Eccentric?

Hi!
It's been almost a year since I've written a blog post but now it's summer, so once again the internet will be subjected to someone's bollocks opinions shoved down its massive throat. But that's enough about Jeremy Clarkson.

Okay, so it turns out that the previous bad joke doesn't work in every context, but that's enough about Jeremy Clarkson.

So recently, while I was staying with some friends in Dorset, someone mentioned a not-very-recent  pooh sticks weekend in the south of France. This was a weekend in which a large bunch of 'eccentric Englishmen' went to the south of France, drank champagne and dropped sticks off a bridge. I found the use of the word 'eccentric' interesting, as my idea of the word 'eccentric' is more that if someone were to have a brain scan and the results proved their brains to function totally normally, the doctor would be surprised.

Therefore, these people who hand around the South of France with twigs and expensive alcohol in custom made champagne flutes are not eccentric; they need a new word. With a new definition.

For these people are often perfectly sane, they are just something else: posh. So posh in fact, that they can do whatever they like. They don't need to show up for work in order to afford to pay their taxes. They can go abroad when they feel like it. They can drive at suicidal speeds because their cars can handle it, speaking of which typing of which, if my dad offers you a lift, reject it . It's safer for everyone that way.

As a result of this poshness comes a whole different mentality. A bored mentality. A mentality in which there are fewer worries, no financial aims, in which fun must be made and risks must be taken all the time.

There's a queue? Cut it. There's a  no entry sign? Didn't see it. Tickets ran out? Bollocks they ran out; find one. Cheers.

In other words, they don't care. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. They're just too posh to give a shit. Speaki  Damn! Typing of which, that's the phrase I've coined for them. Top Gas. Nothing to do with Jeremy Clarkson for once. It stands for TOo Posh to Give A Shit. Okay, so the acronym doesn't fit perfectly. And if I wanted it to catch on, I wouldn't have posted it here; I'd have told someone in person so that if someone else were eavesdropping that would be two people who knew about my new word.

Actually, typing (Yes! On the ball!) of the fact that you are one of the... one people who read this blog, have you considered telling all you friends about it? Not in a grotesque marketing way, but in a You scratch my back, I scratch your back kind of way. It comes in the form of a handy tip – next time you find yourself in an awkward silence as you and a stranger wait for the mutual friend to return from the toilet, why not fill the silence with the following words?

Hey! Have you heard of Gaby Made Me Do It? No of course you haven't, I'm its only reader! [Cue laughter.] Anyway, you should so check it out. It's totes amaze [cue reentry of mutual friend].

If mutual toilet friend is taking a particularly long time, you may have to try

So, what are your views on euthanasia?

But let's hope it never comes to that. 

Well that's about all I have to say until next time, whenever that is. Remember, this blog is never dormant, just having a lie in. So, if I don't post until after next February, Happy Chinese New Year. 

Nat

Nothing

Hello! [Pause for you to return the greeting in an attempt to make this blog mildly interactive] I have decided to call this blog post ‘Nothing’, because I really can’t think of a specific topic I’ll have to ramble on about for at least 200 words.

I could’ve called it ‘Everything’ because it will be about quite a lot of things, but on a scale of nothing to everything, this post is nothing + something so small, it would probably be rounded down to nothing. Which is nothing + nothing. Which equals nothing.

Anyway, holiday-spoiling maths lectures aside, I’d better start talking about nothing. I was actually going to do a post about my holiday in America, but there isn’t really anything to say about America. It’s just, well, America.

But I suppose I’d better write about America. I might as well. I’ll just do it quickly. [Please read quickly to enhance my quickness.] Right.

Milkshakes come with a massive bucket of extra milkshake in case you feel the need to bathe in it. This is good. Las Vegas is a money-stealing women-degrading shitsville. This is bad. Utah is really red. It couldn’t be redder if you jabbed yourself in the eye with lipstick. This is good or bad depending on whether or not you like the colour red. Apparently 911 and 9/11 are very different. Do not confuse them, eg. going to a restaurant and asking for a 9/11 roll. Will not do that again.

Also, the flight is quite long. Which made me realise that the praying-5-times-a-day bit of Islam must be quite hard. Particularly if there are people like me who stand behind you on the plane while you’re trying to pray because they think it’s the queue for the toilet, completely ignoring the Do not go through this curtain! People are trying to pray here! sign and don’t notice until you drop the floor and chant things. Really sorry about that.

‘But you’re just basically talking about America!’ I hear you cry, thanks to a burst of temporary schizophrenia (good thing I didn’t take any nurofen plus). Ah, well my friend (or my acquaintance who takes a suspicious interest in my opinions), shut up and let me discuss something else. With myself. (Don’t worry, I said it was temporary schizophrenia).

Recently I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy. It’s a great show, apart from its title. It’s supposed to be some sort of wordplay on the medical textbook Gray’s Anatomy, because the main character’s called Meredith Grey. However, puns are made by noticing that two words are similar, like ‘high’ and ‘pie’ (eg. Giving my friend a post-pie-baking ‘pie five’), not by randomly inventing a word similar to another word (eg. Imagine if I knew someone called Mr Haw. That would be Hawsome. HA. HA. HA.)

I have also recently been avoiding carbs. That means no bread. I had buttered bacon for breakfast. Okay, fine, that was a lie. Well, the avoiding carbs bit was a lie anyway…

Now I can stop saying carbs (damn). They’re called carbohydrates! They’re sciency! Stop making them sound bad! They’re not bad! They’re a normal food group!

In other news, I am trying to learn to cook. This is partly because I once tried to make porridge and got distracted. I forgot the oats.

On an even less interesting note, I bought some ice cream. I think I'm going to have some now.

On a note that is somehow even less interesting than the previous, I have now realised that blog posting is usually more successful if you know what you're going to write about before you start.

Finally, I am very sorry if you were hoping this was going to be a philosophical contemplation about what nothing is. So, as a consolation prize, I will sum up for you just what nothing really is in exactly 0 words.

Cycling

On a recent trip to Oxford, I did something I had not done in a very long time - I rode a BICYCLE. For those who have forgotten what this is, like myself a month ago, imagine this picture without the whole 'why the hell did I give my four year old son photoshop?' appearance.

So this trip to Oxford really reminded me how much fun cycling is, and it worried me, because my days of cycling as an active, excitable child (yes, active - shut up) are nearly over.

The problem is, after childhood, city cyclists get lumped into groups, each as irritating as the others. (Of course this doesn't apply to small towns and the countryside, because most people there are not as quick to judge. Although this does make Best Sheep competitions nearly impossible to adjudicate, meaning the winner must be decided with a gladiator fight in which a sword is blu-tacked to the face of each sheep and they are all dropped into a ditch containing one bottle of surgical spirit. The first sheep to decide he is above such games and leave is declared the winner.)

Oh yes, city cycling groups.

1. Most common in younger people, there's the 'Look, I'm so totally superior because this bike goes with my vintage satchel (and I don't care that it makes me lean to one side meaning I'm probably going to fall off). My bike so completes my outfit, doesn't it? Doesn't it? I know, it so does.'
2. Mainly found in women aged over 30, there's the 'Look, I'm so totally superior because I'm risking my life and tripling my journey time to save about 3 grams of iceberg from melting due to climate change. I'm such a hero, aren't I? Aren't I? I know, I so am.'
3. There are also the sweet yet annoyingly slow older women, the 'Look dear, I've got some apples in my basket. They're from the grocer's. Isn't that just charming? Isn't it? I know, it so is.'
4. Then there are those fitness types. They're not too bad - like gym-goers, but they've managed to make it to the outside world. Good for them.
5. Then of course, the businessmen. You know, the 'If I'm on a bike, everyone will think I left the porsche at home. No one will ever suspect it's just a BMW. Bwaha. Aha. Ha.'
6. Finally, there are the injured ones. You know, the 'Ugh, a car drove through a red light and now I only have one arm.' Strangely, these aren't usually seen on their bicycles.

So that's it. I'm moving to the countryside. And who knows, I could win best sheep.

Right, two posts in one week. If anyone is still complaining, I'm going to get a super injunction. Then no one will be allowed to even mention this blog again. Pah.

Thanks to Imogen for letting me stay with her in Oxford to research this article. Okay, so it wasn't for research. And I don't think this little blog post counts as an article. But you get the gist.

Picture: Google images. Not sure if I actually need to credit them but better safe than sued.

Revision

So I've recently been under a lot of pressure to make another post. As usual. I've been given a couple of suggestions which I have taken into account and will try when I have time, but for now, in an act of spite and anger, I will just write about revision because that's what I have been doing and will continue to do the whole of this week. No, I'm not even going to write about revision. I'm going to revise. Right here.

So I'm going to summarise everything I know about chairman Mao Zhedong, leader of communist China until 1976. And you don't have to read it if you don't want to, because not only is it entirely to benefit myself, I doubt any of it is true.

So. Mao was born in a small maonsion at the maoth of the river Xi. He love animaols from a young age and had a pet maose. When he grew up, he bought himself a maoterbike and drove to the maontains where he could drink maolibu and eat maoshrooms and maocaroons and maocaroni cheese and maozipan and toast with maomalade and watch Maocolm in the middle and read Much Ado about Maothing and Of Maoce and Men and play maonopoly and grow a maostache which he cleaned with maothwash. He was something of a trendsetter and often seen in his signature maotfit of a maonacle with a maockintosh and Doc Maotens. One of his favourite maomories was a trip to Paris to see the Eiffel Maower and the Maona Lisa. Other maomorable holidays included trips to Maoami, Maodrid and Maoscow (to visit Stalin, obviously). He eventually died of a heart maofunction.

In other words, revision isn't going well for me. Thanks for asking.

P.S. I'm not racist. My mum's from Maolaysia.

Saha made me do it

Hello, and welcome to this special edition of my blog, inspired by the harassment of someone called Saha.

I would like to start by apologising for not having posted in so long. I've just been really busy having a life of my own that doesn't revolve around writing a blog for an audience of about 10 people. But that can change.

Also, if you have any ideas, feedback or general complaints and insults about this blog, please leave a comment. And if you don't please leave a comment anyway, so it looks like I have friends. Now it's going to be really embarrassing if no one does. I bet no one does.

So recently, I've been making myself an identity crisis. I haven't had one before, and I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment, so I thought it might be a nice time to try. I've basically been questioning the number of opinions that are actually my own, not just enforced by other people.

The first thing to question was this.

After calculating the amount of time I spend each day worshipping and devoting myself to Gaby which turned out between 0 and 1 second/s, I came to the conclusion that this opinion may have in fact been bestowed on me by someone else. Maybe it wasn't even me who wrote that on my hand.

Then I pondered the reason why I liked David Cameron, even though I'm more left wing. I came to the conclusion that it was his insanely cool forehead. I have now decided to disown this opinion, as I refuse to have my political values totally influenced by a small stretch of skin. Okay, it's not small. It's massive.

After more consideration, I have decided that Ed Westwick is not attractive, merely a gorgeous jaw glued onto a lump of slightly-better-than-mediocre-ness, Matt Smith is a wonderful doctor, tomatoes are far too disgusting to be a real fruit, whatever people say, and Justin Bieber is definitely male. Regardless of whether his songs are good (please don't think I'm saying they are), he is quite obviously a boy. If you genuinely can't tell what his gender is, I suggest you keep away from tranny bars - you may end up passing out from the overwhelming confusion.

Another thing is this blog - if Gaby made me do it, then surely I didn't want to in the first place. And if I'm sticking to my own opinions, I should therefore not want this blog to exist. So I am going to delete it and never post again.

Actually, then I'd have typed this whole entry for nothing. So I guess I have to keep the blog.

Screw this blog. And screw you. Screw you all.

What I'm really wearing

Hello everyone, and welcome to my tenth blog post ever! Not that that has any significance whatsoever.

So, recently I've noticed a lot of other blogs have several posts entitled 'What I'm Wearing', with a photo of what they're wearing.

I do not like this.

The problem with this title is that it is untrue. In reality, it is highly unlikely that the blog's author is wearing a crazy 'statement' outfit and posing in an unnatural way as they type their blog. It is also highly unlikely that anyone cares what they are wearing. Maybe I'm odd in liking to be more comfortable than fashionable as I type, but better odd than itchy/chafey, I always say. Well, I don't actually always say that. That was actually the first time I'd ever said it and I didn't say it, I typed it. But still.

Anyway, I have decided to post my own 'What I'm wearing' but with my actual current outfit. The one I am wearing right now.

I have even done an ironic pout, but they've become so ridiculous it probably looks quite genuine.

Clearly ill-fitting jumper (XL men's), a market.

Ridiculous orange trousers, from a kung fu centre. I wore them for kung fu when I was eight. They used to be full-length.

Socks, from the King of Cool (A.K.A. my dad).

I hope I have now given everyone their weekly fashion fix. If that's what people like. I have no idea.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe these bloggers really do type their blog wearing an orange and lime green playsuit made of dodo skin while leaning against a moss-covered wall with an expression that makes them look like they've just been impaled with a cactus. But I really don't think they do.

Health!

In the past, a lot of people have told me that they like fruit more than sweets, chocolate, cake and whatever crap people like to eat.

Why?

WHY?

Health. Of course it's health. It's always health.

It bores me to tears, the way people pretend to enjoy fruit and salad more than cake, and go to the gym to be healthy. (Please note, it does not literally bore me to tears. No tears.) I like the occasional banana, but that doesn't mean I will only eat bananas and tomatoes for the rest of my life. This is partly because tomatoes are disgusting. Another nice idea is real sport. Because it's FUN. Not gyms. No one has fun at the gym. I have seen people on running machines before, and they never seem to look like they're having fun. They look more like they want to shoot themselves.

A few years ago, I heard about an experiment in which students are asked to remember a 7-digit number and recite it in their head, whilst walking down a corridor. They are then randomly offered some fruit and some cake. These people asked for cake, because they like cake and are too busy to be pretentious. Then people were sent down the corridor with no number in their heads. They asked for fruit. Bastards. So it clearly takes some effort to remember your false 'healthy' opinions.

So, play some sport! Enjoy it! And eat what you want! That is, unless you are as fat as your mum. She's so fat, elephants ride on her. Goodbye.

Picture: Google images. Not sure if I actually need to credit them but I don't want to get sued, so...