Sugar, spice and all that bollocks…

March 2, 2010 By

I’d always had my reservations about chefs.

It’s a bit like brain surgeons. You know you need them but once they get to work you don’t see what’s going on. Often you wake up the next day feeling like your head’s been stamped on by a horse. That’s where the similarity ends. You wouldn’t want to send your brain back, say, if you woke up even more stupid than you already are.

See no evil, hear no evil. Then after they found a rat in the risotto my local food depot decided to open up its kitchens to voyeuristic punters. It didn’t stop the head chef picking his nose, but at least the paying fools know the gou in their goulash.

Then Gordon Ramsay started talking balls – a long time after he got some much undeserved TV attention for mouthing off at anything animate – by suggesting sterility was on the cards for anyone standing too close to the stove for prolonged periods.

Is it any wonder they go stir crazy? Can you think of any other profession where you reward people for making flowers out of tomatoes with a set of death sticks?

I know a chef. He’s literally bonkers. But not as bonkers as the guy who makes pizza faces.

Bloody ridiculous.

But hope could be on the horizon for those of us impassioned by the edible.

Here in the UK, a bunch of councils got their three brain cells together and reasoned that it was about time we sorted the wheat from the chaff. Restos had had it their way for too long. It was time for commis to be counted, waitresses to be watched and maitre d’s to be matriculated.

Thus Scores on the Doors was born. Food ratings for the masses.

Some scrote in a mask with a clipboard pops in to your takeaway on an entirely random day (this is what we, the public, the tax payers, are told, although I’m, um, let’s say sceptical that it’s completely random…), sniffs the air, fingers the service hatch and counts out some stars you can slap on your front door to show how clean or unkempt your preparation areas are.

It’s a bit like a professional version of Michael Winner’s televised pilgrimages to people’s houses to eat their food and be as fucking annoying as humanly possible.

I think Scores in the Doors is great. It subscribes to every known customer service philosophy in the world:

  • Noone is writing a review that even vaguely reeks of nepotism
  • You know how skank or saintly the kitchens are when you’re going to visit (dependent on the exactitudes of ‘random visit’, of course)
  • It gives the dying resto a do or die call to arms.

Where I think it falls flat is that the local rag publishes the results. So any anomalies are instantly consigned to print and therefore digested and mentalised by the punter. You can write to the council, sure, and tell them they missed a star off – but all they’ll do is change the website. You can’t go and re-ink 10,000 newspapers…

But it’s a step in the right direction. And that can’t be a bad thing.

Incidentally, wouldn’t it be great to visit every local business, identify their principal pain points, and create ideas for growth and innovation? Every local business round here needs a kick up the arse. But for the right reasons – to make them win more often, more profitably. I’m going to do this. Unless you do, first. In which case, give me 10% of anything you make. Now.

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Praise be Tod Maffin, our social media saviour!

February 23, 2010 By

Today threatened great things – and it didn’t disappoint.

The wretched Tuesday bug had already caught me unawares, before even sunrise. Before I had chance to see Lord Sugar on the telly (I HATE telly) rant on about the benefits of bullying. Well, he didn’t call it bullying – he said it was ok for bosses to have a go at their subordinates if they were stressed out about people being crap. There’s nothing worse than crap, inefficient people in the workplace. Sadly there are more of these pathetic specimens at ‘work’ than there are perfectly primed, exciting and dynamic folk who really make our world rock.

Talking of insightful genii (don’t go following up on this. The plural of genius is genii – if you don’t believe me, read The Dictionary of Bob Booby, to be published by Harper Collins next year or whenever you finally forget about it) I must doff my cap and offer a tongue of gratitude to none other than my hero of the moment, Tod Maffin.

Tod, if legend is to be believed, inspired a legion of bakers to create a savoury-sweet treat that adorns breakfast tables of fat people in both the US and the UK. Which is nice, because let’s face it, anything that makes Americans make sense to us Brits is always a good thing. If rare.

This treat, then. What apparently happened is Tod was presenting a seminar of sorts to a bunch of confectioners (ConfAid, 2009). It was a ticket-only event and our light-of-hearing protagonist (not Tod) was unable to attend under conventional auspices. He was a member of the epicerie brigade, you see. He had no right to call himself a confectioner, aside from a packet of hairy bon-bons he had in the inside pocket of his moleskin jacket. That jacket spelt F A S H I O N. It was the meekest, cutest example of the work of a well-helmed couturier you could ever expect to acquaint with.

Our nameless tour de force somehow managed to pull off a stunt few have ever replicated in the ConfAid world. He played stowaway. In his moleskin jacket he cut the finest of figures, and in perfect fettle he managed to underswift himself into the convention as an accomplice of Mr Bento, the guy who invented those silver ball bearings that aren’t really ball bearings, but have a sweet taste and an unfamiliar odour and sit inside plastic jars on rickety shelves in sweet shops.

While Tod was presenting, our baker-warrior was taking notes on his festering pad. It was rancid having fallen into a vat of cherry oil only the day previous. Cherries, if you weren’t aware, have a tendency to stain the average notepad. What was worse, this notepad was made of linseed. On contact with linseed, cherry juice creates an explosion which literally blows the lines from notepaper off the page. This spectacle of teutonic proportions is at once terrifying and arousing. It’s a bit like watching that new film 2012 while expecting an enormously good experience.

Smoke was literally pouring off his pad as Bun Boy became increasingly enthralled by Tod’s captivating speech. Less speech, more rousing epic. Bread Ted saw a change of life. He was totally blown away, like linseed in cherry juice.

Rousing applause met Tod’s finale, whereby the daring diplomat of dynamism summoned a kayak made entirely of figs to the stage.

As dry ice pumped out into the audience, a metaphor for the universe-changing address, Croissant Charlie underwent an epiphany. “What if,” he thought. “What if..”; Baguette Bob was confuded, riddled out – and a stutterer. “What if I could in some way replicate this moment in dough? Produce a tasty shrine that would be passed from mouth to mouth, preferably not like apple-bobbing and certainly with more hygienic principles applied, to toast (deliberate gag entered here) the work of Tod.”

The baker winced with the might of his cleverness. “But how?” And then he remembered a vital piece of advice his dad proferred upon him one sunshiney day. “What would Alexander Graham Bell do?”

Erasing his thoughts of soft white batches, Baker Boy and Bento left the premises, the latter unknowing of the former.

Because of the remote proximity of oven lover to the stage, Tod’s surname had been misrepresented. The audio qualities of the room in which he presented were not optimal. Baker Boy had decided that Tod was Tod Muffin. And thus, a Muffin was born.

Now there’s nothing here of concrete proof that attests to the veracity of said story. I recite it only as it was told. But there’s a lot in there that you can believe in. ConfAid was brought on as a result of many in the confectionery business going through rough times. The dates match: muffins were only created in 1998, and ConfAid was already in full flow. It is decreed Tod’s presentation was a mesmerising podium pleaser entitled “Sweet times ahead”. The subject was reinforced by a series of slides that showed how, with the benefit of experience from other industries, confectioners at this event could experience game-changing emotions and create sweeping strategies for future growth.

And Tod? Today he caught me at an untypical low ebb and installed in me the very essence of awe. Coincidentally, just a short time after I’d swallowed a couple of Scotch pancakes. Baking product dissing aside, here’s what occurred.

I was reading a recent Six Pixels of Separation post by Mitch Joel. I like Mitch. Mitch reminds me of school days. Or rather, pre-school days when we were born. He has an astonishingly honest candour, a bit like a baby, and he also has no hair, which is another striking throwback to when we were just a few days old.

The similarities wither there. Mitch has fabulously clever thoughts that he – being quite the libertarian kind – chose to share with his disciples like you and me, for a price approximating zero. You could buy his book, for sure, but his newest thoughts are nothing-priced. That for me make him the finest of the bargain kind. I like Mitch Joel an awful lot. Not, it must be said, in a way that I like the girls, but then he’s very clever, so you have to draw the line somewhere.

Mitch told me anew about Tod Maffin and his new scheme, called CaseStudiesOnline. It almost blew my flickin’ mind! What Tod (who inspired muffins among the hard-of-skilled or dyslexic oven champions, perhaps) did was aggregate all the case studies online of, erm…

The case studies online of, er…

The case studies of social media strategies so you can persuade your boss why he should be using social media. And now. Before Buick, Barclaycard, Boots and Bonanza Stores, Idaho, strike forth with such commercial vengeance and capitalistic magnitude that you’re so far behind you ain’t even in their wake, dandy boy!

I was sidetracked back there because I was in the mistaken belief that CaseStudiesOnline would be about all types of case studies; maybe even reviews about luggage. But it wasn’t. But it doesn’t matter.

Imagine having all the case studies online you could possibly need to implant in the mind of your seniors the veracity behind social media effectiveness. That’s how awesome this is. And this is how awesome Tod is. I love Tod. I love muffins. I’m totally, like, in love right now!

As a side story I’m also very sad that ProBlogger has defriended 5,000 people or something in his Facebook account. Being totally unsociallymediaaware I hastened to this conclusion rather than reading his virtual oratory. He probably did it for a reason that makes complete sense but this is the danger of headlines, right? If I was retarded I would have surmised the situation using the first few words of his sermon. Which were Dear FaceBook Friends, I’m De-Friending Most of You [It's Not You, It's Me].

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No comment: The Bob Booby burstcast

February 16, 2010 By

What are you lot, a festering pile of fomenting mutes, a lumbering bunch of lethargics? Did noone tell you how to court a keyboard? Are you SCARED of what might happen if you were to hit enter after furnishing this site with an astute or, more probable in your case, astupid, insight into the events of the day?

Why of COURSE I’m talking about comments. What else? You can’t have sausage without mash, can you? So how can you possibly expect a blog to thrive and improve without input?

You know, when I used to work down the bookies, what drived me proper up the wall was them old biddies who used to come in, place their bets, lose and then walk out, grumbling about a three-legged equine or their eggs being underdone (I know – it didn’t make sense to me, either).

Contrast that against my time as a croupier. Stakes were higher, obviously: well they had to be, there was no way I was accepting a 2p stake on red. Anyway, when the bids upturned their purses looking for a chip like you’d look for a quid coin down the back of your Parker Knoll, they’d outburst all sorts of wild and highly improbable accusations about the manager rigging the tables with magnets, or a Japanese robot putting mind-altering tomatoes in their casino-issued complimentary fry-ups.

The difference between these two situations? Quite aside from the quantity of money involved (I once took £70k from a group of game Germans in a 40-minute session on the roulette), there was camaraderie, community – cheer. Punters in betting shops have the air of a one-way flier to Zurich. Soundlessly the money is injected, the only sign of life a rare tinkle of 10ps as the solitary fruit machine gasps the payout for a couple of bells.

Casinos provide a conducive environment. People come to have fun. They give, they get back. Whether the returns are in free fry-ups or a good bit of banter with the pit boss, our good friends the customer-suckers always leave with a smile, albeit accompanied by a chilly back uncovered by the shirt they lost. House always wins? Maybe in money, but it’s a marvellous way to get YOUR house repossessed.

Where’s this going? Well I don’t know. But looking around Dave’s blog, I see the attempts of a man who is craving your love and attention. He’s as stupid as a wood fence, but he’s trying.

Dave sees himself as an ideas man. Whether or not that’s true – and you and me (can I call us friends? I’m intimate with your sister, so we’re virtually family) know he’s got more in common with a blind Cervus elaphus – he needs to be put right.

How can we stop him, lower his sights a little? Well, we can’t do transmogrification so a face to face chat is unlikely. Mindwaves are also out of the question, especially with a brain as tiny as yours. So we have to go down the ‘traditional’ route, a route that involved putting the pad of your index finger to the spongy, receptive square of plastic on the oblong casing in front of you. And oscillate, retrieve, return, upshift, downshift, punch and pull. Eventually some pixels will appear on that square in front of you, and, probably dribbling by this point, you’ll execute the whole blimmin lot on to the interwebs.

In English, we call this commenting. Evidently you’re not familiar with the concept. I’m hardly surprised.

But blogging, as I believe they call this form of charade, needs the comment, like the bookies needs a revolution. Comments and blogs go together like chips and casinos, like fun and games, like me and your sister.

What’s in it for you, I hear you slobber.

How will commenting on Dave’s blog save me money?
How will commenting on Dave’s blog save me time?
How will commenting on Dave’s blog make me more money?

These are valid questions:

1. Once you’ve commented, you’ve closure. You’ve been wondering why you’re here, and I think it’s because you feel a sense of guilt. Dave’s on his arse, and simply by attending his daily sermons you’re offering comfort and companionship. Well, Dave doesn’t deserve that any more. He actually told me just now that he’s actually finding you quite overawing and is considering a restraining order. So comment once, and bog off. Time is money, so you’ll save both in the future.

2. Bloody hell. Read the one above, and swap ‘time is money’ for ‘money is time’. There’s yer answer.

3. I noticed a good half dozen posts by doddery Dave that could – in all honesty – make you some money. There was that one about the REAL secrets of blogging. I’m not a betting man, never have been, I mean, I’ve never even been in a bookies or a casino, but I do know there are at least half a dozen sites out there that would charge you good money for what Dave gives you for free. You’re up. And Dave also casts his incompetent electronic pen towards your blog for the sweet sum of nothing, in the form of what he calls ‘incredible guest posts to turbocharge your site’. If you asked, say, Bob Geldof to write a post for you, you might expect to pay at least £8. Dave would do it for nothing, and he wouldn’t even make your readers cry, which is another bonus. So all told, by commenting on this blog, you’ve actually made about £31 (plus postage and packing).

It makes me cry. It’s 10am in the morning, and I haven’t touched a drop, yet. And it’s all for the love of you (and your sibling). I spoil you, I really do.

So do something for me. Make a comment. Spill your guts. Do whatever it takes. And last of all: commenting on blogs is good for the soul.

I’m off the boozer.

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Bob Booby Bites Back: The Fragmented Reality Session

February 9, 2010 By
Bob Booby returns for another inconsequential rant on the state of humankind and our desperate drive for self-immolation at the altar of asinine attitudes…

What's all this fuss about Siri? Turning your phone into a virtual assistant? Well hello there Starship Enterprise, what are wives for! Stick it up your arse – is there an app for that, too?

Siri is supposed to jerk lots of different services off the web like real-time plumbing concierges and tractor menders so you can do anything, anytime. In a skin suit or out. Some chap called Scooble says Siri is what the web was made for, that it's the “get rid of pages and glue APIs and people together" era.

The Service Interface for Real-time Information. Well blow me down with a nerd feather. Is that really going to set the world on fire? Can't they say it's an acronym of Sex In a Room of Incandescents? Or maybe I just popped their cork by doing a super secret search on my private interwebs firehose.

Source of Inspiration for Rude Intoxication. It all sounds a bit like the Day of Reckoning to me, but without Arnie. When that lad from the bible talked about fire and brimstone, evidently he was talking about Siri.

There's some big-time smoke and mirror activity going on around here, mark these. In a week's time I reckon it'll all come out as some elaborate premature April Fool's Day hoax, at which point the creators may see their cocks literally wither away to nothingness. That's what happens when you roger the Scoobster over a barrel. I love him, and I love the idea of Siri, a lot. I think they're both great. I like the fact they're both on-demand. But I have to wonder how something that has been created to show people when their buses are due, can possibly turn into a game-changer, and force you to spray your everything over a big wall. Unless you're a busaholic or a train spotter. In which case, find a bunker and several spare clean pairs of pants, because you're about to be rocked to your very foundations.

Aside and very relevant segue: I'm singing Kylie and Jase with the missus on Valentine's Day. Mucho – mucho – excited. But my goodness, that Jase does carry a note, doesn't he? It probably says: "Anytime, big boy" on it.

And it's hardly new. Hasn't anyone in the United of States heard of 118 118? Last time I wanted a good curry – it was about four hours ago, if I recall – I called those Steve Cram pretenders with the bushy brows and they were only too happy to tell me I didn't have a cat in hell's chance of finding a half-decent ruby purveyor north of Bermondsey. Which frankly, is quite the inconvenience when you live about 150 miles north of Bermondsey. At 3am in the morning.

This Siri is just one step closer to us being ascribed by alien life forces. Talking to your phone! Sometimes I think people forget what phones were made for.

Take these so-called 'smart' phones. When did they last take a look through the dictionary (I'm up to B and stuck on ballyhoo) to see what smart actually means?

According to thefreedictionary.com smart means:

a. Characterized by sharp quick thought; bright. When was an inanimate object bright? It runs out of battery when you're mid-call; you can't see the display in the dark (which is the very antithesis of bright, no?); the keys are too close together and the screen is too small. BRIGHT?
b. Amusingly clever; witty: a smart quip; a lively, smart conversation. Now here's where my phone really (sarcastic) goes to town. I swear it's employed by the MI5 to explorer the inner recesses of my very disturbed mind. Well try as I might I can't get a bloody word out of it. And then when I use it to call someone, the person on the other end of the line always sounds like a cross between a gibbon and Stephen Hawking, asleep. I think I need to change friends.
c. Impertinent; insolent: That's enough of your smart talk. Well there's the truth. I want to make a note on my phone? Sorry, sir, we don't have a notes application. The camera doesn't focus. I can't send an MMS because it costs 50p. And O2 has whipped my web bolt on, off, because of some technical issue. And they pointedly refuse to reinstate it! That surely is enough of your smart talk.

What a load of crap. Baloney. Horse manure.

This Siri thing. We're all too soft these days – especially that Thackeray chap. Mastermind Groups, indeed. He'll be asking for clones of his ego, next. Imagine that – lots of tall egos wandering round the town, eating sausages out of buns and making quick quips about ladies in summer dresses. Doesn't sound like much fun to me.

Siri is only available on the Apple phone. So are we saying we want Apple to control our thoughts? Is that it? "Oooh, can you show me where the next Gay Pride march is, please, so I can dress up like a sheep-pansy and follow the crowd?"

Because apparently I don't want a mind, anymore. I want to be told what to do. Recommendation engines? More like end-of-civilisation engine. So we just stop having opinions, yeah? Because instead of making our own minds up we all furtively follow the collected thoughts of others. What happens when Siri goes belly up? Trained to think only if someone tells us to, the human race will be left in glorious disarray. There are enough feral youths on the streets today without us having to yield to the rampant anonymity of conceptual void.

Which reminds me. Me and my missus were having some banter the other day about why kids are gluttons for moodiness these days. Apparently (this is a she point) it's because parents are all on benefits these days and they show their kids that they don't need to do anything to get everything. And that's how it's going to be until this government of ours wakes up and smells the shoeshine.

Ergo unless you're crippled, in order to achieve benefits status you have to go and contribute to society in some way. To go sweep some floors, teach some 'tards or make the flower beds all smelly-nicey and tidy again.

I can see the she point on this one. It makes complete sense. Let's erode the ignorance and let's march for community. Because community is where the heart is, right?

So long as we don't have village greens and cricket. I loathe cricket. Mind you, I loathe most things…

Bob Booby was brought to you by Nev's Chippy and Tom's Tractor Menders. All views expressed herein are the views of Bob Booby and are in no way supported, endorsed, or bought with anything other than magic beans by the man behind DaveThackeray.com.

Posted via email from 10 for 10

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Television – what IS it good for?

February 3, 2010 By

Today I’m delighted to welcome my first Guest Writer. It feels odd, having a guest writer on the site bearing my moniker. It’s almost like he’s my split personality, or something.

Anyway, he’s a good friend of mine, and will probably soon be a very good friend of your sister, so please warm your hands and prepare to give a nice pat on the stomach to Bob Booby…

Television is rubbish. It’s just not for kicks any more. It doesn’t have a fraction of the fun attached to it that, say, jumping in the air or doing snow angels do.

Take my mate Dave, who runs this blog. He’s your average guy – very average, in fact. How his missus puts up with him is beyond my comprehension. She’s lovely – dashing, even – and the closest he comes to dashing is at 1am in the morning after forgetting to do toilet before bed.

Dave doesn’t like television. I think it’s because he doesn’t understand it very well. He comes from the north, where they urinate outside. All very French. All very insalubrious.

But he doesn’t like television, and I like him for that. It’s surprising, because he’s got the brain size of a pea. A pea’s brain! It’s a funny image, that is. A bit like Dawn French. You don’t want to catch her starkers on your 60″ Hitachi, let me tell you.

Dave’s doing this 10 of 10 thing at the moment. It’s the nearest he’s come to an achievement. You gotta hand it to him – a P45, that is. If he wasn’t a freelancer, which is a synonym for ‘jobless loser’.

So I thought I’d help him out with 10 reasons why you shouldn’t have a telly. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m not very opinionated. If you enjoy the crap that Dave spouts, fear not, because he’ll be back tomorrow. If he can keep it up. Talking to his missus, I wouldn’t count on it…

  1. It’s rubbish for advertising. Everyone knows you have to be on crack or have $3bn going spare in reserves to pump cash and confidence into TV marketing. I mean, what’s the point? If you’re stupid you go and make a cup of builder’s tea while the ad break’s on; if you’re smart and savvy (for a TV viewer) you’ve recorded that damn programme and can either fast-forward, or you have one of them devices that simply chops out the ads for you. Noone – noone – watches ads any more. So get a big bag, slot that $3bn in the side compartment and nudge yourself myways so we can talk about the smart way to get your factories operating at optimum output.
  2. It makes you sterile. Cramming your fat arse on the sofa for prolonged periods is bad enough, but have you ever thought of the effects of that concertina posture on your baby-manufacturing organs? Normally that Walmart belt creates a safe dividing line between protruding belly and flaccid flesh string, but now you’re hunched over the remote, it’s every man for himself down there. You’re nigh-on crushing your goddamn penis in TV-gawping pose! Which must be damaging your chances of making a mini you. Reading this I don’t want you to make comparisons between Gordon Ramsay’s outburst about chefs sacrificing sperm for saute by hovering dangerously close to ovens all day long. That’s bullshit – the guy has more swimmers in his glans than you and I have blood cells. I do, however, believe that watching telly immolates your cock creatures.
  3. It stymies creativity. I’ve got 17 tabs open on Firefox right now. 17! That’s more than your IQ! Thankfully I’ll be through with the content of all those pages in a minute. Or I’ll have a word with my VA (that’s a Virtual Assistant, imbecile, not the state of Virginia, which was named after Dave, who alongside the question ‘Marital Status’ on the application form for a job at McDonald’s, famously added: “Virgin – ya!”) and she can get cracking on it. What I’m trying to say here is you can’t be creative and static at the same time. You have to create the ripple effect – and I’m not talking about what happens when you try and shift your fat belly from the sofa to the kitchen to grab some more Doritos. The ripple effect means starting something, then focusing on it so hard that everything you need to achieve your goal just ripples from the kinesis of contemplation. Try it. You might have a moment to spare now Strictly Come Wrestling On Ice With Chas And Dave has finished.
  4. It gives folks like Jedward a platform. Don’t. Get. Me. Started. They were on Sky News this morning, with that chubster Eamon Holmes. He’s gone a bit old, quick, hasn’t he? Well apparently the twins – which should have been left conjoined at birth – have been having a bit of a hard time of late. Well, stop the ***ing press! Did anyone think about coaching them on the dangers of mediocrity? They make Katie Price’s bosomy twins look talented. If being twins is enough to become famous, why aren’t The Chuckle Brothers replacing Chris Moyles on Radio 1? And what happened to that Krankie who fell out of the beanstalk?
  5. It created ‘celebrity’. This sickens me to the core. There are people out there – honest to decent folk – who run shops, take kids across the road (I’m not talking to you, Glitter) and slash the necks of sheep to put Sunday lunch on your table. These are the celebrities of our generation. Not the likes of Pierce bloody Morgan. The world’s disappeared up its own back yard. When the fat controller of BBC1 wakes up and smells the mocha, we’ll all be in a better state. Because the first thing he’ll do is hike up the price of your TV license to about £1,000 a day, and retire to Lumbago or another of those Caribbean islands because you’ll all still pay it. And for what? It’s all rubbish. Except for that Attenborough chap – he’s alright, I suppose. Did you know he does the voiceovers for the chimpanzees?
  6. We have no control over it. Unless you have one of those fancy home theatre pcs or whatever, you’re being dictated. Imagine that – dictated! It’s like being a member of the United Kingdom community. You are? Right-o. Well you’re used to it, then. Gordon Brown = your telly = loss of control = you are a lost soul, MIA. Your modus operandi isn’t your concern. Because big Gord and Aunty Beeb are telling you what to do. Even when you’re asleep. George Orwell said it best: the pig wins every time. See in the America they have all sorts of fancy ways to give the telly authorities the bird. They watch fancy pants interactive channels like revision3, sate their pixellated fantasies through on-demand providers like boxee and hulu, and probably even watch the BBC over the interweb without paying with some IP-swerver.
  7. It’s a festering pile of horse vomit. Anyone with an ounce of wisdom – that excludes you, obviously – knows that TV makes your mind flabby. It reduces your cerebral cortex to a spindly spider’s web of a neural network. You can’t win. It’s like being an Evertonian. What can you possibly gain from a couple of hours in front of the tellybox, apart from aggravating your piles? It boggles my mind, is what it does. Why Don’t You Go And Do Something More Productive – like drinking down the pub? Help the local economy and laugh at the smokers shivering outside. What could be more fun than that?
  8. It makes kids angry and violent. The telly isn’t all about the Mitchell twins, you know. Who happen to be a lot more capable than Jedward – one of them’s just got back from war, apparently, where he was very good (but sponsors Brylcreem are pondering their options). But what the Mitchells have in common with what I’m about to say revolves around unlawful pugilism. Fomenting forays of fisticuffs. Because mark my words, your kids right now are plotting to overthrow your administration. Whether they got the idea from the CBeebies or a particularly prolonged session of Grand Theft Auto, you can be sure that revolution is on its way, and it will involve that silicone spatula. Parents, get comfy in your riot gear.
  9. It stops people going out and to art galleries, and that. Lethargy. Procrastination. High-scoring words in Scrabble they may be (the latter would be a tough call; possible, but you’d have to nick some letters from your gaming nemesis, probably using violence of the type you’ll be seeing soon from your obsequious offspring (see 8)) but they also resonate in the hearts and minds of the anti-telly brigade. We empathise, you know? We know how it feels to be addicted to a negative force in our lives. I have this obsession with spelling mistakes and grammatical nakuracies. The next fast-food joint to sell pizza’s will be getting a Molotov through the winder, all burning bottle and a copy of the English dictionary inside with ‘idiot’ highlighted in yellow.
  10. I haven’t got one. I really want one of those Pioneer Kuro screens but @leolaporte got the last one and it’s just not fair. So maybe I’m just bitter. *Newsflash* maybe there is a way – apparently when Pioneer kiboshed its Kuro range on cost grounds, it decided to do some kind of deal with Panasonic. The result is the Viera G2 line of TVs, featuring legacy Pioneer technology. Oh man, this bleedin’ internet is just too damn addictive. I hadn’t even considered this could ever happen, and now I’m hotfooting betwixt this post and amazon and allsorts trying to find a way I can see/get my hands on this telly.

Bob Booby would like to make clear that he has no association with @bobbooby and actually quite likes @TracyCyrus because (s)he (ambiguous profile pic) likes guitars too.

Tomorrow: Same shit, different Dave…

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