Karaoke

Regrettably, I'm attending a Karaoke-based work do this evening. I am far from enthusiastic at this prospect, as I have a keen dislike for both Karaoke and everything it represents (JAPAN). My aversion to the this particular mode of partying is probably due my innate crapness at it. I have a chronic phobia of public singing as well as crap eyes. This means I have to lean, squinting into the screen in order to distinguish the lyrics, which I then feebly whimper into the microphone. When performing karaoke I both look, and sound like a cunt. If I packed a hamper of full of shit-filled baguettes to hand out during my performance, I could offer possibly the worst sensory experience of a lifetime.

Work social events in themselves can be fun, the drink serving the purpose of bringing everyone's simmering hatred for their professional lives to the surface. In my experience, these occasions descend into bitter session of collective abuse. Everyone taking turns to air their spiteful grievances about their colleagues. It's a hoot.

In my old job at a LTSB call-centre (SHABBA) I endured a supremely unpleasant Christmas work party. By about 8.30 it had descended into farce, and I entered the boys toilets to find a call-centre team leader (high on 2 drink tokens) shouting "FAGGOT!" as he booted a toilet cubicle. There was no one inside. The event was eventually put out of it's misery after a mass brawl erupted outside. A total of 2 police vans were necessary to subdue the violence, and a man called Barney lost his job. The ABBA tribute band didn't know what the fuck was happening.

Lads night out!

Shit pal, it's been ages since I've had a good old-fashioned LADS NIGHT OUT. If you have read this blog before then should know how I roll. There are 5 simple rules that you need to adhere to on a LADS NIGHT OUT:

Lots of beer

Lots of gurning

Lots of shouting

Lots of horseplay

Strictly NO pumpum.

These breadbins have got their shit on point:

Back 2 Business

Sorry for the lack of recent blog action, but I have just returned from week of 'catching rays' in Portugal.

I haven't got any pictures from my jaunt, but you will just have to believe me when I say: "It was a hoot".

I fucked up the booking for my flights home, so ended I ended up returning to New Cross at about 2.30 am. After taking a couple hours to fall asleep I awoke within the hour with a bulbous, seeping eye. Again, I failed to document the incident. You will just have to believe me when I say: "I had a shitty eye."

Feeling fatigued this morning, I was getting ready for a chillaxing data entry session at work to get me ready for a wholesome early night. Yet my mildly depressing short-term goals were immediately scuppered when my boss informed of my duties for the day. Instead of the database action I had planned, I was assigned the role of dweeb escort; and was ordered to chaperone two computing lecturers to an Internet security fair in Earls Court.

I'm a firm believer in judging a book by it's cover, so when I was greeted by a middle aged man sporting a necklace that consisted of a 20GB Memory Stick on a string, I was less than thrilled. I hope he had pornography on there, but in all likelihood it was probably just an antidote to a computer virus or something similarly lame. Due to their lack of upper-body strength I spent the morning ferrying an array of stands around Earls Court, while they struggled to engage in the basic social interactions that were necessary for them to obtain a visitor's pass. MY JOB IS DA LICK.

Sandwich

The image above is a pretty accurate representation of how I used to feel about sandwiches. Sadly, 5 years of continuous full-time employment have resulted in sandwich overload. I no longer feel the unbridled enthusiasm that used to accompany the purchase of a prepackaged sandwich.

Today, when surveying the Greggs refrigeration unit (fridge), I was distinctly underwhelmed by the edibles that confronted me. Chicken and Bacon? "Been there..." Oval Bite? "Done that..." Chicken New Orleans... "GOT THE FUCKING T-SHIRT MATE." After backhanding a Sausage and Bean melt from an innocent bystander's hand, I tearfully fled the premises and collapsed into the foetal position outside the Goodge Street Tescos. How did it come to this?

Day after day of hastily eaten sandwiches has taken its toll, I spend my lunchtimes listlessly perusing eateries in search of a sandwich that I can muster some passion about. My search has so far proven fruitless. Sandwich after sandwich, each indistinuishable from the last. Lunchtime has become a form of purgatory.

I imagine my situation is akin to that which confronts your typical 35 year-old Lothario. After commiting himself to the pursuit of pumpum for nearly two decades, one day he is afflicted by an overdue moment of clarity. As he scans his local Oceana for sexual prey, our friend's denim-bound erection begins to subside and a sudden realisation dawns upon him:
"What am I doing in this hellhole"
This immediate concern is then usurped by the catastrophic existential realisation that:
"I no longer know how to love. I will die alone."

The Lothario's penchant for continued physical gratification has rendered him incapable of participating in a relationship that is both sexually and emotionally rewarding. Sure, he will make the occasional ham fisted attempt at love, but the sentimental guff he attempts to pass off as genuine expressions of love are flimsy and transparent... Like Sainsbury's Basics wine glasses, they will crumble under any serious scrutiny.

The similarities between the Lothario's plight and my own sandwich antipathy are clear, his suffering is just on a larger emotional scale. Below are a couple of fellas that have also reached their sandwich crisis point.

Pet Peeve #6

People who can't use phones.


The kind of behaviour I'm referring to includes:

> People who ring YOU up, and then assume the tone of someone who is being inconvenienced by the conversation that they initiated. I have numerous friends who do this.

> People who think that your automated message is actually talking to them (this is a staple mishap for the elderly).

> People who ring me up between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday and ask me 'What a gwan', despite knowing full well that I am in full-time employment.

> People who utilise their ringtone as a backing track over which to perform turgid raps.

> People who hold their phones at unorthodox angles when talking into them.

> People that employ any kind of headgear as part of their personal phone experience.

> People that have a phone that requires you to jab at it with a tiny stick.

> People that pretend that their phone is a pint of Carling.

NEW HAIR

(DISCLAIMER: The bloke above is not me, although we do share a pretty shit haircut.)

WORD TO YA MUM I CAME TO DROP BOMBS!

This week I got a real-life haircut from a real-life hairdresser for the first time in over 4 years. Inevitably I have been given a short-back and sides type do, but with a Covent Garden style edge (the extra tenner was totally worth it).

Being that I was getting a £10+ haircut, a wash was included as part of the deal. The extreme indulgence of having someone else wash my hair made me have a slight freak-out, and for the duration of the wash I suppressed a mild panic attack as I tried to stop my face from doing anything too mental (which in turn made me look mental). Once it was time to be getting snipping, I had to endure some hairdresser beef. As I had been cutting my own hair for several years, as well as never brushing or conditioning, my barnet had developed a birds-nest type quality. As she got to work, my barber started murmuring sounds of disapproval, which unfortunately provoked a quite pathetic urge within myself to placate her. I am ashamed to say that I told the following lie:

Me: "Sorry it's in such a state, but my ex-girlfriend used to cut it."

She then took up the banter baton:

Barber: "Is that why you broke up then. Ha!"

Me "Ha! Something like that!"

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!

This exact same exchange took place 4 years ago during my last haircut, and it was as much of a fabrication then. At times I must look like someone doing a rather meager impression of an adult man.

As I don't have a digital camera, I can't share my fab new haircut with you guys, but then again I'm sure I will see everyone who reads this blog in person within the next few weeks. So whatever...

Luckily for me, a host of jokers have documented their glorious cuts on Flickr:

2 Good, 2 Bad

Inspired by Adrian Chiles's "Offside, what's that all about?" approach to the beautiful game (football), I'm offering my own version of his consistently hilarious take on the weekend's Premiership action. Watch out though, I'm giving everyone's favourite MOTD2 segment a slight twist (the twist is that I don't talk about football).

2 GOOD

We now have Sky+ in the new flat, and it is everything I imagined it to be and more. First on the list to series-linked was Total Wipeout, a British game show that has brazenly ripped off Takeshi's Castle. The show's producers have opted for contestant-friendly padded obstacles and have replaced crack/pornography fiend Craig Charles with Richard Hammond, the personification of a flaccid, impotent penis. While these adjustments have rendered the British show slightly tamer than the Japanese original, Saturday's episode still contained a broken nose and a man with dreadlocks being humiliated while 30 feet up in the air. First class.

While watching Total Wipeout I came up with an idea for a Richard Hammond vehicle that wouldn't make me want to put my foot through the television screen. It would be called The Hammond Chronicles, and each week Hammond would re-enact traumatic experiences from his childhood. Pamela Stevenson would be on hand to help retrieve any repressed memories, and his fellow Top Gear presenters would guest star in Crimewatch style reconstructions of Hammond's personal turmoils. The first episode will consist of Richard Hammond having his head repeatedly flushed down a dormitory toilet by Jeremy Clarkson, while both are subject to the hideous gaze of a lurking, dead-eyed James May. May will spend the entirety of the 30 minute episode malevolently unfurling his belt.

2 BAD

Easter egg hunts for the unemployed. Having experienced the incompetence of jobcentre staff first hand, this harebrained scheme comes as no surprise. The potent combination of Dorothy Perkins vouchers and free chocolate will surely result in unadulterated chaos. Destitute former Lehman Brothers employees will be clambering all about the heavily stained furnishings of the Southwark Jobcentre+, screaming BLOODY MURDER. A stabbing incident is inevitable.

I hope that the egg hunt isn't a compulsory exercise, as the last thing you want to do when you are in genuine need of a job is to have to break open a chocolate egg with your bare hands, while a balding homosexual called Daryl bellows his condescending words of encouragement, all while attired in an ill-fitting Easter Bunny costume. Once inside the egg you discover a job that you are not even qualified to perform. You have been literally brought to your knees (Daryl hid the egg under his desk), and your chocolate-covered hands grant you the appearance of a man who has been scooping shit out of his own underpants.

I would rather use the touchscreen jobconsole in a completely non-Easter themed manner.

Bhuna

"See Clive, I told you I would finish my Korma."

For some reason my Facebook homepage keeps on suggesting that I join the fan clubs of celebrity Asians Dev Patel and A.R.Rahman. Why is this happening? There is nothing about my profile that suggests I'm particularly into this sort of thing (Indians). Slumdog Millionaire isn't listed as one of my favourite films, and I'm not sure if I even have any friends of South Asian origin on my Facebook. I mean, while I enjoy the occasional Bhuna, and appreciate the pacifist antics of Mahatma Gandhi, I'm hardly what you would call a Bollywood Bill!

Now, I'm no racist, but why am I not being invited to join the fan clubs for any Anglo-Saxon celebs? Come on Facebook, WHERE'S MY JOHN TERRY APPRECIATION INVITE!!!! If this politically correct arse-banditry continues then I will be forced to boycott Facebook (again). It's about time someone claimed back the Internet for the white man (and I know for a FACT that Bill Gates is with me on this).

On the topic of fighting for what you believe in, isn't it just the perfect day for a demonstration? I'm feeling to get my butt down to Trafalgar square and turn this G20 shite into some kind of sexy protest.


"Andrea Merkle? Wet her up leave her pumpum Merkled."