Rind

Bus metaphors are like buses: you wait for ages, and then everyone in the world does the same one at once and there's graffiti on the seats.

Southampton are fourth in the Premier League! I thought I'd better squeeze that celebration in before it ceases to be true. Liverpool are playing Sunderland at the moment. If they win, we'll crash all the way down to fifth, like a common Pete Best.

But for now, the sun is shining. And I'm making a shitload of hay.

Come on, Sunderland!

I had a bacon sandwich for lunch. I don't eat bacon very often. When I have it, I'm reminded of my childhood, shilling for Danepak.

Ooh. Disallowed goal for Škrtel. The linesman flagged him for having too few vowels in his name.

Have I written about bacon before? I wouldn't like to go off on a pork tangent and find that I'm retracing my own greasy footsteps.

I wrote something about bringing home the bacon. I swore a lot more in 2008

There's also this old tweet (all old tweets are blue and bold and italicised):

I just googled "The Full English Patient", expecting to find a Ralph Fiennes made of sausage, beans and egg, with a bacon Binoche. NOTHING.

Pretty good. Not great. But OK.

And this one, which is just a bit weird:

There's nothing more comforting than a bacon sandwich stroking your hair and going "Shhhh. I'm here, I'm here".

I also did a bit of stand-up about formed bacon.

But that's not much. Eight hundred and twenty blog posts and only a few bacon references.

I think it goes to show how little importance bacon has in my life.

I've heard people say that bacon is always the thing the vegetarians miss the most. But I could easily do without bacon. For me, venison is the major meat-magnet. No matter how nice Quorn can be, it's doesn't have the deliciousness of deer.

I could go for some deer right now...

***

INTERLUDE

New character idea: Major Meat-Magnet

Initial Notes:

He's in the army. Double-barrelled surname, so posh?

Just a name, or can he attract meat? Strategic benefit?

Dead humans = meat? If so, meat attraction detrimental on battlefield: buried in corpses.

Costume design crucial factor in character's success.

Further work needed.

INTERLUDE ENDS

***

I don't really eat venison. I do like sausages though. Have I written about sausages more often than I have bacon?

Sunderland free kick in dangerous area.

Sausage history is written by the Wieners.

Ooh! Hits the crossbar! 

The wiener joke isn't great. And you're supposed to capitalise 'wieners'? I'll trust that my past self did the proper research.

I've wasted thousands of pounds on sausages and parasols.

At first I thought this was just a weird profound joke, but it relates to some kind of hilarious bit of barbecue business.

Oh man, Liverpool have scored. I didn't see the goal. I was too busy italicising and emboldening tweets.

Debate it all you want: they're called COCKTAIL sausages. So you just sit there, smug as you like, whilst I enjoy my Brown Russian.

Funny.

I think that's it. There were a few other things, but they were meaningless. I don't want to waste your time with meaningless information. Focus on what's important: old meat-related blog content and insignificant football results.

Sigh.

Two-nil Liverpool. Suarez. Fifth it is.

I should probably go. Not physically - I'll stay on the sofa - but I should end this blog post.

This is mainly just to bring September's blog post total up to six. Six seems to be the usual amount these days. It used to be sixteen or seventeen when I was younger. But it's 2013. Insight is scarce.

Six posts is fine. I won't abide five.

Throw-in.

I'm off to raid the fridge for hooves.

The Golden Age of Hollywood

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Golden Omelette

Every day, do something that makes you proud.

It's a simple piece of wisdom. And by thinking of it, I've fulfilled today's quota.


Do something that makes you proud every day. 

That's not the same as my first statement. I've mixed things up syntactically. If there was a comma after the word 'proud', it would be the same.

[Every day, do something that makes you proud = Do something that makes you proud, every day]

But there's no comma in my second statement.

[Every day, do something that makes you proud ≠ Do something that makes you proud every day]

In my second statement, I'm trying to say that you should do something, and that one thing should make you proud every day. Like the goose who laid the golden eggs. Daily.

Actually, that's a bad example. Each egg is a different thing. That's more like my first statement: every day the goose is proud of a distinct egg.

I suppose a more fitting analogy would be the goose that laid the golden eggs, but wasn't so much proud of each individual golden egg, as proud of its own capacity to produce golden eggs. The capacity is just one thing. And it makes the goose proud every day. Because of all the eggs.

Can a goose feel pride? It doesn't matter. Analogies don't need to be based in reality. If they were, they wouldn't be analogies. They'd just be reportage. Goose reportage.

I'm proud of almost all of the sentences in this blog post so far, especially the bit with the ≠ symbol. They should keep me stocked up for a couple of weeks. I like to get all of my pride done at once, then I can coast.

Do something that makes you proud, every day, on average. Like the goose who laid thirty-one golden eggs in one day and had the rest of March off.

***

I don't want to offend people, so whenever I see them, I tell them that they don't look tired.

"You're not looking very tired this morning!" I say, as they take off their coat and hang it on the coat rack.

"Thank you," they always say.

Or, sometimes, "why should I look tired?"

To which I reply with the following. "You don't look tired."

"Yeah, but why should I?"

"You don't look tired."

"No, I know. But..."

"You don't look tired."

"Stop! Stop saying that," they tend to say at this point. "If I don't look tired, why even bring it up?"

"There's no 'if' about it," I say. "You definitely don't look tired."

"I'm not tired."

"And you look it," I say. "Not tired, I mean."

Then Amanda (and it is always Amanda that I say it to), gets out a little make-up mirror and checks to make sure that she doesn't look tired.

In fact, I tell her she doesn't look tired even when she does look tired, just to be polite. I'm considerate.

Her self-esteem is through the roof. 

"You don't look tired. You don't."

She likes working at the desk next to mine. I can tell.

Scratch the Wall

The sound of hot coffee is still ringing in my mouth, so I might as well write a sentence.

I've just been faxing a vampire.

I know faxing is old hat, but he's been alive for hundred of years. Give him a break. He's invisible on Skype, so that's a no-go. But I keep telling him he should go digital. It's not good for the environment to be working on paper all the time. His castle is chock-full of ring binders.

"Paul," he always says, "my real weakness isn't sunlight or garlic. It's paperwork!"

And then he grins that grin of his, and I can't help but chuckle. "That's why you should get on email," I say. "It's so much easier."

But he always just waves his hand dismissively and wanders off to put the kettle on.

He'll cave in one of these days.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Not until you've earned that certificate.

The sound of lukewarm coffee is thundering up my tongue. It's nearly the end of the working week. I'm easing myself out of the corporate mindset and into a slipper.

I'm so glad Premier League football is back this weekend. Last weekend, I was climbing the walls. My whole weekend schedule is based around football. I don't know how to live without Mark Lawrenson making me wish I didn't.

I had to use clocks. Honest-to-goodness clocks.

A football-less weekend is like being adrift in a massive salty lake with no compass, no eyes, and no GPS.

Hey, has anyone done a joke about GPS and GPs? As in general practitioners? I don't know how the joke would work. That's not my business. I write the piano. You make it sing.

This weekend, I'll know where I am.

Football Focus? Oh, it's time for lunch.

Final Score? Oh, it's time to put the laundry on.

Match of the Day nearly over? Oh, it's time to prepare for Eric Lichaj.

That's how I live. Time is just numbers on a disc.

Everyone has their own way of marking out their life.

Christians have a Sunday service they can rely on. It doesn't matter who exists or how uncomfortable the pews are. It's a way to stick a flag in a big throbbing mass of insignificance. For Catholics, attending a big throbbing mass is a part of their weekly routine.

Jews love a different day or something. In the Sikh faith, half past eleven is considered sacred.

Football performs the same function. It orients and orientates us.

That's why solitary confinement in prison is so terrible. You have no flags, no football, no clocks. You have to scratch the days on the wall of your cell. It's true. I've seen films about it.

...

I'm getting off-track here. Where was I?

I'm lost in my own post about being lost. I'll just check my GPS.

Hmm.

They've all lost their stethoscopes...

...

Being and Not Being

Let's get this ball rolling. I don't want to find myself wondering what might have been.

Each blog post is utterly unique. If I were to start this post one day earlier or one day later, it would be completely different. If I choose not to write a blog post, I'm banishing a potential gem to the chasm of non-existence. How could I be so cruel?

Every blog post has a right to exist. What if this blog becomes an Einstein or a Michael Jordan? By not writing it, I'm diminishing the glory of the world. It would be selfish and arrogant.

And...

*sigh*

You know, I could continue this train of thought. I could go down the inevitable path of the abortion debate metaphor. It could be slightly tasteless, but ultimately humanistic.

It doesn't matter now. The post has been born. I don't need to worry about it. It exists. Either it's going to be a Jordanstein or it isn't. Why should I waste my time on it? I simply had to focus my attention on giving it safe passage into the world, at which point I should refuse to care for it in any way.

A potential blog post is the most precious thing imaginable, and must be safeguarded at all costs.

Once the blog post exists, it's on its own. I resent it being bailed out by my tax money. 

AAAAAhhhhaha! Abortion debate metaphors are impossible to avoid. I tried to meta my way out of it, and it came back to bite me on the placenta.

Metaphors follow me around like a... oh. They've gone.

I've bitten the skin on my thumb, and now it has started bleeding.

How did that happen?

I'd like Darwin to explain that. What's the evolutionary benefit of biting your thumb until it bleeds? Tooth practice? Building up a resistance to pain? Are female humans attracted to bleeding males? That might be why Ric Flair has been married so many times.

Maybe I'm trying to pass on my genes. Yeah, that's it. Get those genes out of yourself through the thumb. There's no time to procreate. You need to squirt your genetic material at as many people as possible.

Bleed, don't breed.

[Hey guys. Quick interjection here. Is this post... sort of, I don't know... disgusting? 

Yeah. I thought so.]

Bracket-Me is so practical. He's the kind of square that would wear a bicycle helmet. He's so straight-laced. And straight-bracketed. He should be / bloody straight-jacketed.

I prefer Curly-Bracket-Me. He's a bit pompous, but at least he has a certain charming insouciance.

{You don't know me}

Oh man, I've come up with an amazing joke, everyone! Someone sound the joke alarm!

I'll assume that someone has done so. I can't hear anything at the moment because I'm weak and my ears are full of thumb blood.

Here's the joke. It's really good.

Last night, I had a really nonchalant chat with a dead person.

It was an insouséance! 

You see! Really, really good.

(Also the dead person was called Sue)

Turn off the joke alarm. The neighbours are starting to wonder what it is.

Tapped Potential

And it came to me, like a bolt from the blue:

Smuggler, Snuggler, Straggler, Struggler

Nothing occasioned it. It appeared fully-formed in my head. It seemed to arrive spontaneously, as genius often does. Something out of nothing is impossible. I realise that. But it was something out of something so obscure and unknowable that it might as well have been nothing.

It's a beautiful thing. It sounds good. It rhymes. But what is it?

My first thought was a Twitter bio. They have to be short, and all of the original ones have already been taken. But does it really define me?

I'm definitely a snuggler. I snuggle with the best of them. I'm snuggling right now.

I'm also a straggler. I'm never one to take charge. I like to lurk at the back. Snuggling.

You know I'm a struggler. This whole blog is a testament to that.

It's the first one that's a problem. I'm not a smuggler. I'd be a rubbish smuggler (almost as much as I'd be a rubbish hitman).

Admittedly, I did once fail to declare my purchases of a Ben Folds Five (remember them?) MiniDisc (remember them?), a copy of the Clerks: The Animated Series (remember that?) and a massive leather coat, when I was coming back from New York. But that's not really smuggling.

I'm not even a smuggler in a vague metaphorical sense. I don't smuggle ideas; I carry them in plain sight.

I would hate to lie on my Twitter bio (my current one includes "comedian"), so it's not an option.

What else? What can I use "Smuggler, Snuggler, Straggler, Struggler" for?

The obvious choice is a variant of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor". It could be an alternate rhyme for determining the occupation of your future spouse. Which would you rather marry? Presumably, it would be the snuggler. No-one wants to marry a struggler.

A related option is a version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Smuggler, Snuggler, Straggler and Struggler would make for some interesting character dynamics. It could be a real pot-boiler.

For either of these, I'd need to come up with some equivalent of Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, and Thief.

But I like the rhyming. And I like words that end in "ggler". I can't think of many.

There's wiggler, wriggler and waggler. (Spell check doesn't recognise "waggler", but we've all been bored at urinals, right lads?)

There's Dirk Diggler and Dolph Ziggler, but proper names don't count.

Boggler? Is that a word? One who boggles?

Haggler? (One who haggles, not Marvellous Marvin)

I don't like any of them. I like the simplicity of the original.

Smuggler, Snuggler, Straggler, Struggler.

It's perfect as it is. I don't want to dilute it.

Maybe it could be a sitcom. Or the names of my quadruplets. Cartoon animals? Rapper pseudonyms?

Or maybe there's only one good use for it: the basis of an entertaining blog post.

It's worth a try.