"Wait til you try the Pina Colada". Oh man, American Splendor is so funny and I haven't even finished watching it yet.

Off to an awards dinner at the Natural History Museum tonight, which sounds (slightly) glamourous, except that it's for the HDI Telephone Helpdesk awards. Yay, yawn.

On the bus today: The Hunt Sabatoeur and The Rollup Rat. These peoples make me think of creating an American Splendor inspired comic that at least I would find funny.

People types I don't like:

1. People who kill spiders
2. People who yank dogs around on choke chains (here, lets pop one on you and see how YOU! like IT!!)
3. Smokers that chuck their fag butts anywhere but in the bin

If you're a smoking arachnophobic dog trainer, I goddamn hate your guts and you better keep away from me.

Oh and maybe type 4. Anyone that believes in bloody clairvoyants and medium shite. Like, I'm Famous and I'm Frightened on channel 5 the other night. Ooh, let's lock Lindsey Dawn MacKenzie in a dungeon at 3 in the morning with the lights off. How do you feel Lindsey? "Really scared! It's so cold and like there's an oppressive force, like something really bad happened here. It's not right, it doesn't feel right!". No shit Sherlock! It's a bloody freezing cold 4ft x 4ft x 6ft dungeon in a castle at 3 in the morning and it's pitch black, how do you think you're going to feel?! You dipstick!

And just how the hell do you spell sqwuak? You know, like what a bird does. Sqawk. Squawk, got it, thanks.

Hoooly shiiiiit, there was a guy yesterday actually wearing socks embroidered with the red and black guitar used on The Shadows - Best Of CD cover. What a freak. If I suddenly played Apache would he do the Shadow-step routine?

Do kids still hide behind the sofa (or "stofa" as Toby calls it) when watching something scary on TV? Do they actually get scared watching TV these days? Surely most kids are hardened to the horrors of the world as seen through TV. I just thought this after all the moronic commentary on Dr Who, "Oooh, I used to hide behind the sofa when the Daleks were on". Did you? Wouldn't surprise me if the fact really was that they'd heard so many people say that that they have adopted it as a false memory from their childhood? Anyway, you could really mess with their tiny fragile minds by having an episode that features a mini-Dalek that lurks behind sofas and exterminates children. Evil no?

Listening to: Murs - 3:16 The 9th Edition; Marxman - 33 Revolutions (so, so underrated)

Bizarrely I couldn't find a link to Marxman (above), until I noticed in the Intro that I was listening to, they were repeating "m-a-n, m-a-n". It was then that realised that I had misspelled it in the Google search; Marxmen instead of Marxman. Fortunate.

Last Sunday on TV there was a program that made me want to hurt people. It was that Madonna tribute show where they got brain dead nobodies to comment on the stellar Madonna and her career. They were making such original comments such as, "Oh, she has a different look for every album doesn't she?" and "Oh she's such an icon and an inspiration for women to feel empowered" and "Oh, she's constantly reinventing herself and blahdi blahdi blah". Jesus Christ, please don't bother. If all you can do is regurgitate these tired old, obvious, observations that you haven't even actually thought of your self, you're just repeating, then just shut up. And then the sycophants were getting the opportunity to "sing" their favourite Madonna song, while a crowd of Mongoloid grinners clapped along in mob support. I love that, don't you? When someone on a show starts singing and for some reason the crowd start up with a locomotive clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, that eventually starts getting out of time and has no regard for any subtleties of the tune - it's just clap, clap, clap, clap. What a load of clap.

Wow, I had quite a revolutionary idea on Sunday, I just hope someone acts on it before it get's buried in this chronologically linear blog. Here it is:

I was listening to Desmond Tutu on Radio 4 yesterday making an appeal on behalf of Help the Hospices and, because there wasn't anything else to distract me and it was early morning so my brain was fairly active, I actually took in what he was saying. The details can be found at the link, but what I was most interested in was why, with all the numerous of charities clamouring for our attention, do some charities penetrate the fog of day to day drudgery and make the distance to your heart? My thought process then went like this: when you give money to charity you generally feel good and get a buzz, not dissimilar to the buzz received by consumers when they buy a CD, DVD, new pair of jeans, trainers etc, except that that buzz is generally shortlived and, if really considered, the material goods are often sidelined after a few days or weeks. What is generally accepted is that the buzz from spending is the almost overarching reason for the purchase. Obviously this is not with all people and so this is only going to be effective for a portion of the general public, but if there was some way to "parcel" the buying\donating experience in that same way and harness the consumer buzz and, stay with me, make it addictive, in the same way that shopping is then, by way of a kind of trojan horse, we would create a whole new demographic of donaters. Charities may have already thought of this and indeed may be using this kind of idea already, but I can definitely see great potential in it. Please send any donation for my snowboarding holiday to thegashman@gmail.com.

I thought of this the other day as well when I had to send an e-mail to a customer that I particularly hate. I thought how great it would be to hide abusive messages into sentences. Like sending an e-mail that has a hidden message masked by the words preceding and following it. For example:

"Werthers are the sweets you love to suck. Knobs of butter, spoons of sugar and cream all mixed together."

Now from that I can see, "You love to suck knobs", and something like that will make me laugh on and off for a day or two. And it's so cheap too.

Now, another lesson learned by me the hard way. When inviting a helicopter for afternoon tea, be careful when offering them another biscuit or slice of cake. Even when slowing the rotors down to a hovering speed, they will still knock the plate out of your hand and leave you with a nasty sprained wrist. I'm having to type this left handed and it's a bitch.

Stuck on the goggle box at the minute, watching a lot of movies. Bourne Supremacy arrived in the post today and I watched Shaolin Soccer round Mr Gill's last night, which was much better than I was expecting. The movie that is. He offered me some Brazilian fruit that I have completely forgotten the name of. Quick visit to Google, its called caja and it is VERY sweet (other Brazilian fruits here, including the plant that we get cashews from). Day before going round to Gilly's I was idly wondering what his house would look like and I imagined him having a black leather sofa. When I got round there he said, "Do you like my new leather sofa?". He'd bought it a few weeks ago. Weird huh?

Hard drive failed on me yesterday at work, so I spent a reasonable amount of time today salvaging what I could today. And that is about it. Rubbish eh? Oh, finished Day of the Triffids, which was superb. Next up Nietzsche.

Quite by accident, I came across this, which brought back days of teacher wheeling in a massive TV with a tiny screen into class so we could watch Words and Pictures. Awesome.

Nothing to see, move along now people please. Actually that's not such a hot way to open a blog entry that you want people to read now is it? Or maybe it is?

I have a headache caused by eyestrain and am miserable so don't expect much from me today.

Have you ever been troubled by office cubicle etiquette? Sometimes new people will move to the cubicle\pod\cell next to me that I may be vaguely familiar with. There is usually a period shortly afterwards of awkwardness regarding saying hello, good morning, including them in my "interesting" technical\managerial observations, "How was your weekend?" etc. And also more specifically trying to work out the happy balance between stony faced silence and moronic idle chitter chatter. I have learnt to overcome this by angrily hissing, "Shit!!" every couple of minutes in the morning when reading my e-mails and huffing throughout the day whilst holding my head in my hands. If that doesn't work for you, try farting every 5 minutes. You may end up having a cubicle all to yourself after a few days. Or a letter from Personnel.

There is an annoying student type girl person who works here as well, who has this particularly irritating habit of eating whatever she's bought from the canteen whilst she's walking back to her desk. She must go to the canteen about 5 times a day and is so desperate each time that she simply can't wait to get back to her seat before shoving the brownie, croissant, crisp, sandwich, rack of ribs etc into her fat face as she's walking through the office. People suggested that I was overreacting a little until I highlighted each of her visits to make a point and now everyone finds it annoying. Bizarrely, now that I've offloaded this irritation on to my colleagues, it doesn't bother me as much. I just need to try the same trick with Michael Howard now.

Fell asleep part of the way through Ghost In The Shell 2, but saw enough amazing graphics and animation to declare it a masterpiece. Fell asleep because I had a big Pimms and lemonade. What a dandy fop.

And, Abort, Retry, Fail? Honestly now, how many times has Retry worked for you? Never, right? Everyone chooses Abort, because no-one wants to Fail. So really, you have failed, but in true Matrix spirit, the computer wants to create the illusion of choice (that keeps us happy and controllable) so we get the trio of "options". Scary, but true.

I watched Super Size Me on Saturday night and all the way through it I was thinking, "Ooh, I could just eat a Big Tasty". Am I shallow\stupid\conditioned beyond help? Even though Morgan Spurlock was basically poisoning himself and puking up on screen to show me how bad Mackie D's are for you, I was still thinking, "Yeah, I'll get a Bacon and Egg McMuffin tomorrow morning for breakfast". What a dumb ass.

One thing I would like to see is a hip hop DJ that raps while he's mixing\scratching. I figure if Elton John can sing while he plays the piano, there must be someone somewhere that can mix and rap at the same time. Which reminds me, I want the Propellerheads music writing software, but don't have £300 to spend. Which reminds me that I need to get £300 from somewhere. Damn.

Now I have The Day of the Triffids to read, courtesy of a car boot sale (10p for a Penguin classic - cheers!), I can put down The Bestiary, which was becoming a bit of a pain in the arse to read actually. Did come across some interesting "facts" in it though:

• "Camels hate horses" (Fact 2: I hate horses too)
• "The pack leader male donkey will bit off the testicles of the new born males" (Eeyowww!)
• Lions (Leo) sometimes visit Pards (panthers) for some inter-racial sugar and subsequently give birth to Leopards
• "Antelopes can swivel their horns round, which are so strong that they could fall off a cliff and land on them with no ill health." I think they might have confused their ears (which do swivel) with their horns as I don't think you'll get many antelopes willing to fall 200ft off a rocky outcrop onto their ears
• The term "lick into shape"comes from the licking that mother bears give to new born cubs. When born they resemble little lumps of flesh before the licking, allegedly, promotes the fur growth and they then start to look like proper little bears. Not to be confused with the "lick" of the cat o nine tails the insubordiate or lazy sailors used to get in order to get them back on track

I'll watch Ghost In The Shell 2 tonight and Vijay's very kindly lent me Casshern as well, which is supposed to be a bit mental. Peace to the middle east.

I wish it wasn't the only thing that I write about on a regular basis, but the blokes loos here are something else and I can't help commenting on them now and again. The state of the cubicles makes me wonder sometimes if I share the loos with a whole range of hominids from various eras of human history, you know, Homo Habilis, Neanderthal, Chavpanzees etc. The toilet in the cubicle at the far end of the loos today looked like someone had been washing their wellies in it after being on a fairly rigorous ramble through a ploughed field. It was everywhere. I abandoned that cubicle and then proceeded to the next latrine to find the pan filled to the brim with some kind of primeval bog water, the miniscus fully evident. To top it all off, as I backed out of the cubicle in horror my eye caught sight of the numerous nose goblins that had been wiped over the walls by the previous inhabitant. What is this, some kind of territorial scent marking exercise gone mad? It wouldn't surprise me to see cave drawings of the last buffalo they speared next time I'm in there. Jesus.

Eternal Sunshine was superb and I wish I'd seen it sooner. I saw CD WOW have it for £4.99, but why is it in the Adult section? It has adults in it, but....

The film title is taken from a quote by Alexander Pope and they also mention another quote in the film from Nietzsche, "Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders". Which is taken from Beyond Good and Evil which I bought last weekend at the same time as Catcher in the Rye. Spook.

I've had a few ideas for some modern pub names. The Jacket Inn, The Red Lion Politician, The White Whore and The Queens Give Head. Nice eh?

Couple of days ago I asked Toby as he was settling down for bed, what his day at nursery was like and he started off by telling me that it was really rubbish, which isn't that unusual, he says most things are rubbish whether the means it or not. The odd bit was when he started telling me that he lost his shirt and had to put a towel over himself, then someone stole his flying helmet type hat and hung it on a hook. I then noticed that he kept looking behind me at the back of his door where all of these items were hanging and then deduced that he was simply making the story up from things he could see in the room. "Who are you, bloody Keyser Soze?" I asked. And he said, "Yes". Scary. Then when I kissed him goodnight he told me he had a hot ear. I asked him if he had been listening to a cooker and quickly left the room. I could hear him saying, "What daddy, what?" as I closed the door. Ho ho. A little saying of his when he goes off for a short while is, "Back in a chippy".

Random stuff I saw: an eyepatch by a cash machine and a dead pope shot on a camera phone.

Random stuff I thought of: Findus French bread pizzas and why is it that if you suck a Polo, it always has a weak spot that dissolves away first leaving a "C" shape of much harder candy?

iTunes I be listening to: Buzzin Vol 2 - awesome, grown-up house music; Doc Brown - The Document - rising UK hip hop star; Silicone Soul - Staring Into Space; Mint Royale - See You In The Morning; Fischerspooner - Odyssey; The Bravery. Check out my eBay page from the link on the right - loads of quality CDs at superb prices (only for the next 7 days mind, but I'll hopefully be getting more each month)

If you do a search on Google for, "jumping up stairs backwards", the only place you'll see it will be here. Possibly. I haven't sorted much out about making myself more visible. Would be nice though.

Oh yeah, 2 updates from the previous posting:

1. That thing about the fox attractor was an April Fools joke, which dawned on me completely out of the blue today while I was doing some brainless task like checking eventlogs on a server at work today - durrr.

2. The canteen at work has started selling bagels. They're getting "quite" cosmopolitan in there of late. I say "quite" because anything a bit interesting they sell has always got a touch of the English about it. i.e the chocolate mousse they serve for dessert is cold chocolate custard with spray cream from a can on top. Likewise, these bagels are filled with cheese and pickle for f*cks sake! Where's the salmon and cream cheese, pastrami and gherkin etc? Anyway, I sympathise with Holden Caulfield (Catcher In The Rye) with regard to the bagels. When I see something that someone thinks is being all clever and exclusive, or cool, or cosmopolitan and it's so not, it makes me kind of depressed. It happened when I was about 12 and my Mum bought me a briefcase for my birthday. WTF? I felt like crying, but not because I really wanted Optimus Prime or a new pair of Nikes, it was more because she got it wrong. She must have thought that I would have really wanted a briefcase and she was probably really happy that she got it for me and all I was thinking was that she didn't know what I wanted and how I was growing up.

Watched The Station Agent last night. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone - very funny, with loads of nice observations and subtleties. Now for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind tonight. Michel Gondry, will you let me down....?

I'm reading Catcher In The Rye, don't tell the Feds. Well actually I live in the UK, so you can tell the Feds, just don't tell the fuzz.

Got my Style Wars DVD (signed by Mare139 no less) last night with poster and I just can't justify any reason why I didn't track this movie down sooner. I also haven't seen Wild Style either, what am I playing at? Managed to identify the "CC starboard bound, slow it down, slow it down, this is it, this is iiiiiiit!" sample from Deadly Avenger's "King Tito's Gloves" tune on Illicit Records - one of my favourites.

Some guy at work posted this in the Bulletin Board:

Are foxes regular visitors to your garden? Do you enjoy watching them from a distance but wish you could get nearer?
Now you can! The FoxTamer is a small electronic device modelled on sonic cat-repellers but the manufacturers have developed a frequency that foxes find irresistible...
With a FoxTamer clipped to your belt you'll be able to approach foxes without scaring them off, pet them and even have them feeding out of your hand. FoxTamers are soon to be released through Endsleigh garden centres and B&Q stores but I have some for sale at the pre-release price of £5 (they will be £12.99 retail).
(There's a frequency hack available on the internet which also makes them work on badgers but please be aware that it is illegal to stroke a badger)

So, remember kids, if you want rabies for a mere £12.99, pop down to B&Q. But please stay within the law and don't stroke beavers. Sorry, badgers 8¬)