Validation

I recently received an email from an un-named person asking me to check out their blog and start 'following' it. I did have a read of a few posts and it is indeed quite amusing - I shall be adding it to my google reader - however I won't be 'following' it.

Because let's be honest, it's all a little bit bollocks isn't it, this following lark? It's a teeny small step away from seeing how many friends you can get on facebook ffs. I assume it came from a twitter universe, but that's something I wouldn't touch with a barge-pole - just another excuse for people to increase the mundanity of the galaxy whilst using the fewest number of actual words.

(At least I use proper words on this...)

Let alone followers, I found it hard enough to keep a blog-roll on my previous blog (you may notice that I don't keep one on this one). The politics of it got to me. If someone added you on their blog-roll then it would be rude not to add them to yours, right? Then you find yourself not reading a particular blog anymore, but if you remove them from your list then are you sparking some sort of confrontation? Will they take it personally? Would this be the start of some long-standing internet vendetta? Just in case you leave them all there, and you're suddenly left with a list of blogs you don't read that gets longer and longer. Like some sort of outcast list from hell.

Or maybe I just think about it too much.

I guess it comes down to why any of us blog in the first place. Do you blog for yourself, or do you blog to get hits or comments? Personally I write because I feel like it. If I get a comment then I get a little 'ooooh I got a comment' thrill that maybe someone either liked what I wrote or wanted to advertise soft porn in Mandarin. If I don't get any then as long as I liked what I wrote then that's cool. The moment the hits and the comments start to matter it's a short, slippery slope to targeting them and the inevitable descent into the wankfest that is the 'bloggies'.

I mean seriously, could a series of awards for blogs voted on by people who read blogs possibly be more pretentious? Well yes it could. It could be blogher - a series of conferences (conferences for christ's sake!) for women who blog. Mainly about babies, the funny things that happen with babies, waiting for a baby to be born and how sad it is to not have babies anymore. There'd never be a bloghim, because frankly what would be the fucking point? I probably have more in common with the last person I passed in the street than some random man who happens to write a blog.

I don't have the time or the inclination to write as frequently as I used to. The truth is that there are things in the real world that are more important to me now. I enjoy venting or trying to make people laugh when I get the chance to do so, and I don't think I've done that bad a job over the years. I'll never be as inventively profane as Veggie, nor as eloquently verbose as Mr London Street (though he seems to be quite depressed at the moment for some reason). Unless something drastic happens I'm unlikely to ever be a published author like Elle (though she changes blogs so often that may no longer be a valid link. She's also my closest blogger geographically speaking so we're practically family), or have such a consistently funny outlook on life like Pearl. I'll hopefully never be as paranoid as P, or indeed work in the same environment as Kevin (how he puts up with it I don't know). And I'll probably never be a bananas gorilla either.

I've written some good posts - my ever-so-slightly-made-up guide to speaking Bristolian has been credited with two new words in an online dictionary AND has been cited in a linguistics paper about the origins of the 'pirate accent' (leaving me with the wonderful thought that an aged Johnny Depp will be blurting out 'TUGBOAT BUSTERS!' in Pirates of the Caribbean 7) - and my brutally honest stylings have led me to Mrs RS (for we met via the comments forms on each other's blogs). Plus I must be doing something right because you're reading this, and your taste in reading is exemplary. By the way, that top really suits you. No, seriously, it matches your eyes. And have you lost weight recently? I think you have...


Anyway, you're probably expecting me to retire from this place about now after all that nonsense, but really I'm just reflecting on the news that blogging is losing the interest of teenagers everywhere. I know, shocking isn't it? I wasn't particularly bothered until I was informed that:

One student said teenagers had lost interest in blogging because they needed to type quickly and "people don't find reading that fun".

And if people don't want to read, then why do we all bother writing? Now excuse me, I'm off to stare at the TV for a few hours like a cretin. Apparently that's 'fun'.

Cooking advice...

Dear Cook-in-the-Cafe-at-work,

Things that leeks and potatoes are good in:

• soup
• stew
• the occasional pie

Things that leeks and potatoes are not good in:

• curry

Please bear this in mind the next time you make a Chicken Bhuna.

Yours in gastronomic anticipation,

Red Squirrel

Smile...

No matter what happens in my day, the best parts of it are always when people make me laugh. Maybe it's a product of growing up in England (after all, you have to have a wicked sense of humour to live here and remain vaguely sane) but genuine moments of mirth are to be treasured.

So hats of this week to a senior manager at Apple UK and a local landlord who have both amused me greatly.

The former strolled past a friend of mine last Friday about 3pm as he and a group of colleagues were idly discussing their plans for the weekend. The manager stopped, put his head around the cubicle wall and said, "Excuse me, do we pay you all a bit less on a Friday?"

Fantastic. I shall be using that one myself :)

As for my local landlord, well he's placed a sign in the window of his pub (at one end of a short strip of pubs, bars and restaurants) that reads:

'Last Pub for 22 yards'

:)

Breaking news from Apple...

They appear to have shrunk their board members for a start.

Midget Jobs struggled with his iPhone

What an utter waste of time, effort and money. I shudder to think of what they'll come up with next - the 42" version that sits on a stand in the corner of the room and is called the 'iView' perhaps?

Although I think the Daily Mash said it best.

IT DO TELLY!

I've been a bit lax at updating this recently, but I have a good excuse. Well actually I have four good excuses :-

1) Work. Lots of stuff going on that I can't talk about. Could be significant (you can take whatever implication you wish from that)
2) Tax return. I seriously dislike doing self-assessment every year. It's like doing a simple test with your gonads wired up to a car battery. It should be easy, but the thought of getting a wrong answer is enough to keep you on edge.
3) My girlfriend is moving in in just over two weeks (more on that in a later post)
4) It's cold, and therefore I'm mainly hibernating (as a good squirrel should)

All of the above has made my spare time as minimal as possible.

Talking of drinking (well, you were probably thinking of drinking), I may have made a slight miscalculation in my year of abstinence.

I forgot the World Cup.

I know! The world's biggest and most watched sports event and I totally forgot it. Of course, the last time I did a year off it was 2008 and although the European Championships were on England hadn't qualified - so it wasn't really missed. Plus drinking in the odd years means that I can drink during the Ashes tests.

It's a dilemma.

So I've come up with a solution that keeps my intake down by 50% but still allows me to enjoy those moments when having a few beers actually adds to the occasion - I'm going to do six months on and six months off. The clever part is that I'm going to do it from near the end of March (just in time for my birthday) until near the end of September, and then take winter off. A friend reckons I should extend the logic until I only drink in the first half of every hour, but come 9pm and I'd definitely forget (probably what day it is too).

So summer drinking it is, without destroying what's left of my liver :)

Touche

An email conversation with a colleague who was snowed in in his tiny village last week (apparently they used all the salt on their chips or something):-

Me: "Enjoying your day off?"

Colleague: "I'm looking after a two-year old and a sick wife, what do you think?"

Me: "Could you not get them to a play a first-to-a-hundred Hungry Hippo series?

Colleague: "I normally get a black-eye if I mention 'Hungry Hippo' anywhere near the wife."


Class :)

Allsorts...

I got back from NY in NY last weekend, but a combination of jetlag and a cold has kept me offline for a while.

(And buying Football Manager 2010 on a whim at the airport probably wasn't my brightest idea ever.)

Moving swiftly on to a week last Saturday, and I found myself on an extremely uncomfortable and turbulent flight across the atlantic. For once I wasn't sat next to a baby, a mother and badly behaved five year old, a fat man, a man who smells of chamomile, a fat woman or - best of all - someone talking continuously about the bible. In fact I was sat next to two pleasant young women flying to England to study for a while.

The elder one was studying at Oxford, had a boyfriend at Oxford, thought everything was great at Oxford etc. One of those otherwise nice people who proudly wears the 'obvious superiority' of their chosen University in a way reminiscent of He-Man brandishing a sword and exclaiming "By the power of Grayskull!!!"

The younger one was bafflingly flying to London to study at.........an American college. For four months. I think that's probably the definition of dipping your toe into the murky waters of foreign lands.

As it was the younger one's first trip outside of the Americas, the elder one thought it would be worthwhile filling her in with a few tips and advice. At this point I was stoically reading my book whilst idly listening in (we didn't converse until midway through the flight when they were both so terrified by our impending fiery death that they started bombarding me with questions to distract themselves from why the plane was moving vertically more than it was moving horizontally).

Some of her advice was useless but pointless, to wit 'how to pronounce Warwick' or 'how to pronounce Nottingham'. Some of it was quite pertinent - one should always know what side of the road to travel on, or to add milk to your tea - and some of it was hilarious:

Elder one: "The hardest problem is the accent."

Younger one: "Oh, I just lurve the accent on men."

Elder one: "That's the problem. You fall for them because of the accent, but after three or four months you'll see that English men are just as much bastards as American men."

I failed to suppress a snort at this point. Three of four months?

Three or four MONTHS?!?

THREE or four months?!?!?

Three or FOUR months?!?!?!?

That's just wrong no matter how you write it. No wonder American students are seen as easy prey when they come over here. An acquaintance I was at university with used to feast* almost exclusively on them to the extent that when he graduated we made him a mock US tour t-shirt, complete with locations and dates. In a mere three years he'd touched on 90% of the states at least once, and he'd touched on Texas more times than was hygienic. I do believe his greatest regret was not completing the set. (Though he did try and claim that one had a Hawaiian grandmother and that should count on the basis that eligibility to play football for a country goes back to your grandparents, but we were having none of it.)

Three of four months though?! It shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to see that English men are, well, men. An ability to hold a door open to let a woman through doesn't equate to royalty.

In the end however, she did dispense possibly the best advice ever:

"Over there, it's not Math it's Maths. They say it's short for Mathematics. Never say Math. You will never recover if you do."

Amen, sister.




As many of you are aware I'm rather anti-religious. Faith I'm fairly relaxed about, we all believe in whatever we believe in - but organised religion has killed more people than the Flu, whilst being ever so more unpleasant. So it was interest today when I read the following statistics:

Percentage of Americans who attend church every week: 40%
Percentage of Britons who attend church at least once a month: 15%

Britain 1 USA 0.





And while we're on the subject of the USA (these links are great, I should do this for a living), I do so like this Brooklyn street name:



There is a New Utrecht and there is a New New Utrecht (seriously), but I wasn't able to get a picture.

This was also my favourite advertisement:


Join the millions who have discovered the 'joy of saving'? Sign me up, my good woman! It kind of reminds me of this sketch :)




And finally, if you haven't already seen it, here's a video showing exactly why you should only drive on black ice if you're a complete idiot...






*His words!

Aaaaaaaaand back...

Good evening, my internet chums. How are you all today?

I'm amazingly jet-lagged and have survived going straight back to work by drinking lots of tea and diet coke. Consequently I'm buzzing and nodding off at the same time.

I've just about caught up with all your blogging. My apologies for lack of comments, but it's hard enough just fitting in enough time to read it all! I'll be back to my usual sporadic service from now on.

Anyway;

Things I love about the USA

IHOP
Tempura Cheesecake


Things that suck about the USA

The only IHOP within a reasonable train journey being so busy with scummy people that I couldn't even get a breakfast on my final day.
Feral cats. The ones in Brooklyn breed so prodigiously that we saw a couple of 8-9 week old kittens bouncing down the pavement between Christmas and New Year. It made cooking dinner that night quite hard knowing that they were probably freezing to death outside (it was -14C at the time).



I did promise before Christmas that I'd explain what my homemade present for Mrs RS was (and no Cheeks, it wasn't a shoulder mounted sex toy). I mentioned in this post how we'd gone to a Long Island beach in the week after her attack. It was the first day when she hadn't woken up during the night every hour screaming, so we went to the beach (Mrs RS is a Californian girl so beaches are just natural for her). There had been a huge storm the previous two days - proper hurricane weather - and the beach was littered with stones washed up from way out to sea. These were a multitude of beautiful colours and minerals, and they were worn down into perfect ellipsoids (a mixture of oblate and prolate to be precise*). The sand was studded with thousands of them, and as we walked hand in hand along the edge of the surf we picked up and admired the more stunning ones.

I subtly pocketed the ones she liked as I had an idea - for Christmas I would make her a necklace of the better ones.

The moment I got home I set up a small workshop in the kitchen and, stones held firmly in a vice, proceeded to annoy the crap out of my neighbours by drilling all weekends and a touch each day after work (not too late though, never after 6pm). I soon realised I needed to buy a diamond-tipped drill bit, saw the price, and bought a few drill bits that were ground with diamonds. It's almost the same thing....

The plan was to drill through 13 of the stones and string them together as a necklace. A couple of the smaller ones shattered when I was marking the holes to drill so I dropped it to 11 stones. One month of drilling later and I settled on maybe 7. Another week and I was down to a maximum of 5. After over two months of drilling I'd yet to finish one, so I decided that I'd start off with the main stone I was drilling and add others in time - a sort of anniversary necklace, one stone per year.

And then after 30+ hours drilling the central stone of the original piece (the most beautiful half white/half pinky-orange quartz), and with less than half a millimetre of the 16 millimetres to go, it broke. When I say broke, I obviously mean exploded. Thankfully I was wearing my glasses otherwise I might have lost an eye.

Arse biscuits.

Alfamale had a suggestion that evening over a pint, and the next lunchtime I headed back to the craft shop where I'd bought the clasps and cord. They were extremely helpful and selected a series of 'bell-caps' for me (no, me neither). Only one more weekend was needed to fit, glue, polish and string everything together just in time for my flight. Seeing as I'd never done anything like this before, I think it came out well - though frankly it was more about cementing the feeling we had (that everything would be okay so long as we were together) into something tangible.

After all that boring preamble, here it is:


Mrs RS likes it, and that's all that matters :)





*Made you look that up :-p

Holy fuck...

I found out this week that Mrs RS' nephew is called :-


Dante Elvis Armand Gudszinkskus


Surely that's some sort of child abuse?

Two peoples divided by a common language...

While there are many differences between English and 'American' English, I've been going out with Mrs RS long enough that we both converse in a hybrid of the two. I'll say sidewalk, social security and 'go for a smoke', and she'll say pavement, national insurance and 'go for a fag'.

Or we'll use a mixture, it's not exactly hard.

Or so I thought.

Mrs RS has a neighbour on the same floor as she is and about the same age - however this girl is as Brooklyn as they come, had a orthodox Jewish upbringing and is clearly bug-a-lugs mental. She also cannot understand English, despite not speaking any other language. I thought it was my accent, but it really isn't.

The first night I was here she knocked on the door to return something of Mrs RS' and as she left I said 'cheers!'

She stopped, came back to the door and said "what does 'cheers' mean?"

I was slightly taken aback, I mean I could've sworn that word was in the American English dictionary. In fact I could've sworn that the longest running TV programme ever (or something) was called.....um....'Cheers'.

Clearly I was mistaken.

The next night she again knocked on the door to drop off a box that the postman/mailman had delivered. Being pre-christmas I exclaimed "Great! We have a parcel."

She looked at me blankly. "A whut?"

"A parcel," I replied cautiously.

"Ya know," she informed me, "I jus' don' understand ya language."

That's me told.

It's the end of the year as we know it...

In two days it's another decade, and more importantly it's when I have another year off drinking.

So until now and then I intend to get wasted.

See you in the New Year peeps. Have a great one, and don't do anything I wouldn't do.

Like be sober.

Hic! :)

Concatenation...

Life is always a bit hectic around Christmas. There's always too much to do in not enough time. Therefore it's quite acceptable to take some short cuts here and there to save a bit of time.

Especially, I may add, if you've just been in a city-centre Target on the day before Christmas Eve. A deeply unsettling experience where you can only tell the zombies shopping from the zombies working there by the lack of zombie motivation in the Target staff. It's remarkably similar to certain scenes in Romero's original Dawn of the Dead - only with many times more less healthy looking, ruder zombies.

It is at this point, when you've fled capitalism hell and are both waiting for a subway train to take you home, that short cuts are not needed.

Specifically, when reminded that we have to head towards Coney Island and not Manhattan, don't concatenate the sentence:

"Don't worry dear, I'm not stupid."

to

"Don't worry stupid."

This is apparently 'not appreciated' and I think that the fact it took my brain two seconds to work out what my mouth had said was the only reason I'm not under a N train right now :)


Anyway, Happy Christmas to you all and may you each consume an entire turkey. Apart from those of you that are veggies, in which case I hope an aubergine suffices...

That's disturbing...

Following on from my recent Belle de Jour small-world experience, you can imagine my delight when I had another such episode on Sunday afternoon.

For who should be lurking at Heathrow Terminal 3 all afternoon whilst I waited for my delayed flight to take-off?

Stalker girl.

Airports are not very big places when you're trying to avoid someone. Thankfully a batch of the Barmy Army (England cricket fans) were gathering for a flight to South Africa for the test series, so I grabbed a pint and talked about Graham Onion's batting average with some seriously dedicated supporters everytime she looked like she might be approaching.


All of the above is my polite way of saying that I'm in New York again and will be here until mid-January. I'll try and keep up with all your blogs (59 posts in 2 days? You guys must be *bored*) but my commenting might be a bit out of date.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to figure out a way to cook a whole turkey in a frying pan...

Festive season advice...

While we're on the subject of yesterday's post, I found this to be quite pertinent:

A Christmas tip...

Should you happen to find yourself to be a small lady wearing a pink woolly hat, I would suggest that shouting across a busy metropolitan shopping centre - to a group of men getting a round in at a German market stall - that you require, and I quote :-

"HOT MAN JUICE!!"

is not the wisest thing you will ever do.



We got her a gluehwein anyway....

Bleurgh.

I've had flu for the last 5 days (not swine flu, I had that when it was less fashionable - this is normal flu which I'm packing in pre-Christmas to be a trendsetter) and I feel like shite, so this will be brief.

I'm off at the end of the week to NY for three weeks to see Mrs RS and celebrate Christmas. She absolutely loves it and I absolutely loathe it, so we've agreed some compromises in order that neither of us is infected with Bah Humbug.

One of our compromises is that I dislike getting presents, whereas Mrs RS rates receiving them somewhere between chocolate induced orgasms and a month old puppy - so we've settled on me supplying lots of presents for her. Lots of win.

Her main present is possibly the best present ever. If I told you what it was (which I can't because she reads this) then you would (if you knew what it was) agree it to be the sort of present that would truly show the depth of my affection (it's that good). Even better, it's being made by my fair hands. Fantastic - deeply meaningful, personal *and* self-made. Could I be a better boyfriend?

Don't answer that.

Anyway, I started this the moment I got back from my last trip and have purchased all the raw materials, power tools and equipment that I will require. I've spent just about every weekend on it, and have tried to squeeze in a short burst after work every night before it gets late enough for the polite neighbourly knock of doom. All in all, I've spent about 30 man hours making it.

Until last weekend, when a mere two hours from completion it broke.

When I say broke, I mean 'exploded into a thousand pieces', 'destroyed irrecoverably' and 'crushed beneath the cruel hammers of fate'. My deepest affection was basically shattered.

And no, it wasn't a shoulder-mounted firework launcher. Although one of those would be tres cool.

Thankfully, occasional commenter Alfaman stepped in with a suggestion and lo! Like a non-flaming, un-birdlike Phoenix - the present lives again! Enough was salvaged from the wreckage to construct something different but almost as good, and I shall feel less like I'm turning up with no presents at all. Mrs RS tells me that the visit is back on.

Ewww....

Ready to feel nauseated?

Yes? If not, feel free to click elsewhere right now.



Okay, whilst having a conversation last week with a colleague about diets (and - concerning mine - a conspicuous lack of vegetables therein), we touched on the subject of fast-food.

I confessed a mild craving for a Zinger Tower meal from KFC whenever I pass one, and he told me what his usual McDonalds order was.

Brace yourself...

2 Big Macs
1 Chicken Sandwich
3 Cheeseburgers
3 Large Fries

and if they have them:

1 Apple Pie for desert.

All eaten in one sitting. I think I'd have passed out from grease-sweats halfway through the second Big Mac myself...

Bill Nicholson I am not...

Sunday was round 5 in our inter-departmental football series, during which my expert management has guided our team from a 14-1 spanking to drawing 4-4 (even though we should've won).

I didn't actually play this time because I wasn't feeling well, but I turned up to hurl good-natured abuse at our team and control all the substitutions. In addition I was given a whistle that seemed to have come from a christmas cracker, the job of time-keeping and the task of 'non-moving official under a brolly'.

A position that I feel I'm well on the way to making my own.

Anyway, after 89 minutes of continuous rain (and the score delicately poised at 4-4), our star forward burst though their midfield and bore down on goal - only to be unsubtly hacked down by the opposition.

'Refeeeeeeeerrrreeeeeeeeee!!!!' I howled, appealing for the foul and waving my arms around on the touchline.

Someone standing behind me coughed politely and added, 'Um....you're the referee."

"Oh yeah."

*peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep*


Old habits die hard...

Moral pertubation...

Is it wrong to entirely reject a CV on the basis that they wrote 'companies intranet' five separate times on it?

Is it wrong to entirely reject a CV on the basis that they'll get bored and leave within a month?

Is it wrong to entirely reject a CV because they used the phrases 'excellent communication skills' and 'works well as part of a team' in the first three paragraphs?

Is it wrong to entirely reject a CV for a technical role because they cannot tell the difference between there/they're/their?


I think not.


I am Boss. Fear me.

Belle d'hier

I started blogging, um.....let's see.....blimey, over four years ago. I'd just started yet another contract in the frozen wastes of north-east England and was bored shitless living in a basic (if pretty) flat on the coast south of Middlesborough. As I was only going to be there for 6 months I had no internet, no phone, no satellite/cable telly, no central heating and a single 14" TV that the other occupant utilised for continual watching of Coronation Street.

So I did what any normal human would have done - I read an entire broadsheet newspaper every evening over a pint (or two) in the local pub, or I ate fish and chips in the local pub, or I did the pub quiz in....er....the local pub, or I even branched out and watched the televised football game every Monday in the not-at-all-friendly-and-not-very-local pub.

Basically, I was bored shitless.

Then I remembered what I used to do in my previous contract in some other grim and grey northern city. I used to read blogs at work after everyone had gone home and I was stuck in the office with nothing to do but incapable of leaving until I'd completed my hours (due to a rare personal trait of not waking up before noon every day). I say 'I read blogs' but really the truth is I read just the one website to begin with - Things my girlfriend and I have argued about - and a very funny read it was too.

Through TMGAIHAA I heard of an increasingly famous blog about a London call-girl (you should be able to see where I'm going with this) and started adding it to my evening list. That was the first time I heard about Belle de jour. I perused her blog for about a year as it was exceptionally well written - no post too long and every post was interesting (or tried to be). Her writing style took a subject that could easily become lurid or titillating and made it seem so ordinary that you looked straight past the job and concentrated on the person and the strains of keeping such a double life going at full steam, yet the person herself was glimpsed only fleetingly.

In fact, it was her writing that inspired me to start blogging myself (at the no longer required Reluctant Contractor) and I guess, seeing as you're reading this by choice, that some of the things I learnt from those early days have made me into someone who writes something of passing interest. Occasionally.

More importantly, without my blog I'd not have found other readers, met other bloggers in person, and snared Mrs RS (for we met via the medium of Blog). A few times over the last couple of years I've thought that it would be nice to thank Belle for her inspiration. Who knows, without taking this up as a hobby in 2005 I may have ended up as someone who drinks far too much and spends a large chunk of his life on the internet.

Oh...wait....

Anyway, the reason for this post is that (as you've almost certainly heard) Belle outed herself last week to prevent an ex-boyfriend doing so via the gutter press. You can imagine my surprise when I first read the online article:-

She lives in Bristol. Hey wow! I live in Bristol!

She works at the University. Hey wow! I walk past that building every day on my way to work!

I scroll down and see a picture.



For two years - whilst meandering to work having my morning musings, and probably when thinking of how nice it would be to express my gratitude to an anonymous blogger - I've regularly walked past her.

It's a truly fucking small world.