Freshly Spilled Thoughts

A rather rotund chap turned up in a red outfit earlier asking for a glass of sherry and a mince pie.

I asked him if he could come back later and he replied, “I won’t knock on the door. I’ll just come down your chimney.”

How rude.

I’d advise everyone to stay vigilant tonight, it seems we have a prowler on the loose with a penchant for mince pies and alcoholic beverages.

Favourite colour: Red. Has a wayward beard and a sidekick called Rudolph.

As I write this now, there will be people still frantically placing Amazon orders hoping for next day delivery 🙂

In the olden days when people rode on horseback they’d have to don suitable attire and venture out into the world to procure such gifts of delight.

Christmas is just a little bit mad, isn’t it.

One thing I’ve noticed though…

Less people look cheerful this year and a few people I know have sort of opted out Christmas (it’s bizarre). I wonder why that is? You’d think everyone would be jubilant COVID (as a concept at least) was a blur in their rear view mirror and that people can go out and shake each others hands without a care in the world.

Enforced social distancing can’t get you down. You can even do a hip bump if the other party doesn’t mind that kind of thing. What’s not to love.

Obviously don’t do it to others when you’re standing in a queue or anything.

“Yeah, I read this thing on a blog written by someone seemingly wise whilst retaining a sense of mirth and tongue-in-cheek adventure, that said people didn’t mind hip bumping at Christmas. I’m just paying it forward with my hips.”

“You’ve just assaulted me whilst I was paying for mint sauce. What is wrong with you?”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Police. Police.”

“Maybe I misjudged this hip bumping in queues thing. I need to stop mindlessly following advice dispensed on blogs”

On that silly note…

I’m actively avoiding Christmas songs as they’ve been done to death. With that in mind, let’s play this one out 2 days prior to Christmas with Let’s Do The Time Warp Again from the Rocky Horror Show.

It has to be said that at the age of 52 Cher was MUCH hotter than I remember back then.

She’d give Peter Pan a run for his money (on the youth side. Hotness no contest)…

I’ve got a friend that zigs when others zag.

Most people watch Blockbuster Hollywood Films and the next new series on Netflix.

He watches obscure subtitled films I’ve never heard of.

Most people go for a stroll to the shops.

He runs 10km in the morning for ‘fun’.

You get the picture…

Some people just live slightly off the main road.

He said to me, “I met this woman recently who works in a shop that sells gin. It’s near the flat where I live and I go in there sometimes”

I enquired, “Oh yeah? That’s very specific. Was she sober?”

He replied, “Yes. I mean, I said hi to her now and again, then got talking to her.”

Curious about the gin situation I said, “Do you ever buy any gin while you’re in there?”

“No. I don’t drink gin“, he said with a high degree of certainty.

This is why I love characters. They crack me up. If he doesn’t drink gin, that means he browses a shop that sells gin with no intention of ever buying any just so he can say hi to a woman that he was secretly lusting over.

He then said, “I thought I liked her, but after talking to her a few times I realised she was completely mad.”

I thought, ‘Hmm. That sounds like a deal breaker?’

Before I could say anything further he enthusiastically added:

“And that made me like her even more.”

His eyes lit up.

He’s as mad as he thinks she is. A match made in heaven.

I revelled in this notion of how you can pair two completely bonkers things together and tie them up with gin and conversation, whilst having no intention of making  a purchase.

Brilliant.

I know what he means. Too normal could be boring.

“She had wild eyes, slightly insane. She also carried an overload of compassion that was real enough and which obviously cost her something.” ~ Bukowski

When I was out earlier, everyone was driving around like lunatics. People lose their marbles on Fridays don’t they, especially with the Christmas countdown timer in full swing.

They are so angry as well.

Too much testosterone. Not enough brain power.

I think if more people got laid, the roads would be more peaceful. Let the cortisol out somehow for crissake.

That probably says more about Friday traffic psychology than anything else.

Anyway. I always like hearing how other people see the world.

On that note, I would like to wish all readers of this blog a very happy Christmas (minus the manufactured bit).

I hope Santa doesn’t get stuck in your chimney, and if you end up eating his mince pies, get the decent ones from Marks & Spencer.

Ciao.

This and Rod Serling in Twilight Zone are the two best programme intros in the history of the world (other than the Littlest Hobo)

“Knight Rider, a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless in a world of criminals who operate above the law.”

The narrators voice is brilliant. I wonder how many cigars you have to smoke to get a voice like that.

More gravel than a cheap driveway…

Every kid in the 1980’s wanted to be Michael Knight or borrow his car even though they couldn’t drive 🙂

As I write this it’s all very sunny and splendid outside.

6 days until you can pull a cracker.

Pardon the pun.

You don’t hear many people say cool beans these days…

But this person in my tribe liked it enough to use it as their username.

This blog is now 1 years old. Still a baby but no longer keeping me up at night.

I got a notice it would have expired and vapourised after today

#BadTimes

I shovelled a few quid into the slot and the lights are back on for another year, at which point hopefully I won’t get distracted by the price of quail eggs or something equally absurd and forget to renew it.

If that happens you’ll probably just see a site with slot machine ads or a redirect to something filthy like Freshly Spilled Milf or something.

#GoodTimes (not the MILF bit… I was talking about the lights)

Anyway…

Let’s end this one on something more poignant…

Exhaust the little moment
For very soon it dies
And be it gash or gold, it will not come again in this identical disguise [1]. 

I would say I’m a poet but I’m just good at remembering ‘stuff’ (read that in a diary I had over 20 years ago and it stuck with me ever since).

[1] I added ‘For very’ because it rolls off the tongue better. Gash = Painful, Gold = Joy.

No double entendres were intended in the assembly of this post.

I wonder why this frog is slapping its own ass? (what does G N mean.. I 100% don’t get it – been a long day)

At the bizarre they went too far:

I love witty people and I loved George Burns.

He said things like:

“Sex after 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope. Even putting my cigar in its holder is a thrill.”

“Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal, a good cigar and a good woman – or a bad woman; it depends on how much happiness you can handle.”

“Fall in love with what you’re going to do for a living. To be able to get out of bed and do what you love to do for the rest of the day is beyond words. I’d rather be a failure in something I love than be successful in something I hate.”

“Lots of people have asked me what Gracie and I did to make our marriage work. It’s simple – we don’t do anything. I think the trouble with a lot of people is that they work too hard at staying married. They make a business out of it.”

Side Note: His marriage to Gracie is one of the great enduring and rare love stories. He once said this about her: “”All of a sudden“, he later said, “the audience realized I had a talent. They were right. I did have a talent—and I was married to her for 38 years.”

“It’s hard for me to get used to these changing times. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.”

Nobody quite like old George. I can’t believe he’d be nearly 130 if he was still around now. He was born in 1896… I never thought about it at the time but there were even people in the sitcom Bewitched, that were born in the 1800’s and on telly in colour including Aunt Clara (the one who always got the spells wrong)!

I tried smoking cigars but I gave that up as a bad habit when I was 19. Good while it lasted 🙂 They reckon in Burns lifetime he smoked around 300,000 of them which makes me question if they are really that bad (lol).

Aint nothin’ to it but to do it…

One brick at a time…

Keep going. Even when it’s raining.

Todays Workout: 

20 Minute Run (hard as balls. Women do it. Not many men do)
4 Sets (x2) Dumbbell Rows (never easy, that’s why almost literally nobody does them)
5 Sets Upright Rows (They say they are bad for shoulders. Probably true but I like them and I feel like Godzilla doing them)

Side Note: It’s much better to watch Godzilla backwards because then it’s the story of a benevolent giant lizard who rebuilds a city and then moonwalks into the sea.

I posted this on Facebook a while back and my legend of a mate who has the same surreal sense of humour as me replied:

“I like watching Scarface backwards, it becomes about a bloke who gives up drugs and crime to follow his dream of becoming a dishwasher to fund a trip to Cuba.”

4 Sets Cable Pulldowns (variation on lat pulldown)
4 Sets Of Reverse Hyper Extensions (people avoid this as well – seeing the comfy pattern yet?)
4 Sets of Sit-Ups (pretend you’re in Rocky – that’s what I do)
4 Sets of Seated Cable Rows (toughish if you do them properly)
4 Sets Of Lat Pulldowns (everyone does these because they feel nice)

If you train you’ll probably wonder why I missed out deadlifts. It’s because I was in a car crash a few years ago which was like a scene out of Pulp Fiction when Bruce Willis was staggering around.

Couldn’t do my dead hangs as it was being hogged by the ‘lets’s just check my phone’ brigade. It’s an epidemic.

One thing I’ve learned from all my years of people watching in gyms (etc) is that MOST people are lazy. They avoid the hard thing at any cost and would rather sit there scrolling through TikTok.

I watched a personal trainer with someone earlier. He was fannying about with stretchy bands like one of those street performers making shapes out of balloons. I don’t know what they get paid for.

Takes 1 Hour and 15 minutes.

Then we go again, but not tonight Josephine.

The pre-amble for the post that never was…

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned…

The nearest thing to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation by me…

Next Stop: Wally World.

Apparently an influencer called Mary Magdalene (I hadn’t heard of her) spent hundreds of thousands on cosmetic surgery. At 33 years of age she bowed out of the mortal realm after posting something cryptic from The Truman Show.

The before surgery(ies) photo is on the left and the end result is on the right…

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that she looked awesome on the left and didn’t need any corrective or enhancing surgeries. What we have then, in my unqualified opinion, resembles something more like mental illness, manifesting itself with repeated surgeries until she became some sort of caricature figure. Is it just me or does she look more like Pete Burns on the right!?

Speaking of Pete Burns, I used to like his You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) song…

You spin me right round, baby, right round
Like a record, baby, right round, round, round

lol not a lot to it when you write the lyrics out, but it’s still a classic.

I saw this happen with Rich Piana as well. He wanted to look like a superhero you’d find in comic books. I really liked Rich Piana, but he pushed it too far and ended up being a bodybuilding cokehead.

Back to Mary Magdalene…

To look like she did cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars. She even had her eyeballs tattooed.

That is absolutely insane. I can’t get my head around that, it sounds like something out of a horror film.

I don’t really do much commentary on famous people or what’s in the news, but I just happened to notice this today.

Jack Lalanne used to say, “If man made it, don’t eat it“. Never a wiser word spoken, even if Kettle Crisps do taste nice.

When it comes to cosmetic surgeons I don’t think man is better with a scalpel than God. Blows my mind how many bad surgeons there are out there. They must be cross-eyed, half of them.

I actually think Mr. Magoo would make a better surgeon than half of these dodgy butt lift ones in places like Turkey. Better off sticking to body squats and a bit of Stairmaster if you ask me.

Some people have the keys to the human equivalent of a Ferrari and inexplicably turn it into a Lada because they don’t realise how beautiful they already are. Not only that, they pay for the privilege.

Dick Van Dyke turned 100 yesterday.

He still sings, dances and goes to the gym.

Be more Dick, that’s what I say (had to be precise with my words there).

This may just look like a random sign to some people, but when you examine it closely it’s actually a man begging his dog not to leave him…

The problem though, is that the dog has been watching re-runs of The Littlest Hobo…

There’s a voice that keeps on calling me
Down the road is where I’ll always be

Every stop I make, I’ll make a new friend
Can’t stay for long, just turn around and I’m gone again.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down,
Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on.

I’ve never gone down the PT rabbit hole, but I still get people asking me if I’ll be their personal trainer.

I’ve never done it because I didn’t want to turn a hobby/passion into a job.

Training is something I keep for myself. It’s one of the few things that’s stayed steady through everything, no matter what else was going on.

Got me thinking though…

… if I ever dated a personal trainer, at least they wouldn’t ask me to train them.

But to be honest, I find most PT types a bit too obsessive with it all and who wants to live their whole life only eating chicken and asparagus (Not I, although writing that has just made me hungry). I train because I like it, not so I can call myself anything.

Side Note: Always makes me laugh on TV when someone says they’re a personal trainer and they look like a chip.

Last night when I was out I heard my name… in FULL and it made me sound like I was a famous influencer or something (who says your name in full including your surname? That should never be allowed in public).

I don’t know how this person recognised me as I was minding my own business and I haven’t seen them for years.

Do you know something…

It was like I’d only seen them yesterday.

We shot the breeze for a while and it was good to catch up.

This persons brother rang while I was talking (I know the brother but same scenario again) and asked me if I wanted to speak to him on the phone.

I declined, as it seemed a bit strange not seeing someone for years and then being put on the phone to someone else I hadn’t seen for years, while the first person listened in.

Too much like Surprise Surprise with Cilla Black for me… in that moment.

I got the sense they seemed a bit put out by my rejection of the offer to talk to their brother (lol), but other than that it was all very pleasant and it was nice to see them.

Nice but odd, as it’s a jolt to the senses when you haven’t seen someone for ages and they suddenly appear like that. A bit like a surprise birthday cake… only there wasn’t one.

Reminds me of when I worked at a place and this guy I sat next to left abruptly. Nobody knew why he’d left and it was like a mini office mystery at the time.

I never saw him again until I was on holiday in Tenerife two years later. I went into a random bar to order a drink late at night and the barman said, “Alright Dean”, in a familiar way that seemed to suggest I often pop into bars in Tenerife when I haven’t got anything else to do.

It was almost as if he’d been expecting me.

I asked him if he liked it in Tenerife and he replied, “Better than working in an office in Shirley isn’t it.”

Twas hard to argue otherwise as he had a point.

Absolutely bizarre. What are the chances though?

Bonkers how things like that tend to happen when you’re not thinking about them at all.

The world works in mysterious ways. On that bombshell, I have got to skidaddle.

It was 1995 and I had two things I loved.

1) A Hot Hatch
2) A Dance CD with this song on.

Listen to it now and you may go, “This is just a cheesy dance track” but I had a magnificent pair of speakers and it picked up something in this song that was not of this world.

You had to hear it to appreciate and I did to the point where I felt euphoric. I used to unapologetically drive around as an excuse to listen to it in 1995 without a care in the world…

If you could bottle up the feeling, people would be lining up around the block for it and a tiny piece of my heart stays reserved for this tune.

Late at night I would also listen to Jamming by Bob Marley and that sounded great as well. Just a lovely thing, especially in the Summer. Some tracks by Finley Quaye on his first album also convey the same kind of vibe.

In fact one day I had a track playing in my car from the Maverick album at a set of traffic lights on the way home and two women crossing the road danced across the road to the song in the most unscripted way possible.

I just laughed to myself and thought, “This is what life is all about. Those people are happy and I f*cking love this song”.

Years ago when the internet was still wearing diapers, online dating was in its infancy. This much is true, but it was also better for it.

Now all people really have is mediocre dating apps and things where you swipe right or left to hook up. It’s devoid of soul if you ask me.

Anyway, back then there was a site called Love@Lycos and they advertised it on TV. I created a profile on there, which I never took very seriously at first, but it wasn’t bad.

I never even put a photo of me on there to begin with and I still got messages. I had a cheesy flash imagination that read: “SEXY GIRLS APPLY WITHIN”. It looked very similar to this…

Imagine doing that now.

I didn’t meet many women off Love@Lycos but that’s just because I’m fussy and I only ever met people I thought I clicked with. I’m still the same to be honest ’cause if I’m not feeling it then it’s not worth the effort.

Do you know what my cousin does?

He lines up 3 at a time, meets those three and then goes out with the best one out of the three.

Every woman he dates has a 1 in 3 chance of ending up with him (for a while at least). I know it’s a two-way street (or is that a 3-way? Let’s not go there), but whatever street he ends up in, this is how it works out for him. Maybe he’s a genius.

I think this works well if you’re only bothered about someone passing the pulse test.

These days they want you verified holding up a picture of your passport and a recent blood sample just to confirm you’re not a cyborg. Oh they do make me laugh with everything they require now just to create a simple profile.

It was of its time and I’ve never seen anything quite like it since. That is a sad thing because the apps replaced conversation (with visuals), which is already a dying art form.

In those days you had to get to know someone, idiosyncrasies and all, as oppose to just adding them on Facebook to see who they know that you may know and collecting them like Pokemon.

(I had a friend that collected women on Tinder like Pokemon. You think I’m joking).

How would I ever convey my undeniable brilliance on an app as shallow as Tinder. It would be impossible I tell thee.

They removed all the mystery and what it is to be human and they replaced it with selfies. Narcissus approves.

I did my research, and do you know what the nearest thing to old dating sites like that is now? Twitter/X.

Seriously, that’s all people have got now. Something run by Elon Musk, which is fine if you’re happy with the odd Hitler salute to accompany you on your dating journey.

So if you want to meet someone now you can either go the internet route and burn your finger out swiping right, imagining you’re playing Snap until something goes ‘Ta da, you have a match” or you can chat someone up choosing plums in the supermarket (the organic way). The choice is yours.

Personally I think you’re better off going for some plums (and that isn’t a euphemism).

Sad though isn’t it. Chat/Dating sites are officially dead and so with it the more innocent and engaging times of t’internet.

I am really enjoying this weather.

I hope it pisses it down forever just so we can really absorb that feeling of unrelenting slashery.

You know…

…the ones that mushrooms experience.

Tra la la.

Xmas Order: 

1 T-Shirt
1 Umbrella
1 Bottle Of Undying Optimism 

Funnily enough I was talking to a frog this morning and he feels the same way.

Off to Tenerife on his hols this Christmas courtesy of Froggitt Airways.