Gingerbread houses have a fine pedigree in the world of internet comedy. From Laura Redclouds Gingerbread Barad Dur, to… erm…

Well, never mind then.

But neither lack of comedy value, it being almost exactly the middle of the year, therefore being thoroughly unseasonal, nor even the fact that no male over the age of 12 without his own kids should make a gingerbread house stopped me, when one day my girlfriend said “Why have you got a gingerbread house kit on your fridge?” After which she said “Lets make it!”

Fearing for my poor testicles, already trying to retreat down my trouser legs, and angling for something funny to write about later, I suggested a jellybaby Torture Garden, an idea which got half-heartedly pounced upon. Much as I’d like to talk you through how we made it, its a gingerbread house. Its not a complicated concept. Besides, Wordpress doesn’t seem to believe in letting you format your posts, for some ungodly reason. So lets let the captions have a go.

Nothing too exciting, just a brief overview of the house. Also, some teapots

A top-down view. The house is leaking icing sugar based blood, shock horror.

Is it a crucifix? No, its some sugar shaped like a mutated child. Only decapitated and stuck to a wall.

The... *sigh* front lawn. Also shown is what was supposed to be a pathway of severed heads, but just became what looks like us Brits on a Spanish beach in summer.

Two jelly babies sacrifing a third jelly baby on some dark altar made of dolly mix. I think we overdid the blood a bit.

Do you know how hard it is to represent a jelly baby being burned alive when you've only got dolly mix and smarties?

A lone jellyman being hung. Nothing too exciting, I'm afraid. Also, I spent years trying to put captions like these on my old sites pictures.

And from this fine afternoon, I learned an important thing: Wordpress sucks monkey balls. Here’s what happened with a rolling pin later.

I’ve been ruminating on this idea since I started collecting Ogres. The idea being that the Chaos Ogres in the Beastman army no longer look like the Ogres Kingdoms ogres. So I decided to make them meet somewhere in the middle. I’ve always liked Nurgle, the god of decay, so that’s where I went with that. Here’s the guys in the front rank.

This guy is the units Bellower, who’s supposed to be the guy who shouts the orders for the unit. Amusingly enough, his jaw is hanging off, his eyes are missing and bleeding eyesockets. See his tounge hanging out (done in Green Stuff). He’s got a little beard and mohawk done in static grass. Not too much else to say.

Marginally more complicated, this guy is the unit leader, and has a bit more work done on him. Most obviously, he has three heads (three for each orb in the Mark of Nurgle), neck holes filled out with Green Stuff and stuck on. He’s got a club from the Giant Spruce, simply because it was crying out to be used by someone. See also, skin diseases on his shoulders, done with Green Stuff, hot pins, and purple ink.

Finally, the guy carrying the units standard. The story behind the unit is that they found this standard, and it corrupted them. So therefore, the guy carrying the standard is basically dribbling with diseases. See the tentacle hand, crab claw, tentacle tounge, sculpted pustules, and anything else I missed. Also the sort of copper effect on the standard.

If I feel like it, I’ll put up the rank and file later.

I like to think I have a finger on the pulse of popular culture. This is, of course, utter bollocks. I can muster some trivia about metal bands, and the obligatory Pretentious Rant About How Film Adaptions Of Books Are Crap. So I wasn’t too fazed by some film called Napoleon Dynamite swanning by, dropping memes and hipster T-shirts in its wake. If the box tells the truth, I was busy being drunk at the time.

Nonetheless, the time always comes when you’ve got nothing else to watch, you’re not sinking to taking the shrink wrap off of a boxed set of Lost someone thought was worth the cost of the DVDs, and your only other option is a DVD box with a guy wearing an afro.

Opinions from people I know have ranged between “Its awesome”, “give it a few plays and it’ll be awesome”, and “its shit”. All these people have, however, agreed on one thing: nothing really happens in the film. Which is sort of right. It is a story, in that it has characters whom things happen to, but there is no plot. Any goals the characters have last more than 15 minutes in film time.

What it is, thinks this pretentious pundit, is a shallow look at the life of the socially maladjusted. Everybody knew a Napoleon at school, some weird looking, weird acting guy who didn’t get on with many, if any, people, and perhaps didn’t come from a particularly well-off background, so probably smelt of beans. We didn’t know them (well, I assume not, unless the good reader was that guy), because they didn’t tell us, so we didn’t know what got them ticking. And his family doesn’t escape this banner either, his 27 year old brother still living at home chasing a girl on the internet, his uncle trying to stay flush with a desperate variety of jobs. Had a different director gone with this film, it could have been an interesting, perhaps introspective look at the life of the underdog.

But as you can easily forget, this was an MTV film, which brought us such cinematic classics as “Jackass: The Movie”, where a gang of thick Americans do dangerous stuff, and Henry Rollins drives an off-road vehicle, “Jackass The Movie 2″, where a gang of thick Americans do more dangerous stuff, but Henry Rollins does not drive an off-road vehicle, and “Coach Carter”, where Samuel Jackson is a badass scarty black man. Again. Only he coaches a basketball team while doing it.

With this fine pedigree of work behind them, they had to push out the boat to make Napoleon Dynamite a stupid film. Hence a distinct lack of plot, as mentioned, but also a bunch of pointless things like the dance routine at the end, and the whole “Vote For Pedro” thing. Even though he did have an awesome wig.

So, to ruin what was going to be a good piece of writing by just not caring about it anymore, if you’ve survived this long without seeing Napoleon Dynamite, you won’t miss much by not watching it. Unless you’re a gigantic nerd living in Idaho, in which case you might be worried by the biographical nature of the film.

I guess I need to write some words here, so that people can read them and get the impression that I can actually write stuff, instead of just having a website full of me writing about how I don’t write anything. And in time honoured fashion, I had an awesome idea for something to write about, that went away as soon as my eye got caught by something pretty, like a concrete bridge, or the twenty pound note being dangled on a fishing hook by a man standing on the bridge. That’s my explanation for having a fishing hook through my tounge and I’m sticking with it.

So instead of that, which was all nonsense and fabrication anyway, I’m going to write about stuff that comes to mind, and see where I go with it. Problem is, I’m been reading too much Achewood recently, so its going to end up with their awesome syntax, and probably hella references to things people who have a life won’t understand.

So I’m doing that jogging thing, or at least running around in circles near my house occasionly, and I’ve come to the conclusion you can’t run for thirty minutes wearing hiking boots. Let me stop pretending I’m not blogging, or let me put a coherent sentence structure rogether, I guess I can only pull one of these off.

Perhaps making such thing as a Guinness ice lolly would be a fine waste of time some day. Ice lollys are good, and people like Guinness, so it could work. And was not at all inspired by seeing the big Guinness hat in my room.

OK, I’m going to give up before I write something truly mediocre. I’ll put some pictures up soon or something. Take care, y’all.

Hello, two men and a dog who read this on a regular basis! Every now and then, I like to imagine people listen to what I say, and my advice might benefit people. Thus far, this advice has resulted in three deaths, fifteen maimings, and a presidential coup in the Eastern Bloc. But I’ll get it right one day. And until then, we’ll go for something nice, like a quiet afternoon round of Halo with your dearly beloved.

• Always be courteuos, make sure she’s comfortable, gets the nice chair, the controller of her choice, etc.
• Give her first call on whether you play co-op or deathmatch.
• When she’s trying to find her bearings, and how the controls work, don’t just shoot her as she’s looking up and down. Remember how you were when you picked up a game for the first time? Exactly. Be nice.
• Don’t go strafing round her shooting her as she’s shooting you. That’s cheating! She wouldn’t do it to you!
• If you’re playing co-op, don’t accidently shoot her. You’re on the same team, you need to be working together to take out a greater enemy. Never mind the time she shot you “just because it was funny”, that was funny!
• If she’s reloading, don’t shoot her. She can’t fire while she’re reloading, so its not fair on her.
• if she’s finding a different weapon, don’t shoot her.
• If she’s shooting you, don’t shoot her.
• If you’re winning, don’t shoot her.
• If you’re losing, don’t shoot her.
• In fact, just go and have a cup of tea while she pops caps in your arse for fifteen minutes.
• If you break any of the above, curl up in the fetal position as the abuse reigns down on you.

Next week, join us for A Guide To Playing Monopoly With Your Girlfriend (a short summery: DO ANYTHING ELSE ON THE PLANET).

Sometimes I do wonder how I avoid being single. Magic and cuddles, I think.

Now, despite the fact that nobody who reads this will be anyone I actually know in real life, telling you about what I’ve been up to is a very pointless idea. Especially considering that anyone I know in real life who knows about this site will simply ask “so when are you doing that comic with the skulls again”, thus prompting me to write more bad jokes about webcomics and dead cats in MS Paint. But damnit, if I don’t enjoy blogging more than some kid on his LJ who just got dumped. Only I don’t write bad poetry about it. And I haven’t been dumped. And I’m not a giant emo faggot. So not that far from the course then.

Anyway, here’s to my life story, and unordered lists!

• Like I said, training to be a web designer, with a home learning course that suits my “do nothing all day, and worry I’m wasting my life at night” lifestyle. Its going quite well, I’m racing through it, and hopefully I’ll be ready to get an entry level web design job by the end of the summer. This is banjaxed somewhat by being with the slowest training company in christendom. AQ project I was supposed to be given two weeks ago has yet to even appear on their site, emails can be timed, not with a watch like you’d expect, but with a calendar. And the assessment I’ve just done for XML took ages to get back. And failed by two marks. And failed by two marks the other four times I sent it in, changing what I assumed were wrong answers, mainly because they hadn’t covered half the stuff in the assessment, and Google is wonderfully unhelpful. Grr.
• I think I’ve already ranted about temping agencies, but I’ll recap in short: they don’t call me enough, because I work too hard. Or more importantly, too fast. Which is a shame, because data entry and database admin are wonderfully piss easy jobs that everyone hates doing. And occasionly pay well.
• Therefore, I’m too skint to do prety much anything. So at 22, I’m still stuck at home. I’m none too happy about that. Sooner I move out, the better for everyone. I’m turning into the sort of basement dwelling vegetable not usually seen outside of 4chan.
• Ah, driving lessons. The lessons go fine, the two tests I’ve done… I failed one for being in one lane of a dual carriageway, I failed the other for being in the other lane. And now I’ve got to wait until September to take it again. Wonderful.
• Well, at least my love lifes going well. She’s coming down tomorrow to stay for the summer. I’d say more, but if she ever reads this, I want to keep a few surprises hidden.
• I’ve spent all this time painting Warhammer models, and I’ve nobody to play against, and nowhere to do it anyway. Might have to build a gaming board and hide it under my bed. And play… hmm… myself. In my room.

And that’s about it, I think. Join us again soon where I try to recapture the long lost sense of hilarity that once pervaded this webspace.