Author: 7 Reasons

7 Reasons That You Shouldn’t Knock on the Front Door When I’m in the Bath

Yesterday, while I was bathing, someone knocked on the front door. They shouldn’t have. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Doubt. I’m lying in the bath. I’m wet. I’m not about to get up to answer the door, it’ll be bloody cold standing on the doorstep with only a towel around my waist and five chest hairs to keep me warm, so of course I’m going to lie here. But what if it’s important? What if there’s a gas leak and they’ve come to alert me? What if the house next door is on fire? What if the police have come to warn me that there’s an axe-murderer on the loose?

2. Foreboding. What if it is the axe-murderer? I’m alone in the house with my cat. An axe-murderer wouldn’t be satisfied with hacking the cat to death, that wouldn’t even be murder. That would be animal cruelty. That would probably be an assault to the dignity of the axe-murderer: It would be a demotion from axe-murderer to cruel man (with axe). He’d be a laughing stock. He would be shunned by the other axe-murderers. That would never do.

3. Fear. What if he’s the sort of axe-murderer who doesn’t want to chop me into a barely identifiable pulp of blood, flesh and sinew right away? What if he’s the kind that’s on the run and wants somewhere to hide for a while; menacing my cat with his axe in the living room while I tell the police at the door that I haven’t seen anyone and that I’m alone in the house? I don’t want one of those. It’ll be hours before my wife comes home and I can hide behind her. Hours.

4. Terror. What if he needs to hide out for a couple of days? What in the hell would we feed him? We’ve had snow here for two weeks and the shops haven’t had much in; all we would have to offer him are vast quantities of limoncello and Twiglets. And I doubt that axe-murderers even like Twiglets. After all, I bloody love Twiglets and I’m the total opposite of an axe-murderer; I’m a no-axed-not-murderer, or as we’re more commonly known, a victim. So, the axe-murderer will have lots to drink, but nothing to eat. So he’ll be drunk, and he’ll be cross. He’ll be a drunken, angry, axe-murderer which, I rather suspect, is the worst sort.

5. Twiglets. What if he does like Twiglets? Because these aren’t just any Twiglets. Oh no. These are the Christmas Twiglets. The Twiglets that I’m not allowed to touch. The Twiglets that no one is allowed to touch, or even gaze directly at for a prolonged period. Not until Christmas Twiglet season begins at 9pm on the 24th of December. I’ve made that mistake before and there were consequences. And now I know better than to breach the sanctity of the Christmas Twiglets. In fact, I seem to remember that, following the incident that has come to be known as Christmas-Twiglet-gate, my wife told me that if I ever ate the Christmas Twiglets again (outside of the clearly defined time-frame) that she would kill me. So that’s it. It’s Hobson’s bloody choice. If the axe-murderer likes Twiglets I can either tell him he can’t have any and he’ll kill me with an axe, or I can let him have them and my wife will kill me without an axe (with a handbag probably, or her soup). Basically, I’m fucked.

6. Reflection. When was the last time I saw an axe-murderer? I haven’t seen any for ages. I don’t think I’ve seen one since The Shining. There used to be loads of them. Absolutely bloody loads, but their numbers seem to have declined. They seem to have had some sort of heyday in the late 1940s when they were menacing Fred MacMurray and Ida Lupino in a remote California farmhouse most weekends, and then their numbers appear to have dwindled away to nothing. So, in all probability, it wasn’t an axe-murderer that knocked on my door about sixty minutes ago.

7. Resolution. My fingers are wrinkly, I’m cold, and my left knee has literally turned blue. I have other things to do. I’m supposed to be writing tomorrow’s 7 Reasons piece. I’m not even supposed to be thinking about the Christmas Twiglets. I’m not allowed to do that until the 22nd. You’ve just stolen an hour of my life and caused me think dangerous thoughts and turned my knee a funny colour (somewhere between cobalt and Prussian blue). Damn you, whoever you are/were. Next time, I’m coming down in my towel. To my death, probably.

December 9, 2010
7 Reasons John Lennon Could Be Deemed A Philosopher

Today marks the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. And to celebrate we take an irreverent look at some of his finest work. If you are easily offended by lyric assassination, please walk away now.

The Young Lembit Opik

1. Imagine – “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky.” Yep, I can imagine there is no heaven. I have replaced the ‘Heaven’ sign above the pearly gates with one for Lidl. I’m not as keen to get there now. As for imagining there is no hell below us, I can go one better. I can see a carpet. But that’s why Lennon was a philosopher and I am not. His version is much better than my, ‘Imagine there’s a Lidl, it’s painful if you try. A carpet down below me, above me a ceiling.’ It lacks both meaning and rhythm.

2. I Am The Walrus – “I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together.” Seriously, sometimes Lennon was so in-tune with the world around him, that he is far too intellectual for me. I mean, this goes straight over my head. Something about walruses. And apparently he was as much of a walrus as I am. Which is news to me. But I guess that’s philosophy for you. It should always tell you something you don’t know. It should always get you thinking differently. Otherwise what is the point in it? You may as well go down the pub and play darts.

3. Norwegian Wood (The Bird Has Flown) – “She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere, so I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair.” I’m not quite sure if this is a metaphor for ‘don’t go out with stupid women’ or this particular lady had just been burgled. And that, I suppose, is philosophy again. It takes a certain amount of intelligence and time to work out exactly what is meant. And I have neither.

4. All You Need Is Love – “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.” Wow. This guy just blows my mind. How true is this?! You can’t make a cup of tea if you can’t make a cup of tea can you?! But if you can make a cup of tea then you can make a cup of tea! Extraordinary. Extra-bloody-ordinary!

5. Eight Days A Week – “Eight days a week I love you, eight days a week is not enough to show I care.” It’s very true. There are some people out there you love 110%. There are some people you would give 11 out of 10. For these people, they surely live in an eight day week world. For the rest of us, we’ll remain in our normal seven day week world, loving people 100% and giving their risotto 10 out of 10. We also won’t sound patronising. But that’s because we’re not philosophers.

6. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds – “Newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take you away. Climb in the back with your head in the clouds, and you’re gone.” I don’t think anyone can disagree with this. If you are seeing newspaper taxis on the shore, then you are almost certainly gone. You may also want to work out what you’re actually doing in the sea. If you are on a dustbin lid, you probably want to think about getting rescued. Unless you are on a dustbin lid on a cruise liner. In which case, I don’t want to know you. You’re weird.

7. Strawberry Fields Forever – “Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.” Quite right. Just shut your eyes. Actually, open them again, finish reading this, and then shut them. When you shut your eyes you can see different coloured shapes floating around. And just how how often are these misunderstood? I often think I can see a T-Rex humping a sheep. I can’t. They’re just shapes. According to the psychiatrist.

December 8, 2010
7 Reasons That Twitter Will Alter All Human Existence

Twitter: Fun? Yes. Useful? Yes. A culture-changing behemoth that will fundamentally alter all human existence? Yes. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Opinion. Twitter is a hotbed of instant opinion and, thanks to the medium, our ability to express opinion will remain undiminished. Unfortunately, also thanks to Twitter, all human opinion will eventually come to be expressed in 140 characters or less. Thus Machiavelli’s view of history as a tool for learning will change from:

“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.”

To:

“He’s just like his dad. Men are all the same. LOL.

And Albert Einstein’s,

“The population of the civilized countries is extremely dense as compared with former times; Europe today contains about three times as many people as it did a hundred years ago. But the number of leading personalities has decreased out of all proportion. Only a few people are known to the masses as individuals, through their creative achievements. Organisation has to some extent taken the place of leading personalities, particularly in the technical sphere, but also to a very perceptible extent in the scientific.”

Will become:

“People are becoming more stoopid. LOL”

And where we would once have had wordy treatises extolling considered opinion on the omniscient nature of the supreme being, we will have:

“God knows. LOL.”

2. Mimicry. And it’s not just that opinion will be condensed to insubstantial gibberish. Some people will eventually be reduced to saying nothing at all. Thanks to the retweet button, the lazy and unoriginal will find it possible to maintain discourse with others without ever stating any of their own thoughts or opinions at all. This will be familiar to anyone who has ever conversed with a Daily Mail reader or a viewer of Fox News but, the spectre of it escalating further is worrying indeed. Perhaps thanks to the constant retweeting, the world will be reduced to having just one opinion on any given subject. Rupert Murdoch’s, probably.

3. Courage. And it’s not just that we’ll lack opinions and the capability for extended expression. Humanity will eventually develop to lack courage. Because when we disagree with the opinion that someone has just retweeted: “Pink is for sissies. LOL”, we won’t reply, “No it isn’t. Chuck Norris wears pink underpants. LOL”, we’ll send a direct message to someone else saying, “Did you see what @RupertMurdoch1874 just said? Where does he get off saying that? LOL.” Because as people fear losing followers or public ridicule they become more and more timid and secretive and would rather whisper things to their friends in the corner. Sadly, however, they don’t become any less stupid.

4. Shame. Shame will disappear completely as a human emotion. As we increasingly rely on Twitter for information that we would previously have acquired through knowing stuff and learning and having a modicum of sense and whatnot – or even just old-fashioned googling things – we will eventually attempt to acquire all of our important life information from Twitter.

“Is Twitter down? LOL”

“Can I eat lamb that’s been in the fridge for over a day? LOL”

“Is it weird that my period’s six weeks late? LOL”

“Why am I getting so fat? LOL”

Seriously, if our dead ancestors came back from the grave and saw the things that people tweet, they’d…er…die again, of shame. And spin too. (Okay, I really didn’t think that metaphor through but at least I’m not brazenly parading my stupidity on Twitter full-time. No. I’m busy writing this. I’m saving my Twitter-stupidity for later).

5. Emotions. Human expression of emotion will also come to be affected by Twitter. People will no longer smile, cry, or frown, they will merely write “*smiles”, “*cries”, “*frowns”, “*throws self under a bus. LOL”, to denote emotion. Whether this will extend to mainstream media is a matter of conjecture (which is fortunate as that’s what I’m doing. I’m conjecting. I’m a conjector), but it’s easy to imagine rolling news channels with banners stating “M6 Traffic Jam Reaches Sixth Day *sticks bottom lip out”, “Man Found Guilty Of Sex Act With Goat *eeuuggghhh” and “Osama Bin Laden Captured *punches air with fist”. Well, actually the last one is hard to imagine. But at least emoting by using the asterisk is some progress from using smileys and emoticons, which is just abusing perfectly good punctuation-marks in order to make a stupid bloody sideways face.

6. Internationalism. As cultures interact on Twitter, entire national traits will disappear as the world becomes a more homogenous place. After all, anyone who is aware of the Twitter phenomenon that has been @theashes, will have noted that, after 234 years of trying, an American has been finally converted to following the glorious sport of cricket. This means that, in a mere 71,839,532,700 years, the entire population of the United States will be cricket lovers, and the world will be all the better for that. And then we can start converting China. Seriously, Cricket will be the world sport in…(Nope, my computer isn’t powerful enough to compute that. Probably at about the time when people return to the sea and the dinosaurs come back in their meteor).

7. LOL. As the phrase “LOL” becomes so ubiquitous that every last feckless bastard ends their tweets with it (this will probably happen in about six days time) and we come not to notice that we’re doing it altogether and forget its original meaning, there will come a moment when someone actually wants to write “laughing out loud” which, as it takes up too many characters, they will abbreviate to LOL. And as all tweets will already be suffixed “LOL”, the tweet “LOL. LOL.” will eventually occur. And that will be the moment that Twitter, or humanity (or both) will implode. Or explode. Either way, there will definitely be a plosion of some sort. LOL.

December 7, 2010
7 Reasons You Should Apologise For Not Walking

With the whole 7 Reasons team suffering from Ashes fever, it should come as no surprise that we can find inspiration in one of our favourite sporting events. We have to really. Nothing else is happening in our lives at the moment*. Today’s inspiration comes courtesy of Australian batsman, Michael Clarke, who earlier today smacked the cover off the ball, was caught by England’s Bradman* *and then hovered around the pitch for a while before not walking. Later, via twitter, he graciously apologised for not walking. Which got us thinking. Or one of us anyone. Why else should we apologise for not walking? Here are the results:

1. The Olympic Racewalk. Whether you decide to run in this event or get a bus, you are going to get disqualified. And that means letting your country down. And possibly wasting £2 if you choose the bus option. It’s disappointing behaviour and can only be rectified with a humbling apology. Unless you don’t get caught. In which case, nice one!

2. Stopping. If there is one thing worse than people who walk slowly, it is people who walk slowly and then stop right in front of you without any pre-warning. Idiots. We then have to take evasive action which involves stepping into the road in front of a cement mixer or going into Poundland. For that sense of paralysis we feel when we see horror unfold in front of us, we want an apology. And three rolls of masking tape. Espcially as they’re only a pound. Bargain.

3. Library. A place for quiet contemplation. You can’t be a quiet contemplater if you’re running around the library or driving your small motorbike. And it’s also pretty annoying for everyone else who has come in to get out of the rain. When the librarian says, ‘Ssssh!!!’, you shout, ‘SORRY!’.

4. Cyclists. This is a pavement. It was designed for walking/parking on. It was not designed for cycling on. There are cycle lanes for that. Or gyms. Get off your bike and apologise. Then get on your bike and ignore some traffic lights.

5. The Ozone Layer. If you are within walking distance of your destination, you should be walking. Getting in the car melts icebergs. And polar bears can’t swim for that long. So if you do insist on not walking, I recommend apologising before you set off and saying a small prayer on arrival. It won’t save the polar bear, but it will make you feel better.

6. Supermarket. Trolley rage is caused by one of two things. A wonky wheel or some muppet jogging around Tesco in a mankini searching for the cucumbers. A supermarket is not a place for mankinis and it is certainly not a place for jogging in them. No one wants to see that while deciding what to have for dinner. Apologise. Immediately. And then cover yourself up with a parsnip.

7. Captives. Historically, if a pirate had captured you – and I don’t mean you personally, you’d probably remember that – it was very bad form to refuse to walk the plank. Not only did pirates have to find another way to get rid of you, but the sharks that had been following for three hours went hungry. The least one should have done is apologise. And then used the plank to make a small desk.

*This only applies to Marc.***

**We’re disappointed if you had to read this. To give you a clue though, we’re referring to Alastair Cook.

***No it doesn’t. It applies to Jon.****

****Stop trying to get me in trouble.*****

*****I don’t need to try.

December 6, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: Badges

A long, long time ago, way back in the mists of 7 Reasons(.org) history, Jon promised that there would be badges for guest posters, and Marc rolled his eyes and said, “SHH! You’ll bankrupt us before we’ve even started.” But now, many months – possibly even a whole year later – we have an announcement to make about badges for guest posters.

We’ve never forgotten the promised badges, and just recently we took another look into the 7 Reasons coffers (once we’d located them in a dusty ante-room) to see if badges were now feasible. As we expectantly lifted the heavy wooden lid of our treasure chest it creaked with reassuring portent and, with the light of our torches to guide us, we peered into the interior of the dark, gloomy box.

To say that we were amazed by what we found there would be an understatement. After we had emptied the contents of the chest into a pile on the floor and methodically totalled it up, we were staggered.

So now, we can announce that the 7 Reasons Badge Fund stands at…(drum-roll)…(go on, just bang on the desk, no one will think you’re mad)…half a dead spider, a creased Post-it® note, the crumbs from several ginger nut biscuits, twelve business cards, a mug with a broken handle and a lemon. Plus some blue stuff that neither of us wanted to touch.

But necessity is the mother of invention and we’re nothing if not creative here so we’ve made badges anyway. For free. In Photoshop. So if you write (or have written) for us, you can now have a 7 Reasons Guest Writer badge simply by sending us a photograph of yourself. And we’ll send it back with your badge on it.

Not only will this help us achieve our goal of not running 7 Reasons at a loss one day, it’s also far more environmentally friendly than an actual, physical badge, which benefits the whole world. So the virtual badge is something worthy, it’s a force for good. It’s actually saving penguins.

A guest poster has already taken us up on our virtual badge offer (in fact, it’s what convinced him to write for us in the first place). Here is Sir Andrew Straussy jubilantly wearing his:

And here’s an owl wearing his (because one day, we hope to convince an owl to write for us (and the virtual badge is less cruel than an actual one)).

We also sent (to the lady herself) a picture of Jennifer Aniston wearing a badge and we received this in return.

So this probably means that marriage is still out of the question.

Anyway, the point of all of these badge-related-shenanigans is to mention that we’re currently looking for more guest posts. So, if you’ve never written for us, or if you have; if you have an idea, or even half an idea (because that’s how we work most of the time), then please get in touch.

We have always felt genuinely honoured and flattered that brilliant people, who write to such a high standard, have submitted pieces for us to use, and we hope that – one day – we will be able to reward their endeavours with something more tangible than our thanks, our admiration and our love (which, to be honest may put people off). Perhaps in the form of a badge, perhaps in the form of money, perhaps we will build a shrine, who knows? Anyway, however we decide to reward guest posters when we are dripping with the riches of Croseous, the fact remains that we aren’t right now, but we do feel genuinely humble – and honoured – that people read us regularly and that people allow us to use their work.

Anyway, if you fancy earning yourself some thanks, some publicity and a virtual badge then email [email protected]. We don’t promise to use everything that’s sent to us (because, well, we might not like it, and if we didn’t have standards, then we wouldn’t feel proud of our own website ). We will always consider it, however, and are happy to offer guidance or advice, where solicited.

Here’s a brief guide to writing a post for us. Thanks,

Marc and Jon.

December 5, 2010
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Eating Out Is Better Than Cooking At Home

Welcome to another Saturday. We can’t take credit for the weekend, but we can take credit for the sensational Guest Post slot. Over the last year we have had a diverse mix of guest post, but the one thing we haven’t had is someone telling us why we should go out to eat. Today that changes as we are joined on the 7 Reasons sofa by Sophie Jenkins. I say we are ‘joined’, that’s not exactly true. The 7 Reasons sofa has been abandoned somewhere between York and Kent due to snow. So Sophie is actually alone. But that’s good because she can put her feet up. Which is not something you can do if you eat out. But that’s the only disadvantage there is, as Sophie now explains. And if you like what you read you may well want to check out Bookatable. Maybe on the Bookatable website, the Bookatable facebook page or the Bookatable twitter page. They’ve got it covered.

Dirty Dinner by Cinnamon Cooper

1. Laziness. The first obvious reason is ease. Just go out to eat! No cooking, no washing up all those pans (pans are the worst, cutlery is easy), no cleaning the mess you made in the kitchen. Just book a table, turn up at the restaurant, order, eat, pay and leave. Preferably in that order. In the words of Aleksandr the meerkat – Simples!

2. Shopping. No food shopping, trudging around busy and noisy (and often freezing cold) supermarkets trying to decide what on earth to buy. Even if you have a recipe in mind, the supermarket will no doubt have run out of the ingredients you need, or they will be too bizarre to ever feature on the shelves anyway. If you do find the necessary ingredients after hours of hunting, you then have the fun of lugging heavy bags home too! None of this at a restaurant, because of…..

3. Service. These are perhaps all following the ‘lazy’ thread, but at a restaurant you are not only allowed to be lazy, you are meant to be lazy. People are there to wait on you hand and foot! Plus it’s not like at home, where your parents/partner/younger sibling/flatmate have a moan about being subjected to your orders – in a restaurant people are paid to serve you and not complain about it! Dream come true?

4. Taste. What are you going to cook at home? Spaghetti bolognaise again?! Boring. Maybe you will try to branch out and cook something new. Erm, this doesn’t taste right…Just eat out! You can eat food you would never in a million years be able to cook, try food you have never seen or heard of before! Even if you do order the usual spag bol, it’s going to taste better than what you would have thrown together at home. Do you have a Michelin star? No. Does the chef at the restaurant? Well, that depends on the restaurant I suppose.

5. Safety. Oops, is the microwave meant to be flaming? You can eat pork medium-rare, right? What happened to the hamster…? No risk of fire, flooding, and much less risk of food poisoning. It is much safer to ditch the oven and eat out every night instead. Let a professional take care of the difficult and dangerous bits, while you sit in comfort and stress-free safety.

6. Convenience. A friend/grandparent/in-law wants to see you for lunch. The house looks like a bomb has hit it from the party you had the night before. You woke up late, hungover, and definitely don’t have time to tidy the mess AND cook an impressive meal! Meet at a restaurant instead! There is no need for anyone to set foot in the nightmare that is your house, or any chance of that impressive meal becoming an inedible disaster. Eating out makes life so much easier (and if you foot the bill it still looks like you made a huge effort).

7. Surprise. When you pop into a restaurant, you never know who you will meet – Johnny Depp might be sat at the table next to you (fingers and toes crossed)! He is, however, less likely to turn up at your house for your spicy chilli, no matter how infamous it may be (have to cross your toes as well as fingers for that one).

You can make online table bookings for free through sites like Bookatable.com, from chains like Prezzo to high-end restaurants such as The Ivy. It couldn’t be easier if it tried!

December 4, 2010
7 Reasons They Were Very Wrong

It’s the 3^rd of December and, to save you wondering why that’s significant and making you worry that you’ve forgotten your birthday or Easter or something, we’ll tell you. On this day, in 1929, U.S. President, Herbert Hoover, delivered the first State of the Union Address since the Wall Street Crash to Congress. But this wasn’t your run of the mill State of the Union Address where nothing much of interest gets said. Well, it was, but in the middle of all of the traditional consciousness-bothering guff, Herbert Hoover said something so obviously, epically and unarguably wrong that he has inspired us to bring you seven of our favourite examples of wrongness.

President Hoover. Talking.

1. Herbert Hoover. “While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced that we have now passed the worst and with continuity of effort we shall rapidly recover.” And following those fine, rousing, confident words, America and the rest of the world plunged into The Great Depression, which saw American production fall by 46%, foreign trade fall by 70%, unemployment rocket by 607% and shanty-towns filled with the homeless spring up around every major U.S. city. They called them Hoovervilles.

2. Dr Dionysius Lardner. “Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” The professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College London was wrong on two levels here. One; trains don’t actually reach high-speed in this country because there is always a poxy cow on the line, and two; if passengers unable to breathe did get on a train, they would already be dead.

3. Glenn McGrath. The great Australian bowler predicted Ashes whitewashes in 2005, 2009 & 2010/11. With England on the receiving end. He was wrong. The fact that he got it right in 2006/7 is more a testament to infinite monkey theorem than to any logical analysis*. And to the fact that England were rubbish.**

4. Sir William Preece. The chief engineer of the British Post Office said in 1876, “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” So in Victorian Britain, not all boys were up chimneys or in the workhouse; they were carrying messages which, according to Sir William Preece, is the ideal way to have a chat with your mother who lives a hundred and fifty miles away. “Hello Mother, how are you?”, you would write, before summoning one of the multitudinous boys to bear your message to her. And when he returned, breathlessly, a mere fortnight later with the reply, “Fine, thank you,” you would send him straight back again with a note inscribed, “And how’s Father?”. In the Preecian vision of the future of communication, Americans could have a ten-minute-long conversation with their mothers while the British would have a forty-two-week-long one which would cost the lives of approximately nine urchins. Perhaps to make his idea more marketable to the communications industry he considered the slogan: The future’s bright, the future’s boys. Or perhaps not.

5. Newsweek, In an issue looking into the future of travel, Newsweek magazine carried this prediction of popular holiday destinations for the late 1960s. “And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam.” Erm…yeah. Now Newsweek weren’t totally wrong here. Vietnam did receive a massive influx of American tourists with rifles in the late 1960s, it’s just that they weren’t there to safari. Or to sit by the pool.

6. Lord Kelvin. In 1883, the President of the Royal Society, said, “X-Rays will prove to be a hoax”. To this day, I bet he wishes he had said the ‘X-Files’. It’s a shame though really, because if X-Rays were a hoax then that cracked fibula I suffered could also have been a hoax. As would be the inevitable snapped fibula. And all the surgery. In fact, my whole life would have been a hoax. But it’s not. Because X-Rays are real. And so am I.***

7. Major General John Sedgewick. While directing artillery placements, Sedgewick and his corps came under fire from Confederate sharpshooters about a thousand yards away. As his officers and men ducked and scurried away, General Sedgewick loftily dismissed the notion of taking cover saying, “What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…”. They were his last words.

*Glen McGrath is an infinite monkey. You heard it here first.

**Except Ian Bell.

***Jonathan Lee is real. You heard it here first.

December 3, 2010
7 Reasons It’s A Disaster England Lost The Bid To Host The 2018 World Cup

1. Qualifying. England have got to do it. And that’s worrying. Ever so often they cock it up. And the qualifying campaign for the 2018 World Cup could be the ever so often.

2. Scotland. Russia have won the bid. That is one hell of a long way to go to just to put in a spirited performance – albeit in defeat – against Brazil and then lose 4-0 to Japan. They could have lost at St. James’ Park and then slipped back over the border unnoticed.

3. England. Russia is a long way to go to lose on penalties to Portugal. We could quite easily have done that at home. Or in Portugal. And the players could have done it without wearing gloves.

4. Children. Given that 66% of children think ‘The War Of The Roses’ has something to do with those sweets that aren’t Quality Street, England hosting the 2018 World Cup would have been the perfect opportunity for the BBC to do those profiles of the host country. Like they did in South Africa. They would have taught the youth of the year after the next seven all about England’s rich heritage. Instead they are going to learn about Russian dolls. And I don’t mean Anna Kournikova.

5. Economy. Let me be the first to tell you that Russia is three hours ahead of the UK. That means games during our afternoons. You can bet your last fiver that England will be playing Cameroon on a Wednesday afternoon at about 2pm BST. And it’s a game they are going to have to win having previously lost 2-1 to Romania and drawn 0-0 with a country no one has even heard of. Despite the fact that we will be rubbish, people will still be skipping work to watch the game. It’ll be enough to plunge us into a recession. Probably the same one we are in now.

6. Press. If England do make it through to the World Cup, for one whole day Sky News will be covering the ‘England Leave For Russia’ story. We’ll have to endure watching the England players walk up some steps and onto a plane. Probably followed by Gazza with a fishing rod and a bucket of chicken. Then six hours later we’ll have to watch them walked off the plane in Moscow. Followed by a drunk Gazza with a fishing rod and no chicken.

7. It’s Coming Home! If England had won the bid, we could have listened to this song while it made sense. Now, we’ll have to listen to it trying to work out how Russia is the home of football. And Baddiel and Skinner will be 54 and 61 respectively. They’ll have probably gone all Chas’n’Dave on us.

December 2, 2010
7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Watch The American

The new Anton Corbijn film – The American – starring George Clooney is out in the UK right now. I saw it on Saturday, here are seven reasons that you shouldn’t. (and don’t worry, there are no spoilers)

1. The Unconcious. The pace of the first half of The American is slow. It’s so slow, in fact, that if anyone had said “so slow”, it would have come out as, “sssssssssssssssssssssssssssooooooooooooooooooooooooo sssssssssssssssssssssssllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww”. Someone may even have said it, but I’m not sure, as I was dozing. Not a deep and satisfying slumber, but the fitful sort where you find yourself alternating between brief bouts of consciousness and unconsciousness, with occasional forays into semi-consciousness and thoughts of what the hell is happening to me, is this what old age is like (ness). So, I’ll sum up what I saw in the first half of the film (without spoilers). I saw George Clooney living the soporifically mundane daily life of a hit-man. In a series of slowly cut shots with no dialogue I watched him: Counting his bullets, drilling a series of small holes in some tips, oiling his mechanism (not a euphemism), polishing his barrel (nope, nor this), adjusting his sights, rearranging his small change on a table, lining up his fish fingers in size order, adding up all of the telephone numbers on his mobile and dividing them by four, testing the accuracy of his oven timer against his wristwatch (an Omega Speedmaster Professional with a black dial and black leather strap: model number 3870.50.31, I had time to note), comparing the shapes of his fingernails with his toenails, dusting his light bulbs, and staring into an empty fridge while over his head a strip-light buzzed (I may be wrong on some of these, but if they weren’t there, it felt like they were).

2. The Conscious. That’s not fair, you’re probably thinking, if you’d been awake, it probably wouldn’t have seemed that dull. But I wasn’t the only person that was sleeping during the first half. Because when I was in the toilet after the film, a man standing behind me said, “You were asleep during the first half” and, as I prepared to answer him, the man at the urinal next to me replied, “I know, it was really slow”. It turned out that they were friends and that I wasn’t being addressed at all. So there you have it. Based on the available evidence, there are two distinct types of human-behaviour that occur during the first half of The American. There are the Sleepers, who sleep, and then there are the Sleeper-Watchers who, while they have remained conscious, aren’t watching the film either; they’re watching people sleep so they can tell them about how they slept later, in great detail; “You kept leaning forward, and then you fell back, and then you leant forward, and then you fell back, and then you leant forward, and then you fell back, and then you said “chopsticks”, and then you fell back…” was my personal Sleeper-Watcher’s epic account of my movements. So, during the first half of the film, 50% of the audience are sleeping and the other 50% are watching them sleep and compiling a dossier on their movements, their utterances and their dribbling. Which means that 100% of the audience are not watching the first part of the film. That’s how dull it is.

3. Lust. And then the second half of the film begins. It begins with Violante Placido in bed with no clothes on and, in the words of my personal Sleeper-Watcher, “…you sat bolt upright and stared at the screen while breathing rapidly, remaining in that position for the rest of the scene, before you settled back in your seat and stayed awake for the rest of the film”. So not only do you get a full report on how weird you are in your sleep, you get a full report on how lecherous you are when you’re wide-awake too.

4. Clooney. And then there’s Clooney. Now I understand that George Clooney’s playing an emotionless, calculating and reserved man. But we see his bottom in The American, and I can state categorically, that his arse has a greater number of expressions than his face in this film. Here is his full range of facial expressions in The American (sorry if you were hoping for an arse montage, though we do have one of those on the About Us page):

7 Emotions : 1 Face

5. References. During the film, in a scene where Clooney is counting the grains of salt contained in a salt cellar before he thinks about Switzerland for five minutes in a bar with formica tables, something distracting happens in the background. There’s a film on the television. It’s Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West. God, I love that film, I thought. It’s in my top ten films of all time. Why aren’t I watching that? Why in God’s name would you taunt the viewer by placing an iconic piece of cinematic brilliance within your own, not brilliant, movie. So, he’s made me fall asleep, he’s made me appear lecherous, he’s made me watch a man iron his vast collection of handkerchiefs with a lukewarm spoon, and now Anton Corbijn is actually taunting me. He’s showing me a bit of a film that I love that’s better than the one he’s made and that I’m watching, I thought. While screaming inwardly.

6. The Pants. And then there are the pants. Violante Placido, for reasons I won’t bore you with, decides to disrobe (except for her pants) and go swimming in a river. But why would anyone take all of their clothes off except for their pants? Then they’d be wet once they got out of the water. And they’d have to go home wearing wet pants. And who wants to wear wet pants for an afternoon? And I know that you’re thinking that it was for the sake of modesty, but it wasn’t. Because they became completely transparent the moment they got wet, a fact that my Sleeper-Watcher noted later, before he informed me that I, “…sat bolt-upright and made some sort of involuntary tongue noise. And didn’t blink for eight whole minutes” in reaction to this scene. Three days later, after a great deal of thought, I still can’t fathom the pants.

7. The Ending. Again, I won’t tell you what happens, but there’s a moment of awareness when someone alters the thing. And when that person – whose gender I won’t digress – alters the thing that I won’t name, I had a moment of clarity. I knew, in that instant, that the character that was going to do the deed would be thwarted by the one that altered the thing and that the other character that I also won’t name would eventually have to do the deed – not with the broken thing that had been altered, but – with another thing but that we hadn’t been introduced to, and that the deed would end badly. Not only for the character who had been forced to do the deed with the new thing, but also for the character to whom the deed was being done, that countered the deed with his own thing, having previously sparking this chain of events by altering the initial thing in the first place. And it was just bloody obvious that was going to happen a long time before the end.

So, to summarise: During the first half of the film you will fall asleep or resort to watching someone else sleep to keep you entertained; you will then be branded a pervert, be partially baffled by facial expressions, taunted by the director, and then wholly baffled by pants before eventually spotting the blatantly obvious ending many minutes before the film ends. I don’t think ungoing is an actual thing, but I want to do it. Right now.

December 1, 2010
7 Reasons This Is Not The Perfect Gift For Everyone

With Christmas less than four weeks away now, I last night decided to browse the web for present inspiration. Having examined the merits of both vacuum cleaners and laundry baskets alike, I came across this mug. A mug that Jamie Oliver has got someone to design for him. The spiel accompanying the Foxy Lady mug says, ‘This Is The Perfect Gift For Everyone’. Incorrect. The only thing it is perfect for is a 7 Reasons post. For these people, it most certainly is not perfect.

1. My Mum. I am sure my Mum had her moments in her younger days – and according to ‘friends’ at school during her middle years too – but they are moments I do not wish to know about. My Mum is my Mum. Good at cooking, ironing, forwarding mail and reminding me when it’s my Grandmother’s birthday. In other words, she’s great. Generally when she has performed these tasks well, I say, ‘Thanks Mum’. And that’s where it ends. Never have I found myself uttering the words, ‘Thanks Mum. By the way, you are seriously foxy today.’ I suspect such a statement would be followed by many years of uncomfortable silence. As a result, I shall not be buying my Mum this mug.

2. My Dad. For as long as I can remember, my Dad has been a man. It is never something I have felt the need to question him on – probably because he has a beard. If indeed he had a spell as a Foxy Lady sometime in the mid-1970s – which I suppose is a possibility given that he was in the Navy – well that is entirely his own affair and something that deserves to remain a secret. The last thing we need as a family is for me to embarrass him on Christmas Day by giving him this mug.

3. My Brother. Again, definitely a man. Given his disheveled archaeologist looks, he is highly unlikely to be masquerading as a Lady. And even if he were, it’s nigh on impossible that he’d described as a foxy one.

4. My Grandmother. I don’t need to explain myself. All I will say is that this post gets more wrong the further down the page you read.

5. Yoko Ono. As a bizarre looking woman/prominent anti-hunt protester, a Foxy Lady mug is more patronising than perfect.

6. Megan/Samantha/Edward/Ruel Fox. There are very different reasons why a Foxy Lady mug is not the perfect gift for these four people. But thankfully not enough reasons to convince me to write a whole other post. If I was to give a Foxy Lady mug to either Megan or Samantha Fox I’d have a lot of explaining to do. So I shan’t. Not that I was planning to anyway. And if I was to buy Edward or Ruel Fox a Foxy Lady mug I’d have even more explaining to do. Mainly to myself.

7. Me. Occasionally I do buy myself presents. Last week, for instance, I bought myself a haircut. And very pleased with it I am too. I look much more like the Jonny Wilkinson my girlfriend wants me to look like by the hour. And that has to be a good thing. For both of us. A Foxy Lady mug would just spoil all my hard work. So instead, I am going to spend £10 on a rolling pin so I can keep injuring myself.

November 30, 2010