Going Forward

It's one thing using the term "going forward" to mean "in the future". People actually still say this. However, I've noticed another worrying use of this thoroughly depressing neologism.

Football commentators, rather than saying "in attack", are now rather fond of saying "going forward". Perhaps I'm being over sensitive here. Maybe they've always said this.

Have they?

Gerbils?

Today at the pool I was wearing my orange sized shorts.

I was chatting for a while with Lourdes Quiz Man. Or rather he was chatting to me. In a most animated way as is his wont. He was swearing a lot obviously. I could make out the "fucks" clearly enough. The rest I was only able to guess at based on fragments such as "the fella said", "eighteen shtone", "grabbed me by the wrisht" which gave me small clues to the context.

I chipped in now and again to show willing. Not that it helped. It only interrupted his flow and invariably I asked the wrong sort of question. I was sure there was a butcher mentioned.

"Which butchers was this?".
"No this was in the fucking pub" he said, before forging on with his impenetrable narrative.

It went on like this for about 15 minutes and I eventually gave up asking any more stupid questions. He didn't seem to mind. I started thinking about the Celtic game tomorrow. Would Keane be fit, I pondered. Then I realised I was being asked a question. I couldn't make it out but he was pointing to my orange shorts and saying something about gerbils possibly.

"I know" I said, patting it down.

Wholegrain Puffed Rice Cereal

Although here on the planet earth perhaps the perfect start to the day is a sleepy blow-job followed by a jumbo breakfast roll.

Of course, I am a mere child in these matters...

No Swimming Today

As you may remember, I've recently been having some swimming pool issues in which air pockets have manifested themselves as large bulges at the front of my orange and, to a lesser extent, yellow swimming shorts. These have caused fairly grim experiences but, at the end of the day, it seems there's always a slightly bigger nitwit ready to assume the mantle of BIGGEST DOLT IN THE POOL TODAY.

Today, I didn't go to the pool due to a slight but lingering bug. Instead I stayed home, listened to the criminally underrated Dexy's Midnight Runners, and assembled a couple of cold frames. Having absolutely no excuse whatsoever for any large bulges in the front of my shorts.

Abstrakt

If you really want to, I wouldn't recommend it, you can read about Brewdog's next project -Abstrakt- here.

Here's some stuff they wrote about about it themselves in order to impress us,

"beery creativity"
"concept beer"
"progressive and conceptual beer"
"beer which not only push the boundaries but smash them up completely"
"more art than beer"
"directional boundary pushing beers"

And, arguably, worst of all,

"vanilla bean infused Belgian quad"

[bangs head on keyboard]

Denis Leary's famous routine about "beer flavoured beer" was never more apt.

Sink The Bismark

Here with the absurd Tactical Nuclear Penguin the increasingly preposterous BrewDog merely claimed to "push the boundaries (of advertising)" and "take (marketing) innovation to a whole new level". Oh, and while they were at it, they brewed an entirely non potable beer at 32 of your English percent.

Now they've gone further and, like the good little Brits they are, responded to 40% beer brewed by some evil Germans, with a - one more better - 41% retail concept called, wait for it, Sink The Bismarck.

Sink The Bismarck!!!

Captain BrewDog James Watt, pictured with fellow HELMET Martin Dickie, said:

"In true BrewDog fashion we've torn up convention, blurred distinctions and pushed brewing to its limits with this audacious amplified ale".

And in the process, with their nationalistic Bulldog fervour, they've also utterly blurred distinctions between mere stupidity and crass, feeble minded ignorance.

Yellow Shorts Debacle

Again today, I found that I was merely the second biggest eedjit at the swimming pool.

More bulge issues. Slightly less than the previous week but still a not insignificant protuberance from the front of my yellow swimming shorts. The orange pair having been sidelined for poor behaviour.

Again, the bold Phoebe seemed more interested in hanging out with the man with the bulge in his shorts than playing the many members of her own species who were happily splashing around the pool. She insisted on showing me her handstands again combining that with her usual coughing and choking presumably due to the copious amounts of pool water she was taking in. I kept looking around for her parents but, if they even existed, they were nowhere to be seen. I wondered vaguely if she was one of mine now.

Anyway, I soldiered on in this manner for a while then eventually persuaded the kids, via the gift of the vending machine, that it was time to leave. As we left a man had just jumped into the pool wearing only a pair of white Gaelic football shorts. I knew he had nothing on underneath because, sadly, the cock and balls were on full public display. I quickly ushered the kids into the changing room safe in the knowledge that, for the second week running, I'd snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

NO DUMPING PLEASE

I get the feeling that anyone with the required level of utter CUNTISHNESS (sorry, but no other word will do) to dump rubbish in a graveyard is unlikely to respond to the word PLEASE.

Stella 23% colder

Not content with merely "crafting" their beer for Christmas time, the good people at Stella PLC, Inc. are now actually "crafting" the glass that it goes into as well. This glass will, according to their consumer messages and fully leveraging horizontal cross-vertical seasonal persuasion processes, keep the beer 23% colder for longer.

Significantly they don't state what your beer will be 23% colder than. Coffee?

Orange Shorts Debacle

A couple of things to note about my weekly swimming pool visit yesterday.

I was wearing orange swimming shorts which are ridiculously prone to air pockets. My kids were playing with this little girl Phoebe who, for some reason, was more interested in chatting to me, the man with the large bulge in the front of his swimming shorts, than playing. She insisted on showing me how adept she was at underwater handstands. While she was under I took the opportunity to pat down my bulge. As she came back up my kids arrived and they all noticed the bubbles surrounding me.
"What?", I said innocently.
"Did you just fart?" asked my eldest.
They were all laughing hard now, especially Phoebe who appeared to be choking.
"Er, yes that's right" I said, happy to take the blame for something relatively innocent.
By this time the air pocket had re-established itself, if anything, more prominently.
"Go away and play, girls", I said. "Otherwise I'll fart again".

Later, when we were leaving the pool there was a man I'd seen swimming earlier. He'd taken his boy in to get changed and left his wife watching their daughter who was having a swimming lesson. He'd obviously forgotten something because he was standing at the changing room door trying to attract her attention. The extraordinary thing, and it was extra ordinary, was that he was standing there shouting "where's the shampoo" to his wife wearing only a pair of checked boxer shorts. As I walked past him into the changing rooms I shook my head, smiling, and gave a relatively minor air bubble a small pat. Safe in the knowledge that I was merely the second biggest prat at the pool that day.

Rachel, Kirsty and Jack Frost

I've been reading these "Rainbow Magic" books every day. We have any number of them in the house. I read one every day (whether I need to or not) which is roughly double the time it takes to write them.

They are very extraordinary. They all feature Rachel Walker and Kirsty Tate and their adventures in Fairyland with the evil Jack Frost and his pesky goblins.

I struck me last night, while reading Marjorie the Carbon Neutral Fairy, that I'm actually reading these books with precisely zero comprehension. A very useful skill that they don't teach you at school.

Mika Gave It All Away

I really love the intro to this song. I'm a sucker for that kind of off-kilter orchestral sound. You hear it on the radio and think "this is great". Could it be The Eels or someone?

Then in comes Gately with his sappy, overblown, karaoke-style vocals and you wonder how something could start so promisingly and get bad so quickly. But soon you get a bit wistful for the good old Gately times (30 seconds ago) as Keating ploughs in and makes his late-friend sound positively restrained.

This song was written by Mika who apparently resisted allowing Boyzone to ruin his song for a number of years. Sadly, they did it anyway and, after Gately passed on, he allowed them to release it.