Some things that make me attempt to pull away from traffic lights in neutral

• Typing up comedy tweets
• Checking out my (quite frankly) amazing hair in the rear view mirror
• That blonde girl

(This next bit is completely unrelated, but is too short to warrant its own post)

Amazing (adjective) - to have a hairstyle of such magnificence that it puts an older man, typically a fatherly figure, in mind of a porcupine molesting an electric light socket.

Puppy dog eyes

You know the thing - the TV spot where the cute dog with those big brown eyes looks beseechingly at camera holds up a paw and poses the question: How can you not love this?

There are times when my compassion gets the better of me, when I'm almost taken in.

Then I think to myself - do I really want a dog that can write letters knowing where I live? I have enough trouble with next door's cat climbing in the bathroom window and pilfering my tea without a bloody great dog making off with a string of sausages in its mouth.

And with these dogs, it's even worse. These are abused dogs right, so street dogs. That makes them even more wily and cunning. We're talking Fantastic Mr Fox levels of cunning, combined with a detailed knowledge of the workings of a human abode.

A fox gets in your house he's just blinking in the kitchen light trying to work out where the chickens are. But you let a dog know where you live and he's going to town on the remote control.

And no way, absolutely no way am I adopting a monkey. Those little fuckers would be up a drain pipe and into to bed with granny in no time.

It doesn't stop with TV ads. Yesterday I saw a handwritten poster taped to a lamppost.

Please help me, it said. I'm a grey 8 year old parrot and I'm lost. Please help me to find my way home.

And I say yeah right.

You can write a letter and tape it to a lamppost, you free loading bird?

Well read a fucking map then.

I'm sorry Kevin TotallyTheBestSurnameEva

I'm sorry Kevin James.

I liked you in that sitcom you did, King of Queens. I liked the whole chalk and cheese thing you had going on. You doing your whole chubby funny man thing with the impossibly hot wife. Okay, so I lie. I only watched it for the impossibly hot wife, but c'mon, she was hot. But still, sometimes you'd do something fatman that amused me. I dunno. Ate a massive burger or cheated on your wife with a plate of nachos or something.

But now you've become the guy in the films that are automatically shit.

Tonight I saw the poster for your film, The Zookeeper. There you are in your fat man shirt with your fat man grin luring me in with the promise of fat man jokes. Perhaps I'm being judgemental and unduly harsh, but I've seen the trailer for Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and I've heard the premise for The Dilemma (and by the way, it's not hard is it. YOU TELL YOUR BEST MATE HIS WIFE'S CHEATING ON HIM).

Okay, so Hitch was passable, but that was mainly down to Will Smith's innate coolness.

(Interesting side note - they actually modelled one of the characters and how he talked to women on me. Not that I'm trying to brag or anything, but I have been known to rap).

Anyway Kevin, I'm sorry. From now on I will review all your films based on the amount of fat man gurning going on in the poster. And I'm sorry to say, any amount of fat man gurning, is too much.

It's your own fault. If you will star in films with Adam Sandler.

Go, go, graphene!

I know little about this new miracle material - graphene - but the more I read, the more excited I become. For too long boring white coated egg heads have beavered away in the lab to give us useless products that have little application outside of an academic environment. Like DNA sequencing. Sure, you can get a good movie out of it, but come on, give me one practical example.

But this graphene stuff. Just wow.

Richard Van Noorden writes in Nature that:
According to the Nobel prize committee, a hypothetical one-metre-square hammock of perfect graphene could support a four-kilogram cat - the hammock would weigh 0.77 milligrams, less than a cat's whisker, and would be virtually invisible.

I think the phrase is along the lines of "hot diggity damn", because I for one have gone on long enough living in a world without invisible cat hammocks. Why, just last week I saw a cat, and it was SITTING ON THE FUCKING GROUND. How boring is that? From now on I want all my cats to be almost shitting themselves with fear at being suspended three to four feet up from the ground.

Thank you Science People.

Early to rest, early to rise. It keeps the mind sharp, the Sashimi knife sharper.

If I knew any wise old Sushi masters I'm sure it's the kind of sentiment they would echo. Doubtless they would frown on my approach involving Jack Daniel's sour mash whisky, involving most of a massive bag of cashews (roasted and salted), and involving copious amounts of Portal 2 till well into the wee small hours.

Oh, and don't forget the one litre bottle of yellow snot my friend brought me as a gift. Perhaps I'm being a touch harsh. We think it's Spanish eggnog, though we're not quite sure. It tastes faintly of banana. It cannot be drunk, it must be poured, much like that last globule of a runny yoghurt that would bring grief from your mother because you lifted the pot to your mouth.

Now the shot glasses of yellow goo stand on the counter top, a monument to my rudeness as a gift recipient. I truly am sorry for my initial knee jerk reaction ("What the hell is that?" I said). But I stand by it.

Anyone fancy some of my 1.0 litre bottle of strangely sweet and gloopy liquid? There's at least 0.99 of it left.

The loneliness of the short distance and moderately puffing runner

Last Friday I went for a run. Three miles, down by the river, no biggie.

Halfway through I did the usual - pause at the kiddie play area to knock out some chins on the monkey bars, and feel that self inflicted sense of discomfort - "what if someone sees me and calls me a paedophile?"

Then just this Tuesday gone - out for a run, same route, only this time I came a cropper. Put my foot on something hidden in the grass and down I went. Obviously I ruptured a whole series of ligaments in my ankle, damn near tore the whole foot off, but that wasn't my first thought.

I wasn't worried that my new nickname might become "hop along Jimbo".

I didn't care that I was now the limping buffalo calf of the Newport herd should Jurassic Park ever come true.

All I could think - I was down on my hands and knees, hidden in the long grass, lurking right next to the kiddie play area.

Now it's three days later, and though the foot has reattached itself I'm still in considerable agony.

People tell me - don't be a hero James.

But damnit, men should be men.

I'm still going on that sushi making course tomorrow.

Welcome (to the insanitorium)

All being well this time next week I should be deep into Working At Home.

The suit is being dry cleaned of wedding ice cream, victim of a particular vicious kiddie ice cream hurling match (I won, by the way), the shirt has been excised of Looney Tunes shiny stickers (here's a tip - bridesmaids find it endearing when you let their stupid little niece stick them all up your arm), and the Corporate Noose (aka my single Tie) is being dusted down, all ready for a business meeting on Monday.

That's right, I do business meetings now.

Perhaps I'll channel the spirit of something and end up like one of those well adjusted and decent human beings that people The Apprentice.

So it's back to the dusty world of this blog, the aim being to stay even a little bit sane as I while away my working life with only the C# compiler and my Tassimo coffee machine for company.

With luck I might even write some fiction.

Or just arse around on Twitter.

One of the two anyway.

Movie review: Predators

It was okay....
The premise this time is that a bunch of hard nuts are in some jungle somewhere. Something nasty and mean is lurking. Uh oh, what could be about to happen...

In case you didn't guess from the title, lots of the Predator aliens show up. Lots of things die in horrible ways. People say fuck a lot. A well known famous big star Hollywood actor is in it. He wheezes a bit, presumably unable to believe the size of his paycheck for so little work.

Though much like the Borg from Star Trek, the more we see of them, the wimpier the Predator aliens become. In Predator 6 I expect to see a group of rowdy teen Predators terrorising the residents of the Sunnydale Retirement Home. Cue lots of young punk Predators getting their asses handed to them by Granny Mabel and Grandpa George wielding a walking stick, with much comedy whacks on the back of the cool Predator dreadlocks with a big cushion.

New year, new start

Except it's January 21st, so the year's already slightly rusty. And it's not a new start because I'm working on the novel I started in August 2008. Plus the chapter I wrote today, it's a bit shit.

But, on the other hand, at least I wrote it.

So that makes me happy.