Finish That Shit! Part 1

NEW SERIES INTRO! (Become appropriately aroused)


Because of my lack of time I have come up with an ingenious plan that I jotted down as 'Just make them read your old stuff'. So here goes...


I have written many posts for this blog. Some of which are remembered well.... by me... presumably not by you... and some of which are not even well remembered by myself.


But what I am doing here, with a brand new series!, is manipulating you... the reader who doesn't read my blog.... to go back and read those posts that you haven't read yet for the following reasons.


1. It will be like reading a whole new post from me! Without me actually having to do any work.


2. This new series is going to relate entirely to unsuccessful posts... so if you don't read them... you have no idea what I am talking about.


So this series takes a look at some of my older posts that clearly were supposed to be continued but then ... for various reasons all of which are different ways of me saying "Well that was shit lets move on" ... were not... and quickly wraps them up.


I realize the irony that this itself... is a terrible idea for a series.... and will most likely not be continued.


INTRO OVER!


EPISODE 1! (Please try to recover your lost arousal)


This blog has been responsible for many love-able and quirky fictional characters over the year (and a bit) that you have been hooked on reading it.


However one character stands out above the rest as being clearly awesome and adored by all of you.





(Oomf.. Its like I've created a new genre of porn)


Craig Charles may be my greatest creation. I think, if I look deep inside myself, his character is merely a reflection of me. Perhaps, in my own way, I am Craig Charles... and maybe a piece of Craig Charles could be in you too.


BUT


This episode is not about Craig Charles, that character has plenty more material. No this episode is about the other mainstay of this blog... This guy:





Lets take a time travelling trip back to when he had an origin story. Yeah that's right, an origin story, like Batman... or Jesus.


Ted vs Blob Saga


(You may be wondering where I found this gem. Well. What you have to do is scroll down the right hand side of my blog page and you will find dates that reveal the titles of all of my old posts. Whilst you may appreciate that I keep a record of what all of my old posts were called it's actually even more useful than that! With the tiniest flick of your dedicated clicking finger you can touch these titles! Like a cat or a priest touches its victim before injecting it with venom (Nat-Geo 2016). The title will then transport you on an epic adventure across cyberspace, visiting great lost cities and battling dragons made of pop-ups! Only to be brought back here... to your comfy chair... looking at that title displayed on my blog... and a feeling lost somewhere between achievement and regret.)


This was my fourth ever post and, despite the hindsight of my obvious forthcoming success, to start something labelled a 'saga' was ambitious.


Now here's the only paragraph that actually contributes anything to this series:


Why Is It Shit?
This all really boils down to why I wrote this in the first place. I knew at the time that I needed a character to represent myself that was easier to draw than a person.
     The origin story is true, I really was a bizarre doodling child, much like today only more defend-able. However it is merely a framework so that I can go
"HEY GUYS! REMEMBER THAT GUY!?.... YEAH!?.... I'M THAT GUY NOW!.... Kay bye...."
The planned sequel was going to be to introduce my brothers character. Essentially when my schoolmates stopped participating in strange doodling in class because "you're weird and we are not your friends" or some shit I moved on to getting my brother involved... Yeah I know, picked up no hints there... because I was older and therefore my pass-times were cool. My brother being about 9 years old, and not particularly gifted artistically, created some sort of strange blob character... called a blob... and it looked like a blob.... and it was a blob.... and had it existed people would list no features of it other than its blobbyness and strange smiley face... and I was both disappointed at his lack of commitment to the process and relieved that his character was comparatively shit.


And that... that paragraph.. would have been it. The grand saga concluded just so that I can introduce a character or two. It would be like the first Lord of the Rings movie if it just ended when they decide to make an Avengers team to take the ring.... and then there were no more movies... the end.
Nobody likes the set up for a story, we are all just waiting for a big pay-off ending. Its like I had made a really nice biscuit base for a cheesecake and served you that. No-one gives a fuck about a biscuit base! If the cream cheese topping could support itself then we would all just shovel that into our faces!


(The cream cheese represents a progression of a story-line, remember that next time you eat a cheesecake)


I've run out of similes now.


And that's why I didn't!..... (Say it with me now!)....


FINISH THAT SHIT!


to be continued...

Conversations With A Lunatic

I don't think this blog is the place for gossip about other people. That is why this story is completely 100% fictional. Like climate change, or the Dalai Lama.


There once was a man named .... Ashbey? ..... Bashley? ..... Bashley... his name was Bashley.


Bashley worked in a dull factory putting pillows and duvets into bags. Bashley found this job a complete bore and so distracted himself by striking up conversations with a fellow employee named... Barry.


Barry was a marine biologist with an awesome beard and a super popular blog (that Bashley didn't know about) who was merely working at the factory because he was too cool to do anything else, rather than walking the fine desperate line of poverty and un-fulfillment that Bashley would have suspected if he were not a complete lunatic.


Bashley was a complete lunatic.


Barry was thankful for this fact. These conversations were one of the only things that made this job entertaining. It's the same reason that Jeremy Kyle is so popular. People can hear the issues, conversations and bizarre attempts at sentence structure made by the type of people who appear here, and suddenly feel far superior and content that at-least they are not unhinged to this degree.


As Barry soaked in these conversations and tried desperately to understand some sort of pattern to the subjects being raised. He thought to himself that a list of quotes from such an individual may be just the sort of thing that deserves a place on his blog....


Fictional Barry's fictional blog was full of gossip and nonsense so this was entirely appropriate.


Barry constructed the list over many months. He finally published the quotes under the title "Conversations With A Lunatic" which he thought may get him into trouble but had planned for this by changing the names of those involved to Shlashley and Shlarry.... so no-one would ever know.


Barry's list can be viewed below:


1. "I'm looking at a new flat Shlarry. Ive got to save up a 10% deposit though"
    "Well how much is that Shlashley?"
    "The flat is £80,000. So I need about £3000-4000 right?"


2. "So I went on holiday this one time by myself with some mates...."


3. "Shlarry..."
    "yes?"
    "What is your take on Hurricane Katrina?"
    "...... What?...."
    "I mean who do you think did it?"
    [some time and fruitless explanation later]
    "Shlarry you can't tell me that a hurricane just so happened to hit a city full of black people"


4. "Shlarry what is your take on Aliens"
                                                    Hitler
                                                    Money
                                                    Animals (!?)
                                                    Jesus
                                                    ISIS
                                                    Air (!?)
                                                    Loch Ness Monster/ Bigfoot/ 'that thing in Spain what sucks goats                                                         dead'


5. "I'm goin' on a diet, there's this guy right, who says that you shouldn't eat any acid foods, that's what got all our modern bodies messed up! You get me?"
"So what do you have to eat?"
"Natural things! Back to nature! like fruits and stuff"


6. "You don't have to correct me all the time Shlarry, you know I'm not the brightest star in the ocean"


7. "You know when a woman goes to the doctor to see how much her baby has dilated...."

8. "Why would someone have sex with an animal Shlarry? Tell me"
    "What..... where is this coming from?"
    "Well they found this woman with wings the other day, so some crazy fucker out there must have been having sex with birds"
    "I ..... I don't even.... there's so much wrong here"

I Are Established Now?

Oh Em Gee you guys!



You know what this month is!?



Damn right I knew you did!



It's my (blogs) Birthday!

It's been a super crazy year and it's amazing to see how this blog has developed from an unknown site that nobody cares about, to an unknown sight that nobody cares about with nearly 2000 views! AND a Facebook page (I did that.... thanks me)!



I don't expect this blog to ever get anywhere or be read, it's just fun to draw stupid things and amuse myself. I have promised before to make regular posts. I can now promise that, based on writing for a year, that will never happen. Producing this is a time consuming activity for someone whose usual measure of being productive is actually constructing a sandwich rather than crouching in-front of the fridge and eating individual ingredients (this picture took me 3 FUCKING HOURS! ENJOY IT!).



[other news] I have a new shower now and it's a special shower with a mode that can shoot water forwards at you from the wall. It's rather amazing, I feel I have discovered why bears scratch their backs against trees.

An Open Letter to Craig Charles

A Crispy Duck

When you're a child, food is nothing but fun. The closest thing to a traumatizing plate of food you could get was sprouts, or a desert that consists mainly of fruit.


Or so I thought.


Before I begin I will qualify that I am not a vegetarian. But I did consider it once... and this is the story of why.


You never really question where food actually comes from as a child. Sure you know the simple answer "beef comes from cows" but somehow that is all processed in your mind in such an innocent way.

I imagine the only reason there are any vegetarians under the age of ten is the result of heartless parents who explain the real truth to kids in graphic detail.


Now the most humane way for children to truly get their heads around what they're eating is a gradual educational process. My experience was more like learning where babies come from by investigating aggressive noises in you're parents room, only to find sweaty bodies, new and strange body parts, and a lifelong phobia of leather and horse-riding.


The Parents had decided to break the monotony of Friday night takeaways by going out for Chinese food. This was fine. We regularly decided to go crazy and change the nationality of our Friday meal, we were god damn mavericks about once a month... usually changing to Chinese food....


As such I was familiar with Chinese food. I would be having the crispy duck as I always did.


"Hey kid! Do you want to make your own food!? Using this selection of ingredients in fancy baskets which you can lay out on your plate in a finely tuned (possibly OCD) method and fold precisely to produce perfect ducky goodness packets!?"


"YOU BET YOUR BOTTOM I DO!"


This however was a new Chinese establishment. To satisfy my desire for neat and orderly food parcels, Parents ordered the 'whole crispy duck' to share, the only version of this on the menu. This was also fine, if anything it gave me a chance to demonstrate just how superior my wrap method was to the barbaric improvisation of my little brother.


Everything was completely normal. We played with the strange rotating plate (why is it only Chinese places that invest in this idea? They are the only cuisine that seems to encourage sharing with this, as apposed to all the others where ZER VILL BE NO SHARING OV ZE PLATES! ..... Sharing Nazi there) and dared each other to touch candle flames.


And then the food arrived...


It is easy to disconnect with most meat dishes. You can't see the harm that has been done when you look at a burger or a steak or a sausage because it's just a slab of meat.  Even a roast chicken is missing its head and feet. That's not a real animal. It doesn't look particularly upset about being eaten. I doubt it could look upset if it was... it doesn't have a face.


What I was presented with was something very different than what I was used to.


Here is what my  young mind assumed must have preceded this event.

I still ate it, which I know renders this story rather pointless. But I really REALLY considered thinking about not eating it. As a consolation to duck lovers, I have never ordered a whole crispy duck since then.


And that is the fantastical story of how a disturbing crispy duck caused me to momentarily consider becoming vegetarian.


On a side note. Mallard ducks have been known to mate through gang rape and to engage in necrophilia.... so... fuck 'em.


♫ HARRY'S NERD FACT OF THE TIME PERIOD! ♫  (You're damn right that counts!)

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 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

Mystery of the Rambalam

We all know and love 'Black Betty', the classic tune made famous by such artists as Ram Jam, Tom Jones and Spiderbait, played across the world at birthdays, weddings, funerals and other important events in our lives.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R044sleOW6I


But what is a 'rambalam'? Sounding like a catchphrase that belongs alongside 'yabadabadoo!' and repeated so often that one could assume the writers were encouraged to reinforce the phrase as much as possible by some outside force, perhaps paid for each mention.

You see that advert would completely make sense if Rambalam airlines had existed. Perhaps it never got off the ground......


Plane pun there


The song itself however does date back into the 18th century which makes my hypothesis unlikely. Apparently 'Black Betty' refers to either a musket, a whip or a bottle of whiskey. However as non of these items make the sound 'rambalam' then the word remains a mystery.


I have taken the simplest answer here as being most likely correct. Whoever wrote Black Betty was a lazy writer, had the beat and half enough words for a song, and improvised the rest with rambalams.


I have therefore taken it upon myself to improve on this 200 year old piece of cultural american history and finally finish the lyrics. The lyrics now require at least two singers but I think this means that it still fits with the original marching song roots. I think the new sound gives it a much brighter feel, surely a morale boost that those men have unfortunately never had the chance to use.


The tune is the same and the new lyrics in green are sang to the same beat as 'Rambalam' was.

Whoa, Black Betty (What's her name?)

Whoa, Black Betty (That's her name)

Black Betty had a child (How nice for her)

The damn thing gone wild (Ate a minister)

She said "I'm worryin' outta mind" (Stressin' out)

The damn thing gone blind (His own fault no doubt)

I said Oh, Black Betty (I'm glad he's blind)

Whoa, Black Betty (Gives me peace of mind)

Oh, Black Betty (What's her name?)

Whoa, Black Betty (That's her name)

She really gets me high (I'm sure she does)

You know that's no lie (We all know she's on drugs)

She's so rock steady (That'd be the drugs)

And she's always ready (Sir she needs help...)

Whoa, Black Betty (Where's she at?)

Whoa, Black Betty (Just follow the cats)

Whoa, Black Betty (What's her name?)

Whoa, Black Betty (Where's she from?)

She's from Birmingham (Where is that?)

Way down in Alabam' (Oh yeah that's right!)

Well, she's shakin' that thing (That's her cat)

Boy, she makes me sing (We've noticed that)

Whoa, Black Betty (And blind cannibal Tim)

Whoa, Black Betty (Let's not visit them...)