You guys are awesome... here is how to be more awesome (only slightly insulting)

So what has happened in the last two weeks?


I bought a car. I haven't driven since I passed my test... which was over two years ago. So my time on the road has been spent visibly shaking with the sort of expression you would expect to find on someone who has managed to blag his way into playing for Chelsea F.C. (for american audience .... the New York.... Lions.... or whatever..... some successful sports team) and whilst thrilled to be taking part, knows that soon enough he will be found out, set upon by angry hordes, and killed, and then shamed.


The car is from that brief period of about three weeks when humanity considered that cassettes and VHS tapes were equally as valuable as CDs and DVDs. Leading enterprising individuals to develop gigantic combi-boxes that could play both as well as fulfilling their final role, after quickly being unplugged, as footstools and coffee tables.


In more important bloggy news, holy shit on a biscuit I hit 1000 views last week!


This made me feel two things.


Firstly it made me realize how awesome you anonymous readers are. As the least regular blogger I know, with content of questionable quality and irregular themes, I am incredibly shocked and flattered that anyone would find my blog amusing enough to stick with it for the last nine months.


However it also made me realize that you guys ( bear with me on this ) are not being my audience very well.


DON'T LEAVE! I'M JUST TRYING TO HELP YOU LIKE ME BETTER!


Ok ok I will explain my disappointment in you here... I know this must be hard to take.


After 1000 views, I don't know who any of you are. As I made this blog to share my goofy thoughts with people and offset my monotonous life with fun new internet friends, it's kind of unrewarding to do when you receive no feedback.


It's as though I am writing my blog and leaving it on peoples doorstep. I know some people are reading it because the blog disappears from those doorsteps. But what is happening? Are people taking the blog inside and sharing it with friends and family? Are they playing a game of Shark with their friends? Are they laughing at the thought of Craig Charles (any thought of Craig Charles)? Or does the blog simply get taken in with all the other spam, sneered at and binned.


But I have realized... that it was obvious that this would happen! You didn't know what I wanted! I haven't taken the time to cater to your needs and explain in simplistic steps how to be awesome supporters of this blog.


So here goes..... don't leave.....


STEP 1! : Comment.

I assume that the lack of comments is because none of you have enjoyed any of my posts enough to read it all the way to the end and notice a comments section at the bottom.


Rest assured they are there. Scroll down. Now scroll back up... that doesn't work I know. But after you got lost in that barren wilderness down there I assume you scrolled back up anyway.


You know that barren wilderness.... the one devoid of life and hope.... the one I told you to scroll down to fifty words ago. That was the comments section. That is what I have to look at.

YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO READ MY POSTS! Frankly that is secondary to commenting on them.


Helpful comment topic suggestions! : How was your day? Did you like the bit about the thing? what is Danger Music Helps a reference to? (picture for whoever knows) Where did Sarah Michelle Geller go? This ISIS thing is scary huh? (relevant March 2015)


STEP 2! : Facebook.


If you are approaching this post through the blogs Facebook page, please advance to step 3. This does not excuse you from step 1.


This blog has a Facebook page.

Yesterday the likes count was 189.....


I recommend that anyone committing to 'liking' this page be willing to stick with it for the long haul. Read through a few posts and judge whether you like the content, I am aware that its difficult to gauge what theme this blog actually is. Especially if you have read as far as this.... some sort of aggressive instruction manual seems to be the best description. But there are better bits, remember that bit at the beginning about the car? That was light humorous stuff wasn't it?


The next post will be entitled 'A Crispy Duck' if that clarifies this blogs place in internetland any better.


To the person who left. What was it exactly that caused you to lose faith in this blog? Was it the sudden obsession with Craig Charles? "Oh well it was funny when he randomly mentioned him the first time but taking 2 hours out of his day to draw a vague resemblance of Craig Charles' face is just distasteful..... unlike". Or was it my genuine concern for my own health and metabolism that you didn't buy into? Perhaps you thought that there was no longer any value in following a blogger who is pre-occupied with dying.


...


Fuck you  (I assume they won't read that, but I will find them)


STEP 3! : Follow


Followers give me internet cred. All those other bloggers that you should be reading instead of me, have followers. And they all give me hate mail and shtick about how unsuccessful and lonely I am. They're all bastards really.... it's a cutthroat world here on blogger.


With followers behind me I can ride to the top of this blog tower on top of a flaming Ox that carries the visage of myself! And be happy and popular and buy ice-cream for everyone.... except that one person who left.... fuck you.


To follow this blog you can enter your email address at the top right of this page. I will then be able to forwards all of my car insurance and pornography spam to you.


Following these simple steps will take you from the mediocre readers you are now to the awesomer(er?) readers that I know you can all be!


So..... yeah..... bye and stuff

I WIN! (technically)

I finally feel good again! I beat the no caffeine blues!


Eight whole days of laboriously lumbering my aching body around like a zombie comprised primarily of car crash (it's hard to move a car crash), pinching myself in painful areas to stay awake, and trying to prevent my brain from squirming out of my nose, purchasing a gun and holding up a Starbucks are finally behind me.


I don't know how a brain would hold up a Starbucks, lacking the appendages to hold a gun, but it's a brain... it's smart... I'm sure it would find a way.


Although a smarter brain would use the money it purchased a gun with to simply buy a coffee at Starbucks.... an even smarter brain would get coffee somewhere else.


Anyway over the last few days I have attempted three different cures to make myself feel like a member of the living world. The first being ibuprofen... which does nothing.... if you have ibuprofens at home, either feed them to your local wildlife or send them back to ibuprofenland with an angry letter asking them why they are wasting your time.


My second attempt was codeine. I have a stash of codeine left over from when I was seriously ill last year (because I'm super healthy all the time to the point where God feels it is unfair for me to be such a prime specimen and occasionally decides to spite me with crippling conditions) which I save for emergencies such as this. Codeine works by making you feel awesome... it should pretty much say that on the packet. However what it also does is make you a blissful ball of couch jelly that is even less productive than the tortured caffeine-starved zombie you were before.


So I have finally settled on my third cure choice, coffee!

It's amazing how great of a cure for caffeine starvation coffee is. I would like to take this time to inform you how great coffee is. Coffee is a versatile drink that you can enjoy hot or iced. You can put Baileys in it for your Gran, or drink it from tiny little shot glasses and pretend that its a regular sized coffee and you are a giant who just happens to be fueled by coffee.


Coffee makes you feel 100% of everything, double coffee makes you feel 200% of everything and so forth. Coffee contains caffeine which is what the allies defeated Hitler with probably and coffee is also the reason cows invented milk, otherwise we would have to drink it black and nobody likes black coffee (pending source checks but take my word for it).


Here is Craig Charles without coffee.





Here is Craig Charles with coffee.

I feel that makes my point for me.


If anyone is thinking my title of I WIN may seem a little misguided. Firstly I feel awesome again now except for the crushing monotony and loneliness of my life and secondly I have probably extended my lifespan by eight days, which is exactly the sort of result the evil health inspector lady would have wanted for me anyway.

Scratch that. This is probably death approaching

I'm just trying to be healthy!!!


Remember how I posted the coffee scale and I was all like 'oh hey guys let's go drink a fuck tonne of coffee and get super buzzed until we can stop time and spit coffee grains from our ears!' Well, as totally harmless as all that sounded I have recently had a growing suspicion that my intake of caffeine may be at an unhealthy level.


The clues that pointed towards this included about as many trips to the toilet a day as Craig Charles has pictures drawn of him, as long as Craig Charles has a number of pictures drawn of him per day equal to about five times the average number of toilet trips per day (which he probably does). And whilst I do love going to the toilet of-course, it is the only sanctuary where I can draw up dastardly plans, this was growing tiresome.


What made me rather more concerned was my chest. I had a routine medical at my work, and the medical lady seemed confused when reading my heart rate. The sort of confusion where she may be wondering whether she had just monitored a human heart, or a PlayStation rumble pad (gamer audience outreach! BOOM).


She took a urine sample (which I could easily oblige) as she assumed I was on seventeen varieties of speed.


When it showed up clear she asked me if I had had any energy drinks that day.


I said "No. Just some coffee"


She asked how much coffee.


I said "......a lot?"


She asked how much that was.


"..... 7 cups?...."


"seven?"


"they're also big cups"


(I own a pint coffee mug that I got for free from somewhere. Real men drink everything in pints)


My answers cleared her suspicion that I was a speed addict, but her concern convinced me that I should at-least attempt to see what life would be like without caffeine. Which brings us to now.


I haven't had caffeine for three days and I think I am dying.


For anyone who thinks that caffeine is not addictive, I HATE YOU AND I WILL HUNT YOU WITH DOGS!..... ok I didn't mean that but you are most definitely mistaken. I can also confirm that there is a small possibility that I am one of the addicts.


I woke up on the first day without coffee with a crippling headache. I usually have headaches in the morning and it is usually a cup of coffee that makes them go away... it's astonishing I didn't connect the dots earlier.


My determination was strong to begin with, and I didn't let my crippling headache phase me for at least the first three hours. Thankfully after that time I had to go to work for eight hours, where I could do tedious repetitive manual tasks that require minimal brain function and, more importantly, have my access to coffee completely restricted.


It was in a headache daze, my body not understanding how a wake/sleep cycle functions without caffeine, that I survived my first two days.


I hadn't realized just how many different aspects of your body caffeine affects. Come the third day however, I noticed that it was not just my brain that was suffering.


I went to work on the third day and suddenly realized that my monotonous job of wrapping and moving many things had become infinitely more difficult. Every muscle and limb on my body felt as though it was now comprised primarily of concrete, and as concrete is rather heavy, this made every attempt at movement incredibly tiring. I spent the day shuffling around and leaning on things. It was too tiring to lift my feet as I move like normal coffee drinking people do. I'm not sure how I survived, eight hours is a long time to work anyway, but time in my caffeine zombie world had slowed considerably.


It is day four now. I know I said it was day three but I started writing this post and then got tired and shuffled off.


I don't know when this will end. I have read some discussions on caffeine withdrawal and people say it can take weeks! Weeks!


I don't know if I enough energy to keep shuffling to the fridge to sustain myself for weeks.


It's day five now... you see that up there. those three sentences between 'day four' and here... that's all I could be arsed to do yesterday. I'm not a terribly productive person when I'm not dying, but at this rate this may be the end of my blog and the majority of my bodily functions.


I'm rambling now. I would think of a good end to this but I'm too tired. I will write one if/when I survive and return to full mental capacity. It will probably have Craig Charles in it but I can't see how he is relevant right now.

That is all

Harry

I Know How I Will Probably Die

I have anosmia, which means I have no sense of smell.


I do not have animism, which spell check thinks I meant to say. Frankly I am insulted that blogspot refuses to recognize my affliction.


Before you ask me any questions about this. Here is the conversation I have to have at some point with everyone I know.


Person: Hey smell this (Offering to generously share their wonderful experience with me)

Me: Oh.... no it's ok I can't smell

Person: (assuming I simply have a cold or something) Oh no go on it's quite strong

Me: No I mean I don't have a sense of smell.... at all.... I can't smell

Person: (Person has never encountered this scenario before. Person is confused) What? At all?

Me: That's right

Person: (tries to imagine how such a thing would work) So..... when you breath in.... there's just.... no smell?

Me: Exactly

Person: (Person figures that I have probably just forgotten about some things that I can smell and decides to run through them) But what about like... cut grass?

Me: Nope. Can't smell that

Person: So you've never smelled bacon?

Me: ........No

Person: So if I farted... You wouldn't know would you?

Me: Sadly no.... It's a cruel world

Person: (Person smiles thinking of the freedom they now have) So even like..... really smelly things.... like a rotten egg.... with poo on it... and bad breath.... and it lives on a farm.... and the farm is also made of poo?

Me: Is that a smell?

Person: ........Yes?

Me: Then no


That is roughly how the conversation goes. I have been through that routine enough times that I am contemplating recording my answers on to a dictaphone so that I can play them back and save the effort of actually speaking. Even my close friends often forget that I lack this. This has resulted in the 'Harry-has-no-smell' stare when they offer me something to smell, this can take a number of minutes until the aforementioned friend realizes their mistake.


I don't know why people feel that not being able to smell surely doesn't include particular items. If someone told me they were blind (slightly easier to notice) I wouldn't question whether he was able to see a tree.... or the sun. You certainly wouldn't forget that they are blind! Maybe its the glasses... perhaps I will fashion a special anosmia nose-clip so that I can be easily identified.


But no. I have no sense of smell, never have. To be fair it is probably the easiest sense to live without. Except maybe for the 6th sense.... that's probably harder to live with.


As the title of the post suggests, I think this is probably going to be a factor in how I die. Experiences over the years have made me realize that there are certain things that it would really help to be able to smell. Namely gas, burning things, and food that has gone bad.


My nightmare scenario is when I try to turn on the oven, I can hear the gas coming out, I am holding down the make-gas-become-fire-sparky-click-button (an oven ignition?... that makes it sounds like the oven belongs to NASA) and it is yet to make the gas become fire. Then I reach a critical terrifying moment.... I know that I have made gas come out (LOL) ..... but I cannot smell the gas..... for all I know I have left it on so long that the gas is now all around me! ..... and if I were to press the sparky button again then I would be engulfed in flames. A great big screaming anosmic fireball and the only upside would be that I cannot smell myself. So what I usually do at this critical point is turn the gas off out of fear. Then I open some windows and start wafting a towel near the open oven. After I have left it about half an hour, or less if desperate hunger and need for fish fingers overpowers my fear. I assume that the air is now non-flammable enough to try again.


Even once the treacherous hurdle of turning the oven on has been passed, I am not out of the woods.


You would think that my increased risk of burning to death would make me more cautious when it comes to cooking my food with fire. But you would be wrong. Like many people I am prone to distraction. Once the food is cooking and my eyes rest upon my TV screen I quickly forget that I had any food steadily increasing in temperature and ash content. If the oven cared at all for my disability and desire for well cooked fish fingers then it would oblige by turning itself off and blowing on my fish fingers for me to save me the effort. But the oven does not do this, which only raises my suspicion that all ovens are maniacal killing machines that want me and my fish fingers dead.

The following is a depiction of events that have happened at least 3 times.

Luckily for me I usually live with other people who can put an end to events before they reach the 'Harry-is-sat-watching-TV-surrounded-by-a-wall-of-smoke-and-fire' stage.


Nonetheless the oven is bound to win one day. It's kind of a blessing knowing how you will die I suppose. It gives me the opportunity to avoid it, and all I have to do is avoid my oven for the foreseeable future.


But I really really like fish fingers...


P.S. People always bring up things they can smell that makes absolutely no sense to me. Like rain... how the hell does rain have a smell? Isn't that just the smell of water? So your glass of water would smell like rain?.... People with a sense of smell are confusing