I'm typing this entry as I sit on hold to the Jobcentre. The music they play when you're on hold is "Spring" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, it doesn't feel right somehow. Give 'em a ring, it's 08456088548. I guarantee you won't have to speak to anyone.
I would really dig having a monkey sidekick.
The dog is a good companion, but it just doesn't cut it like I imagine a monkey would.
A few criteria:
1.) The monkey must be the right size to sit on my shoulder. This could be quite a prohibiting factor, as I'm tall but I don't have broad or muscular shoulders with a great deal of space. Having said that, even if I had enormous physique I'd hardly choose to lug a 40 kilogram baboon round on my shoulder. I'm thinking something along the lines of a Capuchin, because any monkey I have as a sidekick is gonna be a 9 til 5 job.
2.) The monkey's got to be toilet trained. Given the previous point, knowing when and where to have a dump is an invaluable thing for this monkey to get right and proper. It must need to know to hop off and do it elsewhere and not just crap down my back.
3.) I'd like it to understand a broad range of commands. Examples would be "Monkey! Strongbow!", at which point he'd run to the fridge and get me a cider. He would also need to be athletic enough to fetch things from great heights, such as on top of shelves. I like my monkeys spry.
4.) The monkey would exact immediate, bloody revenge upon my enemies. I'd just have to glance at him on my shoulder and say "Monkey! Vengeance!"
5.) Leading on from the two previous points, the monkey must have a decent enough grasp of the English language, or at least my voice, lest it becomes as useless as voice recognition programmes. For example, if I were to say "Monkey! My cocaine!", he might bring me Michael Caine, because the phrase 'my cocaine' sounds like Michael Caine saying his name in his own voice.
Similar hiccups may arise if I had just received injustice at the hands of Michael Caine. There would be nothing more saddening or train-wreck interesting than a monkey accidentally drugging himself to death while trying to bludgeon the crap out of a bag of cocaine. To that late monkey's credit, I probably should have spoken more clearly when I said "Vengeance on Michael Caine!"
8.) As with my dog, the monkey should know a few tricks. "Sit" is old hat, but "high five" I think still has some relevance. Sometimes I have very good things to say but no-one is around to hear them. The monkey will therefore be my back-up man, sitting poised and ready to high five me when I come out with witticisms like "Kellie's secretly scouse". To prove that I am, indeed, the man.
9.) It'd be best if the monkey would refrain from touching himself when sitting on my shoulder. Much like the crapping etiquette point, the monkey must understand that there is a time and a place; anytime he's being my sidekick is considered 'improper'.
10.) The monkey must choose his own name from a list of obscure British MP's of the 1930's.
Robert Downey Jr. named his baby Exton Elias. I have never wanted to beat a baby up so badly in my life.
Like most people, I really don't enjoy awkward silences. I think it falls in line with the Virgo part of my personality, which looks for harmony among peers. In my opinion, the absolute king of awkward silence set-ups is when a fat person openly acknowledges that they are fat.
It's awful. What makes it worse is that their comments about their fatness are usually thrown in as a nonchalant, off the cuff comment that everyone was apparently meant to just accept. What are you meant to say?
The instinctive response is to laugh, after half of a second of which you compose yourself and search for the answer which never comes, followed by more laughing upon realising there is nothing to say. Logic tells you that it'd be tasteless to deny it, although this often happens and you find yourself saying "No, you're not fat, don't be silly! Oh, you!", although 9 times out of 10 their girth was the first thing you clocked when you saw them.
But then again, bad as that answer seems, the other option is simply to agree with them, which is probably an even less advisable way out.
"Hahaha, yes, you're a HUGE fatty! Just looking at you makes me feel better about myself!"
Dear fat people - we get that you're fat. It's an undeniable aspect of your being and drawing attention to it mid conversation will not dispel preconceptions we have, if any. It just makes the moment awkward as fuck.
Today however, it was me that was the cause of the awkward silence.
I was at the Huddersfield Jobcentre again to sign my declarations when I made the acquaintance of yet another fellow jobseeker. I can't put her age anywhere closer to the bullseye than 45 - 60. She was short. Quite forward. Angry, grizzled yorkshirewoman persona.
We chatted for a minute after she said hi. I didn't get her name but I do know she'll have had pizza for dinner. We also agreed that the rain in Huddersfield was terrible. And we were just sitting there, when out of the blue she says "I like your hair".
I never really know what to say to this. My hair gets a bit of gel most days just to liven things up. I generally try and keep the old fringe to go to the left. Outside of that it's generally left to its own devices, though it doesn't benefit from being in the pouring rain.
"Cheers", I answered, smiling, "I like yours too."
Then came the pause.
Did I remember to mention that my friend's hair was cut short in that angry, grizzled yorkshirewoman way? It wasn't a buzzcut, but it was certainly more closely cropped than my hair has ever been.
That was pretty much the only thing running through my mind in the seconds after I shut my mouth. Her face froze for a moment and I started to think of ways I could explain how I'd made a surly Yorkshire lady beat the crap out of me in the middle of the Jobcentre.
The pregnant pause gave birth after an eternity's gestation; thankfully, after consideration, my new friend found my comment very funny.
Oof.
Just oof.
We all get a turn in the awkward silence chute, and today was mine.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt kept at the window will keep vampires at bay!
To check whether Joseph Gordon-Levitt is safe to eat, drop him in a bowl of water; rotten Joseph Gordon-Levitt will sink, and fresh Joseph Gordon-Levitt will float.
If you blow out all the candles on Joseph Gordon-Levitt with one breath, your wish will come true. .
The Australian billygoat plum contains a hundred times more Vitamin C than Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
In the Great Seal of the United States the eagle grasps 13 arrows and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
A thimbleful of Joseph Gordon-Levitt would weigh over 100 million tons!
It takes forty minutes to hard-boil Joseph Gordon-Levitt!
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the world's largest rodent.
If you drop Joseph Gordon-Levitt from more than three metres above ground level, he will always land feet-first.
In Ancient Egypt, people wore glittery eyeshadow made from the crushed shells of Joseph Gordon-Levitt!
Any day, now, how's about getting out of this place,
Anyways, got a lot of spare time
Some of my youth and all of my senses on overdrive ..
There's a Hurricane Isaac. Who knew that? I definitely didn't.
I just saw this headline on BBC news "Isaac reaches hurricane strength" and I was like "Awesome, who the fuck is Isaac and how has he become as strong as a hurricane?" I'd certainly never heard of him, but I imagined him as some kind of science guy who had managed to harness the power of a hurricane, but relative to human size. So I clicked on the link and was totally disappointed by some hurricane in the States.
And now I'm imagining him as some sort of bandito coming up the coast to cause a ruckus in Louisiana.
Last night me and George went to Huddersfield and hit up The Parish pub quiz. We could have won beer.
We blew it.
But, we did come fourth with a two man team, which we were proud of. The best thing we learnt from last night's quiz is that one of the major contributors to the Oxford English dictionary was an insane murderer who cut off his own cock. Consider that next time you look up a word.
I also met a toad whilst walking back from town, and it ribbeted when I touched it, which was exciting.
Today I am 22. On some level this is vaguely annoying, because I've only just got used to telling people I'm 21. But it also means that it's once again the anniversary of a plethora of things both interesting and depressing. I listed them here in my birthday entry of 2010, back when I actually became 20, the age I still believe I am, deep down.
Of course, near enough every day could be said to be the anniversary of an interesting or depressing event, but today's my birthday, which makes it particularly good.
I'm so vain, I probably think this blog is all about me.
As seems fitting, here are some top 10 Trivia facts from a website which came up on facebook.
This week just gone I went to Norfolk, as part of my world comeback tour.This actually turned out to be a really long entry as I did more storytelling than I set out to. Kellie should be chuffed.
I want to get the sad bit first to begin to get it behind us - halfway through our trip, our great dane, Della suddenly began having difficulty walking, followed by barely being able to stand. We'd initially thought she had a condition which affects Danes called Wobblers (the symptoms of which are far too sad to have such a funny name. Say it out loud. Wobblers. Really, what the hell) but after some scans, she was found to have tumours in her back legs which were causing her a lot of discomfort. After a bit of debate and the prospect of very expensive, non-success-guaranteed treatment, we made the sad choice her put to sleep.
I'm gonna miss you, you awesome pooch.
This is our sentimental tribute to her in the sand on Holkham beach. Accidentally slicing your fingers and palms on hidden pebbles and razor shells comes second to immortalising your dog.
I don't know if any of you have been to the Norfolk coastline, but there isn't a lot to do. Catching crabs at the quayside (no pun intended) is a fairly staple part of holidaying round here, but can wear thin quickly, and outside of little art galleries, deli's and shops that sell souvenirs and the odd bucket and spade, there isn't a great deal of 'awesome' factor going on. We did spend a decent amount of time on the beach, where I passed the time by trying to bury the other dog. Pebble beaches aren't as good as sand.
I do however have a couple of anecdotes for you. The first one is related to catching crabs, a pastime which I've long since realised is impossible to say to people without some form of short explanation.
"Get up to much on your holiday?"
"Yeah, had a good relax, went to the beach, read a new book, caught crabs down on the waterfront"
"You what?"
Not even calling it 'crabbing' is a viable alternative, because then it sounds like some kind of voluntary STD bender you went on, as in "I need to go to the clinic, I was crabbing the other night". But, 'crabbing' is less of an effort both to say and to type than 'catching crabs', so we'll go with that one.
It's worth pointing out here actually that crabbing has lost a hell of a lot of it's novelty now I'm all grown up. Having been to this little coastal village many times over the years, I'm well versed in the catching of the crab. When you're younger, it's really awesome seeing how many crabs you can get, and then after a couple of hours letting them all go back into the water. There was the excitement of pulling up your line and seeing if anything's eating the bait and the thrill of transferring the poor crab from your net to your water bucket.
But going back there now, I'd been sat there for about 15 minutes surrounded by 5, 6 year old kids and their grandparents and I realised all of a sudden that I am probably far too old for this. Regardless of that 'never grow up' mindset, it was difficult to ignore the fact that I am unemployed, moneyless and was sitting on a quayside next to a bucket full of crabs.
This was only reinforced when a family with young children walked past and had a gander at what I'd caught. Now this is a very normal part of crabbing in Norfolk and passers-by will ALWAYS take an interest in people's catches when crabbing at the waterfront. But as opposed to bygone years, the mum said "ooh kids, look at this crab that this man has caught!"
Pause.
This man.
This man?
This is much too frequent an occurrence. It happens in shops, restaurants, in the street. Anywhere I could come into contact with parents and their children.
This man.
Careful, you're in the way of this man! Look what this man's buying, do you want one?
It's unnerving. I sure do miss being 'that boy'.
So having established that a.) I'm a man and b.) I'm too old to go crabbing, I'll get back to the original story. When we go crabbing we use bacon as bait, simply because it attracts more crabs than the shitty bags of whelks and cockles that the shops sell. On a crab-catching line there's a little net drawstring bag that your bait goes into, so you don't lose anything.
We crabbed on the first night then left all our things outside the house for the next time. Due to various outings and simply not being arsed to go crabbing, it was 3 or 4 days until we went again. The first thing that greeted us was the smell. Retrospectively, this was such an obvious oversight but it never occurred to us at the time: the bacon we'd been using had been left in it's bag, on the crab-line, in about an inch of seawater in the baking sun. For 4 days.
Now, this smell was something else. This was possibly one of the worst smells I've ever encountered. The previous day the dog had shat in the car next to my feet mid-journey and we'd had to keep a second poo in a plastic bag in the boot until we found somewhere to get rid of it. So I am no stranger to diabolical smells. But this bacon was in a different league. The only thought in my mind was get rid of the fucker.
Shit this is a long story.
So we made our way down to the waterfront, my dad changing which side he stood on to avoid being downwind of the horrific bacon bucket, and I started to change the bait. Swapping my sisters bait went off without any hitch other than the aforementioned appalling smell, which had made my eyes start to water at this point. The real problems arose when I got to my crab-line, and realised that the draw-string bag would only open about a centimetre or so, which was simply not wide enough to remove the huge black-grey mushy blob that had once been a rasher of bacon.
Again, hindsight allows better reflection; the obvious solution to the problem was, simply, do anything except what I did, which was to jam my fingers into the net to try and remove the bacon-y gunge manually. At this point I did that thing where you're sick into you're mouth, and the smell becomes so over-powering you pull a face like a frog with your eyes closed and very dramatically turn away from what you're holding. But whatever, I managed to fish out all the crap and dump it in the water, where it probably destroyed ecosystems and killed at least one seagull.
I went back to our car to get the new bait, and regaled my parents with how minging the task at hand had been. Not only weren't they interested, but I quickly realised that the smell had now integrated itself into the fibre of my being and I'd become a walking pile of putrid. They sent me home to wash. There was no sympathy for the grossness of the achievement.
That's how bad I smelt. I was sent home to wash.
And we didn't even go catching crabs in the end, so it was all for nought.
The other story has far less 'you had to be there' factor. Me and my sister were walking down to the quay one night when we passed the couple who were renting the cottage opposite ours. We'd never spoken to these people apart from maybe a 'hello' when we passed each other outside our houses when we moved in. Anyway, we walked past them, not a word from either party. And about three seconds later, one of them lets rip and cuts the air with an enormous fart.
This wasn't your standard trying-to-be-subtle-but-went-wrong flatulence. Effort had gone into this fart. And it lasted just over two seconds, while me and my sister exchanged a look and knew we'd found a joke for the rest of the holiday. I'm certainly prone to the odd fart, but not in public on a summers evening.
I'll leave you with two things. One is a cute picture of our other dane with the sand memorial. The other thing is the funniest thing I've seen in weeks, but can't work out why.
The frequency with which she seems to read this blog also suggests she may need a hobby of some kind.
My ongoing war with the job centre continued this morning. Signing on was a fairly depressing affair anyway, but the amount of faff you have to go through in order to get anywhere makes you want to die, and even that probably wouldn't speed the process up for anyone else.
I'm currently in the process of proving I'm not an immigrant or a refugee; it seems that even though they have a copy of my passport and every other document relating to my person worth looking at, I might still be an imposter. The reason for this is my year in Germany. On their records, it basically says "entered UK June 2011", without mentioning the previous 20 years I lived here.
After being born here.
So I spent an hour today with a nice Indian lady telling her all about the year and what it was for and hopefully the whole thing'll get sorted within a couple of weeks. The year abroad thing also seemed to grant me some magical queue-hopping tactic at the Jobcentre; I was there 9am this morning alongside 40 or so others who I'd gone through a big mob crush with when the doors opened. And we were all milling about waiting for our turn when a lady comes out and shouts "Is there a Max Martin here?"
And I tipped my hat to the fat girls with at least two babies each and the Asian guys with caps and very low trousers and sauntered off for my queue-jumping appointment.
On some levels, the Jobcentre is one of the best place for people watching, simply for the variety of people and the litany of complete nutjobs. There's always a guy effing and blinding about how long he's had to wait and some black guys who do that whole secret handshake thing when they see each other. Ain't nuthin' but a G thang baby.
Anyway, here are the best ones.
The first time I went in, I learnt too much about a guy in the toilet. It's not what you're thinking, like "He has quite a lot of grey pubes for a young looking guy" or "He must have eaten sweetcorn in the last 24 hours".
No, I went in for a tactical wee before my interview, and was just going to wash my hands. The guy was already at the sink, in a tracksuit with that army haircut, short on top and shaved at the sides. Looking back, I never actually saw exactly what he was doing but he was either about to do something with his hair or he was setting up shop to shave. It's weird, but whatever. I give him a generic "Y'alright?".
"Ohh man, just got back from holiday" he says.
Fuck. It's the late-night university computer room experience all over again.
So I said "Oh, right, good stuff". But I didn't say it like "Oh, right, good stuff. Tell me where you went and how it was". It was fairly uninterested, more in the vein of 'I've just nipped for a wee in the Jobcentre, leave me be'.
"Yeah man, went to Spain. It was great, but that fuckin' weather. Just fucked shit up."
Crikey. This is a profanity-filled first encounter. It usually takes me half an hour or so before I'm comfortable cursing in front of someone. Less for him apparently.
So I say "Oh, yeah". This time it was more of a 'I know nothing about the weather in Spain but I'm aware they have it, and it sounds like it wasn't great'.
"Yeah, fuckin' shit. And the fuckin' plane home as well, man. I thought me mum was gonna fuckin' shit her-sen. It was like 'Burrrrrrrrrrrrr'" He gestures with his hand to indicate turbulence.
This was pretty much our whole conversation, but it lasted too long. I really hope our appointments don't cross over again or I feel like we might have to have another conversation and hear about his mum shitting herself. His company was only really enjoyable retrospectively.
The gold medal winner however was last week. I was sitting waiting on one of the sofas when I notice a guy standing near the queue by the front desk. He seems to have a bit of a wobble on, like he was drunk. He'd soon confirm this for us. The lady at the desk calls out "Sir? Can I help you?" The G4S security staff have also clocked him at this point. The guy slurs that he doesn't need help. Then the woman says something like "Well, are you here to register or just to sign?"
"I'm here to register" says the guy, stumbling over.
He slurs "I just want you to know I have to get the bus to Bradford at quarter past eleven and I have 4 more Carlsberg tinnies with me. Ha, they'll probably be all gone in half an hour."
Uncomfortable laughs from desk ladies, security guys shift about. Did I mention it was about half past 9 in the morning?
He mumbles something about applying over the phone. The lady asks "Do you have a reference number?". He says he doesn't think so. A guy behind the desk says he should have got one when he applied.
"Hang on a minute. I think I do" he says. He bangs his hand open on the desk and starts reading from his palm. He has his reference number written there. He recites aloud to the desk people. He must have been a military guy or maybe a truck driver, because he starts saying "Tango, Oscar, Two-Niner". And then my favourite bit: he gets to the last letter, looks the desk lady directly in the face and dramatically says "Foxtrot". Then he repeated it a few times for good measure.
They're the two best ones. I'll keep you in the loop, though not for a week or so (take note Kel) because I'm going to Norfolk for a quaint family holiday on Saturday. I'll take pictures for you.
Before I go though, my last whisper of self respect and what I assume is middle-class paranoia feels the need to point out that my going on the dole doesn't signify a life of idle sponging or an abandonment of hope and prospects. It's mainly because of the rumours that I might be able to get the funding for a CELTA course, similar to a TEFL. They're £1100 for 4 weeks, so getting that for free from the Jobcentre would be pretty sweet.
When not even Russell Brand and One Direction manage to spoil it, you know something's been done right. Congrats to everyone who made it happen. The John Lennon section was the crowning part in my book.
The Olympics is drawing to a close after what seems a very short time compared to 2008 in Beijing. Tom Daley took bronze in the diving this evening, adding another medal to what has been a seriously good haul for team GB this year, enough even to rouse me from my usual patriotic languor and instil a little national pride.
There were several track races which didn't involve British athletes in which I prayed Usain Bolt wouldn't win. If not only to break the monotony of the race outcomes in which he takes part, then simply because his success has made him a wanker. I seem to remember times in previous years where he was just the shy, lanky black guy who was making records, but looking at him now, you wonder just how far up his own arse fame has pushed his head. Specifically the post-race posing and declaring himself among other things to be the 'greatest athlete' and a 'living legend'.
"How much of a dickhead am I? Hmm, good question. I'd say about this much"
I get that it's the Olympics and winning medals and defending titles means a great deal but really, however truthful, those are some bold, dickheadish claims. 'Legend' status only really qualifies when it isn't openly acknowledged by the legend themself. Take a leaf out of Jessica Ennis or Tom Daley's book: have a well deserved woop and a cheer, share your condolences with your fellow athletes, then pipe down. That quote which I forget, something about modesty in victory, is probably relevant here.
Oh and Greg Rutherford is a dead-ringer for a ginger Neil Patrick Harris, albeit with less forehead.
Just staying on the crossover theme of things on telly/annoying people, how long will it be before the new Müller Corner yoghurt advert is changed? I'm a big fan of Müller Corner, but now everytime I see them, all I hear is Miranda Hart's terrible voice.
It would help slightly if she was vaguely funny in anything she was in, but I'm not sure even that would save this advert.
On a scale of 'mildly displeasing' to 'really fucking irritating', her dulcet simpering ranks a couple of levels higher than Jimmy Carr's laugh.
See if you can say "British classics" and "Apple Pie" in a more annoying voice.
The talk of the day is that the latest Mars rover, Curiosity, has successfully landed and is now driving around on the Martian surface. I'm finding it fairly interesting so far, and it'll probably turn into a story worthy of great attention over the next few months or so. Given that the shuttle programme has ended and there are no plans to return to the Moon in the near future, us firing a robot onto another planet to take pictures is pretty awesome.
I do however have a very mild beef with NASA, that being the price tag for this operation.
2.5 billion dollars. Or 1.6 billion crisp English pounds.
To get this into some kind of context, if I were to get my old job at the pub back and work full time, every single day until I was 90, starting now, I would earn around £1.2million.
This is less than 0.01% of Curiosity's budget.
It might afford a pair of fluffy dice or a space-proof novelty air freshener to hang on its camera.
Put differently, I would have enough money to send a robot to Mars in about 91 and a half thousand years.
This translates to approximately 38 million shifts.
This is also before tax and without considering any rent or food purchases I may have to make in the next 900 decades.
There are other things I'd rather was done with that cash. Third world stuff and the like. Education. Global warming. The global economy. Exploring is important. But getting our shit sorted here should be our priority. Not even seeing news footage of how happy all the NASA tech nerds at Houston were after landing successfully could change that. Everyone's a fan of seeing nerds happy on their TVs, but not at the expense of the crucial things.
You better find us some fucking Martians, Curiosity.
I saw The Dark Knight Rises today at the IMAX cinema. It's just as good second time round. I don't know if my true appreciation for the film comes from its great performances/smart plot/awesome effects, or simply the fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt seems to get as much, if not more screen time in his role as a Gotham City cop than Batman does. He's still my man-crush .
Incidentally, I worked out today that in his upcoming film Looper, he wears a prosthetic nose, which was a huge relief. It's only a very minor prosthetic, but its one of those things that manages to be so subtle, yet make him look unsettlingly different, but you can't work out why. But, having found that out, all my initial 'why is he no longer beautiful?' fears were quelled.
Seriously though, that second picture is weird, right? It looks fuck all like him. The prosthetic nose is slightly curved, which is difficult to see in that pic, to make him look like a young Bruce Willis. And weirdly, it works. The looking like Bruce Willis thing I mean, not in general.
What a dude.
Anything else?
Oh yeah.
I realise that the ongoing fighting in Syria is serious business that no-one really wants to be involved in. But a news article I read today again used the phrase "urban guerilla". That's ok as a written phrase, but when you hear it out loud, the first thing that comes to mind is Al-Assad fighting the rebels with a bunch of armed gorillas, which would probably make for fantastic television.
This is the best news item I've read in ages. I'm starting to think that the grim hilarity of it outweighs whatever potential sympathy I may have had for the guy involved.
"A mob of Leprechauns are carrying out vicious attacks in and around the city of Seattle, according to a man who claims to be one of their latest victims.
The pint-sized brutes were allegedly hopping mad after catching the man dancing with the wrong girl at a Belltown bar.
Officers arrived at the scene of a bar fight to find the man covered in blood and screaming in pain with his head held in his hands. When officers asked who had attacked him, the man replied: 'It was a bunch of leprechauns.'"
A few days back I was re-linked to that story from recently about Henry Hargreaves, the artist who recreated the final meals requested by death row inmates. A quick Google search should lead you there pretty quickly, The Guardian, Huffington Post and the Daily Fail seem to have the best articles on it.
It got me thinking the first time round and its got me wondering again: were I to be executed, what would I choose for my final meal? I've been giving it more thought than I did the last time, mainly because at the moment I'm living at home eating real people food again and it's making me more thankful for it.
For a long time, the answer involved some variety of smothered chicken with home-made chips, with a decent takeaway style pizza coming in a close second.
Because I love pizza and chicken.
Possibly more than my immediate family.
I'll leave that one for them to interpret. Bear in mind it's my birthday in 26 days.
But I digress.
Chicken or pizza would be a stonking way to leave this earth. A decent steak wouldn't be bad either. Or a plate of proper fish and chips, with mushy peas and all the trimmings. A big cup of tea. A tasty milkshake. All excellent requests for the last supper. However, a recent trip to the supermarket also made me think about the pleasure that could be derived from the simplest of meals. This isn't of course to say that the above foods wouldn't be tremendous.
But - do you all remember Golden Grahams? I saw them in the shop the other day. They disappeared off the shelves for a good while but they seem to have made a resurgence in recent years. And seeing them again yesterday after a long stint without their goodness made me realise that there is a part of me which would be satisfied, were I to be summarily executed, with a big bowl of Golden Grahams.
Ohhhh yes.
Such good stuff. I don't even know what flavour they're meant to be.
Given the choice, I'd prefer not to reach the premature pinnacle of my life through something as trivial as the over-consumption of breakfast cereal, but for these things I'd probably make an exception. The lure for them was as strong in that supermarket the other day as it had been during the late 90's when I was first eating them.
"Hey", they called. "Remember how good we taste? Buy us, dickhead."
I'm rarely insulted by cereal. It's even less common that I stand there and take it. But I will not take lip from ANY cereal, least of all an old favourite with a name as fucking stupid as 'Golden Grahams', tasty as they may be.
So I kicked the shit out of that cereal aisle; an epic beating, like something out of Rocky. And shoppers looked on, shaking their heads.
"I tripped on this shelf of Golden Grahams while reading about the saturated fat content" I said, maintaining composure. It's important not to lose face in front of onlookers. This wasn't easy because I was crying. I cry when I get angry, like inverse-Hulk. My trousers were also torn off at the knees.
And ultimately I didn't buy it. I went home, and later, as I sat watching the Olympic swimming with a bowl of Bran Flakes, I lamented not buying the Golden Grahams. Bran Flakes are alright, but they can't hold a candle to Golden Grahams. And I thought, "If I were to die now, I'd be less than peachy with my choice of Bran Flakes as the last thing I ever eat." And it was at this point that I realised that Golden Grahams truly were final meal material.
And I'm giving a lot of thought as to how exactly I'll enact this plan during my twilight hours. Its entirely feasible that I'd die of a happiness-induced heart attack. Which would save the time and effort of all involved.
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