WayneSwirled

Grand Awakening

2005-01-27T11:08:00.000Z

*yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn, CRACK*

That was the sound of me waking up from from my annual hibernation. The cracking, in case you were wondering, was the sound of my clogged-up eyelids straining against the months of accumulated green*.

I wish I hadn't woken up, actually, as it's still quite cold outside.

This evening, I am off to play pool. Not English pool, mind, but American pool. American pool is very similar to English pool, but - unsurprisingly - scaled up. So, the tables, balls and pockets are all bigger. Sadly, the pints served are regulation size, and not scaled up appropriately to 741ml.

* "Green" is a word I have just made up for the residue that accumulates in your eyes whilst sleeping. I normally call this substance "sleep," but recently people have queried this as an entirely fabricated word. Does anyone else call it "sleep"? If not, I will feel quite disillusioned, much as Jimi Hendrix would have done, if someone had told him that he was the only person in the world who used the word "guitar," and that everyone else referred to it as a "String-son".

Links Awakening

2004-09-28T13:04:00.000Z

Whoop!

I got my first link today (at least, I think it's my first) from the very kind Mr. Lint of York, England.

Mr. Lint runs a well established Blog, and is respected in the online community. If Blogging was Drinking, then Lint would be the kind of guy who's always propping up the bar, slurring and talking to everyone at the bar. Hold on - he's that kind of guy in Drinking as well. I ought to choose better metaphors.

Those Elusive Spaces

2004-09-24T13:04:00.000Z

I'm new to this, and somewhat foolish.

But why do my spaces disappear? I put one, with military precision,after every comma; two after every full stop.

But, as soon as I click Publish Post, they disappear.

Can you help? Have you seen my spaces?

The Great Mystery of Wasps

2004-09-24T13:00:00.000Z

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the wasp in the night-time."
"The wasp did nothing in the night-time. It was totally dead. It had no potential to sting whatsoever."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Let's get one thing straight: wasps don't like me, and I don't like wasps. I would like to say that I was harder than wasps, but I'm not. Despite being approximately 285 times taller than a wasp, and somewhat heavier, my brain still conditions itself to convince me that any given wasp could have me in a fight. Even if I evened the fight out a bit, by attaching a rather sharp poisoned dart to my bottom, and wearing a stripey black and yellow jumper, the wasp would still win.

I haven't been stung by a wasp since 2000, when one of the blighters caught me whilst going round a particularly sharp hairpin bend on a go-kart track in Great Yarmouth. He'd been following my progress since the first lap, by perching menacingly on the steering wheel, before deciding to unleash his venom on the last lap (they know how to inflict maximum mental torture, you see).

I attract wasps in the same way that benches attract tramps. They seek me out, and congregate around me, in a somewhat menacing fashion. If I move, they move with me. If I flap my arms and run around like a girl, they move with me (and lots of onlookers laugh). I have had to check on several occasions to make sure my hair isn't made of jam. It now seems that this attraction has extended to my flat becoming a makeshift "wasp morgue," where wasps come to spend their last few evenings on Earth quietly shuffling and vibrating on the floor.
They do this at the most cunning and wily times, in order to catch me off my guard.

For instance, the other evening, whilst going for a nocturnal urination, I almost trod on one who had decided to begin his expiration process on the bathroom mat. (For those unaware of a wasp's 'expiration process,' it consists of pretending to be dead, but twitching slightly, ready to give you a nasty nip if you tread anywhere near it. This happened to me once, when I was about six, and I have never really recovered since). Others decide to hide on my window-sill, with the intention, presumably, of stinging my fingers as I open the curtains.

The only good thing about this time of year, when all of England's wasps are slowly dying in my flat, is that soon, they will all be dead. Every last one of them. In fact, I've got the date marked in my diary. Saturday, October 16th. However, early next year, a fresh new batch of wasps will be ready to chase me round parks in a comedy manner. Millions of the buggers. This draws me neatly onto the main reason I wrote this thread: "The Great Mystery of Wasps". How do they keep coming back? I am no natural scientist, hence I am confused by the way they all die, and then come back the next year. I have developed some theories on the matter. I would appreciate feedback on whether you think I am correct, or if you have an alternative (and more educated) theory:

1. Someone, somewhere, owns a "Wasp Factory" (I've never read the book) which works night and day during the winter months, to create a new batch of wasps to unleash in the spring.

2. What's a wasp? You crazy fool! They must be figments of your overactive imagination.

3. Dogs and wasps are the same beasts, and can choose between which guise they want to take; only choosing to be wasps in the summer (so as not to be in breach of the Munich Dogwasp act of 1949).

4. Somebody rounds up a large selection of live wasps, and keeps them in a huge jar, feeding them and letting them breed, each year resulting in a slightly plumper wasp. I like this theory, as it goes someway to prove the old adage "They're getting bigger every year" (with optional proviso: "Jesus! That one's big enough to push a pram").

5. The Biggest and Best Mummy and Daddy Wasps (Who Love Each Other Very Much) hide away in a safe haven for the winter, readying themselves for the next onslaught by feeding themselves up and having lots of WaspSex. If this is indeed the case, there must be a finite number of these safe havens, and it should be every man's duty to hunt them out, douse them in petrol and set the buggers alight.

Three's A Crowd

2004-09-24T11:59:00.000Z

Well, it seems that my new blog is a success! Less than a day after its low-key inception, I managed to glean three whole comments. And none of them called me a bender. Allow me to put this into context for you:

"Approximately 0.000000075% of the world's population not only read my blog, but also saw fit to comment on it."

If you discount those people in the world who are clinically insane, unable to read, imprisoned, Welsh, etc... this figure becomes approximately 46% of everyone in the world.

I think this is going to be the start of something massive.

*pats calculator*

Begin the Begin

2004-09-23T13:03:00.000Z

"Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Don't I?"

A pertinent question indeed, albeit one perhaps not best suited to the merits of online Blogmanship (Note to self: 'Blogmanship' sounds like an excellent title for a board game. Make this game, sell it and become millionaire. End of note).

Indeed, I suppose the main reason I came here, and am writing this today, is due to an equal combination of boredom and the lack of ability to post anonymously on other people's blogs.
Rest assured, however, that I shall try and devote more energies to this than some of my previous fancies, such as when I tried to make a bomb out of soap (1985) and when I aspired to see if a rabbit could eat it's own weight in processed cheese (1989).

I'd better end with some more traditional blog-type things, I fancy: "Brrr! It was windy today. On my way to work, I saw 487 cars. 85 of these were going in the same direction as me (I overtook them); the remainder of the vehicles were travelling in opposing directions to myself. Nine of the cars were yellow, making this a 'Bad Day' for Yellow Cars. The drinks machine at work is giving out free drinks today. This is somewhat unusual, as it never has done so in the past. I wonder if it's an early/late April Fools Joke, that I just don't get."

I think I'm getting the hang of this! And this austere font makes me look awfully intelligent.