Category: Posts

7 Reasons You Should Never Buy a Half Bottle of Champagne (on Valentine’s Day)

It’s Valentine’s Day here at 7 Reasons and, as you might reasonably expect, everywhere else too (we don’t have a special one just for ourselves, you know). Anyway, we’ve decided to do something different today. Usually we’d bring you seven reasons for something: Reasons full of speculation and conjecture; hypothesis; whimsy and made-up statistics. Today, however, is different: We’re not going to do any of those things. Because in another lifetime, one of the 7 Reasons team spent several years running wine shops (yes, you didn’t think either of us had any sort of practical use, but you were wrong). As a result of this, today’s 7 Reasons post comes from experience. Make the most of it, it won’t happen often. This piece is mostly aimed at men who, while in the minority of wine-buyers for the majority of the year are – by far – the majority of champagne-buyers in the run-up to (and at the last minute) on Valentine’s Day. Anyway, from experience, here are seven reasons that you should never buy a half bottle of champagne for Valentine’s Day.

1. You’re Missing The Point. Allow me to explain the point of buying champagne. It is a luxury item; an extravagance; a frippery; an opulent treat to be blissfully enjoyed in intemperate immoderation. You cannot have half an extravagance. You can’t have partial gratification. It is not possible to temper excess. If you buy half a bottle of champagne to share with your beloved on the universal day of romance and indulgence you will – should it turn out that you’ve parked it in front of someone’s driveway – be able to move your car; you’ll be able to put up shelving safely; you’ll be able to do the crossword with a clear head. Trust me, those things are not the point of Valentine’s Day.

2. Consider The Message You’re Sending. What kind of message are you giving to your loved one with a half bottle? That your gesture is half-hearted and half-arsed, that’s what message you’re sending. This is a token gesture. The spark’s gone out of our relationship. I don’t really want to spend a romantic evening with you. Here’s a bit of lip-service (which will, ironically, ensure that no lip-service will occur). I have no feeling for you whatsoever. I have no romance in my soul. I’m an insensitive bell-end and you’re wasting your time with me. You’re not saying just one of those things with half a bottle of champagne, you’re saying all of them. It’s sending a worse Valentine’s message than turning up with flowers that you’ve pilfered from a graveyard. In fact, it’s worse than turning up with a wreath that you’ve pilfered from a graveyard.

3. The Customer Is Always Right. This is not true. As we know, there are many people who can’t walk in a straight line, drive a car without endangering others or operate a telephone without calling the wrong person. This wrongness also manifests itself when purchasing things. Stupid people, when placed in a retail environment, do not suddenly experience some sort of revelatory experience in which the fog of stupidity is lifted from their feeble brains, leaving them with a hitherto unfamiliar sensation of lucidity and exactitude: They remain stupid. So, should you ask, in a wine shop, in the run up to Valentine’s Day, for half a bottle of champagne, you will be treated with utter contempt. Should you choose – once the aghast member of staff has explained reasons one and two to you, possibly in a voice an octave or two higher than their normal register – to persist with your foolish purchase of a half bottle of champagne, you will be forever thought of as the idiot. They will remember you; they will point at you whenever you come into the store; they will whisper about you to their colleagues before they both erupt into laughter. This reaction is not a temporary thing, it will last for eternity, and possibly beyond. Helpfully, they will also put your tiny bottle of champagne into the largest gift bag they can find and that won’t help you at all because…

4. Symbolism. There’s a lot of symbolism around champagne. Let us consider the use of champagne in film and television for a moment. The most obvious example is the popping of a cork and the subsequent cascade of abruptly released champagne as a metaphor for the male orgasm. In this metaphor, the bottle of champagne represents the male appendage. So – even though it might not be a conscious reaction – if you turn up with half a bottle of champagne on Valentine’s Day, your lady will be doubly disappointed. Not only will you have arrived with barely enough champagne to get the cat in the mood, you’ll have arrived with a small todger too.

5. Variety. Although all champagne is grown in a small geographical location, and is composed of any, or all, of a mere three grape varieties, there is a panoply of scents and flavours across vintages and producers. The variety is absolutely fascinating. So buying champagne is your chance to turn up with something interesting, to wow your beloved. And it doesn’t have to be expensive. This is your moment to turn up with a bottle of Taittinger Brut Reserve NV and tell your other half that, like her, it has a beautiful nose, is perfectly balanced, refreshingly complex and has a glorious aftertaste. Or you can turn up with any other nice bottle of fizz that takes your fancy; there are loads of them. If you buy a half bottle though, your choice will usually be limited to the house champagne or the ubiquitous Moet & Chandon. So, you’re either saying “Darling, I brought you half a bottle of Moet because I don’t care, I have a tiny cock, and you’re just the same as all the other girls” or “Darling, I brought you half a bottle of the house champagne because I don’t care, I have a tiny cock and you have lower standards than all the other girls”. That won’t go well.

6. Cost. Buying half a bottle of champagne is cheaper than buying a full bottle of champagne and, in the current economic climate, it might seem like a reasonable economy. It is not. Not only is the cost of a half bottle far greater than half the cost of a bottle, there are other costs that accompany the purchase of one. These costs are the usual ones associated with apology for acts of crass stupidity and thoughtlessness; flowers, chocolates and the like. And while we’re on the subject of peace offerings for women, lingerie is never a suitable apology gift. Never.

7. Volume. There is one thing to be said about the half bottle of champagne. It’s an ideal size for one person. This is useful as, if you take your significant other half a bottle of champagne, there is a high chance you’ll end up drinking it alone. Perhaps for many years to come.

The 7 Reasons team would like to wish all their readers lots of love and happiness this Valentine’s Day.

February 14, 2011
7 Reasons That RoboEarth is a Bad Idea

Readers of 7 Reasons and people of Earth, some horrendous news has reached us: According to the BBC, robots could soon get their own internet. Yes, the internet. For robots. Now, an ill-considered, knee-jerk reaction to this news would be that it is an appalling development that exudes menace and could prove potentially disastrous to humankind. And we agree. So here are seven reasons that RoboEarth is a bad idea.

1. Time. The internet is wonderful innovation that saves so much time in communication, research, the dissemination of information; in just about every field. But the internet is also a colossal usurper of time. After all, if you want to waste time, where do you go? Online, that’s where. That’s where you’ll find Farmville and Failblog and Facebook, and other sites not beginning with F that rob you of time. But who’s to say that, eventually, like the human internet, the robot internet won’t develop from a useful tool into a place where robots sit about in their tin pants eating breakfast cereal and generally cocking about? And robots shouldn’t be doing that. That’s not what they’re for. Robots are supposed to be making the lives of people easier which, as far as I can tell, means making futuristic cocktails for us (preferably in blue or green) and impersonating Stephen Hawking while we lounge around in spangly jumpsuits on white swivel chairs. I’ve seen Space 1999, I know these things.

2. Information. According to RoboEarth researcher, Dr Markus Waibel: “The human equivalent (of the robot internet) would be Wikipedia”. Ah, so the robots will be sharing information amongst themselves via a robot equivalent of Wikipedia? Well that’s reassuring then. After all, Wikipedia’s a name and concept that we’re all familiar with and who isn’t comforted by the familiar and the…wait. Wikipedia? The user-generated website that’s less accurate than asking Geoffrey Archer for biographical information? The website that told me Pink was born in 1879 and that Carlos Puyol was a pig of the team of Barcelona? The website that I, myself, have mischievously altered in the past using these very fingers and this very keyboard that I’m typing on now? If the robot internet is to be based on Wikipedia, we’ll be filling our robots’ circuits and diodes with unsubstantiated gibberish and setting them loose among decent society like automaton hordes of aluminium and silicone Daily Mail readers. It’s going to be awful.

3. Broadband. Or, as we despairingly call it in my house, “gggaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!” Am I expected to share my bandwidth with robots now? I takes long enough for my videos to load as it is, without having a robot halve my bandwidth by downloading Rage Against The Person albums or trying to watch Cyberpets Do The Funniest Things. What if I want to see something on the iPlayer? I’ll get dizzy watching the little circle spinning round the centre of the screen. I don’t want to share my bandwidth with robots.

4. It’s Mysterious. I don’t even understand the practical application of the robot internet (so it must be evil). The only robot we have in the house is our Roomba robot hoover, and how will the internet benefit that? Is it going to be able to suck cat-hair off the floor better because it’s got access to the internet? No, of course it isn’t. After all, I don’t do the washing up any better because I’ve got the internet, quite the reverse. So why does my hoover need the internet?

5. Science. The robot internet is something that’s being developed by scientists. This means that it’s intrinsically bad. After all, scientists developed the H-bomb; scientists developed anthrax; scientists sent dogs into space; Margaret Thatcher was a chemist* for God’s sake. And because it’s been developed by scientists, it’s not just evil, it’s badly named. It’s called RoboEarth. RoboEarth! What sort of a shit name is that? We can all see that it’s a portmanteau of robot and Earth, but it’s about as uninspired as well…um…actually, it’s the least inspired name of anything, ever in the history of everything, ever. Even the BBC’s Cash in the Attic has a more inspiring moniker than RoboEarth and that’s a shit name too. If you want to get something named right you need to go to humourists. We’d soon tell you that the robot internet should be called Cyborgspace which, although there’s a dull, technical difference between robots and cyborgs (something achingly tedious to do with not being part-human or something), is at least a good bloody name. And also, if humourists had developed the thing it wouldn’t be evil, and it certainly wouldn’t work. And that’s important because…

6. This. Do you know what I said when I first read this news? No, no you don’t, because you weren’t here in the dining room with me when I read it unless you are a)my wife, or b) the cat, so I’ll save you a tricky guessing game that could involve a lengthy email correspondence and I’ll tell you. I said, “Fuck me! It’s the rise of the machines.” And it bloody is. This is how the Terminator movies start. The machines become sentient and then they try to kill us. To death. And what better way is there to give them a friendly helping hand on their merry way to freedom of thought and action, than to give them their own internet, where they can form ideas and opinions and plot with each other unmolested by us. Because there’s no way people will be able to control them. Most of us can’t even stop Microsoft Windows and Norton Anti-Virus when they choose to do stuff that we don’t want them to do on our own computers, so what chance do we have of stopping large sophisticated machines with lasers and stuff that are doing things in remote locations? Things that they want to keep secret from us? No chance, that’s what chance. Most of us are habitually outwitted by the controls of our own central heating systems, and our central heating isn’t actively trying to kill us, so we’re going to be powerless in the face of the robot-apocalypse. Robopacalypse. Robocalypse.** If you want to know how this is going to pan out just watch any of the Terminator films, but take the happy endings with a pinch of salt.***

7. Reasons. Because on the robot internet there’d inevitably be a robot 7 Reasons written by robots, for robots and that would never do, because we do 7 Reasons, and we’re irreplaceable. So, fuck you, robots! And toasters. You may take our lives but you’ll never take 7 Reasons.

*This is the nicest thing I’ve ever said about her.

**This is roughly how it will go. Half of humanity will be engaged in an epic struggle against the machines for our very existence and the other half of us will be sitting around trying to name it.

***Don’t take all happy endings with a pinch of salt. That could prove painful.

February 10, 2011
7 Reasons The 2011 ODI Series Between Australia And England Was Really Rather Tiresome

At last! It’s over! England’s tour of Australia finally finished yesterday after being emphatically thumped by the antipodeans in the ODI series. What better way to celebrate it then than to analyse the disaster?

Straussy didn’t look very impressed when his twitter update appeared on the big screen

1. Predictability. I am just as guilty as you are. When the ODI series started, I thought England might have a chance. You can’t argue with history though and to be frank England didn’t even bother trying. Whoever wins the Ashes loses the ODI series. It is a well established pattern and one we should do well to remember next time. As supporters we waste a lot of energy worrying about defeat, it is much healthier to accept the inevitable before it occurs. I’ll certainly be giving it a go next time.

2. Injuries. It seems fairly obvious to me that the more matches there are, the greater the likelihood of picking up an injury. And I mean both mental and physical. In the past few weeks I have switched on the radio seven times to find out the score and each time I have heard a commentator saying it’s been a disappointing performance so far from England. My heart has sunk so many times I am amazed it’s not lodged somewhere around my groinal area. And there’s the physical injuries too. I stubbed my toe walking downstairs to watch the fifth ODI. That just wouldn’t have happened if the ODI series had been over three games. It’s so unnecessary.

3. Future Planning. It amazes me how stupid the organisers of cricket at both an International and Domestic level are. The World Cup should be the pinnacle of One-Day cricket. Surely you would want everyone from every nation fit, firing and ready for one of the major events in the sporting calender? Well, obviously not. Thanks to the organisers, we, the viewer, has less than three weeks to adjust our cricket watching body clock. Instead of programming our bodies to be awake from 3am, we now need to be awake from 8am. That’s a five hour shift! The sooner the organisers realise we are not robots, the better.

4. Motivation. I’ll be honest, to me it appeared as if it was lacking. Once we had watched England win the Ashes* we seemed to lack the appetite for the rest of the tour. Whether we just wanted sleep or we were bored of playing the same team, our hunger had gone. And that’s not good. Not for us or for cricket. Every single time England play we should be desperate to stay up and watch it. So unexcited was I with the spectacle yesterday, that I made up my own game. The plan was to try and get the previous night’s dishes done before England lost a wicket. I lost. Four times.

5. Ponting. Usually, one would be able to take some solace from the fact that, although we lost, at least Ponting didn’t score many. Instead of that, this series we have had to deal with Shane Watson – a player with very limited abilities – twatting our bowlers all over Australia. And if he failed, Mitchell Johnson would do it. Plain silliness.

6. Heathrow Jubilation. If the England team had flown home at the end of the Ashes I would probably have made the trip to the airport to receive the thanks from Andrew Strauss and co for my support. Because of this needless ODI series though, half the team are already back. Even though the Urn will make its way through arrivals tomorrow I don’t think I deserve the thanks of Andrews Strauss anymore. I just didn’t show the commitment to these ODIs that I should have done. So I won’t be going.

7. It Just Was. I’m even bored writing about it now. It just wasn’t very good was it? And quite frankly, no one cares. Which sums up the point of the series quite beautifully I think. Bring on the Ashes in 2013. And 2013/14. And 2015.

*Get in!

February 7, 2011
7 Reasons The BBC Should Find Better Interviewees

You may have read yesterday that Cadbury’s Dairy Milk has been downsized. I didn’t, I read it today thanks to a retweet by regular 7 Reasons guest writer Rachel. If you want to read it, it’s here. I advise you stay here though as I have important words to share. Basically, instead of 140g of chocolate, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is now just 120g. That’s two squares of Dairy Milk gone. At first I was furious. But as I scrolled down the page I became bemused. The BBC had decided to get the views of the Great British public. And between you and me they didn’t do a very good job. Here’s why:

1. Stereotyping. Imogen looks like a nice girl, but deep down she has been influenced by stereotypical viewpoints uttered all around us. I quote, “Cadbury has been taken over by an American company. You would have thought it would have got larger.” Why Imogen? Because all American people are supposedly fat? Disgraceful.

2. Gibberish. Again, Michael looks like a nice guy. Apart from his earring. That’s silly. But it’s not what he looks like that really bothers me. It’s what he says. I quote, “…i guess if you are into being aware about what’s happening…”. Yeah bro, I’m into being aware. In fact all my bruvs and sistas are. It’s well wicked. Boi-akka-sha. Dear me. It’s not a bloody hobby. You don’t wake up one day and think, ‘You know what, I’m going to get into being aware’. Being aware is a natural state. You either are aware or you are not.

3. Knowledge. If I was to ask you to interview someone for an article I was writing about film piracy, I would hope you would find someone who had an interest in films. Likewise, in this situation, I would have expected an establishment such as the BBC to find interviewees who like chocolate. On the most part they have. But Christian clearly doesn’t. How can he not have a favourite chocolate bar? That’s madness.

4. Observation. Florence looks happy, but she is probably one Caramel short of a box of Celebrations. I quote, “I think they are selling a lot bigger bars now.” Yes love, that’s because you are looking at the King-Size section.

5. Logic. It doesn’t get better for Florence, bless her, “I always feel like the packeted chocolate, I open it up and there’s less than half in the bag.” That’s because you’ve eaten most of it in the queue for the till. And anyway, the only way there can be less than half in the bag is if you’ve eaten more than half. If it’s the first time you open the bag, how can there be less than half in there? How ever much is in the bag – no matter how big or small – it is still 100% of the contents.

6. Memory. Last thing Florence, you say, “I feel like I’ve been robbed. It’s so disappointing.” Judging by that it means it has happened more than once. If you feel like you’ve been robbed and your disappointed in the product, why on earth would you keep buying it? Stop it. Now. You’ll feel much better. That is the 7 Reasons promise.

7. Plonkership. “We can understand why the prices have had to go up like that, but we’d rather it had gone up in price and we got more chocolate, then it would be the same money for less chocolate.” How does that work then? You put the price up yet the price stays the same. You get more chocolate at the same time as getting less chocolate. Genius boys. If you could get in touch and write a guest post explaining why the egg came before the chicken that would be awesome.

February 3, 2011
7 Reasons to Follow @BenicioDToro on Twitter

Hello! It’s Groundhog Day today and, to commemorate that event, we’re going to be doing the same thing that we did on this day last year: Not writing about Groundhog Day. Instead, we’re going to be writing about Benicio Del Toro because, as you may or may not be aware, he’s recently joined Twitter. Here are seven reasons that you should follow him.

1. It Might Be Him. Given the level of interaction that he has with his followers it seems unlikely that @BenicioDToro is the real Benicio Del Toro; after all, most celebrity tweeters have little or no interaction with their followers, with some choosing to interact only with other celebs and some not even tweeting their own stuff at all, leaving it to PR minions. Still, given that it’s Benicio Del Toro that we’re discussing, you might expect him to behave a little differently than say, Paris Hilton or Newt Gingrich. You’d probably expect the unexpected from him. So perhaps it is him.

2. It Might Not Be Him. Fake celebrity tweeters are all over Twitter. Some of them are sad, deluded individuals who contribute nothing of interest to proceedings, and some are brilliant, witty, insightful and passionate about spoofing the people they purport to be, or – for fear of litigation – don’t purport to be. I will say this; if it isn’t Benicio del Toro then, whoever it is, they’re doing a damned fine job. Such a good job, in fact, that they probably deserve to be Benicio Del Toro, replacing the real version. After all, pretending to be someone else is, fundamentally, acting, and if Del Toro is being spoofed then the spoofter clearly deserves the promotion. We should still follow though, because if it turns out that it isn’t really him, British followers will be able to sigh, grumble and rant, and American followers will be able to concoct bizarre law-suits for emotional distress suffered or for mail fraud (whatever the hell that is). Essentially we all win.

3. Interaction. He retweets lots of nice things that people say about him (we’re hopeful that he will retweet this). Hmm, you might be thinking, that sounds a little self-serving, but since I’ve been following Benicio Del Toro, my timeline’s been full of people saying nice things, which is a genuine change from the norm. Usually my Twitter feed consists of “Piers Morgan’s a cock” and “the Daily Mail want to shovel us all into ovens” endlessly tweeted and retweeted. So perhaps positivity and kindness will make Twitter a better place. Or maybe they won’t. He also responds to people. Not just glib, cursory responses, but actual considered, thoughtful ones about acting, upcoming projects and the roles he chooses. He just seems really, genuinely nice.*

4. Be An Early Adopter. If you follow Benicio Del Toro now, you’ll be seen as an early adopter and that’s always cool. Well, unless you’re an HD-DVD-9 user (the HD-DVD-9 user?) or a clog-revivalist in which case it isn’t. And if you’re both of those things you’re really in trouble. Anyway, if you follow him now, you can impress people by saying “I was in the first couple of thousand people to follow Benicio Del Toro on Twitter” or, if you’re not talking to an audience of geeks, you could should keep that quiet.

5. He Follows People Back. This might not sound intrinsically interesting, but for a celebrity tweeter, it’s unusual. It’s also a brilliant spectator sport, because every time he returns to Twitter – and we’re probably not helping here – Benicio Del Toro has many, many new followers to follow back. As this snowballs (and it will), how will he cope? Will he have to give up acting, meals or sleep to spend his time following everyone back? Will he be reduced from a fine actor to a haggard, pallid man sitting in a darkened room dressed only in his underpants endlessly clicking the Follow button as he desperately struggles to catch up? This is more exciting than a soap opera.

It's The Beard!

6. The Beard. Benicio Del Toro’s beard is one of the most awesome, luxuriant, manly examples of facial fuzz there is and we should all see that in our timeline every now and again. For men, it would be inspirational, a paragon of masculine virtue that, if we look at it long enough, might just rub off on us. For women, it would be aspirational, a paragon of masculine virtue that, if they look at it long enough, might just rub on them. Let’s face it, a proper beard is something we all love and if you follow Benicio you’ll see it a lot in your timeline.

7. Quantity. The most surprising thing is not that Benicio Del Toro is tweeting, retweeting and responding to people (after all, that’s how most of us non-celebrities use Twitter), it’s that he’s responding in such quantity to people. He’s tweeting hundreds of times a day. Yes. Hundreds. It must be quite a Herculean task to tweet that often (@7Reasons manages to tweet four or five times a day and there are two of us). And it’s not just the sheer dedication to tweeting that’s amazing, it’s the potential consequences. After all, he’s retweeting things that people are saying about him, and then they’re retweeting his retweets of the things they said about him, and then their friends are replying to the retweet of the retweet – and probably retweeting it themselves – and then they’re following him and saying nice things about him which he’ll retweet and the whole process starts again (but bigger because there’s now a wider circle of people involved). Essentially, BDT (How I wish he had a shorter name) is going to break Twitter and probably the internet as well. And if you follow him, you’ll be the first to know when that happens.**

*The bastard!

**Probably.

February 2, 2011
7 Reasons We Should All Have Our Own Personal CCTV

After yesterday’s big announcement I am sure you were expecting a post about that. Sadly though, I have not had the time to give such a piece the careful consideration it requires, but hopefully we’ll read 7 Reasons Andy Carroll Is Worth More Than Blackburn Rovers later in the week. For now we shall look at a subject that is close to many people’s hearts. Or at least it should be. CCTV. Each and every one of us should have our own personal CCTV. Here’s why:

1. Child Behavioural Device. My Mum always used to scare me by telling me she had eyes in the back of her head. Between the ages of four and six I don’t think I ever stood behind her. It was only when a wasp attacked her hair that I realised she was something of a con artist. The lie though (not to be mistaken with lilo) worked. I was never naughty behind my mother’s back. Just in case a couple of eyeballs popped out. Of course, now that today 7 Reasons has dispelled the ‘eyes in the back of my head’ myth, parents around the land will require a new threat level. And while a mirror maybe substantially cheaper, having CCTV cameras sticking out of various orifices would be much scarier.

2. Adult Behavioural Device. Any kind of assault on another human being will soon become a thing of the past. Firstly, everyone will know they won’t get away with it. Secondly, potential victims will be able to see an imminent attack coming. And all yours for £99 (exc VAT). Sometimes, my own genius scares me.

3. Capture Happiness. There are some moments in life we just want to relive over and over again. Maybe your engagement, your marriage, your divorce or England winning the Ashes*. Whichever it is, with CCTV you can record each of these moments using a multitude of angles and when you wish to remind yourself you can do just that. Now, the question you have for me is probably, ‘Why couldn’t I just use a camcorder?’ Well my answer goes something like this. You can’t spend your life walking around with a camcorder in your hand. It’ll get in the way, you won’t be permitted to watch the school nativity and when you are more than a little worse for wear in Las Vegas you’ll probably lose it before you find a minister. With CCTV being the norm, none of these problems will occur.

4. Image. They say pictures speak louder than words so let me point you in the direction of today’s 7 Reasons image. (That’s the one above). Not one of you can tell me that that guy, who we shall call Bobby, doesn’t look pretty cool. Sure, Bobby’s not wearing his usual sailors outfit, but I can tell you that Bobby feels confident. More confident than Bobby has ever felt before actually. And the world needs more confident Bobbies. Bobbies who will stand in the middle of a riot and happily capture the carnage around them. Not that there will be any carnage because of the CCTV. But at least the Bobbies will capture a lot of people standing around in the same place for a while. They can then upload it to YouTube and call it a flash-mob. Bound to be a hit.

5. Piracy. I think we can all agree that film piracy is a disgrace and a blight on the film industry. The quality is often so poor. With personal CCTV this will change. Given that everyone will have the opportunity to film a film, the pirates will have to use the latest personal CCTV equipment to offer the quality that people will pay for. And that’s brilliant because for your £3 you will no longer get a string of silhouettes going to the toilet, but a film of the quality that the original filmmakers intended. **

6. Forgetfulness. Where did I put the car keys? Where did I put the car? Whose nicked the car park? Am I drunk? The answers to so many questions can be found just by pressing that rewind button. Simple, but beautiful.

7. Social Media Integration. I am sure we all have friends who mention on facebook or twitter that they have just arrived at Selfridges or the Hurlingham Club or the Nou Camp. One day one of my friends checked into Sinagpore Airport at 7pm and three hours later he was watching some baseball in New York. Amazing. But obviously utter bollocks. None of my friend’s have ever checked in at KFC. And let’s be honest I am friend’s with some real pikies. Not in real life obviously, just on facebook. CCTV will identify these pathetic people for the fraudsters they really are by posting live video with every status update.

From The Bahamas, JL.

*Get in.

**In no way do 7 Reasons condone film piracy. It is bad. Very bad. (Though it maybe joked about if you are desperate for a fifth reason).

February 1, 2011
7 Reasons That Sparkling Water is Better Than Still

1. You Can Put Fruit In It. I’m perfectly aware, of course, that you can put fruit into still water too. But if you do that, then you tend to look a bit weird; it looks like a bit of an affectation. But you can put fruit in sparkling water anytime you like without anyone batting an eyelid. It has to be the right type of fruit though, a wedge of lemon or lime, for example. If you chuck a banana in there – or a tomato – you’ll look quite mad.

2. You Can’t Drink It Too Fast. Being carbonated, sparkling water is almost impossible to drink too fast – you just end up full of gas and burping for England (I wonder if people of other nations also represent England when they use this expression?). So, basically the major consequence of drinking too much sparkling water too quickly is a comedic one. But if you drink too much still water too quickly, the consequence is death; from water intoxication. So, sparkling water leads to burping and still water leads to death. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

3. Cats Won’t Drink It. If you pour yourself a glass of still water and leave it lying around then cats will often try and drink it.* Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, you’re probably thinking, my cat’s a loveable and hygienic animal. But wait! How do cats drink? With their horrible, hideous, velcro cat-tongues, that’s how. And what does your cat spend most of its time doing with its horrible, hideous, velcro cat-tongue? That’s right, licking its own bottom. So by sticking its tongue into your drink, your cat might as well be defecating into it. Would you want to drink it then?** Cats don’t do this with sparkling water, of course. Firstly, it often contains citrus fruit (which cats hate), and secondly, in many cases it frightens them (they don’t like getting wet while drinking it).

4. It’s Easier To Find. Ever tried to find a glass of still water in the dark? No, of course not. You probably have more interesting things to do in darkened rooms than finding glasses of water. But I haven’t, and I can reveal to you that sparkling water is far easier to find in the dark than still water, being more easily apparent to the auricular senses.

5. It’s Cooler. Not temperature wise, though I imagine that the freezing point of sparkling water would be marginally lower than that of still water due to the bubbles agitating the liquid causing its transformation to a solid to take longer***. But no, it’s cooler. What would you rather be seen swigging from when cruising down the Via Giulia in Roma in a dark suit or pencil skirt on your Vespa, a bottle of San Pellegrino or a tap containing Severn-Trent?

6. It Effervesces. It moves! Now, moving can be a desirable feature; who among us hasn’t berated a car for not moving at some time or other? And, by way of adding balance, moving can also be an undesirable feature; if you leave the same car in the car park and it moves while you’re away, you’re going to be pretty damned cross. But moving water is good. Because still water stagnates, and moving water doesn’t. Would you drink the contents of a little-disturbed pond? No. Would you drink the contents of a fast-flowing mountain stream? Yes. Movement – in terms of water – is a desirable feature.

7. Aesthetics. I know what I’d rather look at while I’m sitting in my living room sipping water. Yes, the television. But in the unlikely event that I wasn’t allowed to look at the television/out of the window/at the cat/at my right knee/at album covers/at the owl cushions, I’d far rather look at a glass of sparkling water than still water, no matter how deep the latter runs.

*This is assuming you have a cat. If you don’t have one, it won’t attract any.

**No! Why did you even have to scroll down to check the answer?

***Blimey. Science!

January 31, 2011
7 Reasons In 7 Minutes?

You may have noticed that recently Marc and I have started to write joint posts. This week, owing to many factors, we haven’t. Oddly, you may think, I only realised this this morning. At 8.53am. That gave me seven minutes to write 7 Reasons. Could I do it? Let’s have a look.*

*If you’ve subscribed to us for your Kindle, you aren’t going to be able to watch this are you?

**That weird thing I do at 1:16? Yep, I’m watching Andy Murray.

January 28, 2011
7 Reasons That the IKEA Plastis is the Ultimate Washing-Up Brush

The IKEA Plastis is amazing. It’s truly a thing of wonder. Here are seven reasons that it’s the ultimate washing-up brush.

1. It Creates Envy. The IKEA Plastis washing-up brush is capable of provoking great envy. I first saw one in a friend’s kitchen four years ago and, ignoring all of the more expensive and conventionally desirable objects that surrounded it (almost the entire Le Creuset range of pots and pans, a very swanky digital radio, a fully-tiled kitchen floor), I made a beeline straight for it. “This is amazing!”, I exclaimed, as I picked it up, wide-eyed, to examine it. “It’s a washing-up brush”, my friend replied, helpfully. “Yes, I can see that”, I said, “but it’s got a sucker on the bottom. It’s ingenious*.” And that was it. I had fallen in love with the simplicity and brilliance of the design. I wanted that washing-up brush more than I want a cat that can talk or the ability to levitate (which I would use mostly to surprise people in first-floor rooms). I had to have one.

2. It Creates Anticipation. “It’s from IKEA”, my friend said. “What! NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” was my rational and measured response during which I adopted a posture worthy of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, but in a well-appointed Bolton kitchen. This may seem like an overreaction to the prospect of purchasing something from IKEA, but it really isn’t. Had the Plastis been available solely from the moon it would have been easier to get hold of. I live in the centre of a city. Because of this I choose not to own a car. This is because I live in the bit that most people drive to and I have no desire to visit the suburbs/industrial estates/retail parks/Frankie and Benny’s so I don’t need one. Public transport is also not a practical option when it comes to visiting our local IKEA and the Plastis isn’t available to order online (I checked. Weekly), so I had to wait four years until we required a sufficient quantity of shelving, lampshades, sideboards and other stuff in order to justify renting a car to get the Plastis. During that time I tried not to think of the brush every day**, but I thought about it a lot. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder and, in the years that the brush was absent from my life, I grew very fond of it indeed. Perhaps too fond.

I stopped short of getting a tattoo of the Plastis.

3. It Makes Grown Men Jump For Joy. “There it is! There it is!” I exclaimed breathlessly to my wife while pointing to a display on the other side of a very large room in IKEA, before abandoning her and hurrying toward the stand of brushes. And there it was. Or, more excitingly, they were. There were loads of them, in several colours, standing upright in serried ranks on their suckers. There was an army of them. This is what it must be like to be The Queen during the trooping of the colour, I thought. After four, long years, I was finally about to get hold of a Plastis!. Obviously, I studied them all very carefully before selecting one and, while my wife was away playing with wardrobes, tape measures and shelving, I made my important decision. Though it wasn’t a very difficult one because…

4. The Plastis Comes In Red. This is important. As one of the rules of our kitchen (immediately after the rule that every time I paint the ceiling, something else will spring a leak and ruin it again) is that nothing goes in there unless it’s red. We have red pots, red pans, red blenders, red mug-stands, red radios, red everything. Josef Stalin and Ken Livingstone would get into our kitchen: Winston Churchill and Joseph McCarthy would not. Unless they’re any good at laying floor tiles (red), in which case, they’d be very welcome.

5. It’s Great Value. The IKEA Plastis is fantastic value priced, as it is, at £1.11. Not only does this mean that you can buy joy and fulfilment for less than the price of a cup of coffee, but – with its preponderance of 1s – should you wish to print this page out, it will be cheaper to do so as the number 1 uses less ink than any other number. Also, should you be near a superstitious type at this moment, the three ones will be causing them to say “Nelson!” and dance around, meaning that you get free entertainment too. Obviously, in our case, the fantastic value was slightly offset by having to buy a sideboard and rent a car to get one, but it’s still better value than paying council tax, which costs many times more and doesn’t make anyone happy.

6. It’s Even Better Value For Dishwasher-Owners. Because, as the people at IKEA will tell you, the Plastis is dishwasher-safe. Which means that you can wash your washing-up brush inside the dishwasher, which is great, because otherwise, if we didn’t have a dishwasher, we’d have to buy another washing-up brush to wash our washing-up brush with. So for dishwasher-owners, the cost of washing-up brush ownership is halved.***

7. It’s Got A Sucker. Obviously the best bit about the Plastis is the sucker, and since we got ours home I’ve been experimenting with it. I’ve stood it up on the draining board, I’ve stuck it to the wall, I’ve affixed it to the (red) biscuit tin and, best of all, I’ve stuck it to my forehead and chased the cat around the house pretending to be an alien (consequently, for the past two days I’ve had a large purple circle in the centre of my forehead which doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon). There is literally nothing that can’t be improved by sticking a Plastis to it. Even people. The Plastis is awesome and one day, who knows, I might even use it to wash something up.

*I promise you, our conversations are usually far more interesting than this.

**Because that would be weird.

***Yes, I did use this argument in IKEA to justify purchasing the Plastis to my wife, who responded by using a technique that she has developed during our marriage called Smile & Nod.

January 27, 2011
7 Reasons The World Needs To Hear From Mrs Morris More

Last week I had the pleasure of catching the end of Rip Off Britain. It’s a show, as far as I could tell, in which Gloria Hunniford, Jennie Bond and Angela Rippon go around the country hearing stories of mass rip off. Despite thinking it should actually have been called Rippon’s Rip Off, the ten minutes I saw were some of the most enlightening minutes in my life. You see, Gloria had gone to visit a little old lady called Mrs. Morris. She was having problems with her phone package and needed help. (Mrs. Morris, not Gloria. Gloria’s got a great package. I expect). Anyway, having shared her woes with us, Mrs. Morris gave the humble viewer some advice. Well, I say ‘advice’, it was more a mantra to living. This is what she said. You can’t really argue with that can you. “If you are paying for broadband and you haven’t got it, don’t pay it.” Genius. Just genius. I’m not suggesting that we should try and make Mrs. Morris, Dame Morris, but I certainly think she should be given her own platform from which she can share her wise words with more of us. We need her in our lives. We need to hear from her more. Here’s why:

1. Love. Many people have been there. Not us, we’re clean. But other people. Other people have been there. They’ve been lonely. They’ve been horny. They’ve got on the phone and ordered a pizza and a prostitute. They’re vulnerable. These people need Mrs. Morris. They need Mrs. Morris telling them, “If you are paying for sex and they’ve finished before the hour’s up, don’t pay for it.”

2. Health. Getting fit always sounds like a good idea. You buy a new pair of trainers, you create a workout playlist, you sign-up to Nike+. Despite this though, nothing seems to be improving. And this is when you need Mrs. Morris telling you, “If you are paying for gym membership but you are getting fatter, actually go to the gym.”

3. Family. In this day and age you have to be very careful. There are some very weird people out there. If we had Mrs. Morris to listen to though – and we followed her advice – we’d be fine. “If someone knocks on the door and claims to be your Dad, make sure it is the same man you said ‘goodbye’ to earlier that day.”

4. Friends. Most of us had to suffer from ‘Mum jokes’ once or twice when we were at school. They weren’t big and they weren’t clever. Well, my friend’s mums weren’t. I don’t think anything annoyed me more than jokes about my mum. One friend in-particular used to make them on a constant basis. If Mrs. Morris had been there though, I could have thought about it rationally, “If your friend calls your mum a MILF, you’ll know your friend is a lesbian.” And she was. Probably still is.

5. Religion. One of the few things each and everyone of us have in common is that we have all been the recipients of an email from an African orphan. Some people ignore it, some people read it and ignore it, some people read it and reply for fun, some people read it and get their bank card out. It is really the latter that require the wisdom of Mrs. Morris, “If a Nigerian you have met on the internet says it is ‘God’s Will’ that you pay him an administrative fee so he can pay £10 Million into your account, make sure you keep copies of your emails.”

6. Politics. I’m not going to tell you which political party I used to canvas for – you can probably guess – but I copped a bit of abuse if I chose the wrong house door to knock on. It took me a year to realise that, while the abuse was tad harsh, what I was doing was bloody annoying. What the hell did it have to do with me who they wanted to vote for? So I stopped. I wish Mrs. Morris had been there though. Telling the unsuspecting bloke whose driveway I was marching up, “When this guy asks you who you are thinking about voting for, tell him you don’t watch Pop Idol and slam the door in his face.” It would have been much better for my morale.

7. Gardening. I can’t remember how many it is, but we lose many brain cells each day. Under such circumstances it is no wonder we forget things. We need Mrs. Morris to replace our brain cells. Reminding us to check things, “If you are paying for a gardener and you can’t remember if you have a garden, look out of your window.” That sort of thing. I once forgot I didn’t have a chair. I ended up lying across someone’s scampi and chips. Mrs. Morris could have prevented this. She really could.

January 24, 2011