Tuesday, March 21, 2006

WD40; Who I've Nearly Killed; and The Guardian Recognises That I'm Right

I have spent the last few days feverishly spraying just about everything in sight with WD40. It somehow brings me immense satisfaction to have doors glide open and shut with the effortless ease of a Jesus in ballet shoes tip-toeing on a calm pond. Every day I think of more things that would be improved with just a little squirt of WD40 on them. However, I'm not nearly obsessed enough to join the WD40 Fan Club. It is taking all the willpower I possess not so sign up, especially when there's apparently two thousand uses for WD40 listed on the site. That's

  1. Lubricate front door

  2. Lubricate living room door

  3. Lubricate kitchen door

  4. Lubricate back door

  5. Lubricate Shed door...

Would someone who isn't me please sign up and tell me what it's like inside? I don't trust myself not to become completely obsessed and spend the rest of my life posting poetry about the amazing properties of WD40 on WD40 chatrooms.

Similar to the Crouch End blog I See Famous People, I could set up a blog detailing all the celebrities I've nearly harmed. I nearly killed Francis Wheen today. He was trying to cross Upper St while I was cycling down it, and my precise series of thoughts were 'Oh, that's Francis Wheen. Or is it spelt Ween? He's looking a bit jowlier and greyer than when I last saw a picture of him. I should stop and tell him that I really enjoyed his book. Now, what was it called? How Gibberish Conquered the World? Was that it? No, it wasn't, was it? Oops, just sped past him at great speed, narrowly avoiding him. Oh, yes, it was How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. That was it. Ah, now I'm about half a mile away from him."

I also may or may not have seen Zane Lowe, but as I couldn't be sure it was Zane Lowe, I couldn't be absolutely certain whether to harm him or not.
At last the leading left-leaning broadloid newspaper gives me my due. A search of The Guardian's website for the phrase "Jim McKenzie is right" (
http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=%22jim+mckenzie+is+right%22
) does indeed bring up a page with the unarguable statement "Jim McKenzie is right" on it. Unfortunately, what I'm right about is specifically that the horrendous Roxy's nightclub in Sheffield became an evangelical church, and it's in the over-by-over live cricket commentary on the India v England Test, rather than, say, an comment piece by Polly Toynbee on Why Jim McKenzie is Right About Everything. It's a start though. Get writing, Polly.

4 comments:

  1. Feel as though I looked at every blog in Chicago and New York, so I signed on to the London Blogger site and found you.

    Funny stuff. But now I feel as though I'll never be able to sleep again until I determine whose eye that is. An Olsen Twin? Fiona Apple?

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  2. Well the best use for WD40 that I have seen was when I spotted a lady who ran a hardware stall on the local market, going slightly frantic when she saw a rather large spider running across the floor. The only thing she could put her hands to quickly was a can of WD40. She speedily whipped the top off the can and squirted the poor spider with a liberal coating of WD40. It didn't die.... it just ran faster!!

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  3. I met the woman from spaced and sean of the dead the other day. Or at least I walked through a room she was sitting in and said hello. Do I win? Dan - PS I bet the Angelatee will never ever guess who the eye belongs to, as I am pretty sure it isn't even famous in America....

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  4. Hey. Those of you who have helped me with my love of WD40 need no thanks. Your low-friction easy lives of squeakless gliding lubricated rust-free bliss are reward enough.

    However, the post about the spider attempted murder shows that, like any powerful tool, WD40 can be used to pursue malign ends. It's worth considering that while WD40 has no beneficial effect on the Pipe of Peace, it can be used to lubricate the triggers of the Guns of War.

    Angelatee: I'll give you two clues.
    a) She's not from America
    b) She's from Sunderland.

    Really, I suppose, that's one clue. Sorry.

    Dan: It's not a competition. But I've won, anyway. I saw Mike Leigh last night. Rather than saying hi or regaling him with my barely formed slight misgivings about his new play, I let him off by looking at him as though I couldn't quite remember who he was. That's psychology.

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