Whimsy; My Fear of Retribution from Hackney Council's Hired Goons;Mog, the Cat

Quick dose of whimsy: This from McSweeny's tickled me for it's none-more-whimsical whimsy.

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I'm posting this because I'm worried that I may 'disappear' shortly. Hackney Council have recently made recycling compulsory for residents, backed up by £1000 fines. Committed recycler that I am, I make sure that the green box is out on the doorstep every Monday morning, so I was perturbed to find a threatening note shoved through the letter box last Thursday saying that they hadn't found our recycling box outside, and making various threats about what they could do to me. It's true: I hadn't put the box outside last Thursday. In my defence, they don't actually collect the recycling on Thursdays, but I'm worried that residents may now be expected to make a conspicuous display of loyalty to the concept of recycling by leaving your recycling box with a token sacrificial wine bottle and shiny tin can outside every day.

I also don't like the way that the system is policed by the waste industry, which Ask Yahoo tells me is always run by the Mafia. I may end up sleeping with the fish-heads if I don't. If you don't hear from me for a couple of weeks, check the bottle banks of N4 for my many and various body parts.

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I'm very excited because tomorrow I'm going to to gouge a hole in our back door to fit a cat flap. I'll have to use a jigsaw to do it, and if it all goes wrong I may just end up with a cat hole, rather than a cat flap. Or no back door. We'll see.

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Also, the cat's name is Mog, and she's settling down very well. She's fond of:

• a good meow
• Whiskas
• running about
• hiding in bags
• not answering her name
• being scared of Guy moving about upstairs
• running at full pelt the length of our flat, pulling up with millimetres to spare before crashing into the all-too-solid kitchen units, then mooching around nonchalantly as though she hadn't done anything crazy just then.

Enough cat for the moment. Be warned of more soon, though.

Attempting To Convey My Getting a Cat in an Extremely Forced Sporting Metaphor; More on the Cat; Further Cat News; Cat Obsession Takes Full Hold

My nil-nil draw of a pet life is about to be shattered, as the referee (the Mayhew Animal Home, dressed in black and blowing a whistle) has awarded me a penalty kick in the shape of a two-year-old moggy (pictured left). We're collecting the penalty kick, er, cat on Saturday.

Ok, I give up on the laboured metaphor. We're getting a cat. Whoop. A big prize to anyone who can come up with a good name for the cat. Although be warned: the prize is one of those intagibles like the satisfaction of a job well done or the feeling of contentment on having named a cat. Sorry. All my money's going on litter and gonks for cats to play with from now on.

I'll probably write this blog from the point of view of the cat from now on. But not in a good way. No. In a way that lists what I did all day. And be assured that if my understanding of cats gleaned from the book on cats I've just read is any any way accurate, cats do not spend much time writing about the virtues of WD40.

Yeah, I thought that'd get you.

Anyway, all I have to do now is worry about the perceptions of men who own cats. Yes, those perceptions. I'll compensate by calling the cat Killer or Fang and taking up a manly hobby like carpentry or violence. And then posting pictures of myself on the Men With Cats page (Warning: will confirm your opinions of men who like cats and then some).

In order to pass the Herculean cat adoption tests the Mayhew Animal Home has put in our way, I had to get a letter confirming that our landlord both allowed us to have cats and wouldn't use their spare keys to sneak in and put sellotape on cats while they slept. In my conversation with my landlord, I was saying that she lived close to the gigant-o-normous Colney Hatch Lane Tescos, and that I could pick up the letter and go food shopping and thereby 'kill two babies with one stone'. I didn't dwell on it, but I'm not sure that it's the sort of thing you want to hear from someone who's about to become the guardian of a cat life. Come to think of it, it's definitely not the sort of thing you want to hear from someone who's going to come round to your house to pick up the letter. She did appear a bit nervous while writing the letter, but I think that was Microsoft Word's fault. I really have no idea why I said it, but now that I've devoted so much time to it, it's all the more likely to come out again.

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.

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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.

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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.

On Accusing My Girlfriend of Being Rude About Other People on the Internet

When seeing a post on chortle.co.uk that said about Stewart Lee:

He's not funny, or pushing any boundaries. He's just dull. Laura 05.10.05

I thought, aha! I bet I know which Stewart-Lee-disliking-Laura who saw him on his Autumn 2006 90s Comedian tour this was. And I sent my girlfriend an email in no uncertain terms accusing her of writing this and what had she got to say for herself, eh?

Of course, she denies it. But what are the chances of there being two Lauras (a name ranked 92nd most popular for girls born in 2001) who saw Stewart Lee around this time? Eh? OK, probably quite high. Let's say about 1000 people saw him at his Soho Theatre shows then, and probably about 650 of these were boys, because, let's face it, nerdy deadpan scatalogical highbrow humour is something that appeals to boys more. Let's say that 3 or the 350 women were called Laura. This leads me to believe (based on a statistically insignificant base, with numbers made up off the top of my head, on a Friday afternoon when I've had quite a tiring day at work) that a shocking 2/3 or more of Lauras actively dislike Stewart Lee, with some even going to the lengths of posting things on the internet about it, which I believe is some kind of difficult and technical thing involving computers and code and hacking. If I were Stewart Lee (and the chances are that I aren't), I would be less worried about Christians hating him than Lauras hating him.

Or Christian Lauras. I'm going to sit and make up statistics about Christians now. I'll probably be some time...

Expect there to be a rash of articles on Monday morning proclaiming '96% of All
Church-Going Christians Are Called Laura (and That's Just the Boys!!!)'.

Enjoy your respective weekends, freeeeks.

Postcards to Dead Bands. Wooooo.

A curious fringe benefit of me getting rid of all my CD cases (I can see you already reeling off the obvious ones. Stop it. You're embarrassing me. Let's just say there's lots of benefits, and you can stop your whirring brain whirring) is that I found lots of those little postcards that you can complete and send back and the record company will then send you lots of information about that artist. Now, I've saved all the ones that have got postage paid, so if you want me to start receiving junk mail on any of the following artists, or just cost the record company some money, let me know and I'll fill in the card and send it off. What really intrigues me is what will happen when I write in requesting information on bands that no longer exist. Will the helpless record company stooge (or person working at 3 Alveston Place in Leamingon Spa, which is the epicentre of this particular niche marketing area) look at the poor scruff requesting information about the still very listenable to in parts Ultrasound who folded after their endearingly overblown debut failed to see millions and see Tiny, their not-a-supermodel-by-any-stretch-of-the-imagination singer, become a jet set rock 'n' roll star, and take pity, and write back a note saying that sadly, owing to the vagaries of this damn industry, they were cruelly neglected, damn it all to hell. Or perhaps it will be the secret password to an alternative music industry that has been kept hidden in a flotilla of large ships of the Kent coast, where Ultrasound are recording their 3rd album, and they'll be doing a well-advertised tour of medium-large venues throughout the UK in the Spring. Or perhaps it'll just get thrown in the bin. It's a risk I take on your behalf.

• Belle & Sebastian (who have moved to a bigger record label since this card was produced, which will no doubt cause a sucking of teeth when they receive this card, a-ha!)

• Another Jeepster card for Belle & Sebastian
  

• Bernard Butler

• Billy Bragg

• Finley Quaye (sorry. Maybe you could write insults about me on the card. After all, I was fool enough to buy this album. And later buy his second album for £1.99)

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

• Placebo (I once served a big burly bloke when I worked in Our Price who came in asking for the place-bo single. I couldn't work out whether to laugh at the idea of this hairy-knuckled hulk boogieing away to the oh-so-forced gender confusion of Brian Molko and co, or to snigger at his mispronunciation. Instead I just told him the release date. Perhaps he became a goth. I've seen it happen. They're not born that way; it's a choice.There was a regular customer who, one Saturday was a nerd, in glasses and a buttoned-up shirt, and the next Saturday had all these piercings and neck-rings and black clothes and make-up. He was into Depeche Mode, which should have made it a less alarming change than it was.)

• Porcupine Tree (Embarrassing Prog. Oh, deary me. I'm a closet Pink Floyd fan. Boo me.)

• Radar Records (Who I presume don't exist any more, but who knows?)

• Radiohead

• Sparklehorse

• Supergrass

• The Auteurs (disbanded! And Luke Haines solo stuff is shit! This card is the last link to when he was good!)

• Two for the Chemical Brothers. (Presumably one for Tom, and one for the other one, who, for these purposes we'll assume is called Colin)

• Ultrasound (like what I said before)

George Michael: So the Man Needed A Snooze; What's Wrong With That?

I'm not sure, but I suspect, based on evidence from this article on George Michael's arrest, that the New York Daily News may not be quite the respected bastion of news values I first thought. It's the line "Wake me up before I go, go - to jail" that makes me think that.

Pop stars must now realise that they have to choose their song titles very carefully, lest they come back to haunt them as punning references in news articles reporting the celebrity's implication in a horrific quintuple homicide.

Deadpan Conversations: The Shop Comes To Me

Scene: My front door, being answered by me wearing, for reasons that are too convoluted to go into at the present time, a shirt and a pair of shorts, with a knee. that is bleeding down my leg. There stands before me a man holding my delivery takeaway.

Man Holding My Takeaway: Here you go.
Me: Thank you. How much was it?
MHMT: You should have told me that Wilberforce Rd is blocked from one end. £6.75 please.
Me: Oh. I'm sorry. Here you go.
MHMT: You should have told me. I've a lot of deliveries to make; it's a busy night.
Me: I'm sorry.
MHMT: You should have told me.
Me: I'm sorry. I don't drive, y'see.
MHMT: [backing away towards his car] You should have told me...

Nice food though. Curry Club. Tottenham Rd. Crouch End. Just make sure your directions are up to scratch, y'hear?

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An excitable tutor came in today, and told me that they had a student on one of the undergraduate courses called 'Bugs Bunny'. I took this in my stride, as I am a keen idle tapper-into-databases of rude/funny words to see what comes up. My own personal favourites have been a student whose surname was 'Moneybum' and a student whose middle name was 'Muvvafuk'. And there it was, on the computer screen in front of me. The student, if student it really is, is apparently due to be on the undergraduate Media Studies course. Ah, 'Mickey Mouse' course. I geddit. Someone's still going to be sacked for inventing students, though.

There are two students called 'Wankey', though. Ah, databases. You satisfy my basest desires. If only you could be taught to love.

Totalisers and the Gnawing Agony They Create

There must be a word in the English language to describe the sudden and unprompted realisation that the totalisers on Blue Peter used to chart the progress of their annual charity appeal were set at a pathetically attainably low level in order to give the children watching a sense of awe and collective achievement as they saw the appeal total soar past the original target on to several new totalisers lined up alongside the original totaliser while the over-enthusiastic saucer-eyed presenters gibbered on about how well the appeal was doing. It's a feeling akin the the recognition that your entire childhood is naught but a tissue of lies, but this as-yet-unnamed Blue Peter feeling is all the more spirit-crushing in its specificity.

Not sure what a totaliser is, and confused by my insistent use of the word totaliser? An example is visible at Rotherham United Football Club's site where you can see how much money they've raised for no stated purpose. I like to think it's a fund to allow the good people of Rotherham to disband Rotherham United Football Club. Over half way there!