Tag: Broken

Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Grow The Hell Up

So you’re a teenage boy. I was one once, and got over it. You can too, if you TAKE HEED of these important points.

1. You are not special. You are not the first person ever to feel this way. You are not the first person ever to fall in love, or get stoned, or drunk, or listen to music that wasn’t in the charts. You are, in a word, unoriginal. Hurry to adulthood where such tedious conformity goes unremarked.

2. You look like an animated French Bread Pizza. This is not a good look. Get busy with the acne treatment, and you might find the teenage girls you pine after, bother to look at you. I mean, it’s still doubtful, given you only speak in mumbles or grunts and have the personal hygiene of algae, but hey, it’s a start, no?

3. You are composed entirely of knees, elbows and Adam’s Apples. While teen girls are so sylphlike they get their A-Level results photos on the front page of the Telegraph, teen boys lurch about like they were made that morning and the glue didn’t take. You’re fitter than you’re ever likely to be again – stop walking around like you’ve a freakishly heavy head.

4. You need ‘fake ID’. Now that’s just plain embarrassing. To have to proffer some weedy doctored piece of card every time you want to do something normal, like buy Tippex or 12 cans of extra-strength Fusilier Lager from your local shop is demeaning to all concerned. Get old, so you can demand such essentials in a booming, confident voice.

5. You’re all over the scale. Speaking of voices, what’s up with yours? One minute you’re frightening bats, the next minute you sound like Sauron spotting Frodo. Stop mucking about, boy!

6. Why so unwashed? Acne treatment is all well and good, but it needs to be accompanied by actual washing. A spray of Right Guard under the arms every morning is insufficient. You’ve achieved success when strangers can enter your room without being knocked unconscious.

7. You didn’t ask to be born. Sorry, what’s that? You didn’t ask? OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T! Nobody did! It’s not how the system works, for crying out loud! I’m sure this was covered in Biology. To become a man, you need to internalise this existential sense of injustice and only let it out, say, during major sporting tournaments.

September 5, 2012
Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Get Your Sofa Fixed

There are few things more necessary in your home than a good sofa. Somewhere to socialise, somewhere to relax, somewhere for extra guests to sleep, somewhere for you to sleep yourself when you have fallen asleep in the middle of Newsnight – again, somewhere for you and a loved one to snuggle, somewhere for your visiting nephews to jump all over and smear Easter eggs into.

Here are just seven of the many reasons for you to get your sofa fixed and fit for purpose.

1. You Are Not A Student Any Longer. It might be acceptable, when you are living on beans and super noodles, to have somewhere you don’t care about the spills and stickiness. To have a place where you don’t care that your best mate – the one with his aversion to baths and who’s Mum hasn’t been up to collect the laundry for some time – falls asleep on for the fifth time that week. That time is long gone. Wake up and smell the sofa. Replace the cushions, give it a good clean and put the missing wheel back on.

2. Your Mum Will Moan At You And Think You Can’t Look After Yourself. This is a good thing when it means shepherd’s pie deliveries and the odd bit of dusting and vacuuming. When she is griping over and again about the state of your furniture, it’s boring and avoidable. Get your cushion foam replaced and a new cover and she will sit and chat with you and ask when you are going to let her meet your girlfriend and when you’ll make her a granny. Actually, perhaps it’s better if she just moans about the sofa.

3. It’s Uncomfortable To Idle On A Lumpy Sofa. Idling is important. It’s time to reflect on your life, time to relax and ponder on the universe and all its beings. You can’t do that unless you are sitting pretty or, even better, horizontal on some luxuriously fat cushions.

4. You Need To Have Somewhere For Your Mates To Sit And Watch Football. You can’t have them putting their backside’s through the seat when they flop back down after contesting that all-important penalty or the little celebratory run around the living room. Fix those slats.

5. Springs Through The Bum Ain’t No Fun! Vintage sofa’s may look cool, but springs poking out of old horsehair and straw is a bit of a pain in the arse. Search the internet for reliable upholstery firms or companies like Cutfoam offering foam cut to size that you can cover up those springs and bare bots that leave you bruised.

6. You Can’t Make A Den With Flat, Floppy Cushions. Those visiting nephews will take a lot more intensive looking after and effort on your part if you don’t have some solid kit – and that includes some good stiff sofa cushions that can be propped up against the back to make a den/battle ship/castle. When they’ve finished playing, you can sit them down on the very same sofa to watch a bit of kid’s tv. Trust me, you will want to delay this as long as possible. Fix the cushions.

7. No Woman Will Snuggle With You On A Crappy Sofa. You need a sofa that smells good, that is sif enough to schlompf into, and that is wide enough for you both to fit, but not wide enough that you aren’t pretty close together. Removable back cushions help with creating enough space to lie down for a good old nuzzle.

Enjoy!

April 28, 2012
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:

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.

April 6, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons That The Umbrella Is A Bad Invention

We were hoping to bring you a guest post by Tom Cruise this week, but sadly talks broke down when we couldn’t give him a more precise date on which he would receive his badge. Thankfully, we have found someone someone else who once considered a career in film. Unfortunately, the Reading Odeon wasn’t recruiting at the time.* And that is definitely to 7 Reasons gain. Back on the 7 Reasons sofa for an unprecedented two Saturdays in a row is serial guest writer, Dr Simon Best. This week he has swapped the luxury of sleepers for umbrellas. Well who wouldn’t? Over to you Dr Simon.

1. Health Hazard. When you are under an umbrella you become blind to things around you. This makes umbrellas a health hazard. Umbrellas are a health hazard for tall people. Imagine you are well over 6 foot tall, and walking down a street in the rain packed with people with umbrellas. You will be very fortunate if you emerge with your eyesight intact. Umbrellas are also a health hazard for short people like me when we stand at bus stops and taller people with their umbrellas drip water onto our heads or if we happen not to be wearing hoods, down our necks.

2. The Weather. Umbrellas may be designed to withstand rain, which is excellent. However they are not designed to withstand more than the gentlest breath of wind. I have seen umbrellas turned inside out by breezes that aren’t strong enough to ruffle a feather. Take an umbrella outside in Britain and it’ll end up looking like this:

This umbrella was probably bought this morning and is now useless. Like all umbrellas.

Provided they haven’t been turned inside out by the wind, umbrellas only protect you from rain from above. However rain often falls horizontally. This is especially the case by the sea. Umbrellas offer no protection whatsoever against horizontal rain. In order to stay dry on your summer holiday by the sea in Britain you need a wraparound umbrella. Or a waterproof coat.

3. Size. Umbrellas come in two sizes: Too big and too small. Either way they are the wrong size. They are either too small for two people to shelter under, thus being anti-social and encouraging selfishness, or, if they large enough to fit more than one person underneath, they are so big that they take up an entire pavement and make it impossible for a normal person wearing a sensible coat (with a hood) to get past.

4. They Get Wet. “Of course they get wet,” I can hear you all saying, “that’s the whole point of them”. Well what happens when you come in from the rain to your house where everything is dry? The umbrella deposits water all over your dry house. Thus bringing in the rain that you tried so hard to keep off you and getting everything wet and posing the problem of where to dry an umbrella. You can just hang a coat up and it’ll dry but umbrellas need to be open to dry (which brings seven years bad luck). You then leave it propped open somewhere and end up falling over it. Ridiculous things.

5. Rihanna. This song is about umbrellas. For some inexplicable reason it got to number 1. And stayed there. For 10 weeks. It is very annoying and not just because Rhianna is inviting her gentleman friend to stand under her umbrella – I hope they weren’t on a pavement and had a good amount of space around them. If the umbrella hadn’t been invented then Rhianna would have been forced to sing about something else, or not at all which would have been infinitely preferable.

Rihanna – Umbrella

6. Georgi Markhov. The umbrella was a very bad invention for Mr Markhov. He was a Bulgarian dissident who was murdered in London in 1978. The poison was in the tip of an umbrella which he was poked with while waiting at a bus stop. If the umbrella hadn’t been invented then there wouldn’t be any risk to Bulgarian dissidents (or innocent passers-by) and the KGB would be forced to resort to the CIA’s methods such as poisoned slippers or exploding cigars which were much less effective and mush more amusing.

7. Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins arrived to look after the Banks children by umbrella. This is ridiculous as no umbrella would be strong enough to take the weight of a middle aged nanny. Leaving that aside most people think Mary Poppins is lovely. I don’t. She is responsible for making up nonsense words, encouraging vermin by feeding pigeons, and frankly questionable childcare methods (lacing medicine with sweeteners and, using witchcraft rather than tidying up and taking them on a dangerous cross-country carousel ride). Without umbrellas Mary Poppins would never have been able to arrive.

August 28, 2010