Make me laugh. Now.

I'm so in love with this photo that I've decided to make it into a competition.
Leave a caption for it in the comments and after a period of time which is deemed reasonable by the Grand Chancellor (me), a winner shall be selected to have their caption put under the photo and placed in the sidebar here for a period of time which is deemed reasonable by the Grand Chancellor (again, me).
Also, if you're a lurker, now's a good time to say hi, because instead of having to write about the rubbish I've written, you just get to write something funny. How easy is that?

The prize is that you get to be recognised by your peers as having a superior sense of humour. You also get to be on my blog.
What's that you say? Lame prize?
I know but this is a tiny baby blog, not the national fucking lottery. What do you want? An iPod or something? Go click some pop-up ads then, ass hat.
Fine. If you win, I'll print the captioned picture out, POST IT TO YOU IN THE MAIL and you can stick it on your wall. Happy now? You better be.

Quick then, go make with the funnies.

Speaking of the future...

My last post got me thinking about the future and how disappointed people must be with the present. Which coincidentally was the future back then.
You see, everyone's lives were built on the hope that one day, they'd be zipping to the space-port diner a la The Jetsons. Granted, there is similarities- Lots of dads these days work part time in factories, but the difference is that their kids don't get looked after by Ruby Robot; they get left in the car with the windows up and occasionally fed by Rosa, the Hispanic alien from next door.

End digression...

Now here's some edu-ma-cation for all you non-Australians.
Back when I was a wee little tacker, there used to be this awesome show on TV called 'Beyond 2000'.
To an eight year old boy, the name alone was the most exciting thing ever since that time dad left his special cup too close to the high-chair.
The show provided an insight into current developments in science and technology and how they would make the lives of those living in the year 2000 so much more luxurious/simpler/exciting/less baby-vomit-green ridden.
So there was concept cars which had magical future things like electric windows, robot co-drivers and digital speedometers.
There was calculators that FIT INTO THE PALM OF YOUR HAND and could do all kinds of crazy things like addition.
There was laser guided kitchen utensils, jet powered steam irons, anaerobic dust projectors, gaseous plasma heaters and televisions that you didn't have to get up off your orange and green couch to change the channels on.
Fucking sweet.
To me, a dumb eight year old that once got so excited by a tv show about crocodiles that he jumped on the couch and fell onto the coffee table splitting his head open thusly getting himself rushed to hospital and receiving a fuck-tonne of stitches down his forehead, this show was like grown-ups had stolen all my Lego ideas and turned them into awesome, actual, radical things.
If I could have had a wet dream, I would have had one, probably. Instead I think I just wet the bed a few times.
Anyways, my head was filled with these wondrous devices and I longed for the years to pass so one day, in the years after the year 2000, I could fly to school with a jet pack and do my homework on this magical computing device which only needed TWO WHOLE ROOMS to operate and maybe even use electrical wiring to talk to people that also had dedicated computing device rooms in their homes.
I thought the future held alot.

Here I am, almost ten years 'beyond 2000' and I can't even get bullet-points to work properly in Word, I still have to tie my own shoelaces, I can't fucking hover/jet/teleport anywhere and to top it all off, the false prophets that came up with this programme of lies and fraudulent dreams have gone and re-made the TV programme under a new heading.

Now fair play, back in '81 they probably thought they were pretty safe with going with the 'Beyond 2000' name. I mean, 20 years or so is a long time in science. Unless your talking about evolutionary biology, in which case 20 years is fuck all. But in the 'science' that this show referred to 20 years was a long time and I can't fault them for expecting some of the things they showcased to have developed into usable technologies come the big 2-0 (0-0).

My problem's not with 'Beyond 2000', it is with the producers who decided that rather than risk the embarrassment of hazarding a guess and going with 'Beyond 2020', they decided to go with the title 'Beyond Tomorrow' for the new show.

Piss-weak.

Beyond 2000 was about things that may come to fruition in the (kind of but not really) distant future. Sure they made some calls that look stupid now, but dammit, in the 80's they put their spandex-clad asses on the line and I respect that.

Beyond Tomorrow is a cop out. Going from the title, Beyond Tomorrow could be a show about Thursday. And anyone can guess which technologies will exist on Thursday.
"Oh look honey, they're doing a special on electric kettles."
Lame.

The least they could have done is gone for 'Beyond 3000', at least then we wouldn't be alive to ridicule them when their isotopic fusion hats never come to be mass-produced or when the anti-gravity super car fails to be developed or when they fail to stop global warming using a series of mirrors, some gaffa tape and a bucket of liquid nitrogen.

But no, we get Beyond Tomorrow.
I predict that beyond tomorrow, I'll be a disillusioned 23 year old who wastes all his time working, complaining about working, writing drivel on a blog and hating on meaningless tv shows.

You can call me Nostradamus.

We're living in the future people!

I found this at work in some marketing material from years ago.
This guy was a tutor...
Nothing says "I'm a man of the future' like a 6 kilogram mobile cellular telephony device.
What a cool cat. So cool in fact, that when asked for a promotional photo, he avoids the standards profile shot and opts for this gem.


Awesome.

Stay tuned for more exciting stuff. I know I've been neglecting this and hopefully soon I'll have the time to give it some more attention.

Until then, imagine what a camera phone would have looked like back then.

Reasons I love Edinburgh

This morning I decided to not sit in on the things I had organised for work. Instead I decided to do the tourist thing and go for a stroll around Edinburgh. Being daft I decided to do this in t-shirt and thin jumper.
Hello, dumb-ass. You're in Edinburgh. Put some fucking clothes on.
Needless to say i got cold pretty quickly.
I ventured back and got my jacket, laptop and my hat. (Yes, the one the homeless guy was into)
All packed up and looking like such a tourist that even some Japanese ladies with visors, big fuck-off cameras and pants-suits pointed at me and yelled 'Stupid tourist!", I set off. Within 15 minutes I had decided that Edinburgh is the awesome.

These are the reasons why:

- I climbed the Scott Monument. Awesome panoramic views over the harbour, old town, mountains and castle. On my way back down I noticed the best graffiti ever.
"Peanut woz ere. 15-7-79"
This on the world's largest ever monument created in honour of a writer.
Fucking poetic. Nice one Pea.

- I swear I've seen Christopher Lambert waiting for a bus at least 5 times. It's disconcerting to say the least. One guy even grabbed me and said "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!... more minute until this bus arrives, I've been waiting for ages."
I'm lying again. But seriously, there's heaps of dudes that look like they're an Immortal from Highlander.

- Through a completely random series of occurrences, I just snapped myself a photo of the First Minister of Scotland (Which is their version of a Prime Minister) arm in arm with two guys who were protesting against the proposed changes to Scottish immigration law which will mean no more Curry chefs will be allowed to migrate from India. Or something to that effect. Anyways, I somehow found myself out the front of the Scottish Parliament, then I saw these guys with funny hats holding boards with all kinds of wicked slogans like "Save Curry!" The next thing I know I see them all huddled around someone and I think "CAPTAIN CURRY HAS COME TO SAVE THEM"
But no, it's the prime minister of fucking Scotland, wearing a little white curry chef's hat hugging all these Indian dudes. I took a photo because it's not every day you see the leader of a nation hugging a guy who's occupation involves giving people diarrhoea.

- I found a shop that sells Scottish souvenirs called 'Thistle do nicely'. Best regional-based store-name pun so far.

- I saw two dudes walking around in V for Vendetta masks. Which I thought was totally lame and if I had my way, I'd tie them to a stake and put fireworks in their eyes. But, Jeebus had taken care of things for me. So rather than forcing me to you know, commit murder or something, he just made these dudes such massive nerds that they still had to wear their massive coke-bottle glasses on the outside of the masks!
Ha! Way to be a revolutionary, Captain Degenerative Ocular Faculties. I decided his sidekick was called Myopia Man.

- I saw the Edinburgh School of English. Which sounds funny and weird to me. Probably sounds weirder to someone who doesn't speak English.

- I threw a pebble at a pigeon and hit it.

- I saw a tiny orange tractor driving up the steepest hill ever. Seriously, it was the size of a small ride-on lawnmower, but with a fully enclosed cabin and stuff.
What, no one else finds this funny? Fuck you. Go see television and tell it you want your imagination back. Also get it to eviscerate Ray Romano or whatever the fuck his name is. God I despise that guy. Also tell it to go drop off a map and a helicopter to the poor bastards on Lost. For fucks sake. Someone sort their shit out for them. How long can you not know where you are for? Tards.

Did I just lose COMPLETE TRACK of what I was talking about? The Scottish drunkard reading over my shoulder said "Aye, yer doom foch." Shut up, Christopher Lambert.

- There's a massive number of gingers over here. They have hair that's like, blazing red. Which makes me look like a brunette. (I have somewhat auburn hair. Shutup.) Finally I feel like I fit in. It's like I'm a monkey that was separated from my monkey crew when I was a monkey baby and made to walk around crashing cymbals together and wearing a fez and now I've finally been reunited with my kin. Although now I don't smell like my monkey brethren, so they all claw and bite my face and throw their stinky monkey shit at me.
Umm.. yeah.

I'm going to make a proposal for the Scottish tourist board. My slogan is going to be:

"Come to Scotland and be reunited with you monkey homies whilst the eyes of a thousand Christopher Lamberts and gingers burn into the back of your skull. Also you can throw things at pigeons and you'll actually hit them."

So yeah, that's why I love Edinburgh.

Photo evidence to come soon.

Don't worry, be happy

Sometimes all it takes to make your day is to have a completely insane, muttering Scotsman walk past you, turn around and shout "YOUR HAT! I LIKE YOUR HAT! NICE HAT!!!"

Thanks McDude!
I'd high-five you but I think you have a needle stuck in your fingerless gloves.

Weather Update: Still windy. Still raining. Still cold.


Now I think of it- The whole hat compliment doesn't really make my day. It upsets me. Receiving compliments about your fashion sense from a crazy homeless guy is like having Heath Ledger compliment you on your medication management.

Too soon?

Aye

Still slacking on the blog front.
I'M IN SCOTLAND ALL THIS WEEK DOING SOME WORK THINGS. SCOTLAND IS WET AND COLD. FANCY THAT...

Whoa, holy mother of god I'm shouting.
I hate when I have a Capsident™. I couldn't be bothered going back and deleting all of that.

Anyways, I haven't had a chance to do the rounds and check out everyone elses issues/hilarity/stories about how their cat once did a poo that smelt like fried sultanas.

So once again, I leave you with no stories and a promise of improvement. Think of me of your amnesic, apologetic veteran uncle. But without the bad touch.

And just like the prodigal son I've returned...

Ya huh bitches.
That's a lyric from House of Pain's 1992 hit single 'Jump Around'.
"Tryin to play me out like as if my name was Sega" is another lyric from the same song.
Halcyon days of rap they were. I mean "...like as if my name was Sega". That's a damn compound similie or something referencing a gaming console!
Shit is tight, motherfuckers.
Word.

Anyways, I'm getting off topic.

I've brought the blog back up. (Or if House of Pain were phrasing this, it would go "And just like a motherly bird, I've regurged.")
Apologies for any confusion caused by the sudden disappearance. I don't think there's going to be any dramas, so am fairly confident I'm not gonna be fired anytime soon. Hooray.
Still though, not a great deal of internet connected free time at the moment, so posts will be kinda sporadic for a little longer.

In the meantime, here's an issue I have.
I have stupid sausage fingers that don't always press the keys my stupid sausage brain tells them to.
As such I'm frequently mistyping things, often with interesting results.
For example, the 'c' key is close to the 'v' key, and with me not being particularly well versed in the art of touch typing, 'v' often boldly presents itself where it's not wanted. Kinda like when I put on a beard and a trenchcoat and turn up at the kindergarten, but way less creepy. Or vreepy as it would be.
Also, my fingers get ahead of themselves and i end up putting words in the wrong order. For example, 'odrer'. Nice one Cabtaim Dyslexia.... (See what i did there! Wow.)
Anyways, this is usually not so much of an issue, but my work dictates that I use the words "Culture and The Arts" quite frequently in my day to day typings.
Whilst checking some copy, I found some glaring errors. Here they are demonstrating how a few small typos can make all the difference.

"...the course recently took place at the Centre for Vulture and The Arts."

"... possibilty of increased funding for businesses in creative sectors, including Vulture and The RAts."

I suspect the Vulture and The Rats sector wouldn't be particularly profitable, what with them feeding off rubbish and carcasses. Although that seems to work quite well for the legal sector.
Z!ng. See, I do scathing too...

Here's a student at the Centure for Vulture and The Arts*

I call zeez one, "Carrion"

On that lame-ass note, I leave you for now.
"Word to your moms I came to drop bombs"
Thanks, House of Pain.


* With my mad paint skillz, I would totally get a Scholarship at the Centre for Vulture and The Arts, if I was a vulture.

Holy shit you guys!

Hey you guys...
SHIT!

I may have been caught out with this at work by the banshee manager herself... (I was on an intense phone call and didn't realise I'd absent mindedly apple-tabbed to my posting page where i'd half written a scathing assault on her mental faculties)

So I'm going to make everything disappear for a couple of days, maybe a week in total... Don't think I've gone for good it's just a safe-measure and if it all pans out ok, I'll bring everything back up in about a week or so, maybe less- If she's onto me, I'm sure I'll find a search for Rage and Biscuits in my stats... Don't search for that just to freak me out, assholes.

Cross your fingers for me. Also tell everyone who matters if they ask where I've gone. not that they will, they'll probably be all like "Ha! Dickhead!" Which is fair enough.

PS: Handy Tip- If this ever happens to anyone else, set your blog to show zero posts on the home page and then remove your archives page element. Unfindable pages! w00t! Meawhile, everything is safe behind the blank home page. Huzzah for panicked problem solving!!

I'm gonna post this and then hide it all, so everyone gets it in their reader and then after that there will be radio silence for about a week.
Peace out hombres.

Hopefully see you soon.

Email me if you have any comments/suggestions/exclamations.

Futile

She sits beside me now.
She's close. Close enough I can hear her laboured breathing. Close enough I can hear her typing with her index fingers at a rate somewhere around five words per minute. Close enough I can hear her make little perplexed noises when she can't work out how to use a spreadsheet.
"It's all so confusing innit!?" she laughs.
"Hmm" I agree through a clenched jaw.
She rustles through the stack of emails that lie on her desk, printed out for 'ease of finding'. Alot of things will be easier to find once they cut down all the trees needed to support her unnecessary printing habit. I alt-tab as she tries to look at my screen. Again.
She's close enough I can smell her breath.
It's a damp combination of burnt cheese and coffee. It would seem she's not a fan of oral hygiene. Or perhaps her mouth is open so often, spewing forth words whose sole function is to mask her ineptness and lack of knowledge, that a horde of bacterium have colonised the white, scum-rich valley in her tongue and her yellow teeth, where they're binary fission-ing themselves an army of stench.
She closes her mouth and I nod in feigned agreement of whatever it was she'd been talking about.
I resume my work and listen as she bellows across the office organising catch-ups, run-throughs, sort-outs and a horde of other time wasting activities disguised with hyphens.
She's mid-sentence confirming a progress-check when she tangentially begins telling someone how she 'found a piece of paper in her backyard on the weekend that was addressed to a place down the street and it was a bill from like, three years ago so she was wondering if she should take it back to the address or whether it would be even worth it because she doubts that the same people even live there any more because her friend next door told her they used to hear them having fights late at night and they even thought that the wife may have been cheating because sometimes there'd be a car that wasn't theirs parked out the front during the day while the husband was at work and then they just packed up and moved one day.'
Somewhere inside of me, a chunk of my soul bursts into flames, fanned by the knowledge she earns twice the amount I do. The smoke rises up and catches in the back of my throat.
"Crazy, innit!?" She asks
The smoke passes over my lips and presents itself as a disinterested response.
"Yeah, sure."

She continues blabbering and the sound fades out as I look to her coffee. She's left it sit while she tells someone about how she thinks she's getting the flu because her joints are swelling, which reminds her of this guy she used to know that wore a kilt and had funny looking knees.
I stare at her coffee and the gears in my head begin to click. Slowly at first, then rapidly as an idea begins to formulate.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

She sits beside me now.
She's close. Close enough I can put drops of correction fluid into her coffee when she's not paying attention.
The label says Tipp-Ex. Poisonous. Should not be consumed.
I figure five drops a day should eventually make her ill enough to need time off work.
A stir of her coffee and a genuine smile before she sits back down beside me and sips her latte.

I repeat this every day.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

A few days in I think she looks paler. She'll be ill soon. I rejoice as I imagine days without her. The freedom to do what I want at my desk without her gazing across and asking why I'm smiling at my computer screen. Days without her telling stories about how she once had a feather stuck in her cardigan but she had no idea how it had got there because she didn't know of any birds with feathers that colour.
Days without her. I smile.

Weeks pass, maybe even months. The empty bottles of Tipp-ex fill a small box in my drawer.
I can't put up with her much longer. The nonsensical stories. The constant catch-ups. The unending incompetence. The barrage of stupidity. Every. Fucking. Day.
She's unwittingly drank seven and a bit bottles now, surely she'll be ill soon.

I'm at breaking point. The rage wells up inside me and I'm starting to think I'm going insane.
I glance at her with crazed eyes as she finishes telling someone a story.
"... I mean, I wasn't even sure if they owned cats, but apparently it doesn't matter because they eventually got arthritis and we couldn't take them on holidays to Spain anymore."

My teeth crack and my hands are balled into tight fists.

"Crazy innit!?" She asks me, her teeth now smiling a brilliant white under the office's fluorescent lights.

No internets...

New house currently has no internet and my banshee manager has decided to come and sit right beside me at work, thus reducing my ability to write horrible things about her.

So won't have a chance to read your blogs/write posts/comment/reply to junk for a little while...

Enjoy the break from the stupidity.

Back soon, bitches.