Walking to the park at lunch an old lady walked up to me and shoved a tangled ball of steel wool in my face.
"It's electronic," she said. And then closing her fist around it walked off again.
Whatever will those crazy scientists think off next?
I don't want to do this too you, I really don't. But I'm so proud I will anyway.
I'm about to show you some leftover curry and jacket potato, rather in the way that a toddler will shove a potty in your nose and say look what i did! Readers of a squeamish disposition may prefer to look away now and resort to reading the rest of this entry in brail instead.
Why, you may ask (you nosey bugger,) am I so proud of my fermenting remains. Well, because they are remains! I have never before walked away from a plate of purchased food without eating every last edible scrap, licking the bowl clean and prising any remaning sustenance away with a a scalpel at the crockery's molecular level. But yesterday, eating slower, enjoying my food and taking my time I felt happy to leave about a quid’s worth of food (two twix bars worth!) simply because I didn't really need it.
Of course, I could have just written about this rather than subject you to an image of it, but then I might as well use this fancy camera phone for something.
Isn't it wonderful how technology is enriching our lives...
I'm Reading Kate Fox's, Watching the Englsh a brilliiant book about the English habits and eccentricties. And I'm trying to make the statements about 'higher class' english people refer to me.
'Really sweetums, It's the Sitting-room, not the Lounge!'
At the moment, when I relax, my stomach unrolls against my underwear, folding the waist of my boxers down over my jeans like a horse curling his bottom lip. Sexy huh?
I've been dreading this week. I've been avoiding it. I’m unhealthy and I know it but as long as I don’t admit it it’s not really true, kind of like Global Warming. I've stopped taking care of myself. I let myself go, which isn't as complicated as it sounds.
I love food. If I was allowed to, I would go to bed with it. I tried that once with Cod and Chips. It was the first time my genitals had ever smelt of fish. But I also love feeling sexy, when I feel sexy my confidence has a natural boost, and I stand in front of mirrors more often.
If I’m honest though I’m not doing much to get healthy at the moment and the only way to get healthy is to get healthy. So for the first week I'm going to throw myself into it like a lesbian into a chocolate cake, get myself acclimatised, and make the remaining weeks seem like a walk in a cruising ground.
To Do
I was calculating my tax codes at work, which is much better than doing what I'm paid for, when I ran out of clean blank paper.
Thanks to this site however I was able to carry on with my financial pondering
Blank Sheet of Paper!
"I was making a paper aeroplane to write a rescue note on after I was captured by terrorists, but had ran out of paper. Blank Sheet of Paper saved my life."- Olivier
The last week has not been a success.
I’ve lied to myself, stared at a blank computer screen, tidied my room, bathed and ate - pretty much a normal week except for the whole tidying my room and bathing thing.
Other than that all I’ve really done is read, and my books can’t take many more rereads before they fall apart enough to be sold on Amazon.
This may have been the wrong point to try this stage. After all, there’s no benefit in spending time off the web if I don’t have anything else to fill the gap with; I just get bored in a whole new way, kind of like watching the latest bond movie.
And I’m bored right now, which is why this looks it was written by a catholic monk. I imagine they must get quite bored too.
After all, monks don’t have the Internet…
With nothing to do and boredom kicking in I found myself sitting at my PC last night clicking between pages on Google Analytics. I've had 842 unique hits since the blog was created, 1,752 page views. 55% of my viewers use Firefox, 42% use internet explorer, and only 47% of my visitors were me.
In my head there was nothing wrong with my repetitive clicking. It wasn't really surfing, just Google, just filling time. But that's what I used to do, mindlessly flick between pages while life rushed past me. I have nothing to fill the gap with at the moment. I've read my Stephen King Collection, started and got bored with Tom Holt, Watched my Simpsons' downloads and DVDs, typed the whole of Edgar Allen Poe's the Raven from heart, had three baths, and spent a ridiculous amount of time staring at the Google homepage.
I need to find something to do in the meantime. I'm working late today. So long as it isn't raining I'll go to the park, watch the ducks, maybe to do some writing.
I'll probably end up staring at the skater boys though and wondering how to get them to comment on my blog.
It's the strangest thing.
I have time on my hands and not the slightest idea what to do with it. I find myself sitting at my PC clicking the Send/Receive button repetitively on Outlook as surely that can't be counted as using the web.
At other times I've decided that I simply must just check something on Wikipedia, say a review of the most hated Simpson episode The Principal and the Pauper, and that doesn't count as using the Internet - it’s research, even if I don't need that research for any reason.
I've now read all of Stephen King's Carrie
Part of me believes that I will reap the benefits of this crazy experiment, gaining more time and a more interesting life and should therefore keep going. The more stubborn part however, is convinced that the web existence of myself is the only interesting thing about me.
Well... that and my expanding collection of Stephen King books.
And now for something Completely different, my rant about my boyfriend has been included in the latest family carnival over at An Island Life
Click over and check it out!
It’s harder than I imagined.
My web clock is reading 1 hour and 20 minutes and that’s in the space of one day, not including time checking e-mails or chatting on MSN, which must have counted for at least an extra hour, as people want to talk to me all of a sudden.
The hardest part though was actually unplugging the internet.
‘But I won’t be able to see who’s reading my blog.’I’m running out of things to do. I’ve already read Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne
‘You can always check tomorrow,’ my brain said.
‘But I won’t be able to get my e-mail to see if anyone comments.’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘I won’t be able to surf for new funny things to post.’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘If I get horny I won’t be able to search for por…’
‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll love ya tomorrow! You’re only a day away!’
I paused for a moment.
‘Why you singing show tunes?’
‘Because you’re gay,’ my brain said.
‘Oh. Ok…’
and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory including all the special features. I’ve even, God help me, watched My Boyfriend playing Fuzion Frenzy 2
on the x-box.Found this brilliant video over at THE FUN HUNT! quite possibly my favourite blog on the whole of the web. Next to my own of course.
As to my get off the web campaign I've failed already! Go me!
Thank goodness failure is the first step to success. Well it is, at least, if you believe George Bush.
Now I know some of you are worried about this one…
After all, how can I produce works of genius and keep you entertained if I’m not on the web? How will you cope without me?
Well, there are two possible options. Firstly you can come to my house and watch me perform card tricks whilst reciting Shakespearean soliloquies or I can keep using the web. As I really don’t want you in my house, and my sleight of hand isn’t as strong as it used to be, I’m favouring the second option instead.
So rather than eliminate the web from my life, like a maid with a feather duster, I’m simply adapting my lifestyle.
Presently my life follows a remarkably dull pattern like a work of unimaginative modern art. I wake up, surf the net, go to work, come home, read some blogs, watch most haunted, stumble the Internet and go to bed.
There are of course such essentials as eating, showering and beating up my boyfriend inter spliced into the routine, but one major element (apart from masturbation) takes up most of my day and it is this sheer amount of web use that I want to eliminate – not ban use of the web itself as an Amish man may do after discovering cable porn.
My aim is to limit my surfing 30 minutes a day. This means 30 minutes of actual surfing not including page loading time, as measured by Time Tracker.
I hope this will encourage (force) me to discover more interesting and useful things to fill my time with such as reading, talking to my boyfriend, or maybe, Heaven forbid, even venturing outside.
As usual I will keep you posted, probably in much shorter entries, and I will visit your blogs from time to time but as my Internet will be unplugged for 23 Hours and 30 minutes every day that may be harder than you imagine.
It is a challenge I am excited to be taking part in. But God only knows what I will do if I need to order pizza…
You know what really grinds my gears?
When I’m at the traffic crossing waiting for the lights to change and a guy comes up and presses the button again.
It’s like “Hey! Jackass! I’m right here! You think I’m so stupid I didn’t know I was supposed to press the damn button? You think I’ve never used a pelican crossing before? You think it’s a pay per click thing? Like only the tenth click gets you any money? Or maybe you just think that the button is like your wife’s intimate area and pressing it loads will make the little green man come?
“Or hey, maybe I didn’t actually want to cross the street! Maybe I’m standing here because I like breathing in car fumes? Doesn’t that sound good to you? In fact, I didn’t even know that bloody great big box and all them pretty little lights even did anything. I thought it was a miniature version of Broadway right here in my quaint little town. I was just enjoying the show and trying to work out where to buy tickets!
“Frigging Jackass.
“Hey wait, hey wait a minute! You pressed the button and the light changed. How’d you do that? I’ve been doing it the wrong way? It never changes like that for me! Hey! hey wait…”
Lessons learned this week.
More importantly, I learnt the one person I can always talk to is my boyfriend, even if he doesn’t always understand what I’m saying. One hour of ranting and pouring my heart out to him and the world seems that little bit brighter again. It’s like Prozac, which is possibly what he takes after listening to me.
It’s been harder than I thought to face parts of me I don’t like, harder still to start changing them, and even harder than that to make it funny enough for this blog.
And best of all, I found that challenging myself can be fun. Even if it does make for incredibly dull reading.
My Boyfriend and I were in bed last night discussing how we might spend some of his redundancy money. This is one of the most common things we do in bed, the most common being sleeping. Amongst some of the ideas (holiday, Wii, owning a small chain of porn retaillers) was a practical one about buying a new freezer.
Him: "Yeah, but there's no point in us getting a freezer."That, quite possibly, is the problem with western society...
Me: "Why Not?"
Him: "'Cos all we'd do is fill it with food."
In the same way a mob of Sun readers stormed a Paediatrician's house, confusing him with the other thing beginning with a 'p', an innocent comment I left on Esoterically.net has sparked a tangled conversation, complete with accusations of child molestation...
Click over to Esoterically.net to read all about it.
...which to me, at least, explains everything...So I spoke to people at work. It wasn’t as I imagined. I am, for example, still alive.
They were discussing aversion tactics when threatened by a drunken lout. Now, I consider myself an expert on this, having been in several bars and not being beaten up in any of them. Plus, having read Derren Brown's, Tricks of the Mind, I know rather a good way to get out of it.
The trick is to talk about something completely different. For example, if being threatened with a knife you talk about the monsoon season in Bangladesh. “It rains for months you know! And because they’ve cut down loads of trees everything gets flooded as well. The water is like this high.” The confident randomness makes you appear unafraid and in a place of power whilst confusing your assailant and giving you time to get away.
The first stage to Becoming Me is to break my negative thought patterns, so I’ve been keeping a metaphorical eye on my brain today.
I have an entertaining negative voice. It says things like this.
“I’m not going to succeed at this. I’ve failed before after all and I’ll fail again. I used to be confident and interesting and happy and I’m only going to fail again so I don’t know why I even bother anyway, I might as well just give up now, no one really cares anyway and if I’ll give up they’re just forget me, they probably want me to get back to being funny anyway and Ooh a Penny!”I’ve been replacing the negative thoughts with more constructive positive ones but this isn’t always as productive as it sounds. For example ‘I can’t seem to sell anything today’ quite easily turns into ‘I ‘m a good salesman and will get a sale next time’ which is quite motivating even if it didn’t actually get me a sale today. However, transforming the thought ‘What if my Boyfriend Dies?’ into ‘Think of all the money I’ll get from the insurance,’ seems somewhat less encouraging.
To begin with let me make something clear. Deep conversation I can handle. In fact I enjoy it, so much so that I paid out £200 for a 10 week counselling course to do it even better. It basically told me that I was good at listening, but it's good to be told nice things about yourself even if it does cost you money. That is the point of counselling after all.
However, getting someone into a state where they are happy to pour their hearts out is hard. I use to be able to engage in competent small talk with anyone, about anything, and more importantly used to be able to say positive things to myself.
Talking to people during lunch used to be a pleasure, even if I had never met them before, although I can't say for sure if it was such fun for them.
There are many confusing steps on the Becoming Me list, mostly because I invented it during a boring sales call. I imagine however, that none will confuse those who think they know me more than the first – Talk.
Talking has never been easy for me.
I have a stutter, a small lisp and talk faster than bad news. Generally I write
instead. Writing can be edited and it is easier to appear witty when you’ve rewritten your punch lines.
But in
All that changed when I met my boyfriend. It became less important to impress people, because hey, I was getting laid! I would spend evenings in a corner talking to him or eating his face. Love was overpowering. I didn’t need anyone, and they’d still be there if I did, possibly with a sharp stick to prod some sense into me.
Overtime I learnt to shut up. It was, although those with teenage children may not believe it, a remarkably easy lesson. I wasn’t special, just one of a couple, the Corbett to his Barker. And I moved to
In a social society, communication is important for survival and happiness, as well as a good way of getting arrested. If I want to be part of the world again I will have to start acting like it.
Hence my first weeks aim to start talking again –in four stages.
During the next 6 days the blog will be updated with (hopefully) short entries detailing how my various talking adventures are going.
I hope, if nothing else, they will make your laugh at me, although always politely.
I would like, if I may, to take you on a rather unusual journey.
I sat down the other day (not that sitting is an important aspect, although it would be awkward to do what I did standing up) and realised that somehow my life had gotten off track.
Back in Reading I was confident, in a job I loved, and had a friend just up the road from me. In Bristol I'm shy, in a boring job and alienated from the known world. I’m also fat.
Clearly something has gone wrong, possibly to do with cheesecake. I have evidence to suggest that Cheesecake is in fact the route of all evil, rather than money as was previously believed.
Now I’ve tried to change before but lacked the motivation (or the guilt) to see it through. But I have this blog for guilt now and an upcoming shopping trip to London for motivation. And my efforts can be recorded and boasted about for the rest of my life or until hell freezes over, whichever is longer.
So I sat down (see note above) and wrote ten steps to finding the old me. Then I crossed out three, added four and combined two together. My London trip is at the end of March so, unless I blatantly lie here, (which I considered for a while) eight steps is too many. I crossed out two more, added three, reworded five and, with a deft pen stroke, deleted two of those remaining. And so finally came up with my Seven Steps to Success. I call it 'Becoming Me.' If you can think of a better name - screw you.
So I’m wary of being in public since the prostitutes were killed.
It’s not that I’m a prostitute, I’d be out of the price range of most people, nor do I expect to be killed any time soon. If I was going to be murdered I would have been years ago.
No, my fear is that the last thing the world will see of me, unless someone posts my autopsy photos on the internet, will be a grainy, unattractive CCTV image.
“These are the last images of the victim shopping in the Bristol Galleries, stuffing his face with a triple cheese and bacon burger. Notice the size of his mouth? Reports suggest this was the reason for his kidnapping.”
Nowadays I refuse to litter, accidentally bang into people on the street or urinate in alleyways, in case someone adds my last act to my epitath.
“In loving memory of Simon Hembra. Died cutting line at the post office.”
Daily subjection to ten minutes of captured CCTV footage could be a brilliant way to lower the crime rate.
Or at the very least would be better than Hollyoaks
So I saw this graffiti in a toilet in the Bristol Galleries the other day...
Am I the only person in the world who feels an overwhelming urge to do this to it
"Gary! Your Prince Albert! Don't go to the toilet!"Linking back to Avenue Q, here is a fun video that may explain yesterdays post somemore.
It's also told by sonic and friends, and someone who cant splel.
Enjoy
You can find the Avenue Q Soundtrack 
Before this blog goes any further, let me make something clear. I love my boyfriend.
I do not say it enough. When I do it sounds silly, babyish or just orgasmic. And I certainly don't write it enough, partly because I imagine most of my visitors would cease reading if each of my entries made them violently sick.
But I do love him, and I want to make you understand that. I would write an epic love poem exclaiming my love, but knowing him he would stare at it for a while then roll over and go back to sleep. And so instead I will just say it here one more time. I love him. I love him. I love him.
And a large proportion of the time I want him dead.
Now those of you already tied into long term relationships, like a submissive into a sling, you know this feeling already, but some of the single, care-free readers I jealously admire may find it harder to understand and get confused when, as is bound to happen, I rant about how much he annoys me and then run into the front room with him to watch the Saturday night takeaway.
At no point did I decide to spend my life with someone else. It is a remarkable choice, which invariably affects my life and this blog. And as bitter things are funnier to write about than sweet ones it may seem, most of the time, that I would rather live in a small beach hut on a clump of rock orbiting the moon, than live with my man.
This is the problem with themed blogs. If I could be bothered to write a diary like blog of my boring little life that would get maybe 2 visitors a year, they would see a much more balanced view. But I am selfish. And I want viewers. And I also want money, but that seems to be a little harder to get.
And so I say it again in pre-penitence. I love my boyfriend.
He is annoying, possessive, impulsive, obsessive, and I hate him.
And he is loving, funny, caring, giving, damn sexy and I love him, more than anything, ever, in the history of the world, the universe and everything- with the possible exception of this blog.
So next time I am knocking him down, slating him off or just bitching about his music taste, remember that after I click publish I still go and hug him whilst watching trash TV.
Because that, after all, is what lovers do.
Together, forever - or at least until the ad breaks.
So I signed up for this Pay per Post thing.
I'm currently waiting for them to approve my blog.
I imagine they are having some interesting conversations now about whether or not it is ethically right to give a psychopath the right to advertise.
I don't see why not. I will only use my advertising powers for good! I won't try to sell a single crossbow or chainsaw, I promise!
Not immediately anyway, I'll have to use them first...
According to the Mirror Yesterday, the Queen wants to meet Shilpa.
Off course, having not watched Celebrity Big Brother, due to a desire to keep my guts inside me, and not reading the Mirror I can ony gain my news from the headlines on the front page. And the Mirror is not the most reliable newspaper anyway often featuring stories about cats given birth to puppies, and the like.
Indeed when the Mirror refers to the Queen they may infact mean Queen Latifa or Boy George depending on how homophobic they are feeling an that particlar day, but I like the idea of the QEII meeting Bollywood's Superstar.
A-list Celebrity Shilpa walks up to the Queen of England seated on her throne with her crown on her head. And before HRH Elizabeth II can say a word, Shilpa shakes her hand and asks, 'And what is it that you do?'
In the mean time here's some more animated Racisism.
Enjoy, with a touch of cynicsm
