Joe Le Unlicenced Taxi

Last Saturday I was out near Old Street until the early hours, and as seems to be the norm round there, ended up getting one of those dodgy, unlicenced taxis to take me home. You know, the ones that are just some bloke in his car. My journey back was a bit of a nightmare, and things started badly when I realised the driver didn't know where we were headed. He also kept asking me if I was a policeman and was obviously very nervous at this prospect. I think he assumed that I was just waiting until the end of the journey before I leapt out of the car, flashed my badge and exclaimed "Taxi Police!" before pinning him down and calling for backup. Anyway, as we approached the scene of a serious accident near Old Street tube, he managed to knock a cyclist over, attracting the attention of about 20 police officers who were already there sorting out whatever mess it was. Amazingly, they just gave him a cheery nod and waved him on.

As I mentioned, he didn't seem to know where anything in London was so was using sat-nav to direct him. He reassuringly told me that he felt like he was just a robot fulfilling the demands of the sat-nav, with her reassuring womanly tones. Unfortunately, sat-nav didn't know about the existence of ths accident at Old Street tube, so sent us in circles for a bit. By the time he made it to mine (which involved ignoring most of sat-nav's instructions) I'd already mentally prepared my will. We came to a screeching halt with him doing some kind of Knight Rider skid that left us diagonally in someones front garden.

God bless London transport. Especially late at night, when it's at its best.

The Cranial Remix

Does anyone else find that, after having had a song stuck in your head for a couple of weeks (it can be a good song or a terrible song - there's no accounting for your brain's taste), that you start remixing it/adding notes, instruments and singers that weren't there before?

I only ask, as I'm being driven mad by repeated listens to Kanye West's 'Gold Digger' sung by The Worzels (of 'Brand New Combine Harvester' fame). It works pretty well until they reach the 'N' word, at which point the possibilty of calling them up and suggesting they do a cover of it all seems a bit wrong.

The last time I had such an appalling cranial remix stuck in my head was when Holly Valance's 'Kiss' came out. Instead of hearing the (mwah) (mwah) noises, i'd hear the comedy sound of a trombone sliding down then up (like you'd expect to hear in a slapstick film). Thus:

"Cause tonight im gonna give you my
BBBBBRRRRRRrrrrrooooowwwwwWWWWWWAAAAHHHHH
Kiss!"

Anyone else have any cranial remixes they'd like to recommend?

Life Above The Undergrowth

A friend recently directed me to these very amusing video clips (in particular those from 'Programme 1: Invasion Of The Land'). They're taken from the new David Attenborough series 'Life In The Undergrowth' and show how weird and interesting the courtship ritual can be for various bugs.

Tonight I have invited a young woman round for dinner, and have spent so long preparing for this, that I haven't even started any work yet today. 4.30 p.m. (when I've finished writing this) has to be my record so far. And it's Friday, so does that mean i get to leave work (and walk back to the non 'office' designated area in my bedroom) at 4.30 p.m.?

Anyway, it occured to me that the bugs featured in that programme would be quite justified in having the last laugh were they to obtain footage of what I've been doing today. David, if you're reading this, that video wasn't yours to take.

Here are some excerpts of what the commentary would allegedly include, had David Attenborough turned up at my front door this morning telling me he was here by order of the landlord to fit webcams in each of the rooms in my flat:

"Purpulos Smokius begins his courtship ritual first thing in the morning by using a vacuum cleaner to remove any detritus from the floor of his dwelling. This includes a vast number of staples which his dwelling-mate seems to shed on the carpet on a daily basis."

"Later on, P. Smokius is found scuttling from his cave to another cave around the corner from his, where goods are avaiable to buy. He purchases a number of items required later on that day, including the most expensive bottle of wine he's every bought in a non-restaurant situation. If you listen closely, you can hear him mutter: '£8.99? I'd expect it to be 40% for that price' before scuttling back to his cave."

"After using items from the shopping cave to prepare a feast for that night, P. Smokius cunningly realises that he has forgotten many items still required for the ritual, and scuttles back to the cave around the corner. Here he buys floor-cleaner, milk and ice cream. The latter two items we will go into in more detail in Episode 2, but they are the result of yet another bizzare human ritual which involves squeezing the nipples of a lesser organism and drinking/freezing the resulting product."

"Back at his cave, P. Smokius then scuttles around his cave some more, wrestling with a Vileda Supermop, to have his cave clean before the female arrives. After filling the mop-bucket with dirty water, he then proceeds to empty this all over the area surrounding his sink, meaning he has to do all his washing up again. He then wastes some time, when instead he should be working, writing about what would happen if David Attenborough had turned up at his front door earlier that morning and told him that he was there by order of the landlord to fit webcams in each of the rooms in his flat."

By the way, if any lay-deez are reading this, can you please reassure me that you lot get very turned on by the smell of Dettol, as that's what I've discovered I cleaned the floor with, and it stinks.

Baby Dating

No, I'm not suggesting a dating service for babies, or even a controversial new technique enabling scientists to determine the age of a baby by cutting it in half and counting the number of rings inside.

What I am proposing is an alternative to Speed Dating, in the same line as Dark dating (where you chat people up in total darkness while a night vision goggle-wearing waiter serves you food), and 'Lock and Key' parties, where you have to find a woman who's lock fits your key (ooh err).

Baby Dating would require that you, and everyone else booking themselves in for the event, email a photo of themselves to the Baby Dating Corp. Using Photoshop, or some such image-editing program, Baby Dating Corp.'s team of designers then create a montage of what each potential couple's baby would look like. Then, come Baby Dating event time, rather than meeting potential partners, you rotate around a room (one for men and another for the ladies) looking at framed photographs of what your offspring would look like with each of the potentials, and give a tick or a cross.

I think it's a great idea and someone should buy it off me. But remember where you read it first - look, I've got: (c), TM, and Patent Pending on it. Just writing those symbols means it's mine, even though I don't know what they mean.

I can't help thinking maybe I need to work on the name a bit.

Safety First

Last night as I was returning from the pub, I spotted an advert (one of those safety-conscious ones probably paid for by the government) on the escalators that read something like 'PROTECT YOUR MP3'.

What are we to make of this? Which MP3 are we to protect? My iPod has around 5000 MP3s on it, so should I pick my favourite one and protect that? Am I now required to carry a laptop and USB lead around with me so that, should I find myself in a mugging-style situation, I can say to the hi-tech burglar "Hold on mate, before you take my iPod, just let me hook it up to my laptop so I can transfer 'Biology' by Girls Aloud across. Then you can take it. You've seen those safety ads funded by the government right? Better do what they say, Big Brother and all that".

Hopefully be the time Windows has loaded up, he or she will have become bored waiting, and found someone with an old cassette walkman or even a gramophone to mug instead.

Or perhaps there's a typo on the poster, and the government have decided that in the current climate of terror, they want us to watch out for them, hence 'PROTECT YOUR MP'?

Yet another example of the huge repercussions that can by faced when a graphic designer makes a simple typing error.

Souper

Does anyone know how to defrost a carton of Covent Garden soup?

I'm thinking that if i put it in the fridge, it will take weeks to defrost as it'll still be cold. But if I leave it out of the fridge, that it will defrost a little bit, and then instantly start sprouting the mould that the fate of the 'Best Before' label predicted, had I not cryogenically frozen him.

Or do I just put the soupy lolly in a saucepan?

(I don't have a microwave by the way, before you all get smart on me)

How do firemen do it?

No - i'm not being saucy. I'm talking about waking up to an alarm bell, getting dressed, and going to work. All in the space of a few minutes.

Miraculously, I actually have some work at the moment, a freelance project for a few weeks. You'd think I'd be grateful for this, but what do I do? I keep distracting myself, that's what. Hell, I'm writing this instead of working, aren't I?

It's 12 noon, and I've only done about half an hour of work. I don't even have to slide down a pole to get to work - I just have to walk from one side of my bedroom to the other. This is why I set my alarm clock for 8:59 a.m. - in theory it should only take a minute to walk from my bed to my desk. In fact, i don't even need a minute to do it, more like about 3 seconds, but my alarm doesn't have the facility to allow me to wake up at 8:59:57.

So, what do I do after the alarm goes off? Well, this morning I spent about half an hour just lying there feeling sorry for myself for being hung over (and on a paltry 4 drinks) and then I watched quite an interesting programme about marmite. HOT NEWS: they're making it in a squeezy bottle. There was some debate in this programme about whether it was spelt 'Squeezy' or 'Squeazy', which quite frankly is obviously the former, but their dyslexic graphic designer had used the latter spelling on all his designs, so had to go back to the graphics tablet.

See, graphic design isn't just about using Photoshop to trace over a photo you've found on Google Image Search, it's also about being able to spell (and a few other such technical things you wouldn't understand). In fact, because of the huge potential for disaster in getting a spelling wrong in a design, I often spend hours worrying about doing exactly the kind of thing the Marmite man did. Ironically, I've just had to look up 'dyslexic' in a dictionary only to discover that it's not spelt 'dislexic'.

Anyway, yes, this gist was that the little nozzle on the end of the squeezy (or squeazy for all you designers out there) bottle didn't work very well so they got behind schedule until they decided to use a valve thingy instead.

It really was an interesting programme.

After that, I finally got out of bed at about 10.30 and went to the kitchen to see what was available for breakfast. Despite having a choice of breakfasts that would put Seinfeld to shame (that man always seems to have at least 20 different boxes of cereal in his kitchen), I always feel like having the one thing that's not in my cupboard. This morning it was beans on toast (no, i don't keep toast in my cupboard, i just didn't have any baked beans), so I went and bought a couple of tins. But tomorrow, i can guarantee that i won't want beans on toast, or anything else that's alreay in my cupboard.

Finally I started working at about 11 a.m., which is actually my record earliest time since starting the project. If i take baby steps, I may be able to get that down to 9 a.m. by the last day of the project.

Hmm...is it lunchtime yet?

A Blog is Born...

Hello, my name is...Ha! i'm not going to tell you my name as I don't want any of this used as incriminating evidence in future.

All I'm saying is that I'm a 27 year old male, living in London, and struggling to earn a living as a graphic designer. When not earning a living I also struggle (with my science degree from a fairly respectable university) to figure out how on Earth one applies for Job Seeker's Allowance. All I know is that the amount of paperwork required for me to do this has probably been one of the main contributions to the rapid decline of the earth's rainforests, global-warming, and ultimately the destruction of the planet.

But hey - the £56.20 a week means I can buy pizzas and beer.

Other struggles I will no doubt spend my time whinging and whining about on here will include:

- Women. Why are all the good ones in London taken, and when they do split up with a boyfriend, how is it that they instantly seem to be going out with someone else? How does one become a 'someone else'? Why do women (the ones I like at least) seem to always need a boyfriend? They're always bragging about how 'empowered' and 'independent' they are, but they can't operate for 10 minutes without the support of some dickhead who's only half as attractive/intelligent as I am. And why do they always have to tell people like me that 'we did [insert boring event here] over the weekend', where 'we' has not been explained?

- Money. Why does everyone have tonnes of it apart from me? How can I get a piece of the action? A slice of the pie? I'm 27 and I can barely afford a bike, let alone a car/wife/pet/children. As for buying even a bedsit in London - how does anyone do it!

- Death. It's all a bit unfair really, ain't it? Just as someone's brain has become full of interesting stories, experiences, and knowledge, they pop their clogs. What's the point of life, eh?

I'm sure I'll be adding to those original and groudbreaking topics as I go along, but I don't know yet, do I? If I could really see into the future, I'd be able to tell you that I'm so lazy that I'll probably give up on writing this blog in a few days, but I can't. So you'll just have to wait and let the mysterious sands of time flow over you and get stuck in some bodily crevices along the way.

Until tomorrow....Watch this space!