppa in bed, making my missus her breakfast sarnie and then having my cereal of choice. In winter months, I have Ready Brek. In summer, I alternate between Rice Crispies and Weetabix.

This morning, I followed my routine to the letter, but at the last stage, I decided to throw caution to the wind and have an omelette. It’s good to live on the edge every once in a while.

Anyway, while the butter was melting in the frying pan, I mixed three eggs into a glass, poured in a little milk and then added a splash of water. It makes the omelette a little fluffier, I find.

Now, at this stage, something distracted me. I can’t remember what it was — probably the cat or something on the radio — but the sizzling of the frying pan reminded me that I had a potentially flammable situation on my hands, and I’d better get my arse into gear. So I poured my omelette mixture into the pan and then chopped up some sausage and cheese to add to it.

By the time my attention turned back to the frying pan, Julie had got up and joined me in the kitchen. So far, the routine was coping fine with this minor detour and the morning was developing more or less as per usual.

Then it started to go wrong. Something was amiss on the cooker. The omelette wasn’t working.

“My omelette’s not working,” I said.

“What do you mean it’s not working?”

But that was about as well as I could describe it. The omelette should’ve been forming, it should’ve been in the process of fulfilling its destiny and becoming an omelette, but it was still liquid. The mixture refused to congeal. Minutes passed; still nothing. When it looked like waiting on this bloody omelette to appear was going to make me late for work, I decided to cut my loses. In disgust, I threw out the chopped up sausage and cheese and went to get my Rice Crispies.

“Bloody stupid omelette not working properly,” I said and I remember thinking, what if all omelettes didn’t work anymore? How would this affect my life? I mean, I don’t eat a lot of omelettes, but it’s good to know they’re there when I need one. And if omelettes didn’t work, would scrambled eggs remain unaffected? It was an odd sort of moment.

“It must be working,” Julie replied.

“Much as I hate to disagree with you, dear, ” I began, and that was when I saw it.

On the worktop was a glass of omelette mixture.

Next to it was an identical glass, which until a few minutes previously, had housed some refreshing orange juice … right up until the moment when I threw it into the frying pan and attempted to stir-fry it. Suddenly, the smell of cooked oranges filled the kitchen.

So I had no eggs left, no orange juice left, a citrusy frying pan with burnt orange juice around its edges and a wife who thought the entire episode was hilarious and I was an idiot. I took some comfort from the fact that this probably meant omelettes would work again.

See? Routines. They’re there for a reason.

 

A Gape of Pleasant Surprises

A pleasant surprise this morning. I was doing my usual, obsessive compulsive checking and re-checking of sites and mags that are due to publish one of my stories or are in the process of thinking about rejecting one.

During this journey, I discovered that Random Acts of Writing has released their new issue. I’ve enthused about RAW before in terms of its look, its content and its ethos and the fact that it proved to be something of a template when designing the look of Trialling The Content.

So, my story — The Ghouls at the Four Sisters — appears in RAW’s issue 13. Apparently, Gemma Rutter’s story shares the theme of childhood in high-rise flats, which amuses me because in RAW 12, there were two stories that featured hornbills, and one of them was mine, too.

While reasonably pleasant and surprising, none of this is really the main pleasant surprise, though. The main pleasant surprise was the discovery that further down the RAW home page, after the contributor list and flanked on top and bottom by a deep block of black, was the opening paragraph from my story. It looks really smart and I thank whoever it was who thought that doing this was a good idea.

(apologies — I have no idea what the collective noun is for pleasant surprises, but gape seemed as good a choice as any)

 

How To Destory A 13,000 Majority In Seven Minutes

Don’t let the bleary eyes, the stubble or the unbuttoned short fool you. Eric Joyce is actually a Labour Member of Parliament.

In the hours before the broadcast, one can imagine someone from the BBC’s Newsnight programme giving Mr Joyce’s office a phone, asking him for an interview and one can also imagine a brief outline of likely questions being handed over. Even if this wasn’t the case, some of those questions, it would be safe to assume, would be around those pesky expenses that have been getting so much airtime recently.

So why Mr Joyce thinks that an acceptable answer to the question, “How come you think it’s okay to charge the public purse for the artwork in your office?” is “Because they look nice,” or that, “Did you pay Capital Gains Tax on either property?” is deserving of the response, “What are you saying about my wife?” is anyone’s guess. But it does make for some entertaining, if uncomfortable, viewing to anyone not residing in Falkirk East.

UPDATE — Credit where it’s due, though, Mr Joyce responded to my Tweet on the above subject when it would be far easier to ignore. I’m very easy to ignore.

 

Confectioners … Is There No Limit To Their Skull-Duggery?

About ten years ago, I went through … well, I guess you’d call it a phase … of writing spoof letters of complaint to confectioners in hope of receiving some free vouchers in return. The success rate is so close to 100%, it’s not worth doing any further investigation.

Starburst paid up when, in a letter that constantly referred to the product as Opal Fruits, I complained about the frequency and variance of getting a Strawberry and included a number of pages of observational statistics.

Rolos sent me free stuff when I took them to task about their claim that the customer services desk could help with “any question I may have” and submitted them a recent pub quiz.

Quavers gave me vouchers and pieces of plastic when I posed as a OAP confused by the Tazos that were included in the packs.

It’s great fun to scam them and even better when they hint that they know they’re being scammed in their reply — they’d never be so bold to make the accusation clear.

Anyway, hidden at the heart of all this wanton Thomas Foolery there was a serious distrust of confectioners who, for the last twenty years, have been reducing the size of their product while conversely increasing the price. Milky Way, it’s safe to say, are among the worst offenders in this regard.

So today, I was pleasantly surprised to see an old Milky Way advert on TV that took me back to my childhood and a time when the fluffiest of fluffy chocolate bars wasn’t so small that it could comfortably fit inside a Tom Thumb’s arse pocket.

While watching it, though, something struck me. They guy’s voice … that’s not the voice I remember from the 80s and 90s … so why would they go to all the bother of re-cutting the vocal when the music and the video are unchanged. Towards the end, I discovered the answer was in the lyrics.

The Red Car and the Blue Car had a race,
But all Red wants to do is stuff his face.
He eats everything he sees,
From trucks to prickly trees.
But smart old Blue, he took the Milky Way.

He’s looking for a chocolate treat,
Fluffy and light,
Coz he knows it will taste just right.

[Oh, no. The bridge is gone. Old Red can't carry on!]

But smart old Blue, he took the Milky Way.

Can you spot what’s changed? Here’s the old version, which I think has the new singer, which complicates things but lets skip by that for now. Focus on the lyrics; particularly the self-righteous reasons behind Blue’s snack of choice.

It seems that over the years, the reason that Blue finds his Milky Way so irresistable during the race with Red has changed. It used to be to protect his appetite. Now it’s about taste? Are you kidding me? It makes a nonsense of the whole campaign. The whole chuffing point of going for a Milky Chuffing Way in the first place was so it wouldn’t bag him up in his race against fatso Red. Now, apparently, taste alone is what allows Blue to clear the canyon? IT MAKES NO SENSE!!!

So why change it?

We all know. Deep down, we know the reason. We can see the law suit landing on Willy Wonka’s (or equivalent) desk and I particularly know because in an old hard drive in my attic, there’s a draft spoof complaint, unsent, that was a forerunner for this scam. And now, someone else has picked up the torch.

After eating a Milky Way, someone, somewhere will claim to have spoiled their appetite and punitive damages will be well in excess of the few vouchers I scammed all those years ago. And ironically, due their current size, such an eventuality has never been so unlikely.

For shame.

 

iPhone 3GS

I’ve given it careful thought and the answer is, yes please.

 

Victorian Freakshow, Anyone?

It’s that time of year again. Big Brother 10. Who’da thunk that Davina McCall’s career and our interest would have lasted so long? Or at the very least, delayed the inevitable.

I was unfortunate enough to see the Big Brother Quiz the other night and I’m pretty sure it insulted my cat’s intelligence. It honestly couldn’t have been any worse had Chris Moyles been somehow involved.

So anyway, despite my better judgment, I’m sitting watching the launch show as per usual and shall be exchanging bitchy comments with m’colleague Stoobs as the freaks are fed in. I’ll register my intial thoughts on the sorry bunch here. Might as well.

9:01pm — Davina reveals that 16 housemates aren’t really housemates. Fingers crossed for monkeys.

9:03pm — Davina makes a Deal or no Deal funny while trying to muster up interest in the housemate / non-housemate twist.

Here we go, folks!

9:04pm — Freddie — posh bloke who seems to be trying to sound like Derrin Brown. Not a monkey. Can’t help but be disappointed. First impression … fud.

9:07pm — Lisa — she’s a lady lesbian but doesn’t follow the typical blonde hair, big busted stereotype. This one has a shaved head, tattoos and many piercings. How novel. First impression … wasn’t she on last year? And the year before?

9:11pm — Sophie — glamour model. Hold on, though. Don’t go forming an opinion just yet because just like Lisa, she breaks stereotypes by being thick as fuck. First impression … she’ll get her chebs out before sunset.

So far, off to a bad start. Charlie Brooker thinks Sophie needs a Sims icon above her head. I tend to agree.

9:19pm — Kris — That’s Kris with a K. Oh dear. Pretty sure he was on last year, too. Didn’t he … oh, I forget. First impression … seems quite fond of himself.

9:23pm — Noirin — she’s the one who claims to be outrageous and an exhibitionist but she’ll not say a word for a week and then people will forget she’s even there. First impression … which one’s she again?

9:26pm — Cairon — another one who’s been on before. It’s Science. And we all know how successful that was. First impression … I actually might end up tolerating this version.

Six down. Ten to go. Ten. That’s still quite a lot. A monkey can’t yet be ruled out.

9:34pm — Angel — a Russian female(?) boxer. I’m losing the will to live here. Most interesting thing about her is she went down the right hand staircase. First impression … a bone fide weirdo.

9:39pm — Karly — an unemployed Scottish lady who says bitch an awful lot and will be interchangable with Sophie. That’ll be her dole money screwed. First impression … she’ll be evicted first.

9:43pm — Marcus — a window cleaning geek with half a beard. Has the look of the carny and I predict he’ll be nominated every week until the others get bored with the public’s reaction and decide to lynch him. Stoobs comment: “bet he smells of leather.” First impression … I like him already.

Are we there yet?

9:51pm — Beinazir — normal. First impression … normal.

9:54pm — Sophia — a tiny woman. Not Mini-Me tiny, but certainly short. What she loses in height, she more than makes up for with a screeching, mind-piercing, laugh that literally makes you want to rip your own eyeballs out and stuff them in your ears. First impression … perhaps the most annoying short woman I’ve ever seen.

9:58pm — Rodrigo — a bisexual Brazillian. Seems overwhelmed by everything. First impression … he’ll be popular.

10:01pm –  Charlie — A gay Geordie. Is the aliteration deliberate? First impression … seems a decent enough chap but oh, who cares?

Struggling to see where the entertainment is going to come from.

10:09pm — Saffia — another person who claims not to be a nice person. Yes, I’m a bitch. I’m horrible. No one likes me and I hate everyone. She doesn’t like the term single-mum, despite the fact that it describes her. Is ditching two young children for the summer … or maybe the next couple of days. First impression … boring.

10:12pm — Sree — he’s the prudish, tee-total, non-sweary one that manages to get on everyone’s tits after the first night. First impression … not much, but Stoobs isn’t a fan.

10:15pm — Siavash — Iranian man who … well, I’m not sure what he does. Claims to be a stylist or something. I’m finding this very hard to follow, but he seems a right twat regardless. Have a sneaking suspicion that Mike Myers is under that hair and make-up. First impression … look, I’m just glad that’s the lot.

Terrible line up. I’m thinking that these were the only 16 people who applied. So disappointed that we’re lacking a monkey but I suspect they’ll all be flinging shite at each other by the weekend.

 

Who Ate All The 3.1415926535…

I can recite pi to 422 decimal places.

I’ll just put that out there and let it settle for a moment.

Up until a couple of years ago, I just knew it up to 10 decimal places. I know. Terribly inaccurate. Then, I noticed that the scientific calculator on Window$ had it up to 30 odd, so I spent half an hour tripling my knowledge. By the time I got up to 100 decimal places, I started to put the experience to good use and wrote a half-decent short story about it. By the time I finished writing Memorising Pi To 120 Decimal Places, I’d already chalked up 200.

I stopped at 500, mostly at the behest of my good lady and in the intervening time, I’ve forgotten 80, but 422 is still a hefty sequence to remember so I’ll try not to beat myself up about it too much.

Anyway, I discovered today that the advert is true and there literally is an App For Everything. You, yes you, can indeed, for 59p, download an app from iTunes where you see how many you can remember. Your attempts are timed and ranked and I can’t stop playing it.

Even before I get into this sentence I was already aware of its pointlessness, but if there’s anyone out there in my reading several interesting in joining me in my high geekdom, you can download the app here but you’ll need to supply the 59p yourself.

You have 422 and 245 seconds to beat. Get to it!

 

Trialling The Content

So, I mentioned rather briefly the other day, a little something called Trialling The Content. I’m now in a position to reveal a little more information.

Trialling The Content is a small run magazine featuring work by Alloa Writers Group which launched yesterday. I’ve edited the first issue so any typos and whatnot are my fault. Apologies in advance.

Thanks to all those who’ve been involved in its production, either in a creative or advisory capacity.

It’s been quite a hectic business putting the whole thing together. There’s the content. There’s art work. There’s the print run. There’s choosing paper. There’s First British Serial Rights Agreements to be drafted up and signed. There’s organising people and words and when Alloa Writers only meet every couple of weeks, time runs out very quickly. There have been many times I’ve wished we’d plumped for a 1 July launch, although I suspect that would have led on to 1 August etc.

As someone far more intelligent than me said, distribution is everything, so I’m thrilled to be able to say that Trialling The Content will be available for free from every library in Clackmannanshire and will also be available from Toast, the café at the cinema in Stirling, The Card Shop and McFarlane’s in Alloa. It will also be popping up randomly throughout the Wee County.

I hope those of you who can get your hands on a copy will do so and I hope even further that you enjoy it. Steve, yours is in the post, ser. Nearly.

 

For Whom The Repetitive Strain Injury Tolls

My copy of Guitar Hero: Metallica arrived today and I’ve managed to coax about two hours play out of my left wrist.

There are no great surprises in the gameplay — it’s pretty much exactly like any other GH or Rockback game — the only exception being the Expert Plus level of difficulty on drums, which sees the introduction of a second bass pedal. Madness.

At the moment, I’m progressing reasonably well through Hard on guitar and frequently surprising myself at the number of riffs I’m hitting. The trick seems to be not to think about it too much. That, and mashing the buttons randomly.

Presentation-wise, though, it’s a much slicker product compared with the rather disappointing Aerosmith addition to the franchise. The band look like the band and behave like the band. Watching the game is, by and large, exactly like watching Metallica perform live. Unfortunately, that has a downside and that downside’s name is Lars Ulrich.

If you didn’t hate Large Oilrig beforehand, you’re not going to find anything in here to secure his position on your Christmas card list. He yawns at points when his drumming prowess is not required. He constantly has that smarmy, smug expression on his face, mouth doing a passable impression of a cat’s arse.

But what get’s me is, he must look at that and see it. He must surely have had to sign off the design of his digitized face.

“Guys, guys, guys,” I imagine he might have said. “If you can’t make me look like a bulldog licking pish from a nettle, we’re pulling the freakin’ plug.”

GH games and their ilk live and die by the song selection and GH:Metallica has picked its tunes from the right end of the Metallica back catalog, ie. the pre 1990 bit. That’s not to say there’s nothing from St Anger etc, but so far at least, they’ve been thankfully brief.

Easily one to play through to completion and to return to when the mood takes.

 

The Office, Stirling, 11:23am

MAN: (frustrated) What the fuck’s wrong with this fucking photocopier now?

Man crouches and starts looking at flaps and doors, giving one or two a slap. Woman leans over and looks at the control panel.

WOMAN: It’s finished.