Andy Parsons
February 11th, 2006 at 16:09

Last night I took Heather to see a stand up comedian. Andy Parsons, who you might have seen on BBC Two’s Mock the Week.

Unlike Mark Thomas, Andy picked on the audience, which was rather terrifying as Heather and I were sat in the middle, about four rows back: the perfect seats. He picked on people and asked them their names and what they do, and made jokes about it. What made this slightly irritating was when the people he picked on tried to be funny themselves.

“What’s your name?”, he asked.

“In a nutshell: Conrad”, a man on the front row replied.

“You’ve always got to be careful when you pick on people who chose to sit at the front”.

Then there was another guy, who was an engineer, and described the medical equipment he designed as “the machine that goes ‘ping’”. Thankfully, the calibre of Andy’s comedy was much higher than this.

He was essentially working his way through the seats talking to each person, and picking up on anything the audience did- like when one man ran out to the toilet across the stage, did some impromptu stuff about that. The downside to this is that I have no idea whether or not Heather was enjoying it as much as I was- I didn’t dare turn my head to a ninety degree angle, just in case he saw and made a spectacle of me. Also: I was quite concious of the amount of blinking I was doing because of the bright lights. I tried not to blink so rapidly.
It was fantastic how he managed to go between his audience banter into his set piece routines. He just managed to switch topics without sounding as contrived as I’d imagine one had to. “Did you see Iraq now has bird flu? Havn’t they got enough problems as it is? I can’t wait for the day Tony Blair holds up a sparrow and says ’see, I told you Iraq have WMD’… So they want us to have ID cards now that carry scans of our finger prints and eyes. I don’t know about you, but I tend to carry my fingers and eyes wherever I go anyway”. Seamless.

The other interesting thing I noticed (I wasn’t sitting there making notes, mind), was how weak some of his material must sound on paper- he executed it really well and got lots of laughs. I think my blood based economy thing actually works better on paper than one or two of his things.

There was a couple of those disillusioning moments when you see a comedian who sounds like he’s doing stuff “off the cuff” when he’s actually repeating material he’s used before- like Ricky Gervais’s anecdote about finding a “snake skin” on holiday as a child that he’s told on Room 101, Meet Ricky Gervais, and Jonathan Ross. I’d seen Andy’s bit about dropping dips and pringles instead of bombs on Bin Laden on the Mock the Week. Not that I’m complaining- it was very funny.
Overall, Andy Parsons was excellent and I had a much more excellent evening than say, you.

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Bus Death
February 11th, 2006 at 01:30

I had to catch a bus today in order to get to my driving lesson (it’s not as bizarre as it sounds), and on the way back I was slightly worried.

No, it wasn’t the workshy driver’s sloppy driving, or the possibility of bumping into someone from my old school who I’d be unsure whether or not I should speak to them, but it was one of my fellow passengers.

This woman got on the bus as it went through one of the villages, and I’m not joking when I say this, but she was almost spherical. Her diameter was approximately five feet. To make matters worse, as she stumbled onto the bus, she dragged along with her a shopping basket on wheels that old women traditionally use.

As she sat opposite me I was thinking: what if the bus was to take a particularly harsh right turn? The bus fallng on its side probably wouldn’t kill me, as I’m on the bottom deck- although might offer some “glass in side of face” pain. The trouble came when I factored this woman into the equation. If the bus was to fall onto his right hand side, this woman would fall on top of me, crushing me. It’s essentially like if you put a cricket ball (the woman), and a small duck (me) into an empty cereal box painted red (the bus) and shook it about a bit. The duck would obviously come off a bit worse for wear.

Buses: terrifying.

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Lib Dem phonecall
February 9th, 2006 at 21:05

I receieved a weird phonecall the other night- it was the leader of the district council!

Rather than ask me if I’d like to come and try out some poses for the municipal statue of Market Harborough’s greatest citizen, he was instead ringing up for partisan business!

He wanted me to renew my membership of the Liberal Democrats- something I’ve neglected to do because I don’t know whether I want to or not. Here is a transcript of the phonecall:

Him: “When are you going to renew your membership?”
Give me some money, now!

Me: “I don’t know if I want to… I think it’ll depend on who wins the leadership election”
I’m a cheapskate.

Him: “Oh, that’s too bad… it really doesn’t matter who wins… who do you want to win?”
All politicians are liars.

Me: “Probably Hughes as he’s supposed to be more to the left of the party”
This makes me sound knowledgible and interested and that.

Him: “Well you see, I have the same problems balancing left and right”
Campaining to get that fence near the railway line painted is hard work. Some want it green, others want it blue!

Me: “Hmm”

Him: “Go on, renew!”

Me: “…”

Him: “Pleeeeaase, I’ll be your friend”

Me: “I’ll think about it”

Him: “Go on, you know you want to!”

Me: “Oh, okay then”
I’m bored of you and your power to RAISE or LOWER the price of parking, what can I say that’ll shut you up?

Him: “Alright! I’ll be in touch again! Bye!”

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One year, (nearly) One thousand Cokes
February 9th, 2006 at 14:18

Today marks an important day in human history. The day that James O’Malley proved that his logging his coke intake has changed absolutely nothing atall.

What?! New readers, you must be confused. For the past year I’ve been keeping track of the number of Cokes I’ve been drinking a day- the term “coke” in this case applies to all cola drinks from the awful Freeway Cola to the lovely Pepsi in a pub. I’ve logged it by the number of “servings”- one serving being anything from a small glass to a 750ml bottle.

Why am I doing this? Last time I went to the dentist, he told me to cut down on my coke intake- to help me do this, I decided to log what I drink, so next time I go to the dentist I have some raw data and some pretty graphs to show him.

But you knew all of that anyway, right? Lets have a look at the results.

Just looking exclusively at the start and “end” data, you can see that my CPD average went from 3, down only slightly to 2.7. Oo-er. Just 0.3 Cokes after going as low as 2.11 in May! If you look at the “CPD” over time graph, you’ll see that it lowered dramatically before shooting right back up again.

If you look at the “Cokes in a day over time”- a log of the absolute number of Cokes I have had in a day, you’ll see that there is a huge jump in September… incidentally the month I started University. Clearly the notion that students drink lots doesn’t just apply to alcohol.

The cumulative graph isn’t very exciting. It’s just a big curve.

I think the sliding average graph is one of the most interesting- it shows a definate upwards trend and worryingly, each value is entirely dependent on the three days around it- meaning that I am actually drinking more than before.

So all in all, not a great year. In this coming year though, I’m going to try and beat it- by which I mean, drink a lower number of cokes than before. I’ve stepped up my obsessive-compulsive behaviour too, and I’m now trying to log the individual brands that I drink, too.

Stay tuned for more thrilling Coke action folks!

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Nutter of the week #3
February 8th, 2006 at 00:13

I was walking into town with Mickey (of Uni fame… you don’t need any backstory on him, he’s essentially a one-dimensional character with a catchphrase) and a man who was quite clearly on a “come down” from drugs spoke to us.

“Sorry to be cheeky, but you couldn’t lend us a…”, he asked pathetically.

“Sorry!”, I cried, cutting him off, before ducking my head to make myself more aerodynamic, and increasing my walking pace away from him.

Michael later explained to me how this drug addicted street vagrant had asked him word-for-word exactly the same thing a few days earlier- proving that being a drug user is equally as creative as being a tillmonkey. More interestingly and alarming still, it turns out that Michael, who in the past is known to have given a monk four english pounds, gave this nutter eighty pence. Its not even as if this money will go to a good cause, like what might have happend with the monk- it was clearly going to be spent on drugs.

I think the most unusual thing was how smartly dressed this vagrant was. He obviously wasn’t wearing a suit- but his casual wear appeared cleaned and ironed. I can’t quite figure at which point in the injecting/begging/sleeping in the gutter cycle it will occur to him “Hmm… maybe I should iron my clothes?”. Maybe he just buys steals some more clothes every few days? I’d imagine his hoodie will have a fair few holes in the arms after a while. Any drug addicts know why he was so well presented? Use the comments function below!

I suppose it’s not all bad being a drug-addicted street vagrant though- who knows, one day you might end up being James O’Malley’s Nutter of the Week!

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Race Hate
February 4th, 2006 at 18:23

I’m quite pleased that the race hated bill hasn’t gone through. Not only is it a draconian invasion of our freedom of speech, but it would have presumably prevented me from talking about how much I dislike athletics.

Don’t get me wrong- I think its great that Paula Radcliffe and Kelly Holmes can erm… run really fast, but its not a very useful talent to have, is it? Imagine if they’d studied rocket science and brain surgery respectively?

It’s not even like these so-called atheletes are good role models. People like Paula Radcliffe are influencing young, impressionable youths like Mark Oaten into doing career destroying things. I bet erm… that really good triple jumper, whoever he was, steals sweets from young children in his free time too. He looks the type.

I think athetlics would appeal to me more if I could relate to the challenges me easily- at what point in time am I ever going to need to run exactly 100m in under 12 seconds? If it was say a test of how many items can be scanned through a till in a set amount of time, or the number of valid lines of PHP that can be written to accomplish a task without consulting php.net, it might be a bit more believable.

And hurdles… arn’t they counter-intuitive? The althlete wants to run forwards- not be constantly held back.

Silly sport.

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Road Rage
February 4th, 2006 at 00:15

My mum recently put me on her car insurance and has been taking me out in the evenings in the vague hope that it’ll increase the chances of me passing my driving test.

I tend to narrate what I’m doing as it helps me stay focused, as well as reassure my mother that I’m not going to go ploughing into the child on the pavement who’s looking at me funny. To this end, any passenger when I’m driving is likely to hear:

“Crossing coming up… no pedestrians… green light… arsehole walking out into the road… chicane in the road in the distance… twats not slowing down to let me get through despite it being my right of way… bollocks! fuck! arsehole! twat!”.

Essentially, I’ve started swearing heavily again. I just hope I don’t carry on doing this when I have driving lessons, as I’m guessing my current instructor might be slightly more offended than my mother, who’s used to my swearing and even applauds it in some cases.

I think driving just tends to bring out the worst in people, though.

I was walking into Leicester city centre with Rob (of “goes to Uni with me” fame) and we were crossing a zebra crossing. Just as I’m approaching to cross a large white van comes flying round the corner and over the crossing. “How about an indicator?”, I ask rhetorically. It wasn’t aimed at the driver of course- I just wanted to sound like a big man in front of my relatively new friend.

As the driver passed me I saw he had his window rolled down so in all likelyhood heard every abuse word I’d said- all the way from “how” to “indicator?”. Out of embarassement, fear, and feeling a bit mean for criticising someone who has actually passed their test, I quickly jogged down the road away from the van. I looked back to see where Rob had got to, only to find him doing something most unexpected. By which I mean, he upstaged me slightly.

He was standing stationary on the pavement, arm stretched out giving a “two fingered salute” to the driver. This wasn’t even from behind- he was in front of the van, and in direct view of the front window of the van. Rob just stood there laughing, oscillating his two upright fingers back and fourth, taunting the van driver.

I was half expecting the driver of the van to stop and get out and give us a “good” kick-in. He looked the violent type- by which I mean the surly van driver type. The sort of person who’d find it hilarious to compare the cleanliness of his van to that of his wife, and then write as such in the dirt and dust on the side of it (the van, not the wife). The sort of person who’d go to a rough pub and boast to his “mates” (not “friends”, or “pals”) about how he’d “smacked” me and how “hard” he was as a consequence.

In the end, he just drove on carefully, but I bet if he had got out looking for a fight, he’d have been too busy damaging my major organs to notice my excellent judge of character skills.

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Look away now if you’re easily offended
February 3rd, 2006 at 21:25

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Members of Parliament in Coke habit shocker
February 1st, 2006 at 16:25

A while back now I e-mailed every single member of Parliament and asked them if they prefer CocaCola, or its age old rival, Pepsi. Cleverly, I’d written a script that sent e-mails that look personal but wern’t- it just put their name in the relevant places.

I’ve now got 44 responses, and I think that’s enough for me to draw some exciting conclusions.

It appears MPs love doing Coke as much as I do- statistically, and this is absolutely true: Eight out of ten Members of Parliament prefer CocaCola to the closest leading competitor.

What I find most odd is that loads of MPs specifically identified Diet Coke as their preferred choice… does it taste different in the palace of Westminster or something? It’s vile. Quite why Boris, among others like it is beyond me.

Among other celebrity responses: former foreign-secretary Malcolm Rifkind is a full-strength Coke man. We should have perhaps predicted that former Lib Dem home-affairs (!) spokesman Mark Oaten was gay… he drinks DIET Coke. I wonder what he was doing on his “Diet Coke break” etc etc.

Interestingly, Edward Davey, the man who sort of led the rebellion against Charles Kennedy, drinks Pepsi, whilst the rest of his party are apparently staunch Coke people. Was this what caused the rift? Was it a drink problem?

No one really interesting from the Labour party responded- presumably they were too busy governing to answer an inconsequential (if revealing) survey.

I’ve posted the full set of results as a page, so you can see what your MP drinks!

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Slashdot on “The I.T Crowd”
February 1st, 2006 at 01:55

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