Sometimes the random voices come to me mid-afternoon; lunchtime, maybe half one, replete with a plateful of hot, buttered crumpets. They try to convince me to become a Seventh Day Adventist, take up rollerblading and invest in pork belly futures.
It never works, even with the crumpet bribe.
Walking.
I like to go walking in the country. In the nature. In all the trees and stuff. Looking at badgers. Sniffing the occasional blue tit if there’s one available. That sort of thing. I like it a lot and therefore, I do it a lot.
Once, I was walking through an overcrowded Scottish glen. Overcrowded with lots of trees, bushes and frogs, not other people, if there were other people there, I wouldn’t be. I’m that sort of guy.
I was kicking my way through the scrub; the brambles and thistles and all the other spiky stuff nature sometimes like to put in my way. Sometimes you have to give nature a good kicking. It likes it. That’s why it puts stuff in your way.
It’s like;
“Hey, Buddy. Yeah, you. I see you’re walking through my verdant abundance. Checking out my flora and fauna, looking at my leaves and whatnot. That’s cool. I appreciate it. So……There’s that prickly, spiky hawthorn tree over there, right in your path, see it? Good. Would you mind, you know, giving it a swift kick in the branches? I know it’s weird, but I really like it when humans do that. Don’t break anything. Just hard enough to rustle some foliage. I’d really appreciate it friend………….. Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh! Thanks so much.”
So, after some nature kicking, which was a bit too pervy for my tastes if I’m honest, I stumbled into a little gully to find little stacks of stones everywhere.
My mind immediately recalled The Blair Witch and I panicked a little. Kicking nature for shits and giggles I can handle, but I’m not that keen on tangling with a creepy witch who hangs around in deserted little gullies stacking stones. At least not if there’s no chance of finding lost treasure, a sacred amulet that turns pebbles into turnips or some kind of magic stick that whistles the theme tune to The Thundercats.
I hung around a little bit to see if anything supernatural happened, mainly in the spirit of curiosity. Also because I felt like running away and it’s a lot cooler to run away from an actual terrifying thing than it is to run away from some stones. I can’t help the way my brain works. If I have to run away from some bloodcurdling terror from hell, then I want it to actually chase me so I know I’m not wasting my time and energy for no reason.
Nothing supernatural happened at all. Some natural stuff happened. A frog plopped off a log into the water and a large bird farted loudly somewhere in the trees. I wandered off, bemused and perplexed.
Also Walking.
On another occasion, I went for a walk, as I do most days, (I believe I may have mentioned that I like walking) and, also like most days, due to my irregular lifestyle, I find myself walking down a deserted country road at 4am.
As is my penchant at times like this, I am singing (badly) at the top of my voice, accompanying the tunes in my tabs. I do it all the time. It’s fun. There’s no one around so there is no risk of ear bleeding or ruptured eardrums.
I get to a corner and head around it, almost walking right into a man coming the other way. He was both hairy and highly visible.
By that, I mean he had long hair, a beard and a hi-viz jacket.
I immediately look embarrassed and say ‘Whooops!”
The guy looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at me.
He looked embarrassed too.
I noticed the earphones in his lugholes.
Something passed between us.
Some unspoken understanding as our minds linked for the briefest of moments.
No words were uttered, just a succession of expressions as we both realised at exactly the same time that we had both been doing exactly the same thing.
He smiled. I smiled. Then we went our separate ways.
I hope, like me, he felt a little bit happier knowing that people are sometimes more alike than different.
This sort of thing has happened before.
Once, during the winter, I was doing the same thing. 4am, lonely country road, pitch black, Sunday morning.
This road is maybe two miles long. Two miles of dark, deserted road before it finally opens up into a small town.
I was walking along, singing my song, it wasn’t too long and I was wearing a thong. One of those is a lie.
When I got to the end of the road and into the lit streets of the town I see a man, half hiding behind a wall, staring at me.
“Uh oh”, me thinks, “A Saturday night drunk. Here we go.”
I walked up to him. He visibly relaxed and stepped out from the shadows.
“I’m so happy to see you!” he said. “I thought there was some kind of monster or something following me!”
Turns out I had been following him down that country road singing at the top of my voice. Well, shouting really. In all truthfulness, growling and roaring would be a more apt description. I was listening to Metallica.
Poor guy was walking home from a night out and some weirdo had followed him, for 2 miles, in the darkness, growling, roaring and barking like a maniac. He couldn’t see me, he could only hear me. I was walking slightly faster than him and for the entire length of that dark road I was catching him up. Slowly and surely. Getting louder and louder. He honestly thought he was going to die!
He was so happy. He hugged me tightly and we had a little chat and he eventually walked away grinning and whistling!
I like to think that from that day on, he lived his life a little bit better. He survived and he would savor every minute of this gift called living.
Why not? Makes me feel good.
Also Yet More Walking As Well As Also More.
On yet another occasion, (I told you I like walking; I wasn’t kidding) about 10km into a regular circuit I do mainly for exercise, I was approached by a man. A skinny man. A skinny, sweaty man. He wasn’t wearing a green suit. If he had have been I think that would have just made the situation weirder.
He was, however, clearly completely off his nut.
“Hoy neebs.” he said. As is the time-honoured greeting of strangers in Scotland.
(Translation: “Well, hello there neighbour.”)
I slowed and he caught up with me and got a little too close for comfort.
He asked me if I could sell him some drugs. I don’t know what kind of drug he asked for. He was from Inverness (he later said) and even my Scots-English translation matrix doesn’t stretch that far.
It sounded like ‘cracker cheese bish’.
That’s probably not what he said, but I got the gist.
It was kinda obvious by the way he leaned in conspirationally and asked sotto voce.
I’m still trying to figure out whether it’s a good or a bad thing that I look like the sort of guy you can stop in the street and purchase drugs from.
It’s kinda good ‘cos I don’t look like a respectable member of society and maybe I look ‘down with the yoof’
Maybe.
I don’t want to be a respectable member of society. Have you seen this society lately? It’s horrible.
It’s bad ‘cos, well, it’s kinda obvious why it’s bad innit. I look like the kinda guy who will happily sell narcotics to a stranger outside a school at 8am while all the kids are slowly filing in for their next day of brainwashing.
Whatever. It happened.
So, I say, ‘Negative, hombre’ and he looks crestfallen. A deep sadness comes into his bleary eyes. Then he perks up a little and smiles.
“Do you know Tufty?”
‘No, sorry.”
Sadness again.
But I think I’d like to know Tufty. Just because he/she/it is called Tufty. I want to know why they are called Tufty.
We walked along together for a while. He begins to tell me his life story as if we were old friends. I’m doing the verbal equivalent of nodding and smiling. I would have just actually nodded and smiled but we were walking side by side and he wouldn’t really have seen the nods or the smiles.
Plus he’s so far out of his gourd he probably can’t see anything at all with the exception of giant, florescent hamsters and electric tablecloths with far right political leanings.
Eventually we reach a crossing just before the school entrance, complete with lollipop person.
He says:
“This lollipop lady always gives me the evil eye, I don’t know what her problem is, the bitch.”
I look at him.
I take in the large, ugly scar down one side of his face.
I see the eyes that are like the proverbial piss-holes in the snow; red, bloodshot and apparently attempting to reside on different continents from one another.
I notice his clothes and marvel at the way he seems to be able to wear one pair of shorts on one leg and a completely different pair of shorts on the other and the puffa jacket covered in burn holes.
I see the three roll up filters he has in his mouth ‘cos he keeps trying to smoke and his co-ordination is so fucked that he pulls the filters out each time he attempts to light his smoke, and 100% of the time he misses the smoke and lights his nose. But he’s so wasted he hasn’t noticed the filters in his mouth and keeps replacing them with a new one while giving his smoke a confused look as if the smoke is doing it on purpose.
I notice the general demeanour of a skinny, sweaty man who will happily hang around outside a school and ask strangers for drugs.
‘Yeah. Bitch. What’s her problem?” I say with a snigger.
He says, ‘Later man.’ and walks up to the lollipop lady so she can help him cross the road, which, to her credit, she does.
I wander on, as I do, confused, as I usually am.
It’s a weird world we live in.
Sir Boberto Rossi.
I love this guy!
Apart from being very talented and regularly making me say things like:
“What the….?”
“How the hell did he do that?!?”
and…
“That hair is awesome!”
I also find his attitude, personality and general demeanour to be very calming.
He’s like a televisual version of valium.
From “Brad’s about to go postal and finally set off that nuclear bomb in the shed” to “Brad loves everything and everyone and just wishes we could all be more empathic” in 30 minutes.
Breakfast.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Sometimes it’s also the scariest.
It haunts my dreams!!
No-one deserves to spend their day with a fractured mind remembering the horrors of a demonic fried egg.
Cat beards.
It should be a law that all cats have beards. Life would be better in so many ways. Primarily in the ‘bearded cat’ area.
Cats with cat hats doesn’t quite have the same effect.
Lord Chester Drawers of Ilfracombe.
I mean…
Seriously?
I’m really hoping this is an ad for a piece of furniture whose name just happens to be Chester.
(And that’s ‘ad’ as in ‘advert’ and not, as I have seen so many times, ‘add’ as in ‘what the fuck does that even mean?’)
The alternative is very, very depressing indeed.
I’m really not keen on the idea that, somewhere in the same town I live in, is someone so stupid that they think Chester Drawers is really the name for a piece of furniture and not the name of a 70’s porn actor.
And this person might be driving a fucking car! Or be in charge of medicine or food! Or any number of terrifying scenarios!
So hard not to message this person and ask if the furniture was christened Chester or if it’s more of a nickname but I really doubt they’d appreciate it.
I did. They didn’t. There were swear words.
The Mysterious Mark.
Woke up today to find a perfect exclamation mark cut into my index finger. No idea where it came from.
I contemplated it being the Riddler but that dude was all about question marks right?
It would have made more sense if it was a question mark ‘cos that’s the finger I use to poke strange stuff and say: ‘What’s that then?’
But then, sometimes when I poke strange stuff and say: ‘What’s that then?’, that strange stuff reacts badly and I recoil and scream: ‘Holy Duck Tales!’, so maybe that’s what the exclamation mark is for.
Ahh, the mysteries of life. Beautiful in it’s un-work-out-able-ness.
P.S. You should thank me for resisting the urge to post the photo of the semi colon cut into my buttocks.
Oh wait, that’s not a semi colon, it’s just a comma and I was looking at the photo wrong.
Reminds me of the time William Wordsworth drew his initials on my bottom and I thought it said ‘WOW’!
That was a weird night. Bloody laudanum!
Ghosts and Whatnot.
The Titanic didn’t sink, it melted. It didn’t hit an iceberg, it WAS an iceberg. It was just painted to look like a ship. The real Titanic had already been dismantled and the metal used to make candelabra for Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
This was all done to cover up the fact that JFK was shot in the big toe while on the moon filming a fake video about how Planet X/Niburu was going to collide with the Earth as it was annoyed about the crappy calendar the Mayan’s got it for Christmas.
Hazzard County and the Invasion of the Ramps.
In Hazzard County, you can drive anywhere you want and spend most of your time in the air. It’s great for fuel efficiency. Drive a bit, jump, drive a bit more, jump. There’s ramps all over the damn place!
It was the strangest alien invasion ever. Hundreds of thousands of sentient ramps from Reticuli 5, came to Earth with the express purpose, given to them by their God; Frank, of taking over the planet.
As soon as they got here, they all died from stupidity, a disease rife here on Earth that their scientists had completely failed to take into account, and just sort of became part of the furniture.
Hazzard County became the car jumping epicentre of North America. (There’s a bigger ramp situation in Papua New Guinea but that’s another story entirely.)
It’s a strange world we live in.
Mince Are Heavy.
Fantastic early 90’s grunge by L7.
Track listing:
1. Mincegasm
2. Scrap Mince
3. Pretend We’re Mince
4. Diet Mince
5. Evermince
6. Slidey Mince
7. One More Mince
8. Mr. Mince
9. Mince Monster
10. Shitmince
11. This Ain’t Mince
A Funny Movie.
Actual dialogue from a movie I watched the other day. This dialogue led me to believe I may have stumbled upon a clever, subtle, tongue in cheek b-movie. I watched way too much of it before realising it was just a big pile of shit with flip flops hanging out of it.
A small child is found dumbstruck with terror and almost catatonic.
“Policeman: What do you think is wrong with her?
Doctor: I don’t know. I’ve seen this in adults when they suffer a traumatic event.
Policeman: What sort of thing would cause that?
Doctor: I don’t know. Probably something traumatic.”
Overheating Knees.
I seem to be suffering from overheating knees lately.
Google is no help.
What happened to those guys? When did they just sell out?
“Dear Google,
Good morning, I hope this search request finds you well.
How is your wife? Good, I hope.
Would you, perchance, be able to furnish me with some information regarding overheating knees?
Many thanks in advance.
Warm regards,
Bradders.”
(It pays to be polite.)
……..
You have 18,000,000 search results….
9,000,000 are: ‘You have knee cancer!’
and the other 9,000,000 are:
‘Knee sale now on!’
or
‘Buy ‘overheating knees’ now at Crazy Cecil’s Discount Knee Warehouse!’
The Duck Biller.
It’s always at this time of the year, when the peacocks poop pebbles and the mid-Atlantic current dumps the spotted dick and gets romantically involved with hot cross buns, that I ponder once more the possibility of a Plat-Billed Duckypuss,.
In an infinite universe, everything is possible.
Smoking Babies.
I have a few questions:
1. Which dirty mofo is selling ciggies to unborn babies?
2. Where do the unborn babies get their cash from?
3. How are the unborn babies lighting their smokes? Everything would be all gooey with womb juice wouldn’t it?
Tater Tetris.
Nice to eat…
(obviously with loads of salt and vinegar ‘cos if you don’t do that……what’s wrong with you, you Philistine?!)
…but you have to swallow them whole and do a variety of strange dances to line them all up correctly in your stomach.
I don’t want to experience what happens when you let them just pile up all higgledy-piggledy and they reach the top. Game over I guess, but I have no desire to find out what that looks like in a human digestive system/tater based Tetris situation.
Probably very messy at best.
I would warn you though, stay away from shopping centres because it’s very disconcerting when your stomach makes that ‘widdly-wee weee’ noise when you accidentally get a ‘Tetris’ while walking down an escalator.
Escalators are, of course, available in places other than shopping centres but I don’t have the sort of time to list them all.
Who the hell are you to tell me where escalators live anyway? Ain’t you got nowt better to do?
By the way, chips are just a cheap knock-off of Tater Tetris where you only get the straight, four block one. Don’t fall for that shit!
It’s like Aldi’s ‘Toucan’ bars.
They the same as Penguins, but they isn’t Penguins, know what I mean?
Like a lot of things.
It’s amazing how many things aren’t penguins.
I suspect some form of conspiracy.
First we take away their ability to fly, then we make lots of non-penguin things.
Bloody capitalism….or something.
A Birdhouse in Your Soul.
I got a little birdhouse in my soul.
There’s an elderly crow with rickets who lives in there.
He’s got a penchant for Greggs sausage rolls. It’s a real pain in the flying buttress ‘cos Greggs closed down in my town (because of that damn clown with the frown) so now I have to traipse all the way to the next town to feed his dark desires. If I don’t, he pecks at my aorta.
He’s always muttering sotto voce. Evil things, nasty things, proper ‘orrible things. Impressing his malevolent nature onto my subconscious. Urging me to do dirty deeds.
Like:
“Go on Brad, nick that kid’s ice cream. Go on, do it. What’s he gonna do about it eh? He don’t need it anyway, little chubby fucker, he looks like he ate his brother already, you’d be doing him a favour, go on, go on…..”
Or:
“Hey Brad. See that old dear over there, yeah, her, the one with the purple rinse and the bald spot. She’s barely holding on to that zimmer frame. Grip like a melted action man that one. Just pop over there and kick it from under her, go on. It’s be a right laugh. Watch her fall over and make that ‘old lady falling’ noise. Ha ha ha. Watch her shopping bag burst and spill her soup all over the road. You can leg it and be gone before she even noticed it was you. Go on…”
He especially likes making me stick a licked finger in people’s ears in queues and then act like it wasn’t me.
I don’t even know where he came from. I never invited the fucker in. I just woke up one day and he was there, bitching about needing a pastry fix and coercing me to poke pregnant women in the eye ‘for shits and giggles blud’.
I can’t get rid of the feathered twat. He’s got a firm, talony grip on my heartstrings and I’m sure he’s laid eggs in my left ventricle. Don’t ask me how a male crow can lay eggs, I’m as puzzled by that as you. But this is a crow that lives inside my heart so I don’t think the normal rules apply.
Explosive Eggs.
I don’t care what ‘medical experts’ and ‘specialists’ say;
Eggs should not explode.
The argument for explosive eggs:
There isn’t one. Eggs should not explode.
I had a bad experience with a non-explosive egg once.
Turns out it was French.
I really couldn’t tell from the accent.
Sleep.
When your sleep pattern is so out of sync with the rest of the world that your first question after waking up is:
‘Wait, is this yesterday or tomorrow?’
Look at the clock: 7 o’clock.
Look at the window: dark outside.
None of that helps!!!
I need some kind of monkey butler who brings me a big mug o’tea and says:
‘You’ll find the herring gulls are serenading the haddock right now Sir. The milliners have started on the brims and the Spinning Jenny’s rotate at thrice their usual speed.’
Then he waddles off leaving me to mentally unpack that shit using a leaky spongebag of a brain that’s even leakier than normal due to being full of sleepy flange grease.
But at least I have a cuppa.
Small victories.
Some thoughts on time travel:
(TLDR: Time travel is impossible because if it wasn’t, it would already exist and it doesn’t so it definitely is impossible but may not be and I ain’t never seen no Velociraptor wearing wellies.)
It will never happen because:
a-i) It’s fundamentally impossible and would break the fabric of space/time and make everything go all wibbly and hatstand.
a-ii) It’s fundamentally impossible and would break the fabric of space/time and make everything go all wibbly and hatstand but nevertheless HAS been invented, made everything go all wibbly and hatstand, possibly several times, and God (or some other supernatural, omnipotent, omnipresent being) has had to step in and metaphorically turn the Universe off and on again to reset everything. He/she/it/unknown pronoun is so pissed at doing this that he/she/it/unknown pronoun has lost all interest in us and that explains why bad things happen to good people etc. There is now, therefore, some kind of firewall on the knowledge needed so we don’t keep messing with it.
“Leave the nutjobs to it, I’m done with them, messing with the Universe weave all the damn time, I can’t be bothered with them anymore. I’m just gonna stop them inventing the flux capacitor, that’ll show ’em. Bastards can just do without hoverboards.”
-God.
b) It is possible and, in fact, at some point in the future, has been invented but every single person with access to the technology has a high moral code and hasn’t gone back into history and placed an iPod in a sealed urn and buried it with Tutankhamen or tied an oversized cowboy hat to the head of a T-Rex just to mess with people. This is also, obviously, impossible.
c) It is possible and may be invented in the future. However, as time travel would immediately become available everywhen as soon as it is invented, which it obviously isn’t, this must mean that it has never been invented which makes it, in fact, impossible.
d) It is possible and may be invented in the future but the human race has wiped itself out before we get that far so this, again, makes it impossible.
Conclusion:
Cave men will never wear denim.
Lynx Flavours.
After the launch of Lynx Africa, which smells mainly of dust, I wondered what other geographically scented flavours of Lynx would smell like.
Lynx Scotland – Whisky, iron brew and casual violence. Mmmm.
Lynx Ireland – Guinness, leprechauns and terrorism.
Lynx Wales – Lager, sheep and sexually transmitted diseases.
Lynx America – Meth, governmentally accepted racism and Donald Trump’s left gonad.
Lynx Antarctica – Snow and penguin shit.
Lynx Australia – Castlemaine XXXX, kangaroo semen, koala feet and separatism.
Lynx Iraq – Saddam Hussein’s taint, camel thrush and violent sexism.
Lynx Amazon – Monkey butts. Just monkey butts. Hundreds of them.
