What's red and crawls up Mother's leg?

Was going to call this post ByePod HiPod, seeing as the fucking thing has broken and miraculously repaired itself twice since the last time I mentioned it. It'll probably continue this loop indefinitely until August 29th, at which point the warranty runs out, and it'll just explode, probably taking out my face with it.

Croak. CROAAAAAAAAAK. I sound a bit odd today. To be brutally honest, I sound like the unholy lovechild of Papa Lazarou, Darth Vadar and a 40 year old chainsmoking bullfrog. You know that advert for Strepsils with that little cartoon man, and every time he talks, it just makes engine revving sounds? Well, my voice is actually like that. When I say that, I don't just mean 'it's a bit croaky'. I mean that it does literally sound like an engine revving. Imagine a Hell's Angel driving his Harley up a 45 degree hill. Thats the sound that comes out of my mouth when I speak. Exhaust gases pour out of my throat when I sing tenor.
This interesting croakyness is probably somehow connected to the vast amounts of random yellow phlegm that keeps pouring into the back of my throat. This is probably the best symptom of my current condition, as every half hour I can have some long coughing fit and produce a great big hunk 'o gunk. I can then either re-swallow this, chew it for a bit appreciatively, spit it into my palm and poke it with my fingers while marvelling at its colour, size and texture, or just huck it off the side of a tall building and laugh as it hits a bald man wearing green overalls.

As you might be able to tell from the following paragraphs, I am ill. To be honest, if you were unable to figure that out, then you probably are too stupid to live and should go drink the yellow stuff under the kitchen sink. Go. Now. NOW!
That's right, my unassailably powerful immune system is having its yearly breakdown. Long-term readers of this blog might remember that it was nearly exactly a year ago that I threw up partially digested tuna-fish all over the toilets at school. Mmm, creamy. This just goes to prove my theory that, seeing as my white-blood cells are just the most awesome miniture fighting force this side of 2D, they have to take some time off once a year to allow the enemy to regroup and attack again. If they didn't do that, then there would be literally no germs left on the planet Earth. They would have all been drawn to my bloodstream and been plasmolysed into next week by my ninja-antibodies. There'd be no disease left. And then how would we get rid of all the hobos and weird-looking bald children? We'd have to do it the old fashioned way (pool cue to the back of the head).

So it's my theory that, in order to avoid all this unecessary bloodshed, my immune system just shuts down for a bit once a year. The antibodies all take some time off and go play golf in my colon, or smoke huge cugan cigars in my alveoli, or go skinny-dipping in my skin (HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAomgHAHahhahahahAHHAHAHHAH!H!H!H!H!!! LOL!!!!! HAHAHAHHA! BECAUSE IT'S SKIN AND THEY'RE [lmao]SKINNY DIPPING!!! LOLLERCOPTERS!11!!! ROLFF!!1HAHAHAHHA!!! YES I WENT THERE!!!112!). Perhaps they go to my bloodstream and laugh at all the red-blood cells as they go by.

"Hey, look at that dickhead."
"Yeah, he got no nucleus."
"And we're like fifty times bigger than him!"
"Hell yeah!"
*High five*

Whatever. It doesn't matter. It just means that all the hardass germs who think they can mess wit' me have a chance to pour into my body (because Christ, it's not like I wash my hands or anything. Hell, my chosen sporting activity has me slowly scraping the skin off my already hole-filled hands with a piece of rubber-covered wood soaking with water from the River Thames, the only river toxic enough to kill a whale in less than a weekend). These germs will cause a little havoc, mess with a few red blood cells, fuck up the mucus production for a bit. Because, after all, they're mean mofoing bacteria. None of this 'friendly bacteria' shit you get in adverts for Yakhult.
My white blood cells won't do anything, though. They'll just sit there, smoking their cigars, oiling up the bullets in their biological AK47s, watching everything and remembering everything. Then, in a few days, they'll decide that enough time has gone by, and they'll slowly stand up, stretch, do lots of cool clicky things to their guns, lace up their hiking boots, zip up their fleeces, then stoll into town. The result will be something like this:



Just check out all the cell death that's going on there. Actually, thinking about it, that diagram might be a bit complicated for people who didn't get A* on GCSE Biology (with 29/30 on the coursework), that is to say, genii like me. Here it is in a slightly more simplified form:


NAPALM'D!!!!

That picture isn't exactly accurate, I admit. The white blood cells would probably be screaming "YEEAH MUVAFUCKA!" or "WHOOPEE!" or "LETS GO SURFING!" or "RUN RUN RUN LIL PIGGY, AS FAR AS YOU CAN!" or "This is fun isn't it Timothy" or they'd be playing some Wagner or Mozart or Spice Girls or something as they blow away those pesky bacteriums. But I was somewhat lacking space in that picture and I feel that I'm pressing my luck on the whole 'speech bubble' thing already. And you don't know how hard it was to avoid having the bacteria saying "OMG RUN!!!". Hehe. I think that inanimate objects saying OMG is really funny, sue me.

But that's besides the point. The POINT is that, having bent all the bacteria in my system over a chair and viciously raped them, my immune system will be rejuvinated and ready to take on anything that the world has to throw at it.

Seriously, the first enemy bastard that thinks it's a good idea to enter my inner sanctum will rue the day it decided to mess with Thomas HW Phipps. And it doesn't matter how big or messy that disease is, my digestive system will take em all on and win. It'll see polio, machete its little spotty arse, then spit it out, bruised and bloody and incontinent. Flu? It'll kick it's fecken teeth in, before jumping up and down on its crotch and then beating it to death with the blunt end of a pillow. Smallpox won't stand a fucking chance, my white blood cell will castrate it with a pool ball before it gets past my epidermis. And if that twat typhoid comes near, well, fuck it, my immuno-system will pull out a towel, soak it with water, stuff it down typhoid's throat, leave it there for a few minutes, then wrench it back out, along with typhoid's stomach and gullet lining.
Who else wants some?
Oh shit, there's Veil's Disease. No, wait, panic over. My antibodies broke all its bones and punted it off a flyover.
Cholera? DRAGON PUNCHED backwards into a box of cheap chinese explosives.
Behind you, immuno system, it's branched-chain ketoaciduria! No, wait, you knew all along and you nailed it to the floor with nails made of splinters of branched-chain ketoaciduria's own TEEYH.
But wait, it's a double team of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and rosai-dorfman disease! And they're both armed to the teeth with grenades and small asian people! What'll happen now? I think we all know. BLAM. PUNCH. POW. KAPOWERY. KICK'D! OH MY GOD, IMMUNE SYSTEM, YOU JUST SET FIRE TO BOTH OF THEM THEN HURLED THEM INTO A ROOM FULL OF ANGRY KILLER BEES COVERED IN PETROL!
WATCH OUT, IT'S CANCER, AND IT'S NOT EVEN SPREAD BY MICROBES BUT MY IMMUNE SYSTEM KICKED IT'S ARSE ANYWAY. NO TUMOUR FOR ME. Whoopee.

I could continue. But you now see how great my immuno-system is. It's just so incredibly powerful. I walk down the street and germs literally bounce off me to either side. When somebody sneezes at me, it's like that bit at the end of the Matrix. I just frown slightly and the germs stop a few inches from my face, apologise profusely, then turn round and give a pensioner pneumonia. I go out and have sex with HIV+ prostitutes, just so I can get infected and laugh heartily as the virus attempts to take over but is brutally ejected. You know what? I hope that birdflu DOES evolve and DOES make it to Britain. I feel that my system needs a TRUE challenge. And I'm pretty sure that I'll win. Everyone else will get ill and die cuz they're pussies, but I'll just stand there, hands on hips, and CACKLE. Then the only one left will be me, laughing away atop of a huge pile of corpses of people who didn't have as good an immuno system as me.

MWAHAHAH! I AM UNBEATABLE! I AM BARON SAMEDI! I AM BORIS FROM GOLDENEYE! I AM CHUCK NORRIS! I AM THE WALRUS! I AM THE EGGMAN! I AM THE CLAM! I AM THE LEEEZARD KING!!

*Coughs bitterly, spits out some phlegm, blows nose*

Incidentally, the answer to the title question is: A Homesick Abortion. Heh. I'd like to say that I'm sorry for that joke, but I'm really not.

If you're a newcomer to chainsawzombie.blogspot.com, read the previous post before even trying to decipher this one

... back? Now go and read as many of the comments as you can manage. At the time of writing, there are 154. By the time I'm finished with this blog, who knows? They start off pretty sensibly, but it all starts to go to hell at around the 95 mark, which proves my belief that humanity is essentially savage and, given enough time on our own, we're all going to dis-evolve down to our primitive savage monkey forms and throw poo at each other and listen to Crazytown and murder our captors, like in that book by HG Welles.

But I digress.

154 comments. 154. Wow. Woweee. I'm literally speechless. And I thought the way to get people to comment was to write clear, inciteful posts in which you get to the heart of certain social and moral issues in a way that is both thought-provoking and amusing. I had no IDEA that all you had to do was to write a load of random shit insulting various people, and then the entire bloody fan-club would swoop down like a pack of metaphorical harpies (or herpes, go wild) to support and argue their way through ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FOUR COMMENTS. Note to self: Include pointlessly contentious issue in every post from now on.

So, those arabs, eh? With the tea-towels on their heads? Kerazy lil' fellas. I reckin we should just give 'em all the bombs they want. They'll soon get bored.

But I digress.

But seriously... ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FOUR COMMENTS? WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING? Why does anybody care that much about the relative fatness of Lucia's sister? I mean, its not that we'll ever really know her true weight. It'd require a set of power-lifter strength scales and one of those huge industrial construction cranes to winch her onto them, and I'll be damned if I'm sorting out those. Let's just chalk the lardisitude of Ali as one of the great mysteries of life (Like the meaning of Stonehenge, or the average weight of a blue whale). Perhaps she's fat. Perhaps she's not. Let's just leave it at that. Although, Googlefight seems to agree with the theory that she is. I'm not saying anything, but that's just what the fight concludes, and I've never known the fight to be wrong before.

But I digress. Seriously, people, 154 comments? Why? And who gives a shit who could have won in the wussfight between Nat and Paul? The point is: they're both women. That was what I was trying to get across, ok? I mean, for Christ's sake, THEY WEAR PINK CLOTHES. Pink is a girl's colour. Wasn't it one of God's commandments when he came down from his bungalow on the Moon, back in the Bible? THOU SHALT EAT FISH FROM THE SEA AND THOU SHALT GROW CROPS FROM THE GROUND AND IF I SEE A BOY WEARING PINK CLOTHING, I'LL BE PISSED OFF AND WILL BE FORCED TO DO SOME RITEOUS SMITING. Come to think about it, immediately after Paul wore that pink tshirt on Saturday, the London Whale died. THANKS A LOT PAUL. Whalekiller.

But I digress.

I guess that I should be pleased that so many people in accordance with me with me about everything. It's not often that you have 154 people totally agreeing with you and validating your every word. Hey, I probably have a greater approval rating than President Bush!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Blogdog: "OMG POLITICAL JOKE!!!!!1!!!!!1!!1!11")
Oh yeah, did I mention that, by commenting, you automatically agreed with everything I said? Perhaps I should have made that clear. By commenting, you automatically agree with everything I say, and you must love me as your father and God. You also owe me money. Sorry, that's just how it goes. Should have read the small print.

Except nobody obviously told this girl. Known only as Anon, she was obviously upset, both by my blog, and by the surgeon who stuffed his arm down her throat and ripped out her sense of humour with a ladle, and is probably riding the cotton pony, so she posted a very hurtful comment on my blog. I guess that she decided to take out all her stresses and insecurities about the world out on something, and I was the most attractive nearby person for her to focus her female attentions on. But hey, its ok, I can take it *sniff*. If she thinks that this is the worst tongue lashing I've recieved from a girl this week, well, then... boy oh boy. Here was the comment in question:

OK, Tom Philips, or whoever you are, whatever, I dont care. Now, you dont know me, and I dont know you, but what I do know from reading your blog is that you the most:
selfish, self congratulary , egotistic, arrogant, sexist, know it all, sad-loser-who-spends-a-substancial-time-blogging, pathetic, shallow, insulting PRAT I think I have ever been unfortunate enough to come across, why dont you just take some peoples advice and stop being a cock.
Have a good day,
Anon

(by the way, if you were wondering how I knew it was a girl... well, only a girl would count 'sexist' as being a bad thing. Everyone else - ie. sane people like me - sees sexism for what it is: an infinite source of comic potential. Alternatively, the anonymous commenter was Paul/Nat, or one of these touchy-feeling "new men" types. Which means that I'd still be technically within my rights to use the feminine pronoun... ba-zing)

Well, first things first: I'll give credit where credit's due - she was very polite at the end. I will have a good day, thank you. Also, most of her words were spelt correctly (with the right number of letters and EVERYTHING!!!!). Several words necessary for it to make complete sense are missing, but the ones that ARE present build up a very nice picture of what was running through her head, along with all the horses and pretty flowers and topless pictures of Prince William and all the other pointless crap that girls think about.

To be honest, I enjoyed this comment so much, I wanted to share it with ALL MY FRIENDS (read: action figures... I don't have any REAL friends, I scared them all off with my acid tongue and caustic wit). Anyay, I decided that I'd make a night of it. So I printed a load of cards, rented out the church hall, invited all my action figures round, made some punch and buns, dressed up in my most dapper tuxedo, then played Weak-ass Insult Bingo!



In case you were wondering, I won. This is because I'm amazing, and I win everything. But I digress.

I mean, you'd think that this comment would make me slightly annoyed (I mean, she didn't even get my name right, even though it has been written roughly 15,000 throughout the comments, and requires less effort to spell than "Philips"). But no. It has actually made me deliriously happy, for two important reasons.
Firstly, I thought that the art of good debating had died along with Stalin, but this girl's FABULOUS use of the 'ad hominem' argument structure has proven to me that this is anything but true. I also liked the interesting way she directly contradicted herself several times, and way that she failed to finish the first sentence... magic.
Secondly, this comment offers me some sense of security for the future. Because now I know that as long as there are there are brave people like Anon out there, I can be safe in the knowledge that when our Ant Overlords finally come down from Up-High to invade, crush and enslave us, there will ALWAYS be people willing to work in the sugar mines. Because, Christ, I was worried that there wouldn't be enough menial labour to go around when King Anthoteph strolled into town. You've managed to dispell that fear, baby. Thank you.

Ok, that's enough of that.

Honestly, how fucking stupid are you? It's like somebody tied a plank of wood to a doorstop, beat it with the stupid stick for an hour and a half, then kicked it down the Stairs of DUH into the University of Yokel where it took a Masters in NOT BEING VERY INTELLIGENT. Does nobody understand the basic concepts of irony, hyperbole or even SARCASM any more? I SAY THE WORD 'IRONIC' ROUGHLY THREE TIMES EVERY BLOG, JUST TO KNOCK IT INTO YOUR HEADS, AND YET STILL PEOPLE THINK THAT I'M BEING SERIOUS. WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER?
You know what? I give up. You're all a lost cause. In the future, I'm just going to fill this blog with racist jokes and reviews of William Shatner's teeth.

How many black people does it take to change a lightbulb?
Three, because they're really stupid.


I really like Will's teeth in this picture. You can see every nook and cranny of his big 'bugs bunny' gnashers. If he had a piece of spinach stuck in his teeth, I bet that you'd be able to see THAT, too! God that's hot. LOL.

Do you like that? Do you? Do you? Is that what you'd rather see? Racist jokes and Shatner's teeth? Because I can do that. Any time. So easily. That's what this blog is going to be like if you lot don't buck your ideas up. I mean it. Sigh. Ok, one more time. This picture was aimed at ANON, but I'm pretty sure that it could be fired at humanity in general, so pretend that 'fuck' has an s on the end and pluralise yourselves:



The Twin Towers? Oh yes I did go there. Cutting.

I hope that everybody noticed that I altered the shadows on the lettering, according to the relative distances from the "sun". That's an artistic touch that the little shit who drew this picure failed to include. Clammy palmed retard.

If you go to Tiffin, just don't bother reading this

Well, I was going to title this post HiPod, seeing as my iPod has mysteriously decided that it wants to return to life. Yes, that's right, no more unhappy face, just acre upon acre of quality musical vibes. It was going to be a happy post, making absolutely no insulting comments about anybody. However, that is a story for another day (and, possibly, never), seeing as I have to report back upon the party I just attended. Well, I say party. I mean shambles.

There are certain rules that one always must abide by in life. "Don't eat yellow snow" is one. "Never kick a sleeping bull in the testicles" is another. Possibly a third rule is "Never go to your ex-girlfriend's Birthday Party, no matter how many times you get invited". I was going to follow this rule myself, but then I realised that she still had my tent and I needed that sucka back to make a fort in the garden where I can smoke opium and listen to The Doors (no, not really, and it's better to just not imagine why she has my tent). Upon arrival at the house, all cranked up on acid and weed (read: blue porridge and apple juice), I found out that she hadn't bothered to get the tent out of the shed, and my primary mission for the evening had already been failed. I probably should have just cut my losses then and gone home to play three and a half solid hours of Resident Evil 4, but did I? Did I HECK. I'm made of sturdier stuff than that. No, instead, I wandered around, digging myself into a massive and seemingly bottomless hole with pretty much every female at the party.

The problem with girls at Tiffin School is that they have no sense of humour. I mean none. Well, I guess they probably laugh at jokes about Justin Timberlake or butterflies or pink things or something funny that happened to them at school at some point when I wasn't there or ponies or whatever the hell it is that humourically-retarded females laugh about during their slumber parties, but for some reason, they don't understand the simple concepts of irony. Or hyperbole.

EG: if I say "OH MY GOD, YOU'VE GOTTEN FAT, YOU UNHOLY WHORE OF BABYLON" to Steph (who does not go to Tiffin), she knows that I am being purposefully and playfully over-the-top in an attempt to teasingly play with gender stereotypes and the respective roles of males and females, with particular respect to taboo language and obesity in this increasingly PC culture. She doesn't take it as a literal comment, gasp, run off and tell all her friends, and then glower at me from the corner for the rest of the evening. This is because Steve is not stupid (just fat and ugly), and she has a sense of humour. Every other female at the party failed this very basic sense-of-humour test, which meant that after about twenty minutes, most of them wanted my dead. Well, I'm sorry if my sense of humour is too complicated for you, ladies, but you take everything far too fecken seriously. This meant that everything kind of exploded when Nat entered the scene.

As you all know, Nat is the guy who tried to steal my ex-girlfriend with a combination of MSN seduction and prolonged whingeing. For those of you who haven't met him, just imagine a scrawny 5ft2 jelly-baby, wearing a pink designer shirt, stupid gloves, an assortment of delightful bangles, £120 jeans specially aged by French monks, with an obsessively petulant whining streak a mile long, and probably a tear-stained teddybear called Mr Kiddlykissums whom he dresses up in an assortment of cute little sailor costumes in the middle of the night when the rest of his Halo Club have gone to bed. He's in love with my ex, and has the singular ability to NOT TAKE A HINT.
Anyway, about an hour after I arrived, he waltzed in like an infinitely less hard emo version of Dale Winton, to take on Paul, the second participant in tonight's comedy of errors.

How can I describe Paul? It's hard. Well, does anybody remember that episode of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers when there was that really cool Power Ranger with the beamsword? The one with the healthy disrespect for females and the rules in general? The awesome tall Power Ranger with the amazing monster-slicing movez and the cool costume. Remember him?
Yeah, well, Paul is nothing like him.

Paul is an officious little prick whose level of over-niceness to girls is seen as sweetness and thoughfulness by the girl in question, and disturbing and annoying sucking-up by everyone else. He emotes. He is also roughly two feet tall. He wears pink jumpers, and in his spare time he enjoys writing wanky essays about basketball for the School Newspaper, baking cookies for his latest obsession, or wearing a leash and being walked around Norbiton. He's become best friends with Lucia, my ex, for reasons unbeknownst to everyone, and has apparently taken it as his solemn duty to keep her away from anybody who might be dangerous (people carrying sharp objects, those who talk slightly too loudly, anybody who isn't part of her cabal of female friends, and me).

I'm not sure why Nat and Paul decided to have a fight. Paul probably borrowed Nat's lipstick and didn't give it back, or something. Whatever.

Now you've met the two combatants, you can see why I found it so hilarious. It was literally the least manly fight EVER. It was like a battle between a pansy and a daisy to decide who gets to be the prettiest flower in the hanging basket. But everyone was dancing about sqealing as though fecken Martin Luthor-King himself had risen from the grave, fully roboticized with a wicked-awesome mecha suit (complete with missiles, a submachine gun, and some incendary grenades) , with the intention of defeating a fifty foot tall flame breathing skeletal dinosaur-king, Barray-Murteene, who was marauding through Norbiton, kidnapping damsels, stepping on cats, and raping teenagers.

Luckily, though, this powderkeg of explosive fighting power was defused without anybody being seriously hurt (But, seriously, the way that Paul was hiding behind two girls and hopping nervously from foot to foot... I swear, if he hadn't been held back he would have ripped poor Nat clean in two with his teeth). But it was a close thing. I helped to calm the situation by running around excitedly and cackling every time I saw Rocky (aka Nat), standing, fists (or as they are otherwise known, "The Duel Diplomats of Agony") clenched, smouldering in sexy rebellious energy.

After the situation was averted, Lucia failed to tell Gnat to fuck off, and was instead tried to talk him into calming down. This was a mistake, and pretty soon Nat was holding her hands and crying like a fecken woman. This in turn made her burst into to tears, which made me metaphorically stab myself in the left temple with a hypothetical pen-knife. While Nat was traumatising my ex-girlfriend with his own special brand of moronic whiny bullshit, Paul did the proper thing by running to hide in the house.

Then the SWAT Police arrived in a riot van, no doubt reasoning that the awesome battle of NatPaul had wasted half the neighbourhood and left hundreds dead. They looked pretty disappointed that the epic fight had been averted, and told everybody to stop hanging about outside. We were making the neighbourhood look scruffy. Well I wasn't, but there were a lot of ugly people at that party who would have made the monkey enclosure at London Zoo look scruffy, and it was a good idea to lock them inside the house, and possibly set fire to it.

This was the point that I made my primary mistake of the evening. Having been told by Lucia's totally thin and attractive sister to make everyone go back inside, I wandered about yelling at people until I came to the two high Witch-Queens of Lucia's Coven (her best friends, who are called Susan and Bez or Bex or Frank or some fucking stupid name like that). All of Lucia's friends hate me with a passion. I don't know why. I guess it's because I don't wear pink sweaters. The conversation went like so:

Me: Yeah, you have to go inside.
Bez or whatever the fuck her name is, I don't care: Why? I live here.
*She gestures to the house next door, which is where she apparently lives.*
My internal monologue: For fuck's sake. What I wouldn't give for a sledgehammer right now.
Me: Yeah, you live THERE. But this is MY TERRITORY, beeyatch. You gotta go inside. Whatserface, you know, uh, fat girl, sister... you know, her... she says go inside cuz of the police.
Bexyzzesxz: OMG YOU CALLED HER SISTER FAT!!!1111 !OMGFOMGOMGOM!111!!ONE!11! She's not FAT omg omg omg.
Me: Yeah whatever. Just go inside.

I can only imagine this female's internal monologue, but I guess that it went something like this: OMG HE CALLED HER FAT OMG WHAT A BASTARD! I'll GO AND TELL HER THAT HE SAID THAT! LOL!! Because that's what this situation needs... more stress!1!! I'm so smart! GO FEMALE LOGIC!

So, like, forty five minutes later, after I'd:

a: Hidden in the bathroom with some of the only sane people in the party to bitch about everybody else and to compare Lucia's sister to various large sea mammals in the Thames,
b: Tried to see if Lucia had stopped crying yet, but been repelled back by the combined hate-vibes of Lucia's bodyguard friends and Paul, self-elected King of the Lucia Fan Club. But I guess I can't complain. After all, he did go out with her for four months, having known her for an extra six first, whereas I'm just some creepy little guy who invited himself into the social group and attached myself to her like a limpet after meeting her three months ago and thus I have literally no right to say hello (Oh, the uncompromising levels of irony in that sentence would cause even the most steel coated superhero to implode!!)
c: Slowly fallen into a deep spiritual depression,

... I was sitting on the stairs with Cassie [Cassie is a sensible female, who looks like a short fat version of Joanna Dark], when Lucia's fat sister game barrelling down the stairs, in the kind of fury usually only seen in Greek Myths and The Shining.

Her: WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?
Me: Sup.
Her: YOU CALLED ME FAT! YOU'RE FUCKING FAT! YOU'RE FATTER THAN ME!!
My internal monologue: Perhaps I should take off my shirt and show her my six pack to highlight the fact that she is, in fact, far more obsese than I am. I mean, I'd have to recline back on the stairs to get the best lighting conditions but... Uh, maybe not. I had better say something diplomatic.
Me: *Stifled giggle*
*At this point she grabbed me and tried to throw me down the stairs. And, you know, she's a big girl, she probably would have been able to. And then, if she'd tripped and fallen, I could have been crushed, killed, even. Luckily, her hands were slippery, no doubt from the huge jar of extra-fatty bacon fat she'd probably been eating before our big confrontation, and I managed to wiggle free.*
Her: GET OUT. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU WITH A HATRED THAT BURNS INTO THE DEPTH OF MY ETERNAL FUCKING SOUL!
My Internal Monologue: Boy, she's really annoyed at me. Better not piss her off any more.
Me: *singing in a high soprano voice* You touch my sooooooooooooooul, baby!!! OH YEAH! Sing it to me!
At this point, she probably would have ripped off my face and eaten it (I guess she was still probably hungry), had Paul not entered the scene.
Paul: Right, everyone, go home. The police have been called again. So piss off. Especially you, Tom, I hate you.
Me: Can I PLEASE go and see if Lucia is alright, you officious little twerp?
Paul: No. Fuck off. I know what's best for her, and only I declare who may go and see her, and I do not count you as being worthy. Fuck off.

My memory of the conversation gets a bit hazy after I started singing to Lucia's sister, but I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what happened. Then everyone left the party, which was generally considered by all to be a roaring success by all the neighbours, seeing at it ended at like 1030 without anything being burnt down. It wasn't really considered a success by anybody else, least of all by Lucia's Sister, who has suffered the ultimate penalty: she can no longer count me as one of her close friends. I feel sorry for her, I really do.

The funniest thing about this entire situation is that her sister isn't even that fat. She's just a healthy size. However, as soon as she took that much offense to an untrue comment said in passing to someone else, I've decided to make it my life's mission to promote the "Lucia's sister is fat" message to the world. Because I'm obnoxious like that. But, if I'm going to be serious here, I don't see why she was so upset. It's not like I said it to her face. It's not like I said it as an insult. It's not even as though I meant it. And hey, at least I didn't make a picture and stick it on the internet, where it could be viewed by thousands of people, did I?



Whoops.

I do realise that, by writing this post, I have forever lost any invitation back to that house that I ever had, and I also will probably never see my tent again. God damnit, that's the last time I give a handy portable living space to a girlfriend.

(clam)

ByePod

I've been bereaved.

I'm grieving.

My iPod is broken. It broke yesterday when I had the termerity to change a song before it had decided it wanted me to. In a divine twist of cosmic irony, the song in question was "The End" by The Doors. That is so awesomely appropriate. I would have felt kind of gipped if my iPod had given up the ghost halfway through playing Las Ketchup, or a monologue by John Travolta on bacon, or the Miss Piggy remix of Crazy Train (all these are on iTunes). And if it had died halfway through anything by Savage Garden, well, I probably would have beaten in the side of my own skull with a claw-hammer. But "The End"... awesome. Awwwwwwwesome. That's some opium music, right there.
The final moments were dramatic and explosive - very good television, if any TV producer out there wants to buy my script about an iPod who realises the futility of life and goes on the run (starring Ray Romero as the iPod, and Kiefer Sutherland as a left earphone who just won't play by the rules) . It kind of flashed, froze, then died with a melodramatic death flourish (in its dying breath, it begged me to go find its parents and tell them it loved them. I won't do it. Fuck 'em). Now, whenever I turn it on, all I get is a sad iPod icon, and advice to go visit the Apple website to seek help for my problems (mental, spiritual, and iPod-based):



I would be more annoyed at this point (HOW THE HELL AM I GONNA BE ABLE TO LISTEN TO GRAND FUNK RAILROAD WHILE CYCLING TO ROWING???) but, well, I'm too charmed by that lil icon fella. Just look at him. How can I be mad at somebody with such a sweet little face? He's all cross eyed and sad. He's already obviously going through enough pain. Any other insults I pour onto his little broken head will just be pointless overkill. So yes, I've taken this loss with an unusual amount of good grace. And hey, maybe that high pitched, painful ringing in my ears will end now I don't have the Pixies blasting out 100 brands of pure punk guitar tunage into my delicate eardrums at full volume for hours each day. Perhaps this iPod breaking is the best thing that's happened to me. God bless you, lil fella.


"God bless you too, Tom!"

I love you.


"I love you too, Tom! Lets get married and have babies!"

Man, those would be some high tech, user friendly babies. With added headphones.


"They sure would. Let's call them Shuffle, Nano, and... Yourmum."

Cool.

Actually, I think this incident highlights an important difference between Mac and PC products. When a Mac product (say, an iPod), breaks, at least it does so with a sense of decency and personality. It shows you its human side, as if to say "Hey, even though I'm an mp3 player, I got feelings too, and the fact that you can no longer listen to the awesome part of River Euphrates five times in a row during a History lesson is hurting me far more than its hurting you. All you feel is the lack of amazing bass guitar thrashage, I feel the eternal shame of failing my master and my kindred. I'm no longer worthy of you." In fact, iPods are like those awesome japanese fellas who killed themselves with a samurai sword through the belly if they lost a single battle in their war against the magical robotic flying ninjapirates. They don't like to fail.
Alternatively, when a Windows product (for example, I don't know... WORD?) dies, all you get is (if you're lucky) a blue screen of death full of random flashing digits. EG:



Seriously, what the fuck is that shit? Where's the love? Where's the little PC face-man saying "Whoopsy, I broke, but don't worry, I'll try and fix myself right soon. Don't worry about all the rest of these letters and stuff, it's just useless Geekobabble!"? I'll tell you where he is. HE'S NOWHERE. Fucker. Of course, there will be some fellows out there (PC users, most probably) who claim that a little face with a website link is next to useless when compared to a technical readout of what's wrong, but I say that those people are cretins. And cynics, who don't appreciate the beautiful things in life, like snowdrops and unicorns and unicorns made out of snowdrops and encased in solid diamond-studded gold. And balloons. And candyfloss at Spring.

So anyway, I followed the website link and tried out all the amazing troubleshooting tips that Apple gave me, like "Making sure the iPod is switched on", "Checking that it has battery charge," "Turning the iPod on and off and seeing if that helps", "Shake the iPod about a bit in the air chanting voodoo fertility rites", or, my personal favourite, "Download five different updates, plug in the iPod then delete everything off it". Is it me, or does "Delete everything off the iPod" sound somewhat similar to "Just napalm the entire jungle, that oughtta sort out them Viets," ? Maybe it doesn't. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. But whatever, none of their trouble-shooting things worked, except for the last one, which was "Get a new iPod." I'm not joking, it literally said something similar to that. So I guess that I'd better go find the John Lewis Receipt and go bust it down to them and get a new one on the warranty.

But I'm nervous of doing this, for three good reasons:
1: The warranty is in case of technical malfunction uncaused by misuse of the iPod, and I'm pretty sure the reason it broke in the first place is because I dropped it on the changing room floor twice, dropped it in the garden once, cycled about with it in sub-zero temperatures, scratched it up like a bitch, didn't bother to buy a case, shook it about every time it failed to immediately load the next song, probably accidentally doused it in water on several occasions, filled it with illegally downloaded and possibly corrupt song files, played several Linkin Park songs on it, and sat on it several times [delete as applicable]. Is that covered by the warranty? Actually, who cares? I'll just lie. I'm a rebel like that.
2: I have a feeling that they don't make my nice iPod anymore. The default model is now the Video iPod, which, in my humble opinion, imho, is a fucken brick. The scroll wheel is too fecken small for the iPod body, and that screen looks designed for scratching and I just don't like it at all. Eughy. Also, when the fuck am I ever gonna want to watch episodes of Conan O'Brien on the bus? I don't even travel on the bus. Fuck off with the advertising, Apple.
3: I like the personality of my current iPod. It's pleasant and nice to me. When it breaks, it shows me a nice face and is apologetic. What do I know about this new iPod? It could be a total cunt to me. If that one breaks, it might not show the face. It might just insult me. I don't think I could live with myself if I dropped my NewPod, and the next time I switched it on, THIS came up:



AAAAAAARGH!

Coming Soon to Stores: iPod Yourmum - now with the ability to be an iWhore with all your friends! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fuck you, Word (EDITED - now with extra clams!)

YOU FUCKING FUCK ALL I FUCKING WANT TO FUCKING DO IS FUCKING CHANGE THIS FUCKING PICTURE ON MY ENGLISH COURSEWORK BUT FUCKING NO YOU STUPID CUNT YOU HAVE TO FREEZE UP EVERY FUCKING TIME I PRESS A SINGLE FUCKING BUTTON ON MY COMPUTER YOU DUMB CAR-WASH CUNT GO TO FUCKING HELL WHERE YOU ROT IN THE FLAMES OF ETERNAL FUCKING TORTURE AND WILD FUCKING SNAKES EAT OFF YOUR FUCKING TOENAILS AND IMPS PEEL OFF YOUR EYELIDS WITH FUCKING CHOPSTICKS MADE OF RED HOT FUCKING CHILLI PEPPERS AND LEMONY PENGUINS CRAWL INTO YOUR SHIT-EATING MONKEY FUCKING NOSE AND RIP OUT YOUR NOSTRIL LININGS WITH THEIR BARBED WIRE MUCUS AND ANGRY BLACK TWO YEAR OLDS SLICE UP YOUR ERECT PENIS HEAD WITH CRAFT FUCKING PAPER. DIE ALREADY.

The above spiel is actually something I said today. Or nearabouts. It was something like that, punctuated with me punching the wall, throwing the bin across the room, picking up the stuff from the bin that fell on the floor, punching out a coffee mug, and jumping about screaming.

Oh fuck, Word is still open. That explains why my computer keeps oddly freezing. YES, I WANT TO FUCKING FORCE QUIT WORD. NO, PISS OFF. AAAAAAARRRRRRRRFUCKFUCKERYBUGGERCUNT... ok, I finally quit Word. Ha ha, its quitting, spasming in its dying movements. It didn't like that. Look at that, you're not so fucking big NOW, are you, you fucking blue W? Ha HA. I hope its painful and boring in the land of Quitted Applications. I hope its painful and boring and all the other programs hate you and flush your head down the toilet.

I hate Word. With a hatred that burns eternally in my immortal soul. There has never been a purer hate between a boy and a shittily programmed word-processing application than the hatred between me and Word. EVERYTHING IS SO HARD TO ACHIEVE USING THAT FECKEN PROGRAM. I mean, how difficult is it to change ONE picture on a Word document? Not very hard, you would think. Surely it's a matter of seconds to delete one image and replace it with another. BUT NO. It's about on par with Hannibal crossing the Alps with an army of war-elephants. And when I say "Hannibal", I'm referring to Hannibal Lector, as played by Antony Hopkins. After Red Dragon, when he was missing a hand. And wanted by the police. That's how long, difficult, and drawn out a task it was.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First of all, we have to consider why the picture in question needed changing. It needed changing because it was too big and Hotmail was refusing to attach my Word document to my email to send to myself. But did Hotmail tell me that it was too big? Did it fuck. It just froze up my computer every time I tried to send it. No warning. No 'this file exceeds your attachment limit'. No, the little fucking blue bar just slid to about a third of the way and sat there, the spinning CD of death appeared on my computer and suddenly the mouse worked. Hotmail, you truly are a swindling miserly bastard. AND FUCKING NO, I DON'T WANT A FREE £25 BET ON LEEDS VS WIGAN ON SPORTING ODDS, STOP ASKING ME YOU VILE CUNT. (This post was very nearly entitled "Fuck you, Hotmail". But it's not.)
Because of this, I was forced to send the first of my coursework pieces (the one without the giant picture) with an added message of JUST SEND THE FUCKING EMAIL ALREADY, in the vague hope that Hotmail would somehow notice this and acquiesce to my demand. It didn't. In a trite act of vengeance, I renamed my second piece of coursework "Hotmail is shit". That'll show em.

So then I realised finally by myself that the picture was mysteriously massive. That is odd, I think. It wasn't a 34mb picture when I copied it off the internet originally. But, wait, oh no, it seems that Word has arbitrarily changed it into a huge file without consulting me and... you know what? Fuck it. I can't be bothered. Mr Gay says it best:



It's times like these that I'm glad I have a crappy bootleg copy of Word, stolen from Warner Bros, as opposed to the proper £350 version. Fuck you.

The word "fuck" was used 31 times in this post. And what's really sad is that I had to open Word to count them. Christ on a bike.

EDIT: Following a wide public outcry, here's the first part of this post, with all the swear words replaced with either "Clam" or similar shelled aquatic creatures. The public wants, the public gets. But not in the case of naked pictures of me. Those are staying safely stored away in my sock drawer. Enjoy:

YOU CLAMMING CLAM ALL I CLAMMING WANT TO CLAMMING DO IS TO CLAMMING CHANGE THIS CLAMMING PICTURE ON MY ENGLISH COURSEWORK BUT NO YOU STUPID LIMPET YOU HAVE TO FREEZE UP EVERY CLAMMING TIME I PRESS A SINGLE CLAMMING BUTTON ON MY COMPUTER YOU DUMB CAR-WASH LIMPET GO TO CLAMMING HELL WHERE YOU ROT IN THE FLAMES OF ETERNAL CLAMMING TORTURE AND WILD CLAMMING SNAKES EAT OFF YOUR CLAMMING TOENAILS AND IMPS PEEL OFF YOUR EYELIDS WITH CLAMMING CHOPSTICKS MADE OF RED HOT CLAMMING CHILLI PEPPERS AND LEMONY PENGUINS CRAWL INTO YOUR BARNACLE-EATING MONKEY CLAMMING NOSE AND RIP OUT YOUR NOSTRIL LININGS WITH THEIR BARBED WIRE MUCUS AND ANGRY BLACK TWO YEAR OLDS SLICE UP YOUR ERECT PENIS HEAD WITH CRAFT CLAMMING PAPER. DIE ALREADY.

Thank you, you bunch of limpets.

Don't you toy with me, you saucy minx!

There are a lot of things I could blog about today. I could blog about my return to school. I could blog about the amazing influx of new and exciting technology that has entered my house (not only digital tv, but also a microwave and, get this, A TOASTER!!!!!111!11!!!1! omg!!!!1112!). I could even blog about Resident Evil 4... again. I've started playing through it on professional mode, and it's like, fifteen thousand times harder. You shoot the villagers, and THEY DON'T DIE. So I got repeatedly raped on the first village section. I was pitchforked/chainsawed/shaken about TO DEATH by the villagers roughly eighty times. Cunts. But I'm not going to blog about Resi 4, no matter how tempting that may be.
I'm not even going to resurrect Sir Me and tell you about the hiroshima of a french oral I did yesterday. Or the cakewalk of a french listening I did today. Because you don't care.

Even blogging about birdflu crossed my mind, but I think I'll hold off on the birdflu until a few more hilarious minorities have died. Perhaps some bulgarians. Now that's vintage comedy.

No, today, I shall blog about................ MY ACTION FIGURE COLLECTION!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes. Seeing as I have a fuckload of revision to do, I decided that the best possible use for my time would be to get all of the old action figures out of my toy-box, re-unite them with their accessories, reattach their limbs, and then arrange them on my desk. When I was finished, I had a fiendish leigon far superior to anything that the mighty Caesar could ever think of dreaming up.

I took a photo.


Wow, that's overlappy.
(Please not: this is not my exhaustive toy collection. I have a pile of mutilated Action Men downstairs, along with [I am SURE] a load more Aliens and even some Predators. Predators are so shit. I hate them almost as much as I hate Robin. Also note: this large photo was made using photostich, and so for some reason I appear to have two identical Spidermans at the back of the picture. I do not have two identical Spidermans. This is a fallacy.)

Wow, thats a lot of toys. 34 ish, to be precise.

• Two "Aliens" toys. From the motion picture "Aliens" starring Sigourney Weaver and some other people. I got these toys a good, ooh, nine years before seeing the film, or, in fact, even knowing that such a film existed.


• Twenty three "Batman" toys (consisting of fourteen Batmans, seven villains, one giant disenbodied Batman head, and one Robin. And a hat. See if you can find the hat in the picture. It's like "Where's Wally", but not homosexual.)


• Three "Captain Scarlet" toys, two of which give me nightmares.


• Four retarded looking Spidermans. For some reason, Spiderman always looks retarded in toy form. Its something about the way that he's always too tall for his width, and thus constantly falls over, legs splayed out everywhere, like a gang-raped ballet dancer.


• One I-have-no-clue-in-hell-what-the-fuck-this-is toy.


• A kind of homosexual Lord of the Rings model, complete with a kind of homosexual beard and some kind of homosexual clothes. I lost his kind of homosexual sword under my kind of heterosexual bed.

I know that I've actually just namechecked 33 toys. And that number changes depending on whether or not you consider a hat to count as a seperate action figure. But you have to admit, that's a pretty impressive collection for JUST ONE BOX IN MY ROOM (I have another pile of boxes downstairs). This set also includes action figure versions of Jim Carey, Tommy Lee Jones, Arnold Schwartzanegro, Michael Biehn, Al Matthews, Micheal Keaton, Val Kilmer, Christian Bale (not George Clooney though, thank God) David Wenham AND Toby Macguire. That's a whole lotta celebrity.

By the way, please don't think that I'm some sort of insanely loserish fanboy, slavishly collecting action figures and obsessively keeping them in mint condition in their boxes in my cupboard so I can get up in the middle of the night and visit them, just to smell the sweet, sweet fragrance of the blister packs before putting on the extended Lord of the Rings soundtrack (remixed by Ficsherspooner) and dancing about in the pale moonlight with Boba Fett t-shirt and my inflatable model of Leia in her Jabba's palace outfit, reeking of three-day -old sweat and the Cheesy Puff crumbs that nestle greasily in my thin babyfluff wannabe biker beard on my pimply rash-covered chin, cackling in the knowledge that these things are MINE and nobody else's, my own, my preciiiiiiious... Because that's not me at all, baby. I have PLAYED with all these toys (bar one... can you guess which?) extensively. At one point or another, most of them have been buried up to their necks in my sandpit, being swallowed by quicksand, before being saved by whichever of the other action figures is my current favourite (nb: this was usually the blue Batman on the far right... legend). Many of the really good ones are now falling to bits. If you look carefully at the above picture, you'll already see that one of the Spidermans have given up the brave fight and has collapsed in a retarded pile, probably wondering where his arm is. I do not know where his arm is. I've probably injested it. I chewed a lot of my toys. I was like a dog in that respect.

But that picture is kind of small, isn't it? You can't really see some of the awesome highlights of my childhood toys. And seriously, some of my toys are classics. Totally classic. Of course, some of them are total fucking pieces of shit which I wish I'd never been given. But anyway, here are some of the really notable toys in my collection:

Web-Stunt Spiderman


I got this lame piece of shit for Christmas last year. It came with the street scene and lamp-posts. As far as I can tell, the idea was that you punch down on the lever between the lamp-posts, then Spiderman is thrown between the two posts, at which point the string causes him to do all kinds of kerazy and exciting stunts. This does not happen. Instead, Spiderman falls over slowly. Occasionally, he's thrown forward, then gets choked on the strings and crashes unspectacularily into the lamp-posts. If you're really lucky, he'll just fly forward and fall on the floor. Whatever happens, this is the second shittiest toy I have in my box o'toys. It totally ruined last Christmas for me. Thanks a lot, Mum.

Terminator


Did you know that they made Terminator toys? Apparently they do. And the likeness with Arnold is spectacular (sadly, this isn't my only Arnold toy. I'm pretty sure I have a Last Action Hero figure somewhere).
This is one of my favourite toys ever, just because it's so damn violent. Arnie is covered in scars and bullet wounds, and in several places HIS FLESH IS RIPPED AWAY TO REVEAL HIS ROBOTIC ENDOSKELETON. Actually, if you look kind of closely, it seems that the Terminator was actually made of bronze. None of that strengthened silver steel shit. Also, amusingly, the base colour of this toy was a flesh tone, and all the black plastic on this toy's arse has worn off, so it LOOKS LIKE HE HAS A BARE BUM. Hey, made me laugh when I was ten. And was there ever a scene in the movies when Arnie was dressed in tight fitting shiny black trousers, a silver belt and a wifebeater? I don't remember him having the numbers 9330 printed on his arm, either. Doesn't matter. Awesome toy.

Catwoman (and hat)


I'm pretty sure that this is the most erotic toy ever made. Getting this toy literally fast forwarded me into puberty. Seriously, I reckon the boobs on this toy constitute an actual health risk. You could put your eyes out on them. However, I guess that some of Catwoman's sexy allure is cancelled out by the fact that she can no longer stand up straight. However I position her legs, she just falls over like a quadrapalegic on a tighrope. She's basically a fit cripple. Or she could be lying suggestively on the ground, beckoning me with her whip. Hmm.
Also pictured: The Joker's hat. I figured that this didn't really deserve its own picture, no matter how cool a fedora it is. NB: this hat is from an ORIGINAL JOKER MODEL from the 1988 film. Not some shitty new-fangled Joker model, this is the REAL MOFOING DEAL, HOMIES. Its probably worth more than your teeth. And it's MINE. ALL MINE.

I lost the actual Joker model in Bushy Park when I was four. Maybe it's still there.

The Scarlet Twins


These two are just creepy. Eugh, they give me the willies. The lifeless blue eyes. The identical poses. They have the dead, emotionless glare of the eternally damned. I bet they're just biding their time until they can strike down and wreak havoc on those who attempt to oppose them. Unfortunately, neither of them will be using their right arms to do this, as there appears to be some sort of structural weakness in the design of these toys which means that they're only allowed to use their left arms to wield their demonic demon-twin powers.

Robin


Seriously, just look at this cunt. Look at his twattish hair and his stupid little half grin and his long arm and his dipshit belt. I hate this toy with a passion. I can't remember ever playing with it (except, apparently, to chew one point of his no-doubt horrible tasting ninja-star). I mean, I haven't even made a makeshift parachute and thrown him off the roof, which I did with that ginger Aliens toy that I hated with an almost equal fervour. Is there anybody out there who likes Robin? He just seems to be the crap foil to Batman. I hope that all the other toys in the toybox hate Robin. I hope they piss in his breakfast milk and throw excrement at him when he goes to school, and then when he comes home again they've broken into his house and kicked his cat to death and set fire to his goldfish and graffitied "ROBIN SUX" all over his late mother's wedding dress. This is my least favourite toy of all time.
Cunt.

Mr Gay


I have no idea. I really don't. Mr Gay (I gave him this name!) just appeared in my action figure collection one day. I don't know when. I don't know how he got there. I just... don't... know.
Is there anybody out there who recognises Mr Gay? Perhaps he was on a TV show at some point? Like Mr Gay UK or World's Manliest Moustaches or What not to wear if you're a homosexual rebel leader about to attack the evil emperor Zorg's HQ? Who knows? Not me.
But you have to admit, he is a saucy fellow. I bet that MR GAY bites his thumb at passing motorists and does little dances on street corners whenever the mood takes him. I love this toy with all my heart. I love his little moustache and the floppiness of his arms and the fact that if you drop him on the floor, however he lands, it looks like a homosexual mating pose. I love his little bra-top thing. That's pretty gay, but I do love him.
But let's be serious here (how many times have I said the word 'seriously' in this post?) If there was a celebrity of my toy-box, it's Mr Gay. He follows me all over the world and I take photos of him next to famous landmarks. In fact, he may soon become a new Chainsawzombie.blogspot.com cliche. Watch out, Blogdog.

OMG!!!

OMG!!!! CAR ACCIDENT!!!!1!!!!11!!! :D

And the driving lesson was going so well, too. I'd sorted out downshifting gears (just take your DAMN FOOT OFF THE ACCELERATOR BEFORE YOU SLIDE OFF THE CLUTCH, THOMAS), roundabouts (mirror, signal down, brake a bit, downshift gear, look, judge, follow the kerb, check mirror, look into the road, steer, upshift gear), and even pedestrian crossings (don't run over the damn walkies). I thought that I was doing pretty well.

"How do you think you're doing this lesson?" asks my instructor.
"I think that I'm doing pretty well today," I say.
"Yes, I think that you're doing pretty well," she replies in a breathless flight of imagination that would compell every novellist of today to just give up their craft and become burger-flippers, safe in the knowledge that they can never compare to my driving instructor on the imagination front. No, seriously, nice comment there love, I liked the way that you just took what I said, changed one pronoun and added the words "Yes, I think..." to make it TOTALLY your own creation. No, seriously, bravo, teacher. I'm dedicating my Oscar to you. You're a fecken inspiration to all of us.

So then I'm driving happily down the road, carefully avoiding the pedestrian ("She's going to get herself killed, crossing in front of the road of you like that," says the instructor helpfully and encouragingly). I then see that there are some cars on my side of the road, so I carefully check top mirror, right side mirror, then take down the speed a little, as I'm supposed to do, and I carefully pull out exactly the width of a car door away so that I don't hit the parked cars (because GOD, we don't want that, do we?). We pootle along. I then see that the long line of cars is ending, so I should carefully maneuver back onto my side of the road. I check top mirror then left side mirror, as all good car-conducting gremlins are taught by the high-viziar of driving, then I carefully steer back. Unfortunately, I do this just a little too early, and I manage to crash noisily into the side of the final car on the row.

I don't know if there were any spectators nearby to view the terrible scene, but if there were, they would have beheld a sight that looked something like THIS:



But don't worry, people, I'm not hurt. Neither was my instructor. Thank GOD, we were wearing seatbelts. And helmets. Still, we both fell into a deep paroxym of shock; my knees turned to jelly, and I'm pretty sure that her shins morphed into trifle. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. Actually, I lie. Most of it (ie: the crash) happened in what seemed to be ultra-fast motion. The things that happened in slow motion were:

1: My instructor's realisation that I was about to total her car,
2: My instructor's movements to grab the wheel and to stop me from wiping out. She was probably distracted. I bet she was too busy thinking up another variation on her hugely imaginative take on "I think you're doing pretty well today" (based on my earlier, original "I think I'm doing pretty well today" comment ).

You know all the crashes you see on TV and in movies? It's like a million times worse in real life. I mean, who would have thought that two wing mirrors colliding could have been so BRUTAL? I'm just relieved that nobody important got hurt. When I think about what could have happened if, say, a toddler's head had been between the two wing mirrors and then instead of colliding together, the wing mirrors had just popped that toddler's head like a ripe pomegranete, and toddler brains and seeds and delicious juice had spashed over the floor like so much sticky swamp-mush... well, it makes me shiver. Shiver like a welshman.

Following our cataclysmic crash, I managed to brilliantly pilot the car to the side of the road (check mirrors, signal, cover the brake, cover the clutch, steer in, steer out, straighten wheels, clutch down, brake). How the car got all that way following the fender-bender, I'll never know. I guess the ghost of Thord, Patron Hammer-God of Cars and Car Engines was riding with us in that yellow MG that hour. When we were parked, the teacher rolled down the window and twisted our wing mirror back into place. Magically, it seemed that the car was unharmed, almost as if it was DESIGNED to bend back in the case of a crash such as ours.

"Well, you hit that parked car," said the teacher, obviously in the midst of reasearching her phd on Saying the Obvious at Annoying Times, but we're not damaged. I don't know if he is. What should we do now?"
"Well," I said, wiping the burnt-rubber from my handbrake turn from my eyes, "I guess we should go back and, you know, write a note and leave it on his windscreen or something?"
"Yeah," she said. "But lets just keep driving."
So I did, safe in the knowledge that I was totally not to blame for the collision. For the following reasons:

1: I'm a learner driver, and can thus do whatever the hell I want. I can ever scootle down the middle of a busy road in first gear at a leisurely 7mph, and that business suit wearing twat in the silver BMW behind me can't do shit to stop me. This also means that I can stall whenever I want and hold everybody up. As that wise philosopher Britney Spears once catawauled, "It's my perogative."
2: My driving instructor told me that it was the car owner's fault. For parking there. Apparently the road was too narrow. Hey, I'm not complaining.
3: The car I crashed into was white. Who gives a shit about a feken white car? I probably raised its overall value by scraping yellow paint onto it.

Sadly, that wasn't the first car that I've gone into while piloting a moving vehicle. The other summer I managed to cycle into the back of a parked Renault Laguna. On my BIKE. Pretty slick, eh? I managed to break the back tail-light with my head, and possibly dent the bodywork with my ribs. Actually, I probably caused more damage when I hit a laguna with my own body, than when I hit a white shitsmobile with a natty yellow MG. I must be like, a superhero, forged of bronze. Luckily, I still had enough wits to get back on the bike and cycle off as far as my little legs could carry me. When I told my parents about my car/head altercation, I got the following exchange:

"Well, did anybody see you?"
"Uh, don't think so."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, best just leave it then. Insurance'll cover it, and anyway, they'd probably try and scam us by making the damage worse."

So now you know why my moral compass is in the pitiful state it is.

This is a boatie post for local boaties! There's nothing for YOU here!

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I'm a boatie. Unlike a lot of boaties, who try and hide their boatie nature by doing rugby and weight-lifting and wearing animal-safe makeup, I'm proud of this boatie fact. I enjoy wasting weeks of my life sitting in boats, thrusting, bending over, and sweating on a nice hard bit of wood. I think it's fun, in a masochistic gimpy painful way. Actually, no I don't. But I guess that it's good for my health, perhaps. And anyway, all chicks dig the rowers. Not only are we covered in wave upon wave of blisteringly sexy muscles, but... uh. Did I mention that we're covered in blisteringly sexy muscles? My legs are bigger than a short Chinaman. And we get to wear lycra. In my case, yellow lycra. Mmm, fit. Do you know, when I've got the lycra up and the leggings on and the muscles bulging, I look like Captain Falcon from Smash Bros: Melee?


I actually do look like this.

Fun fact: I've recently discovered the joy that is black lycra leggings and I now cannot be found wearing anything else. But that's not the point. I just wanted to say that, yes, I am a boatie. In fact, if I remember correctly, when this blog was first launched it was known as "True Confessions of a Boatie". There weren't any true confessions (plenty of fake ones), but plenty of boatie-ism. Because I was a boatie. And thus that means that everything I wrote was a boatie-ism. Simple mathematics.

You may have noticed that I've become somewhat disillusioned with the whole rowing phenomenon recently. This was presumably after I realised that, after three solid years of rowing, I hadn't won anything (except a mini Christmas Pudding and a "Well done for being a finallist" medal from a race in which we were straight finallists). That kind of prolonged level of failure starts to grate, like an endless cheesegrater that's being slowly drawn across your skin. There's no pressure on that cheesegrater, but after a couple of hours, that skin's gonna start to grate off on top of my pasta of PAIN. This lack of success eventually led to a deep-seated spiritual depression and deep-seated belief that getting hit by a car would be preferable to continuing rowing training.* I was even considering (whisper this) quitting rowing. But now, I'm so glad I didn't, for three simple reasons:

1: Lycra leggings. These things are literally the best legwear EVER.
2: We no longer have to do a 1.6 mile long run before every training session. Instead, they've implemented some sort of weird warm up exercise circle that has us dancing around the car park, jumping in the air and clapping our hands like a bunch of deranged fools, before hopping about, jigging, and pretending to chop wood. Seriously. Still, it's better than the run.
3: I AM IN THE SECOND EIGHT!** For those who don't understand, this is extremely good news. Like, the best news ever for me. Well, the best boatie-related news ever. The best news ever for me would probably have the headline Extremely Attractive Blogger wins Pulitzer Prize for Chainsawzombie.Blogspot.Com Website, Gets Paid Lots of Money, Runs Away with Extremely Attractive (But Mute) Woman. But the Second Eight is a pretty damn good achievement, and for one simple reason: When you are in the Second Eight, you tend to win things. Well, usually. For some reasons, boats that I am in tend to not win things. I've never been in a winning boat for anything... just unlucky I guess, to continually not be put in the boat that wins. But to understand how amazing this development is for me, you need to understand the entire hierachy of boats in the boat club. They run like so: The Four, The Fourth Eight, The Third Eight, The Second Eight, The First Eight.

The Four: This is the boat for the left-overs, the dregs, the concentration camp survivors. Rowers in this boat are generally considered to be the lowest of the low (not by me though, I have an open mind and I once saw Ghandi. The film, not the man). The rowers that have had debilitating injuries, are kind of fat, are missing limbs due to landmines or laprosy (like leprosy, but with extra laps), are blind, or have no legs, these are the ones that get put in the four. The four is the most fucked-with boat in the entire boathouse. Due to illnesses amongst the rest of the boaties, they usually have about one outing a year. They spend the rest of the time filling in for the other boats, going in singles, or digging up and re-ploughing the car park. Members of the four, considered subhuman by many of the boat club, are often sold into slavery for malt-loaf money, or are forced to fight to the death in a series of deadly arenas known only as "The Four Gauntlets" . To be honest, the Four is only used as a threat in our boat club - "TURN UP TO TRAINING TOMORROW, OR SO HELP ME GOD, I'LL PUT YOU IN THE FOUR!". It's also used as a fear-incentive for people who are in...
The Fourth Eight: There isn't a Fourth Eight this year. This boat only exists when there are just too many people to have only three eights and a four. The Fourth Eight isn't allowed an actual boat to row in (it's considered a wasted resource on them) and they're usually just told to sit in a row on the floor and just MIME rowing. Quietly. On the other hand, the Fourth Eight has more priveleges than the Four. They're allowed to go to the toilet INSIDE the boat-club (as opposed to just being told to soil themselves), and sometimes a kindly member of the Third Eight will allow a Fourth-Eighter to carry his bag up to the changing room for him.
The Fourth Eight is possibly the most depressing boat to be in, as there's still that glimmer of hope of getting into the Third Eight. This never happens, and the continual crushing of hope can really take it out of you. Also, did I mention that the Four, the Fourth Eight, and the Third Eight are all trained by the same coach, who really only cares about the Third Eight? In conclusion, the Fourth Eight is a depressing place to be in the middle of.
I was in the middle of the Fourth Eight last year. During that time, I tried to commit suicide fifteen times. Nobody noticed.
The Third Eight: This is the first approaching-respectable boat. If you manage to get into the Third Eight from the Fourth, you'll notice an immediate upsurge in your quality of life. For one thing, people call you by your name, instead of 'Fourth-eighter SCUM!" And you're no longer kept in a cage in the boat-club basement when you're not needed. Also, when you're in the Third Eight, you can band together with other Third Eighters and, if you're lucky, capture a member of the Fourth Eight while he's making a river crossing and feast on his soft succulent flesh.
I was in the Third Eight for a month this year. Its the first of the boats that the Head Coach (our lord and master) even mentions in his motivational speeches -

" Right, lads, I want us to get a really fast First, Second, and Third Eight this year! Oh yeah, and the Fourth Eight and the Four too. They can try their best. Bless them."
*Sees a Fourth-Eighter sniffing around for scraps*
"Are you in the Fourth Eight, son? Aww, have a sweetie. Woah! Don't touch him, lads, he might be contageous."

Members of the Third Eight are often good enough to row in the Second Eight, but get temporarily muscled out due to sheer numbers (cough). This leads to large amounts of repressed anger/cage fighting amongst the members of the Third Eight.
The Second Eight: Wayhey. This is where the - well I can't say respect, I guess I'll say 'recognition' - starts to come in. You know that old saying? "In dee boat cloob, first yew get the yaylow layycra, then yew get the Third Eight, then you get the weemen, then you get the Second Eight, then you get the power.***" Basically, when you're in the Second Eight, you get your own personal minibus. And a coach (coach as in 'man who orders us about', not coach as in 'thing that's like a bus but isn't'). And your own fancy rowing oars. And a little servant robot called RodneyGaleBot which you can use to crush your enemies. And smite the rest of the boat club. Also, when you're in the Second Eight, you're allowed to take the food/clothing/organs of anybody in the lower boats. You also get given a discipline cane which you can use to beat the younger boaties until they respect you. It's a good life, and a tough responsibility, but it's worth it overall.
The First Eight: We lower-rowers don't see much of First Eight. They live in their own private temple, constructed on top of the Boat Club. If we want to commune with them, perhaps to ask for their opinions on some personal matter, we must sacrifice twelve french lambs to their shrine, along with eight plump malt loaves. Then, and only then, will one of them perhaps command his personal slave to carry him down on his sedan chair. The First Eight don't have to walk anywhere. In fact, they don't even have to row anywhere. Their boat, which is made with military technology, travels at supersonic speeds at a flick of a switch. The First Eight can also order drugs, guns, money or women whenever they feel like it. It's the ultimate desire of every boatie to be a First Eighter one day.

The Boat Club: it's a harsh, harsh environment. Few Survive. So you can see how joyous I am to have finally risen to the level of "Second Eighter". It's an achievement. It really is.

Not a single word of this post was a lie. Or an exaggeration.

*The 'getting hit by a car' plan I had got worked out to fine details. Basically, I would be hit while crossing the road by some sort of fast moving ambulance-car made out of rubber. I would be knocked unconscious immediately, would not feel any pain whatsoever and would wake up in hospital a few hours later with no permanent injuries. I'd be the only one hurt by the collision, and I'd get to miss a month of school. However, it would be during the winter term, the time when school is boring and cold anyway, and I would do all my homework on computer and drink lots of coffee. My wounds would consist of a really cool (non uglifying) scar on my cheek that makes me look like a bit of an upstart urban-rebel from Chino and a broken bone, probably a leg. However, it would be a simple break that takes a few weeks to fix, and I'd be given some cool pogo-crutches after a few days. The entire school would be buzzing with the news of my exciting near-death encounter, everyone would send me cards and visit me and I'd be the most popular boy in school. Meanwhile, my parents would buy me lots of presents to fill up the monotony of being stuck in a bed, not knowing that being stuck in a bed is like my number one dream. I'd catch up with my reading and finally write the great British novel, before emerging from my period of convalescence more intelligent and better adjusted than I am at the moment. However, I would be unable to rejoin the Boat Club, as I would have 'missed too many weeks of training' and would instead take up a better sport like 'private study at home' and would go to lots of parties. I would then have quit rowing with absolutely no loss of face.
No, I don't see how getting hit by a car could POSSIBLY have any negative side effects.
**An 'eight' is a kind of boat. It contains 7 rowers.
***This was meant to be a Scarface style Cuban accent. I'm sorry.

New Year's Resolutions

1: I will write a list of my New Year's Resolutions.
2: I will not talk about fight club.
3: I will NOT talk about fight club.
4: I will get a new girlfriend. A new and shinier one, possibly equipped with special features (like rocket launchers or laser eye vision).
5: I'll go to the cinema more. No wait, I'll get a student card first, THEN I'll go to the cinema more, thus saving me TWO POUNDS FIFTY. And I'll watch art-house films and look really interlekchual.
4: I'll get into the Rowing Second Eight. Except, OH WAIT, I ALREADY DID. MWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA. And perhaps I'll win something this year. You never know, stranger things have happened.
6: I'll be nicer to... well, nobody. Fuck you all. Especially YOU.
7: I'll keep my points better ordered in the future.
8: I'll blog more. And in return, everyone else will comment loads and make me feel validated. Starting from... NOW.
9: I'll stop being such a pussy.
10: I'll get a job? Hahahaha. No. Work experience, maybe. Actually, nah. Notgonnahappen. I'll just sit in my comfy rut.
11: I'll go on some exciting adventures, possibly involving alcohol and those cool beige hats that jungle explorers used to wear. And machetes. So basically, what I'm imagining is a kind of cross between Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and that level from Timesplitters 2 with those rock men and the jungle tribes and that FUCKING MONKEY that threw explosive fruit at me and took off 50% of my health until I shot him with a fiery arrow.
12: My blog posts will be fully finished, well planned and brilliantly edited. I certainly won't just go onto random tangents and trail off into nothing this year. Because after all, that would be really du





ONLY JOKING, I wouldn't just finish a blog halfway through a senten