So, last night I had the privilage of seeing that most splendid of drum’n'bass acts, Pendulum, doing their thing in Brixton Academy. In the style of my summer holiday review, here’s some thoughts on the evening.

• My santa hat got more action with the ladies than me. And I don’t mean in a “that’s a sexy hat!” way, I mean as in a “being stuffed down a very ample cleavage” way.
• Sixteen thousand crushed plastic cups are very hard to dance on.
• Over one thousand people trying to start a mosh pit in an approximatly hundred square meter area are very hard to dance with.
• Give the man handing out free badges a fake email address, you cretin.
• Don’t believe the official timetable on the venue website. The headlining band will not finish just before the last train home, it will start at the same time as the last train home.
• Do not believe the 3am bus driver. You will not be dropped by a pub in the middle of town, you will be dropped by a random A-road in the middle of nowhere.
• OK, I can see you need a smoke, and don’t want to leave the front of the stage to go to the smoking area. So yeah, ducking down to have a smoke is a genius plan. But why aren’t you dying of dehydration as well? And how does that make a fag palletable at all?
• When buying your tickets on eBay, check they’re on the main stalls, and not in the balcony a hundred miles away from the action. That took a bit of work to sort out.
• Do not try starting a circle pit to Pendulum, for fucks sake. They’re a drum’n'bass act with metal influences, not a goddamn metal band. You want to pull that shit, find Shellshock, they’re a metal band with drum’n'bass influences, you can do that shit with them. Let me have some room to dance already.
• London prices are always London prices.

You know, I’ve been looking solidly for three years for one of these:

And the only sign of one I’ve seen since I found on in 2005… was when I was looking through the archives of my old LiveJournal, and found that picture… in the entry saying I couldn’t find one.

Brilliant use of my novel-writing time there, but I’m over 10,000 words, and I’m hoping to pump out more when I’m not working next week.

So yeah, I’m shutting Jelly Pufflemur down.

We have been at war on and off for umpteen million years, but only this morning, the despotic warlord JM Hoffman overstepped the mark by too much. Let me tell you what happened.

Out of sheer desperation, I arranged an interview for a Christmas job sorting post for the Royal Mail, a horrible job only made easier by a.) them seemingly employing anyone who can hold a pen b.) paying money. These two things meant I navigated their nonsensical application website, before being told I had an interview on Monday 14th October. Having arrranged it for 9am so I could get a decent shift, I went off to bed last night (Sunday night), alarm set nice and early, and fell asleep nice and late due to a bit of web design I’ve been working on recently.

Three hours sleep later, I haul my arse out of bed, negotiate a rushed breakfast, a crazed bus, and the unfortunate tummy that dislikes the previous two being combined. I get to the sorting office, get told to wait and someone will be right down… and no-one comes right down for half an hour.

You don’t need me to tell you what he told me when I showed him my confirmation email. It was Tuesday 14th October. So I’ve wasted a morning, and I’ve got to do it all again tomorrow.

This, of course, can only have been the work of that fiendish, dictionary-snorting megalomaniac JM Hoffman’s doing, so I have summoned my e-lawyer (Summon Parasite, casting level 15), to rid the earth of that travesty of a Tripod page. And if all else fails, I have a death lazer.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

So, I mentioned when I started again about my web designing tendencies, and naturally you’re not interested at all. If you were, I imagine you’d ask “So what’s come of that then?” Well, so far, not a lot. Lets make a list, and curse HTML for its stupidly formatted list tags.

• Nobody seems to want to hire me yet, since I’m currently a scrawny student doing not a lot. Dogg needs more portfolio. Which seems a little stupid, but its the world, no job no experience, no experience no job” thing. But this being the internet, any sod can put up a site. So I’m working on that now.
• But since my main client is my family, that’s a bit difficult. I’ll have to start sneaking links to my web design portfolio in relevant sounding text. Like that.
• But yeah, main bit of web design is still here, and on the site in the links. And that’s not making much money, since the upkeep of the other one is paid for by me not being chucked out on my arse.
• I’m about to start learning how to make things in Flash, though, so not only is that another cool thing for the CV, it also means I can make cool Flash things to put here! Pimptacular!
• I’m going to start making another family-business website in about a month, and webmastering for an old one sometime soon.
• Ironically, I made the first version of the second site I mentioned there, but they replaced it with a package of some sort. Still using a logo I made in fifteen minutes in Paint, mind.
• I’ve made them a newer one now though, and it looks so much nicer.
• More excitingly, I’ve been contracted to make a website for the last guy on Earth you’d expect, except for the fact that its actually bloody obvious. I’m really excited about this one, because its going to be an awesome website, and its more things to put on the CV.
• I hate Javascript.

That’ll do, I’m out.

Yesh, there’s no better way to milk humour out of absolutly nothing than going through your unusual search strings and finding the oddest ones! Then making a completly sucky caption. Credit, as ever, to Yahtzee, who didn’t do it first, but usually did it better.

rolling pin torture
Now, to my knowledge, a rolling pin is an ideal improvised weapon for beating the crap out of someone, due to it being a long hard piece of wood. Normally, you’d imagine an angry housewife battering her husband for some percieved slight, which goes with just about everything I know about women. As a torture device? Not quire so useful. Certainly, you could tie someone up and beat them, but surely you could just use a 2 by 4 for that? A metal rod? Unless its some sort of perverse sex thing (I suppose not that perverse, considering the shape of a rolling pin), I don’t think we need to know.

coconut crap
I know that there’s supposed to be something called a coconut crab, a huge and fearsome looking beast that seems to have crawled out of a first person shooter somewhere. But this is obviously something completly different. Evidently, someone needed to see what happens when a tropical nut tree has a massive shit. But having checked Wikipedia, it turns out coconuts don’t crap! It even seems that trees do not poop whatsoever! Someones a bit confused, methinks.

jackass crab claw
And on the other hand, I think someone was looking for Johnny Knoxville and his pincer hands.

my sexy girlfriend
Why do you need to Google for your sexy girlfriend in the first place? She should be in bed with you right now! Close your laptop and see to her! Unless you’re searching for someone elses sexy girlfriend, but I doubt they’re willing to share. Or you’re searching for my sexy girlfriend, in which case… erm… lets move on, before I get hit.

warhammer nobody to play with
How depressing. He’s spent hundreds of pounds buying all those models, painted them to a beautiful standard, given them splendid scenic bases, and because he’s been hidden in his room painting all that time, there’s no one to play. Never fear, introverted painter of the night! Go to a Games Workshop store on whatever night they have games where whiny twelve year olds aren’t demanding to use the Galloper Guns, take your army, and play someone! Or if you’re someones sexy girlfriend, come play with my little men… and we’ll wrap it up in a second.

converting sternguard with heavy flamers
Just clip off the hands of a Sternguard with a bolter, and pin a heavy flamer in place. I even found a donor model for the heavy flamer. Damn lazy honkeys.

…

Evidently, I have no idea. I hate driving lessons.

- No matter how hard you look for one, someone else always has a bigger sombrero.

- Just because the ant powder declares it will kill fish, birds, and your garden, does not mean it will actually kill ants, or even mildly intimidate them. You want the spray that looks like water for that.

- Walnuts go with anything. Walnuts go with everything. Walnuts are delicious. Eat walnuts.

- Nowhere will sell you the awesome tequilla flavoured beer they have everywhere else in Europe. Even though its the Costa Brava, and they’re throwing sombreros at you.

- (I wish I had a better site to link to back there.)

- Seven year old cousins who know next to no English are nonetheless perfect mimics, as long as they mimic stuff you don’t want repeated, such as screaming, or the word “foot”.

- Spanish drivers do not believe in “smooth gear changes”, “careful driving”, “not stopping in the middle of a goddamn roundabout”, or “safe overtaking”.

- Seriously, I saw a moped overtaking a car, which was itself overtaking another car at the time.

- People who write tourist guidebooks have magical running powers, as they can apparently get up and down a steep, hilly and abundantly tall mountain in 40 minutes, where us normal people are wheezing with our hour each way.

- If you are so drunk you cannot even walk straight, you can nonetheless use a diving board.

- Sangria is goddamn delicious.

- Always make sure the DJ at the campsite bar has more than one CD, or you will hear “YMCA” played at least four times a night.

- If your girlfriend accidently trips you over, and your face is pointing in the direction of another girls behind for about a second as a result, you are cheating on your girlfriend. You horrible, horrible person.

- Don’t just fill the barbeque with gas and stick a match in there, or you’ll lose your eyebrows.

- Take the ring off of the security wire before trying it for size, or it will be too big.

- Thanks to no knowledge of Spanish, and a opposing incomprehension of English, you will never know whether the tattoo artist actually met David Gorman, or simply saw the Googlewhack Adventure DVD as well.

- Put some god damn suncream on already, being sunburned is not fun damnit.

- The pool is always cold, its just how hot you are at the time that changes whether that’s a good thing or not.

- Kittens cannot sit on sombreros.

- You cannot take the stray kittens home.

- No.

- No you can’t.

The awesome thing about being British is that since we have such low expectations of our weather, if the sun can stay big and hot for 90% of a fortnight long holiday, then we can ignore everything else and say it was awesome.

By the by, I’m back. I’ll write more when I’m in a better position to do it.

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.

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.