7 Reasons

Tag: black

  • 7 Reasons Not To Elbow Someone Whilst Sleeping

    7 Reasons Not To Elbow Someone Whilst Sleeping

    Last week you found out that my girlfriend and I discuss potatoes in bed, well today you are going to discover that she elbows me in the neck whilst sleeping. But this post is not so much for the benefit of her as it is for everyone. The simple fact is this: elbowing people whilst sleeping is bad. Here’s why:7 Reasons Not To Elbow Someone Whilst Sleeping

    1.  Sides. Like most couples, my girlfriend and I have dedicated sides of the bed. I am on the left with 80% of the duvet, Claire is on the right shivering. Now, if like me you never venture from your side of the bed, it means your fellow sleep partner must be breaking bed protocol if her (or his) elbow is making contact with your neck. In such situations you do have to wonder why you had to nominate sides in the first place.

    2.  Damage. Of course, before you wonder about why you agreed to nominate sides, you need to inspect your injuries. In my case I had to check I was still breathing. Thankfully I was, but an elbow protruding into my trachea made it much harder than it usually is. Still, I am one of the lucky ones. Other injuries you may suffer from being elbowed in bed include: a black eye, a broken nose, a fat lip, a dislocated jaw and a wobbly tooth. And that’s just on your face. If you sleep upside down it could be a whole lot worse.

    3.  Reflex. Generally when people feel pain, their first reaction is to react. This probably isn’t news. If you are asleep and someone disturbs you by elbowing you it would be very natural for you to instinctively punch them in the face. Satisfying, yes. Sensible, not really. Especially when you consider that a reflex of being punched in the face is to kick out. You could quite easily end up having a pillow fight. Without the pillows.

    4.  Retaliation. Maybe you manage to avoid reacting instinctively though. Possibly because you are already awake. You can’t let your partner get away with it! They’ve just whacked you in the face. This is when you start turning to dark places. (Unless you switched the light on to work out what the bloody hell just took your head off.) Thoughts turn to revenge. Should you kick them? Knee them? Pinch them? Poke them? Slap them? Chances are you won’t do any of them, but thanks to your partner you stay awake all night thinking nasty thoughts. Then you’re cranky all day. You snap at people. You argue with people. You put salt in people’s coffee. Then, come 6pm, you have no friends left. And all because the lady loves Milk Tray elbowed you up the nostril.

    5.  Moving. In something of a design flaw, when someone elbows you whilst they are asleep, they rarely move their arm back to its rightful place. As a result you have to move it for them. Which is not as easy as it sounds. Joints were only designed to move in certain directions and usually the only direction it wants to go is further into your eye socket. Generally speaking, the only solution here is for you to move. Probably downstairs to the sofa bed.

    6.  Dreams. As I do on most nights, I was dreaming in my sleep. Last night’s adventure was particularly exciting as I was unbeaten on 245 and Shane Watson had just pulled a hamstring. It was a pleasant change to his usual trick where he pulls a hamster from a Tesco carrier bag. So there I was watching Shaun Tait jog in from the Michael Jackson Statue End (we were playing in Fulham) when I lost sight of the ball. Next thing I knew it had smacked me in the throat. Which is when I woke up with a start and realised that not only had I been dreaming, but Claire had been the one to spoil my moment with a viciously placed elbow. Pathetic.*

    7.  Petty. If you have an issue with someone, elbow them in the face when you are awake. That way they’ll know exactly how you feel. Doing it while you are ‘asleep’ is childish and, as detailed above, helps no one.

    *When I did get back to sleep, Janet Street-Porter yorked me first ball. One of us were also naked. That’s the stuff nightmares are made of.

  • 7 Reasons Life Would Be So Much Better In Black & White

    7 Reasons Life Would Be So Much Better In Black & White

    This post needs no introduction, but I’ll give it one anyway. Colour is rubbish. Right, on with the reasoning.

    1.  Colour Blindness. Suffering from the disability myself, I know that a world without colour would make things much easier. Especially when it comes to my work as a designer. Never again would a client phone me up and ask why I have decided to turn their red logo a shade of dark green. I then wouldn’t have to apologise and spend hours redoing the poxy thing. Nor would I get a subsequent phone call from the client advising me that they are terminating the contract because I obviously thought it would be funny to send it back brown.

    2.  Dull Games More Exciting. There was a time that I used to like snooker. I was at school and it proved a more enthralling than doing my homework. These days though I have found my entertainment elsewhere. I like to prod myself in the eye with chopsticks for example. If snooker went back to the good old days when it was played in black and white though, I can imagine being positively horny about the prospect. What colour has he hit?

    3.  Wardrobe. The reason I have such questionable dress sense is because I just have so many colours to choose from. That’s my excuse anyway. If everything was black or white though I couldn’t possibly go wrong. I could wear black with white. Or black with black. Or white with white. Or, if I was feeling adventurous, I could replicate a pack of dominoes.

    4.  Embarrassing Clothes. Talking about dress sense, why is there always someone who turns up to the wedding looking like a twat? Either they are wearing pick shoes or a turtle-shell patterned blazer.Black and white would eradicate this problem immediately. And you wouldn’t need to store your photo album in the loft.

    5.  Sunburn. Another disability I suffer with, the inability to put enough suncream on regularly. Because of this I often find myself getting burnt. Mostly on the face and neck, but I have been known to get burnt somewhere near Maidstone before too. While a black and white world wouldn’t lessen the physically pain, it would certainly reduce the mental anguish. I’d probably have something of a grayscale face which would enable me to blend nicely into an urban world of roads, pavements and lampposts.

    6.  Cheaper. The reason living is so expensive is due in no small part to likes of cyan, magenta and yellow. Get rid of them I say. Let’s just have black with nothing filling in where one wants white. We’d save a fortune and

    7.  Decision Making. In a world that is black and white it would only make sense that there are no blured issues. We would automatically know right from wrong. We would know that tea is right. We would know that Janet Street-Porter is wrong. Life would just be so much simpler.

     

  • 7 Reasons To Stone The Crows

    7 Reasons To Stone The Crows

    Crows sitting on a telephone line in the rain

    1. Farmers. I have never been a farmer, lacking as I do the necessary sheepdog and accompanying whistle. I imagine, though, it must be tough work. Tiring work. Frustrating work. Especially if you have ploughed your field and sowed the seed only to see a flock of crows engulf the scene. It’s at this point when you have a choice. Allow them to eat your livelihood or revert to the stones. Whichever you choose, you also need to invest in a better scarecrow. *

    2. Rivalry. If you live in the city of Adelaide, Australia, you may well support Port Adelaide Football Club in the AFL. In doing so you immediately have a rival. They are across town and are called the Adelaide Crows. You may take exception to defeat at the hands of your nemesis and wish to take matters into your own hands. To, you know, bring some pride back to your end of town.*

    3. Attack. Picture the scene. You are walking along the street, minding your own business, when an armoured vehicle rocks up next to you with crows on its roof. And when I say crows, I mean a Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station. You know, one of those things that you can mount a machine gun on and then operate from the comfort and security of the driver’s seat. If this happens you need to get prepared. If he starts firing you need to use whatever means you can to fight back. And chucking stones at the crows might be your only hope. Good luck.*

    4.  Words. The collective noun for crows is a murder and, if we take that as some sort of corrupted historical instruction, we should be killing them.  Now, shooting them would probably be the best way to do this but, as most of the 7 Reasons readership is based in the UK, there probably aren’t that many gun-owners among us.  This would leave us furiously hurling bullets at them (which would be expensive) or desperately searching for alternate methods of killing them.  Though they live in trees and rope is in plentiful supply from chandlers all around our island nation, hanging them isn’t practical as crows can defy gravity.  Basically they’d just flutter about for a bit then fly back to the branch we’d hanged them from so, in essence, we’d just be tying crows to trees.  Where they live anyway.  This really leaves stoning as the only viable option.

    5.  Australia. In Australia, where the phrase stone the crows is said to have originated – or should that be aboriginated – the crows eat lambs.  That’s right, lambs.  Now I haven’t been too close to Australian lambs, but they seem like quite sizeable creatures to me.  And frankly, if I lived in an upside-down land where large black birds were capable of swooping up from the sky below me and killing animals that are the size of human babies (which apparently have enough to fear from dingoes over there as it is), I’d be ready to stone them too.  Or I’d go even further and rock them.  What’s more, being English, my throws would have a better chance of hitting them than the natives’ efforts.***

    6.  Do The Right Thing. Crows are the proper animal to stone.  I – before I corrected a spelling mistake – spent an earlier paragraph exhorting you, the reader, to stone the cows.  But cows are definitely not an animal that you should be stoning.   They’re large – surprisingly fast – and would probably become quite cross if you were to hurl stones at them.  Not to mention the possibility of being shot by a furious and ruddy-faced farmer.  Stoning cows is wrong.  Stoning crows is right.

    7.  Kia-Ora. Remember the Kia-Ora advert where crows impersonate a hobo-child’s dog to relieve him of his Kia-Ora, despite his protestations that it’s too orangey for them?  You’ll know if you’ve seen it, the music will still be reverberating round your head over twenty-five years later ready to surface when you least expect it to.  Or want it to.  Which is never.

    Enjoy!

    And now we all probably want to stone the crows.

    *7 Reasons would like to point out that we do not condone the stoning of crows whether they be real crows, the Adelaide Crows or the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station.**

    **No, on second thoughts, fuck them.  Stone away.

    ***We can probably keep this up until the next Ashes series in 2013.