Sandbags

RAT: I'm stuck in a rut.

PIGEON: Uh... coo?

RAT: Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so.

PIGEON: Seriously though, mate. You're doing fine. The world's your sewer.

RAT: Thanks. You're right, you're right. I'm not even worried about it really, it's just... I don't know. You get to a certain age, and you think... maybe I'm not going to make it as an actor.

PIGEON: Oh, come on. That's rubbish. That's absolute rubbish. Think of all the actors who didn't make it until they were older. Where was Robert Pattinson ten years ago?

RAT: *snort* I'm not exactly Robert Pattinson, am I?

PIGEON: What do you mean? You could be where he is! It's all just chance and... you know... whatever. Geography.

RAT: I sent my head shots to another agency yesterday.

PIGEON: You see! What if they say yes?

RAT: They're not going to say yes. It'll just be another "Sorry. You're not what we're looking for right now."

PIGEON: What about your stage work?

RAT: Dried up. I'm tired of that, anyway. I'm tired of being typecast.

PIGEON: As a rat?

RAT: Exactly. It's always the same stupid rat role. It's patronising. I'm always the 'token rat'. I want to show something more. I want to stretch my wings.

PIGEON: You can stretch my wings if you want.

RAT puts his hand on PIGEON's knee. (Do pigeons have knees?)

RAT: I appreciate you, you know? Don't ever think that I take you for granted.

PIGEON: Coo.

RAT: *smiles* Yeah. Coo you too.

Has anyone got any contacts at Pixar?

***

Things have slowed down lately.

I need a shot in the arm.

I need a shot in the arm like I need a hole in the head: BADLY.

I could really do with some industry interest.

I'm not sure what industry.

Perhaps some kind of industry that deals with people who whine one sentence at a time.

Still, you never know.

You never know.

You knever no.

That's why you wouldn't be my "phone a friend".

Unless the question was about IGNORANCE.

And even then, you wouldn't answer the phone.

You wouldn't know what it was.

You'd check the tumble drier.

***

This next section will be in longer paragraphs, as I want to demonstrate my versatility to Paul and sundry. The approach will pay off when someone from the industry reads this and sees that I've mastered dialogue, chippy uselessness and extended chippy uselessness. Once I've signed my contract, I'll reveal to them that my branching out was just a sham. And just a shame.

Let's include something useful here. I don't want to be wasting your time. Not all of it.

This is funny.

I haven't posted a video from The Armando Iannucci Shows for a long time. Here is one:

The Armando Iannucci Shows would be in my top four favourite comedies of all time.

I don't know what the other three are.

***

It's too late to add anything worthwhile to this post.

I have a long story about poisoned gas in the bathroom, but I don't want to go into it now.

The story, I mean.

Or the bathroom.

War and Piece

Starting this blog entry is a piece of cake.

It's easy.

A piece of cake isn't that easy, though. It involves the baking of a cake. Which can be difficult. Not only that, but it requires a knife and some cutting. It's not that easy.

For that reason, the expression has fallen out of favour. There's a more popular variant: "a piece of piss".

You may hear it being said by an idiot in a pub:

"Nah, mate - it was a piece of piss!"

[TRANSLATION: "Perish the thought, my dear fellow! In fact, this particular incident passed without incident!]

I wish I was there when that expression was invented. I would have liked to have seen its origin, seen the expression on the face of the speaker, and to ask, clearly and firmly, "what do you mean, exactly?"

***

A quick interlude to tell you about an excellent anecdote (which I think I heard on the Armando Iannucci Shows DVD commentary). Apparently, Iannucci (or The 'Nooch) was at a literary festival, in a tent next to Harold Pinter's (when he was alive, obviously, not at some kind of wake).

The 'Nooch had a large crowd of people, and used them to speak out to the great writer. He got everyone to shout in unison: "Oi, Harold! What do you mean exactly?"

The word genius is overused, but that is geniusgenius.

***

So, where were we? Oh yes: a piece of piss.

A piece of piss.

It was a piece of piss.

How did that happen?

I suppose a piece of cake was chosen as it is simple and pleasurable and self-contained. The same can't really be said for piss.

For one thing, it doesn't come in pieces. If you're pissing in pieces, you should probably see a urologist.

It's not really pleasurable, either (unless you've been holding it in for ages).

It is easy, I'll give them that.

Urinating (I find) is, on the whole, less work than baking a cake. Baking involves various stages of mixing, whisking and creaming that aren't really necessary for doing a wee.

On the whole.

Even so, the leap from "cake" to "piss" is a large one. I don't know if there were any intermediate stages. (eg. cake > muffin > cupcake > piss)

I don't think you can go any farther, though.

You can't ascribe credibility to the same idiot in the same pub if he says:

"Nah, mate - it was a piece of shit!"

[TRANSLATION: ""Perish the thought, my dear fellow! In fact... uh... hmm.

...

There was excrement."]

A piece of shit is reserved for an actual piece of shit, or a person of whose behaviour you disapprove.

"You're a real piece of shit, you know that?!"

"Do you mean I'm as easy as cake?"

"Uh... what?"

SuperCrazyRocketshipFunTime!

Here's my attempt at a dirty limerick:

There once was a girl named Regina
Who was born with a liquorice vagina
Coping well with the stress
She became a success
And didn't let her condition define her

It's a feminist parable. I'm like Germaine Greer in lots of ways...

***

I tried to write an entry yesterday, but I was bored.

Utterly, profoundly bored. I was bored on a fundamental level. It was a deep, physical boredom that penetrated my very being. Even my organs were bored, doing the same old job. My heart wanted to breathe. My lungs wanted to hear. My kidneys wanted to yodel - so bored was I.

It wasn't a trivial boredom. It was a heavy, depressing shroud. I could easily imagine someone committing suicide because of boredom. It would have to be something quick. None of this tedious sitting in a garage full of fumes. Slit wrists? Forget about it. I'd lose patience halfway through and turn on the telly. Hanging? Boring.

Of course death would be the ultimate in boredom. Imagine killing youself out of boredom, and then realising that you were still conscious after death, but stuck in your body. Same old coffin, same old view. Now that's boring.

So, yesterday, I was bored. Did I mention that?

I was bored on a quantum level. Even the minute fundamental particles, particles that behave in crazy unpredictable ways, were chugging along in a uniform line. They were bored.

You wouldn't think that I'd have such a short attention span, given that I'm pretty laid-back and let's face it: lazy. But I get bored so quickly. It's not a good quality. Also, it seems to be getting worse as I get older.

It reminds me of that Armando Iannucci sketch where someone is literally dying of boredom. Brilliant, it's on youtube!



So the entry I was going to write yesterday was about my annoyance at having a cold. The reason is: it makes me look stupid. With my nose blocked up, I have to walk around with my mouth open like a special-needs fish. People who breathe through their mouths are supposedly stupid. 'Mouth-breather' is an insult.

I don't know why. Why is one breathing channel more sophisticated and intellectual than the other? I suppose the nose looks more streamlined and futuristic than the mouth.

Don't get me wrong - it's no eye. The eye is by far the most advanced bit of face aparatus. But the nose is pretty good. The mouth is just a hole.

I got bored writing that yesterday. Can you see why?

So this whole entry is about boredom. It makes me think of when people say: "the only people who get bored are boring people".

Am I bored or am I boring? The answer is clearly 'both'.

That's a stupid expression anyway. That's like saying "the only people who get raped are rapists" or "the only people who get pissed off are urinating".

Yes, those are exactly the same. Directly comparable.

***

I've decided to open up a gym called Futility (in truth, that seems like hard work, but I might sell off the name).

That way, their slogan could be 'Exercise in Futility!'.

Lucy has suggested that all the exercises are pointless, like in the underworld. There could be the Sisyphus machine where you push a boulder up a hill over and over.

I'm going to make one million pounds.

***

I'll bid you good day with one of my many excellent TV ideas that I've honed in emails to Lucy:

I'm going to write a TV programme called 'Don't Forget Smelly!'.

My first idea was a kids' cartoon about a gang of friends who always go on adventures. But as they're setting out, their parents say 'Don't Forget Smelly!'. And they begrudgingly take him along. Then it turns out that Smelly always saves the day with a piece of quick thinking or bravery.

My second idea is a kind of anti-war polemic. An aging world leader faces difficult decisions/pressure from oil compaines and corporations to go to war. Each episodes has a flashback to Vietnam, where he discusses the meaning of life with his army friend Smelly. These morals remind him to keep true to his beliefs and pursue a course of peace. 'Don't Forget Smelly', he'll say to himself, looking at a sepia photo of them both. "I never will".

The flashbacks will form a continuing narrative, where we're led to believe Smelly was eventually killed. The world leader will remember scenes with sad music, and say things like: 'this is for you, buddy'. But in the end, it's revealed that Smelly didn't die at all. He just turns up in the Oval office at the end of the series, and they go bowling together.

I should write TV.

Fixing a hole where the rain gets in

A whole week without posting? This hole must be plugged. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it seems right to me.

I have been distracted by various things; primarily our trip to London to see my sister's gig in Camden. I estimate that a good 50% of my readership (hi Dave!) were there, so I won't go into too much detail. Needless to say, I was very drunk and really enjoyed the gig. I don't know if the latter was contingent on the former, but I don't think so.

It was also a kind of scouting trip for a possible move to the big city. I have mixed feelings about London. Actually, they're not that mixed: I don't like it. I feel like I can't get a sense of the place, because I go everywhere by tube, and can't get my head around the geography. I think it's also because whenever I'm there, it's just for a short time, so I always feel rushed and pressured.

Having said that, I'd still like to move there. If I had a home base and more time, I'm sure I'd get to like it. Also, if I live in London for a while, I'll feel I can legitimately complain about it afterwards.

Don't know if I'd ever get used to the whole pollution-black-snot thing. Maybe I could wear some kind of nose protection, like cotton wool balls or an asbestos moustache.

***

I've been wasting time at work, expanding the scope of my internet perusal (but not THAT far; you know what I'm talking about). I haven't got anything too interesting to say, so here's a few people that do:

Stephen Fry's blog is well worth a visit if you've got lots of time on your hands (his entries are very long [that's almost a double entendre; maybe a triple]). He talks about fame here in a typically interesting fashion. He has also introduced me to the practice of putting links everywhere in my blog. I can't decide if this is useful or annoying.

Armando Iannucci is writing a regular column at the Observer site, and is consistently amusing (although sometimes a little to wry for my tastes). Which reminds me: everyone buy the criminally underrated The Armando Iannucci Shows on DVD. It's damn good.

I've also been digging Richard Dawkins' new crusade, which seems admirably ridiculous and ridiculously admirable, or something like that. Not sure about his 'A' T-shirt though. Atheist or not, wearing that surely signifies: Loser with a capital L.

And finally, this is why I don't wear a belly-button ring. Although my pierced cock is now making me nervous.

***

That should do it for now.

Consider the hole plugged.

(By the way, never use that last line as part of a rape case defense. Juries can be a bit sensitive.)