Drying spoons, mint cake and rumours of my death being greatly exaggerated. Twice

This wasn't good enough, even by my low standards.

The Ads they'd love to make #1: Dishwasher detergent

You wouldn't wipe your behind with a piece of shit, would you?

You wouldn't brush your teeth with a dead TB infected badger either, would you?

 

So why are you still washing dishes in your filthy dishwasher, you base creatures?

Your dishwasher contains more disease than 12th century Europe. FACT!

A dirty dishwasher will probably explode while you sleep, killing you all in your beds. FACT!

New! Improved! Spanglox Dishwasher Detergent will not only make your glassware sparkle more than a thousand stars viewed by a migraine sufferer with compound eyes through a kaleidoscope full of diamonds, but every box purchased counts toward your reincarnation as a human being (or at least a high order of primate) no matter what heinous crimes you may have perpetrated in this life*.

But don't take our word for it...

"My cutlery shone so brightly that the glare transformed my husband into a Hiroshima Shadow. Thanks Spanglox!" Mrs. P Watson, Dover

"I now have to wear a welding mask when emptying my dishwasher. I'm so happy." Doug, Walmington-on-Sea

"I don't even need to eat any more. I just look at my super-clean plates for satisfaction and sustenance." Mrs R., Mexborough

"Spanglox products definitely do not make us die. At all." Millions of aquatic creatures

*Failure to maintain a regime of using our products may cause dandruff, molten lava kidney stones and depression in kittens worldwide.

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I meant one of your Saturn days. Anyway, here's some filler above. I'm working my way toward animation and video. Scheduled for 2024 with a good wind behind me. 'Pologizing soon. I promise.

---

[My apologies to Terry Pratchett for the (mis)use of the Weatherwax sign. Don't sue me. Ah fuck it, you've probably forgotten by now anyway.]

Just so you know - I did a Weatherwax...well...sort of...

 

Explanations and apologies forthcoming within one of your earth days. Here's a hint. It's something do do with uselessness...

Reflections on a particularly unstable and one-sided relationship

Another irreparable breakdown

Oh God, look at you.

You’re a mess

I knew this was coming for some time

but why did it have to be now?

Not now of all times.

You get like this all the time now.

I hate it when you just sit there.

Not saying anything.

Not doing anything.

I can’t communicate with you any more.

 

I don’t mistreat you do I?

I constantly give you things.

Expensive things

And you look better now than you ever did.

I know you’re always busy.

I know that you need your own space,

and you seem to have the right

to change at any time.

 

You’re just so bloody unreliable.

Always forgetting things.

Important things.

And now you’ve gone and done this again.

Well, I’ve tried as hard as I can to save this,

but it isn’t going to work, is it?

Goodbye, you bitch.

 

Click here to restart your computer, eh?

Righto

Where’s that Windows CD?

>FORMAT C:

 

[See what I has done there? I is all highbrow now. All just because I couldn't save a document, and the computer locked up]

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Well it beats a fucking picture doesn't it? Google thinks my sister site is spam. Boo. Little do they know she's as tough as nails, and a nasty drunk to boot.

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[Here's a quandary for all you Humor-blogs.com visitors...if you vote me down I shall only become stronger. If you vote me up against my wishes, I only become strangely aroused and wriggle in my seat a bit in a mildly disgusting manner. What to do? What to do?]

Farming With Dynamite - found stuff, not a band

Hello. This is a picture of the first page of Du Pont Chemicals 1910 pamphlet 'Farming with dynamite'. I saw it at Fourmilab a while back and greedily, selfishly chuckled to myself - hugging the concept to my chest like some Gollum of the Internet. Now I want you to see the whole thing as well as the rest of John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD's unassuming but superb site. I use Home Planet to find stars and satellites and suchlike. Also to watch the tiny moon move over the manse. I had all the windows bricked up you see, in readiness for a new Window Tax. Fourmilab has articles on hacker diets, books, anagrams. And software coming out the wazoo. Whatever one of those is.

Fourmilab has nothing whatsoever to do with Fermilab. Don't go looking for high energy physics there.

This is the kind of thing that Pointing North's sister site (already set up so you can't pinch it, you fiends) will be featuring. I know that after my outraged rants on web-trawlers just linking to stuff they found makes my doing it now quite cheeky to say the least. It makes me the cunt that I am to say the most. This will also make me some kind of bitch - or beatch - or biotch - or beer hatch - or something. The site is called The Supermodel Overlord Hierarchy, and will contain stuff about free stuff that is clogging up my hard drive and my bookmarks and my mind. It is unlikely to be funny - but it may be useful/helpful/illuminating. I signed an NDA with the real SOH, but I'm always one to push my fucking luck whenever I can.

---

Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

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There's no point me adding the traditional and necessary link to Humor-blogs.com here, but I am a creature of habit. This will no doubt help the authorities find me if I ever get off my arse and start serial-killing]

Somalia - It's Africa's pirate hook

This is the kind of thing that happens when I remember that I have a graphics tablet in the desk drawer...and a GCE 'O' level (grade B) in Art...and time on my hands...and I experiment with painting a dry wipe marker moustache onto my top lip. You deserved this for voting me up at Humor-blogs, you sods. It wasn't reverse psychology, damn it!

Original image/map by the Central Intelligence Agency of the US, apparently. You learn something new every day.

original image in likkle for comparison - and so you can see just how useless at this I really am. This took four fucking hours. The dry-wipe giggles didn't help of course.

---

I know. I know. Stop trying to fucking do art. Stick to words magnetite. You can barely manage with those fuckers anyway. This whole wearing two hats thing just isn't going to work. You are undoubtedly a cock of the highest order.

(A sample of my internal voice there, folks. This is why I silence him with the gin...and now with the dry wipe marker 'tashes)

I can heartily recommend the Sanford EXPO  Bold Color Dry Erase marker. (Certified AP non-toxic - conforms to ASTM D4236)

[update: It's actually quite difficult to remove from skin. I understand that this is because skin has different properties to the average whiteboard. They should probably mention that on the barrel of the pen itself. My recommendation still stands though]

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[If I'd wanted to be highly ranked at Humor-blogs.com, I'd have pretended to be a woman. I don't know whether to thank you all or strangle you all. Both I think. First the stranglings, then the thankings]

The give and take of giving directions

Why is it that in this day and age - when you can practically get a sat-nav free in your fucking breakfast cereal - do we still get people asking us for directions when we are happily minding our own business pootling about on our own two feet, without need of mechanical aid?

Even in the pouring rain. Car pulls up. You momentarily have a flashback to childhood when your parents told you never to speak to strange people in cars, but you shrug it off. You're a grown-up now, and - as far you are aware - haven't angered any mafia-types in your locale. You are not a sleeper agent for a now-defunct spy network. You are unlikely to be a prostitute. A car pulling up next to you is therefore probably not going to be the precursor to a kidnapping, a silenced bullet in your treacherous heart; or an opportunity for you to make a quick couple of quid out of some married businessman from Stirling, in town for a couple of days for a conference on waste management. Okay, maybe that last one - Stirling isn't exactly the French Riviera so any freaky fun the locals can get when out of town can't really be begrudged them - but it is usually just some cunt asking for directions.

I ventured out from the manse yesterday, briefly - as always. I loathe the idea of having food, toilet rolls, newspapers and suchlike fucking brought to me like I am some God-King in a jungle palace deep, deep in the heart of a lush, lush rainforest filled with the calls of strange, strange creatures. It pisses off the tiny remnant of hunter-gatherer left within this civilised, pussified shell. I itch to get out and bring SOMETHING home. An atavistic call from the hindbrain, maybe. Whatever it is - if I don't do it I get irritable. Even though going out just makes me bloody angry most of the time as well.

So I perform a balancing act of efficiency versus laziness, of need versus want. I plan my hunting trip to some extent. I know where the shops that sell the stuff I want to buy are. A typical man, my purpose is to get there, get the goods, get home...job done. If I have to go somewhere else I find out where it is and when it is open. I am directed. I am focused. Like the arrow of shopping loosed into the heart of the stag of consumer need. Straight and true. Pretentious, poncey and prone to claptrap - I'll give you that, sunshine...I'll give you that; especially with that last sentence about arrows and stags - but straight and true nevertheless.

So when a car worth around 25 grand pulls up next to me and the window rolls down, and the driver leans across his wife slightly to ask for directions to a house number in a residential street, like so: "Can you tell me how to get to..." I noticed one little detail about the car, and something inside me snaps - just a little. I probably shouldn't listen to Bill Hicks on my mp3 player during these little trips out - things never go well for the rest of humanity when I do. Glorious, clever, misanthropic dark poet that Bill was, he's not conducive to good-natured helpfulness toward strangers who couldn't be arsed to think about what they were doing.

The first thing that went through my mind was: 'What makes you fucking think I even know where I'm going, let alone where you're going?' I did not say that however. That would have been rude. What I said was: "Yeah, but...How many moons does Jupiter have?"

A palpable wave of puzzlement came out of the window at me. I was enjoying this.

"What?" he asked in a voice pitched higher than when he first spoke.  I repeated the question. He shook his head, looked at his wife and asked me again if I knew how to find the place he wanted. I told him that yes, I did - but I had questions too. Burning ones.

"What was Captain Mainwaring's first name in Dad's Army?" I asked him. I wasn't being an abstruse cunt just for the sake of it, mind you. The little detail that I had noticed was the sucker-mark left on the inside of his windscreen where his sat-nav ought to have been. He asked me again if I knew how to get to his destination, his voice now becoming angry.

"Yes," I replied with a smile, which was directed toward his wife, who was holding in a giggle. "If you can tell me the day on which your wedding anniversary falls this year."

Well, he couldn't have pulled away fast enough. I swear that there were marks on the road from the tyres and the scent of burnt rubber in the air. As I pressed play on the mp3 player I saw, further up the road, his car pull up by a young couple walking hand-in-hand. As the dark poet's half-mocking, half-caring tones started up again I hoped that the answer he got from them was in the form of a question.

I came home with forty cigarette, the ingredients for a variety of omelettes, assorted alcoholic beverages - and a steam cleaner. Well, they do say the journey is better than the destination half the time. I shall probably go out again tomorrow.

[updated to linkify Bill Hicks, Stirling, Henry Kuttner and Holly Willoughby. Getting the hang of this tech-know-low-gee, bit-by-tiny-bit. Baby steps old boy. Baby steps]

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As well as listening to Bill Hicks far too much for anyone's own good, I have been reading Henry Kuttner's The Proud Robot - short stories about a drunken inventor (who can never remember how, or even why,  he worked when he finally sobers up) and his very, very, very irritating robot. That bloke never really stood a chance, did he?

I have also been forced to watch far too much reality TV - specifically The X-Factor - by people who supposedly care about me. I'm not so sure. When told that I could just watch Holly Willoughby for eye-candy ogling purposes, and simply ignore everything else, I replied that it would be like visiting an art gallery full of beautiful works - but having to stand waist deep in shit and used syringes while doing so. I'm surprised I didn't key that chap's car, to be honest. I really am.

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[Just a thought - if I manage to get voted down to last place on Humor-blogs.com, I'll have to petition them to put a 'LAST' link on the members list page so I don't have to click through all the mere failures and half-arses who just stopped updating and who aren't attempting my epic Lucifer-like fall from grace. Bollocks. Now I need an 'UnDigg this' and a 'StumbledAwayFrom' button. More fucking work.]