It's all bad news again today.
More people dead.
More things going wrong.

The world is falling apart,
they keep saying,
and it's all your fault
for not behaving yourselves,

There's evil out there,
they keep saying.
There's evil out there, and we've got to fight it,

All the money's run out
they keep saying.
All the money's run out,
even though it never really existed.

Spend spend spend
the adverts all say.
Spend as much as you can,
and then spend some more,
or you'll never be happy.

You've got to fit in
they say.
You've got to stand out
they say.

You've got to FIGHT for PEACE
they say.

You've got to stand on the hill
and wave your arms in celebration
as the planes fly by...

LIFE IS GREAT,
but
there is one unavoidable truth
you will never escape:

People get old
and then die.

Sooner or later
everybody fails.

Every summer
leads to autumn,
and eventually
winter.

..............................

This is another one from 6 months ago. This one also makes me chuckle, especially when I think of what inspired it. I had been watching scrubs, and JD said the line "Sooner or later, everybody fails."

Make of it what you will...

Memories
arising like sulfur
from the ashes
of a volcanic dream.

I've been here before,
swimming through fields
of sunshine-filled
imagination.

Scream
             at the sky,
             at the days.

I want
        a reason,
        a purpose.

That's why I came here.

Somewhere to belong.
Somewhere for old memories to belong,
building up into something more
than they can ever live up to.

Falling into time.
Feel the drowning.
Feel the drowning.

...drowning in sunshine
and trees
and
        ...time...

I feel
like I'm returning back
to an old, comfortable
dream.

I feel
       the uncontrollable,
       the days,
       all the words
                            left unspoken.

I feel dreams
as they unfold
like a new day.
                                       an imaginary day
                                        left dancing in the long grass

Forms - thought forms,
unfolding, expanding,
like arms.......................embracing the sky.

And...
dreams are only thoughts,
and thoughts are only dreams,
and
memories are the heart and soul,
beating deep down
beating deep,
deep down...

Feelings, unspoken in unknown places,
on the edge, peripheral,
always ---------------------------------------------- just slightly out of reach

This is where the magic is.
This is where
the magic
is.

This is
where dreams unfold,
where flowers grow
and then die
in quiet corners of fields.

This is the place,
where nobody goes,
where all the unsaid words ............................ sit whispering in the corner

This is where
all the still-born and aborted dreams
lay buried,
decomposing in the dark soil
beneath old forgotten trees.

The faint smell drifts across the hills
as I am drawn towards the distant view
and
I feel like I'm back where I belong
yet again.

I always end up back here,
like a bird
flying home for the summer,

And
it's never looked so perfect,
it's never looked so
swim in time and upside-down and
flowers in the sky and distant views of
past and future and present moment expand up beyond
and blades of long grass swaying so hot so touching eyes and breeze
and forest hidden deep dark sky between the leaves
and days so lost...

just
let it go...

let it all drift away
on the breeze...

....................................

Note:
I wrote this back in the summer, and left it sitting on my computer for six months. If you understand what it means, please tell me, because I'm not entirely sure. Bits of it actually made me chuckle.

Time stands still.
Life flies by
at an incredible speed.

Woooooooosshhhh!.....

"Come back!" I shout.
"Come back! You're going too fast!
I can't keep up!"

I dream I'm standing forever
in amongst the trees
at midnight,

but somehow
it's light all around.

Hello you Mellow Yellow Fellow!

Happy Holidays to you all.

Check out our latest Uncle Bertie episode:
Christmas With Boring Norman

8-)

Marcus.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Midgets and the Transgendered,

Today I am going to talk about the English Language.

Or more precisely, how certain modern uses of the English language just don't make any sense.

E-mail/Mail

E-mail stands for Electronic Mail, the electronic form of the word Mail.

Mail is the collective term for what the postwoman (or man, or post-transgendered-person, or postmidget) delivers to your door. If we were going to check to see what they had delivered, we might say "I'm going to check my mail." If you were going to write something to send to someone, you might say, "I'm going to write a letter."

So why, please tell me, do people now say: "I'm going to check my e-mails" or "I've just received an e-mail" or "I'm writing an e-mail" ????

Surely they should be saying things like, "I'm going to check my e-mail" (no "s"), "I've just received an e-letter" or "I'm writing an e-letter" ????

Also:
What if someone sends you a file attachement? Isn't that an e-parcel?

The Media

Many people these days seem to take "The Media" to mean "The News". It doesn't mean The News at all. The News USES The Media to get the news to The People.

Media is the plural of Medium. TV is a Medium. Radio is a Medium. Newspapers are a Medium. Magazines are a Medium. Books are a Medium. The World Wide Web is a Medium? Or is it the Internet? What's the difference between those two? Well, The Internet is the physical network of computers, whereas the World Wide Web refers to the websites containing all the information. The World Wide Web and E-mail are two functions of The Internet. So I suppose it is The Internet which is the Medium (like a TV is), whereas the World Wide Web and E-mail are like the TV shows that appear on TV, they are what it is used for.

But I'm getting side-tracked here...

The Media can also include the following:

• Oil Paint
• Clay
• Charcoal
• Pencils
• Pens
• Plastercine
• Watercolour Paint
• Crayons
• etc...

Why?

Well, because an art teacher might say to an art student: "What medium are you going to use for your next piece of art?" And Media is merely the plural of Medium.

The reason why many people take The Media to mean The News, is because The News is the most frequent use of The Media, because there are always new things to tell people. New lies and half baked truths to get people to accept. Newspapers, The Internet, The TV, The Radio, these are all good ways to sell your version of the days events to the general public. Hence, the common useage of The Media comes to mean News Via TV, Newspapers, Radio or The Internet.

I mean, if there was some breaking news, BBC News aren't going to manufacture sculptures that represent the new information. It's just not cost- or time-effective.

But it's still Media.

And that also means Multimedia could mean creating a piece of art using a variety of media, for example pencils, paint, sculpture, and maybe a TV balanced on the top of the sculture repeatedly flashing the words "News Flash: Everything You Think You Are Exists Only As Thoughts Or Memories."

Shan't & Won't

We all know that Don't is the abreviation of Do Not.

But what is Shan't the abreviation of? Shall Not? Well shouldn't it be written as Sha'n't?

What about Won't? Is that an abreviation of Will Not? Well then shouldn't that be Wi'n't?

Regular/Frequent

People often say Regular when they really mean Frequent.

Think about it.

Frequent means How Often something happens.
Regular merely refers to whether or not it happens at evenly-spaced time intervals.

For example, Christmas happens regularly. Only once a year, but it's the exact same date every year. That's EXTREMELY regular. Whereas if I had a cold I might cough FREQUENTLY, but I'm not coughing REGULARLY. I'm not coughing precisely once every minute, at exactly the same time each time.

Txt Spk

If u thnk wrtg lk ths is cul u cn fk off and di. I dnt evn wana no u.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention...

Check out our new comedy episode:

Santa's Grotto

That last message got caught by the spam filter again, and arrived 2
days late again. I don't know! What is this world coming to?!¿?

What's next? I'll go to the bank to draw out some money, but they'll
have to ring me on my mobile phone to check it's really me?! Or maybe
one day the Police will turn up at my parent's house, and they'll be
like, "Who are you? Why are you here in this house?" and I'll be like,
"They're my parents," and the Police will be like, "Why are you still
living here?" and I'll be like, "I'm too poor to live anywhere else at
the moment, without resorting to floating my body on the stock market."

Anyway, time for a proper story...

Once upon a time (11am yesterday - or if the spam filter catches this
message, a 11am 3 days ago), a man called Gerald woke up (he'd had a
late night the night before, staying up surfing the internet for answers
to the question "Why isn't Planet Earth cube-shaped?"), and yawned a big
yawny-faced yawn, so wide he nearly swallowed his own head (that's how
tired he was).

But oh - shock horror! Right at that moment, a cat flew past in a remote
controlled helicopter. It looked terrified and bemused, flapping its
paws around, and had an expression on its face which said: "Why does
this kind of thing always have to happen to me?"

The End.

I wish to apologise for any tie-ping errors you may have noticed in my
last massage, if you bothered to read it. I suppose I must have been so
frantic to get the message out about the spam filter.

If you didn't bother to read it, you really have no idea what you
missed. I answered the actual riddle to meaning of life, and there you
are totally oblivious. Poor you, in your little world of sitting in a
chair eating smarties and scratching your elbows. Elbows, elbows,
felbows, melbows, trelbows, wibbly wobbly hibbly wobbly dungerees. Etc.

Anyway, who wants to hear a little story?

Okay, then I shall begin...

Once upon a time (not very long ago, but long enough ago that you
definately wouldn't have been alive when it happened, whatever it is
that I'm about to tell you), in a very far away land (e.g. Norway-
unless of course you life in, or close to, Norway, in which case one of
your dead relatives may have witnessed this very event), a man (whose
name - Dave - shall remain unknown) was busy in his garage (it had a
green door) building a model helicopter to fly his pet cat towards that
place above the clouds where the sun always shines.

"Simon," he said (his cat's called Simon, by the way). "You have lived
for far too long in this grey, dull shit hole of a place, and I can see
the tears just acheing to burst out from behind your tightly closed
eyelids, that you yearn for the warmth of the sun on your beautiful
face. Oh my beatufil cat, oh how beatiful you are. And that's not a gay
thing to say, because you're a male cat, not a male human."

"Meow meow meow," said Simon.

"Yes I know," said The Man. "I quite agree, life really had been
terrible down here."

"Meow meow,"

"Yes, I know, that's why I want to fly you up above the clouds. Up up up
up up up, up, up above the clouds. Up up above the clouds. Up. Above the
clouds. Way up, all the way up, right through them and out the top,
where it's always sunny and you can fly around with a big smile on your
face, purring like the beautiful purring kitty cat that you are."

"Meow."

The End.

Sorry, that message about the comedy night was a day late.

Can you believe it, I sent that on Thursday evening, but today I got a message say that the spam filter from my mailing had detected it as being possible spam! What the hell??? What a stupid spam filter!!! Didn't it notice that the sender was the owner of the mailing list, and therefore the same person that it was sending the warning message too?!?!?!?

So anyway, I had to approve that message by click a link and then choose the option "No This Message That I Wrote Myself Is Not Spam, And I Should Know Because I Wrote It".

I know it contained a lot of links, but none of them were trying to sell anything. They were just links to Wikipedia and YouTube.

Anyway, rant over...

It was Wednesday night I went to the comedy night.

Last night I stayed home.

And today I went out for a hilly walk with my friend Dan. 5 hills in only 5 miles. That's a record for me, in terms of the hill-to-mile ratio. All of the hills were in the same small area, near Dursley & Cam in Gloucestershire.

Okay, so let's talk about that. Why don't I tell you about where I went. This is my blog/list, I'll do whatever I feel like. You don't have to read it if you don't want to...

But anyway, for anyone who is still reading...

1. First we went up Cam Peak (officially called Peaked Down). You can see an image of it here, and another one here.
2. Right next to Cam Peak is Cam Long Down.
3. Then we walked across to Uley Bury.
4. Then down to Downham Hill. This has not Public Right of Way across it, but it is now "Access Land", and has long had a "Permissive Path" up it anyway. But there is no route through, so you have to just go up the side of the hill, walk round the hill, then come back down the same way. As we were coming back down, it started to snow.
5. Then it was along the lane back towards Cam Long Down. It really began snowing heavily at this point, but this soon passed. We then walked back over Cam Long Down. My original plan was to go back over Cam Peak too, to get 6 hills in, but by then Dan's sore ligament was starting to hurt, so we went back down to the car.

Then we went to a nice pub in Dursley, where he had a hot chocolate and I had a fruit tea drink. We played table football twice, and I beat him 9-1 both times. You made it far too easy Dan, you really did. I can't even remember when I last played that game.

Still reading this?

Well done. Have a banana.

If the spam filter catches this message too, I'm going to protest by dancing like a maniac in my side garden.

Peace, Love & Satsumas,
MEJC.

A few weeks ago I saw a news item on the BBC Gloucestershire website saying that Ardal O'Hanlon was going to be performing at a venue near me. I booked tickets, invited my friend James, and last night was the night.

The line-up was nicely varied, with 4 totally different comedians from 4 different places:

• Ardal O'Hanlon (Irish)
• Phil Kay (Scottish)
• Paul Tonkinson (English)
• Craig Campbell (Canadian) - Host

All of them were very good, very funny...

Craig Campbell

Never seen this guy before. The main thing that struck me about him was that he looked like Justin Lee Collins. He was very loud, in your face, and interracted with the audience a lot. The great thing about him is that he's lived in the UK for 12 years (although he sounds totally Canadian), and he had a lot of funny observational things to say about British people versus Canadians and Americans. For example, saying how amazed he was that it was so easy for him to get a British driving liscence just by sending off his Canadian liscence to the UK DVLA. And he was like "Wait! Which side of the road do I drive on?" and they were like, "Don't worry, you'll figure it out..." And also he pointed out how a foreign driver would have absolutely no clue as to the the speed limit on a British motorway. Of course, all this is only 1% as funny as was hearing him say it all.

Video - From 2007, telling some of the same jokes he told last night, talking about British life from a foreigner's point of view. He has much shorter hair here though.

Paul Tonkinson

I've seen him on TV qutie a lot in the past. Pretty funny guy. Interacted with the audience a lot. Made me quite glad I wasn't sat anywhere near the front. He did some funny impressions of French people.

Video

Phil Kay

Where do I even start with this guy? The guy's a total and utter mental random loony crazy freak of a nutcase, and I love him! Phil was my favourite comedian of the night. I remember him from a TV show he did more than 10 years ago called Phil Kay Feels. I was wondering what he would be like now, whether he would still be as extreme, and he certainly didn't disappoint.

It's hard to describe via written words just what Phil Kay is like, but he really is totally random and insane, and is exactly my kind of comedian. There is absolutely no theme or structure to his act at all. He just frantically does whatever pops into his head.

For example:

• When he came on stage, he brought an ironing board with him, with various things placed on it.
• After the previous comedian (Paul) had observed that the Christmas tree was badly decorated (it didn't have much decoration on the top of it), Phil, near the beginning of his performance, decided to place a plastic coat hanger with a tomato on it onto the top of the tree. He then screamed that he wished he was the fairy on top of the tree, and grabbed the star and pressed it onto his chest. I can't remember exactly what he did then, but he really went off on a tangent.
• At one point he randomly went over to the widow and started shouting at kids on the street.
• He pulled his jeans up really high, so they were really tight around his crotch. He then did a really random dance, jerking from side to side over and over again.
  

Video - Altough this really isn't Phil at his best, but it gives you an idea of who he is. There aren't that many video clips of Phil Kay on the internet, as these days he doesn't appear on TV much. However, to get a feel for the kind of things he comes out with, here's a chunk of text I stole from his website:

Skim the surface and it is an utterly up to the minute super-list of recent events in phils life,esapades adventures, mishaps, ideas, schemes, scams, dreams and drams..recipes, jokes and thoughts thoughts thoughts, wee,wee description of the most exciting moments of phils recent gigs...Dip your head under a bit..hold your breath, go deeper and it will then be a more further reaching set of riveting philosophy prose as i release my auto-blography in tiny chunks..it is to be published as a book with photo and dvd of footage and is to be called: 'sorry i am late,the orphanage was on fire..' ....or...'any trousers will do after the earthquake'.

Ardal O'Hanlon

There was something subtly surreal about seeing Ardal come onto the stage, having never seen him before in real life but seen him many times on TV. It's like that subtle realisation you know you shouldn't really be having because it doesn't actually make any sense, like "Oh, he's actually a real person..." The main thing that struck me is that he seemed smaller than I imagined him, although I am aware that TV often makes people seem bigger than they really are (for example, apparently Jack Dee is only 3 feet tall in real life). I noticed the same think with Paul Tonkinson, who looked a lot skinnier than I imaged him.

Anyway, Ardal was very funny, and did make me laugh a lot. Especially lines like "Me and my wife - hey, I have a wife, WAHEY! - anyway, me and my wife, every month we go out to a restaurant for an argument..."

He was very funny, but somehow couldn't quite match up to Phil Kay, just purely because Phil Kay is so extreme. What I'm saying is, I'm not saying Ardal O'Hanlon wasn't funny. I'm saying Ardal WAS very funny, but Phil Kay before him had nearly killed me.

Video

Things Worthy of Note

• The woman sat next to me laughed hysterically at everything, yet the man she was with didn't appear to smile the whole time he was there.
• After Phil Kay's set, I passed him half way up the stairs on my way back from the toilet. It took me by surprise, because I wasn't looking at him at first, and only realised it was him as I got right next to him. I heard him grumpily say something along the lines of "Oh, don't stand and talk to me then..." to a woman a few steps above me as she walked on past him. It was then that I found myself right next to him and turned to suddenly realise it was him, stood leaning against the middle banister with a pint of beer in his hand. I instictively said a cheerful "Alright?" to him as I carried on past, and he just quickly replied "Hello."
  

Conclusion

Very enjoyable night. Well worth the money. All four comedians were very funny, but Phil Kay was amazing (in my warped opinion).

I think my dad is insane
And suffering from Olfactory Hallucinations

He keeps walking around the house
"What's that strange smell?" he keeps saying
But nobody can smell anything
The silly man

"I've had enough of it all, I'm throwing it all away," said A Man You
Don't Know as he tore his room apart.

"But what if you need some of it later on at some point?" said Another
Man You Don't Know.

"I don't care, it's all got too much, I want to get rid of it all," said
The Man You Don't Know. And so he began ripping everything off the
shelves and stuffing it into black bin liners.

"NO! STOP!" shouted Some Woman Whose Place In The Story We May Never
Fully Understand. "Just think of all those old Christmas cards, and
letters from people you no longer give a shit about. If you get rid of
them, you will no longer have those memories to fall back on, and
without memories what will you be?"

"Free," said The Man You Don't Know. "Without memories to hold me back,
I can do anything. I can fly, up beyond the clouds, to islands floating
in the sky."

And at that moment, the red and yellow of the sunset sky began to leak
in through the small gap in the window. The Man You Don't Know leaned
forward and opened the window fully, letting the orange glow fill the room.

And as all three of them leaned out the window to wave at the people
below, the house began to collapse, and with big grins on their faces
they all jumped out just in time, and began floating around the street.

And they lived happily ever after as floaty people, forever and ever
amen and yourmen and everybodysmen and all the women too, all tickling
each other and dancing and that.

I went for a walk today with my walking group, out in the Wiltshire
countryside. It was a lovely sunny day, and I enjoyed myself, as it's
the first group walk I've done for about 6 weeks or something.

Anyway, a few things worthy of note happened today...

Allow me to explain..

So we all met up at the meeting point in the centre of Bristol, and the
idea is always to car-share out to the start of the walk. Two new lovely
young women turned up, and they were going to go together in their car.
I overheard them giggling something about hwo rubbish they are at
directions as they walk leader handed them their map and directions on
some paper. I was just on the virge of offering my services as their
highly compitent navigator, when the walk leader started saying how we
needed more drivers, and he asked me if I'd drive.

Ah, feck!

But anyway, so I drove, and two other people went with me, and a
different guy went with the two young women.

So, cut to over an hour later (a lot of which was boring motorway
driving on the M4), and we arrived at the car park for the start of the
walk. It was really full up, so I tried to park on this grassy area, and
my car got stuck! I ended up wheelspinning like mad. So I ended up
getting about 5 guys from the group to help push me back out of it, and
after lots of effort we eventually managed it, and I found another space
down the other end.

Just at that moment, the two new young women arrived in their car. But
their passenger was nowhere to be seen.

They started telling me about how they had had to let him out right near
the beginning of the car journey because he freaked out. They said he
suddenly said "I've just remembered, I've got some DIY I've got to do at
home," and then asked to be let out of the car. So they pulled over at a
petrol station and he got out. What the hell?