Tag: Guest Posts

7 Reasons That A Red Bucket Is The Most Amazing Thing In The World

Hello 7 Reasons readers. Due to unforeseen circumstances we’re going to publish a guest post on a Thursday, which is something that we’ve never done before. So here, taking up not very much space on the 7 Reasons sofa at all, but making quite a lot of noise and a bit of a smell that we’re pretending not to notice, is today’s guest poster. Possibly our youngest ever.

Hello! My name’s Byron Sebastian Fearns and I’m a baby. Now I may not have seen much in my five and three quarter months, but today the most wonderful thing happened and I was compelled to share with you what I discovered; it is the most exciting thing in the whole history of the world ever. It’s something called a red bucket. Here are seven reasons that it’s more amazing than anything else, even elephants and balls.

1. It’s Red! The first thing I noticed when my mother and father wheeled me through the big building full of shiny stuff and dishcloths and picked up my toy that I now know is called a “bucket” (which rhymes with “fuck it”, a phrase I heard my father say once shortly before mother became very cross) was that it is red. This means that it’s amazing and not blue or yellow like everything else that people buy for me on the basis that “it’s for a boy” or that “yellow is a neutral colour”. I don’t like blue (it is a colour that makes my father cry at football matches) and I’m not neutral. If I liked neutral colours I’d hurl magnolia coloured food at the walls rather than orange coloured food. I like bright colours! I like red!

2. It Makes A Noise! It does! As we perambulated through the big building full of shiny stuff and dishcloths Father turned the bucket upside-down and began banging on the bottom of it. It made a noise like the noise that the man next door makes all day long in his kitchen or the sound that Father sometimes makes with his head on the desk after he has stared at a white screen for a considerable period of time. I’m relatively new to the concept of onomatopoeia, but it made a noise that sounded like thump-thump-diddle-diddle-ump and was very loud. The ladies that live in the big building full of shiny things seemed most impressed.

3. It’s Hilarious! Then we took my bucket to the park where the trees and squirrels live. We lay down on the grass and, after I had completed a short bout of screaming for absolutely no reason, Father said “Look Byron” and put the bucket over his head. This was the funniest thing I have ever seen. Ever! Father then took it off his head and put it back on his head and I laughed again. We did this for hours! Father enjoyed this so much that he started rolling his eyes and staring at his watch with delight.

4. It Makes Another Noise! Just when I felt that I might eventually tire of Father putting the bucket on his head, taking it off again and then putting it back on his head, something amazing happened. Father coughed and it sounded like the deepest loudest sound ever heard by anyone at all. This was hilarious. I laughed for ages. Then Father made other noises in the bucket too and they were even funnier. They were so funny that I laughed more than I ever have before; they were so funny that Mother had to edge slowly away from us in case she injured herself with all of the fun; they were so funny that Father suddenly became religious and started asking god when he could go home. He spoke to god in the bucket! Oh, how I laughed.

5. It Moves! Then Father stood up and started running round the park with the bucket on his head and pretended to be a monster (which is a creature similar to a dog). “Rooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr!” he said as he ran round a tree; “Roooooooooaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!” he said as he ran past a bench; “Rooooooaaaaarrrrrrr!!!!!!!” he said as he ran behind a bush”; “Aaaaaaaaaarrrrggghhhhhh!!!!!!” screamed a tour group from behind the bush; “Roooooaaaaaaarrrrrrr!!!!!” he said as he ran back from the bush; “OOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!!!” he said as he fell over a bin. Then he said a word that I’ve never heard before and Mother shouted a lot and we had to go home.

6. It’s Red Inside Too! On the way home Father put the bucket on my head and I thought it was the most awesome and amazing thing that it’s possible for any human to experience, ever. It turned everything in the world red and when I made a noise it was the biggest noise that anyone has ever made. It was bigger even than the noise that Father made when I weed on his coat as he was changing my nappy at the National Railway Museum. It was amazing! Then Father took the bucket off my head and the next-door-neighbours were there and they seemed concerned.

7. I Can Get In It! After a long – and really boring – conversation with the neighbours about babies and the bucket and stuff we got home and then something happened that was the most incredible, fantastical and phantasmagorical thing of all. I got into the bucket!

Look at me! I’m in the bucket.

Then Father took the bucket away and told me if I ever wanted to see it again I had to write today’s 7 Reasons post as he has something called a “headache”, which he says is a contagious disease that is contracted by proximity to children. So now I’ve written it I’m going to get the bucket back and play with it all day every day for a week. Or perhaps a month! I’m off to play with my bucket now. Bye-bye.

September 15, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Gadgets Can Kill You

Today we welcome Danny Ashton to the 7 Reasons sofa. Danny is a self-confessed gadget fanatic who writes about Android Tablets at his blog. So who better then to tell us that gadgets are going to kill us? Exactly. No one. Once you’ve read today’s post do head over to Danny’s blog or feel free to chat to him about gadgets over email.

If you’re a gadget freak, you may want to watch out, because your gadgets can sometimes get you into serious trouble. I hope you enjoy reading this fun list of dangerous gadgets, just as long as you don’t read it on your new tablet PC whilst trying to cross the road…

1. United Nuclear Magnets. If you want powerful magnets, then what you need is a United Nuclear Magnet. These aren’t your average flimsy fridge magnets. No, these are so strong they can actually break your arm or crush your hand. Their website even states that they cannot be shipped by air because they will interfere with the aircraft’s navigational equipment. Ideal if you enjoy squashing things. Just make sure it’s not your own head.

2. Wicked Strong Laser Pointers. Made in China, these hand-held lasers are so powerful they can light a match from 10 feet away. It’s not quite clear what these lasers have been invented for, but rest assured they are certainly not toys for playing Star Wars with your little brother.

3. Ball-bearing Boot Travel Suits. This bizarre form of transport involves not just wearing special boots, but an entire suit. By looking at the picture (above), it appears the suit comes with a weird face mask which looks like some kind of modern version of a fencing mask. The main body of the suit resembles a black and white version of what the Pet Shop Boys were wearing in the video to their 1993 hit Go West. And as for the boots, don’t even get me started! Ball-bearing boots? Ball-bearing boots??? Boots with ball-bearings on the bottom of them? WHY???

4. Tunnel Taxis. Okay, so this one is perhaps a bit big to really be called a gadget because it’s actually a type of vehicle. Another Chinese invention, it consists of a large bus with a gap down the middle of it to enable cyclists to ride through. This is all very well if the bus is stationary and the cyclist just quickly rides through and out the other side. But what happens if some crazy cyclist tries to cycle through it while it’s moving, and then the bus driver decides to change lanes. Maybe all the roads in China are straight? I don’t know I’ve never been there.

5. Cell Phones. Although the jury still seems to be out on the whole “cell phones give you cancer” issue, they can still get you into all kinds of trouble, including:

Accidentally texting “right now, I’m thinking about your lovely soft thighs” to your brother instead of your girlfriend.

Walking head-first into a lamp-post while posting “I just ate a sandwich” to your Facebook page.

Falling into a ditch whilst laughing at a video someone sent you of a cat playing the piano. Yes, we’ve all done it. Don’t pretend it hasn’t happened to you.

6. MP3 Players. Although great for whiling away dull hours in traffic jams on public transport, MP3 players can indeed also be a hazard. I mean, it’s all very well you doing some freaky dancing to The Birdie Song as you walk down the street, but if you don’t see that the fat guy in a diaper from Jackass has just come round the corner being chased by Wee Man, you could end up squashed.

7. Satellite Navigation Systems. Satellite navigation systems are fine if they take you step-by-step along the quickest route from San Francisco to Los Angeles; but it’s no good if that’s the same day it decides it’s going to have a short circuit and cause you to end up on the edge of Area 51, having accidentally just driven over the sign which says “DO NOT ENTER” and also probably something about trespassers will be abducted by aliens or whatever. Or if you live in the UK, you might end up in field, surrounded by angry cows. Either way, it’s not good.

September 3, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Meetings Make You Homicidal

Saturday dawns as Saturday always does with a new guest post. This week the we welcome Juliet James to the 7 Reasons sofa. Most of the time Juliet is a writer for Print Express, a UK printing company that features booklet printing and business card design. Juliet has worked for many years as a writer and blogger. Over the years she has become quite adept at avoiding meetings for the safety of her co-workers. Here she is:

The two most dreaded words in business are definitely “You’re Fired” but if you ask me, the second worst words to hear at work are “Staff Meeting”. Almost every working schmuck has had the “pleasure” of sitting through at least a few meetings. Everyone has their own pet peeves when it comes to corporate convocations. But most people have probably wanted to kill someone in a meeting for at least one of these seven reasons.

1. The Boss. I’ve gone to great lengths to avoid seeing the boss. I know he uses the east entrance, so I use the west one. He takes lunch at noon, so I eat mine at 13:30. My schedule is a finely tuned instrument of circumvention. And meetings blow it all to hell. Not only do I have to face him, it’s almost impossible to escape one of the boss’s meetings without extra work, a policy change or a self-esteem deficit. And if we’re really lucky we’ll get all three. That’s a trifecta.

2. Stupid People. Everyone works with a moron. You know the one. It’s person that complains that the coffee maker is “overly complicated”. Normally you only interact with them for entertainment purposes. But in meetings, somehow, you always manage to wind up seated next to the dumbass. Perfect. They’ll either whisper stupid questions to you, or invite the entire room into their idiotic inquests. Either ways it reminds you why it’s unfortunate that bitch-slapping violates company policy.

3. Suck Ups. There’s always one guy in the room who’s just WAY too happy to be there. He’s taking notes, nodding emphatically and looking a lot like a dog about to go on a car ride. These are the suck ups, and they all come out of the woodwork in meetings. “What’s that boss, you think we should re-direct the Christmas bonuses to a mandatory sexual harassment seminar? Fantastic! You wanna do it over Labor Day weekend? Brilliant!” But on the plus side, at least you can spend most of the meeting fantasizing about flattening the sycophant’s head in the Xerox machine.

4. Wasting Two Hours of Your Life to Get Nowhere. Does anyone ever really accomplish anything in a meeting? In my experience it’s a gratuitous exercise in going in circles. It starts with a simple discussion of a problem. Then we have to dissect all of the complications surrounding the original problem. By the time we’re finished we haven’t solved anything but we’ve raised half a dozen other issues and someone went home with a migraine. Most office think tanks fail to engender progress and dissolve into pointless bitch sessions. Can’t we find a more efficient, less annoying way to get nothing done? Cause I have plenty of ideas about much more entertaining ways to accomplish nothing.

5. Being Stuck Sucks. Leaving in the middle of a meeting is always awkward and uncomfortable. So whether you have to pee, smoke or eat, you just hold it, because out of a meeting only seems to draw inquisitive looks and silent admonishment from others. It’s like there’s some kind of unspoken agreement among the inmates that everyone will “Stick it out”, so… you get stuck. Being locked into any one place for an indefinite amount of time is annoying; I don’t care if we’re talking about being trapped in the Gumdrop forest, if you can’t leave, you’re miserable.

6. Staying Late. It would be one thing if having an all-staff meeting bought you an extension on that project that’s due by COB that day. Of course, it never does, Nope, you’re deadline didn’t move but you just lost crucial work time to discussing the pros and cons of the re-designed Time Sheets. So now you get to stay an extra hour tonight to tie up loose ends. On deadline days the announcement of a meeting literally drops a bomb on your to-do list. You spend the entire gathering twitching anxiously watching the minutes tick past. Slowly, your hopes and dreams of making it home in time for dinner slip away. You already know it’s going to be another night of ordering take out at your desk. So by the time the meeting breaks you’re ready to trample anyone who gets between you and your desk

7. Here Comes The Bus. A lot of times meetings get called to address an “issue”. Of course that tends to be code for “Bob screwed up and now we all have to get together to talk about his mistake.” Or, even better, the meeting itself is a trap to catch a culprit. And the suck-ups just love those meetings because they’re dying to drive the bus right over the guilty party. So you just slouch down in your chair praying you’re not the guy who winds up under the wheels. Half the time if a meeting isn’t an announcement, it’s an indictment. Going in you never really know which one it’s going to be, and that’s always fun.

Meetings have all sorts of different functions, but usually by the time they’re over you’re pretty much ready to slaughter someone. But I think it’s healthy. Just keep your weapons at home and your murderous urges off of Facebook and you’ll probably be fine. But if you absolutely can’t resist exacting punishment, I hear Ex-lax makes excellent chocolate. And nobody can resist cookies during a meeting right?

July 23, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Put All That Stuff Under Your Bed Into Storage

We’d be lying if we said we didn’t keep anything under the 7 Reasons Sofa Bed. In fact this is where all our unwanted guest posts go. According to Drew Davies though we should really be putting it all into storage. Here’s why:

1. Feng Shui. In feng shui, the principle of proximity means that the closer something is to you the stronger its effect will be. Which is probably why you keep having those trippy dreams about Grandma’s old cardigans.

2. Ghosts Feel Shame Too. We know you only used it that once on Valentine’s Day in 2007, but what if you died unexpectedly and your parents discovered your Vibronator XL Delux?

3. Increased Value. Potential homebuyers are always looking for roomy underbeds and so with more space, the price of your house will rocket. Ask anyone. It’s, like, science.

4. Self Preservation. With all that junk under your bed, will your toy boy be able to dive underneath it when your husband arrives home early from work one day?

5. The Ace of Base Fallacy. That box of old CD’s that you’re always planning to burn onto your laptop at some point? Never. Going. To. Happen.

6. Well Hung. With your things in storage, you can finally get rid of your bed altogether, buy that hammock you’ve always wanted and get into “swinging”. That is what swinging means, right?

7. Lumps ‘n’ Bumps. You’ve heard about of the Princess and the Pea, but what about the Princess and the Playstation 2??? Yes, we just made that up.

With rooms from 9 sq ft to 400 sq ft, and leases starting at just one week long, you can store just about anything at Big Yellow Self Storage for as long as you need.

June 18, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Air Travel Can Be A Pain In The Butt

Today’s guest post is written by Sally. That is all we know about her. We suspect, judging by her use of ‘z’s instead of ‘s’s, that she resides on the other side of the pond. Other than that, our file is empty. You might think letting such a mysterious character onto the 7 Reasons sofa is as dangerous as the 7 Reasons cushions themselves. For the sake of keeping you entertained this Saturday though, it is a risk we are prepared to take. And it means we can watch the cricket. After the nice picture, it’ll be Sally.

Did you know people actually used to get dressed up to fly on an airplane? I mean, people were so excited to fly that they would actually break out their Sunday best for the flight. Why? Because flying was seen as such an exciting, high-class event that it was as much a highlight of their trip as actually getting to the destination. Most travelers could not imagine that today, as it feels like these once great sky coaches have been reduced to little more than a cattle car that flies. With that in mind, here are seven reasons why traveling in the year 2011 can be a giant pain in the butt.

1. Packing. Some of us were born without that organizational gene. You know, the one that lets people organize their sock drawers and car glove compartments. I never quite figured these out. Normally, it’s just a minor inconvenience. But when it comes to packing for a trip, I’m hopeless. I might as well just pile my clothes on top of a suitcase and hire a fat guy to sit on it.

2. Getting To The Airport. I’d like to send a message to all my friends. I am not a cab driver. Do not ask me to take you to the airport. First, people never fly at normal times, and waking up 4 hours before I have to go work is not worth you saving $15 in cab fare. Also, you’re about to go on a fun trip and I’m about to turn around and drive home from the airport in morning rush-hour traffic by myself. Hearing you talk about it on the way there makes me want to drive off the road into a tree. And I’m pretty sure your travel insurance doesn’t cover that.

3. Airport Check-in Staff. Okay, I just wanted to ask a simple question and see if there was an available window seat on my flight. You don’t have to talk down to me. You have the easiest job in the world. You type my name into the computer, you asked me a couple of dumb questions about my luggage (by the way, don’t you think anyone carrying contraband in their luggage would just lie?), and then you print out my ticket. Don’t act like you invented the airplane.

4. Airline Security Staff. Pretty much the same as reason three, except they’re more smug, less competent and fondle people’s legs for a living. We were never destined to get on.

5. Safety Speech Freestyling. Yes, we know! We have all heard it a million times. Just because it’s rehashed, I still don’t want to hear your lame canned jokes. I understand this is your one chance to show a little personality during the flight, but hearing Bob the flight attendant – not his real name – rap about oxygen masks makes me want to strangle myself with one.

6. Fellow Passengers. Sadly, I can’t charter my own flight, which means I have to travel with other people. At least I think they’re people. Sometimes you wonder given that don’t seem to get that the big piece of plastic in front of them is a seat with someone in it. Usually me. Kicking it makes me want to stop strangling myself with the oxygen mask and instead have a go on them. Either that or I regret not driving into that tree on the way to the airport.

7. Baggage Claim. Seriously, all you have to do is get the baggage from there, bring it here, and put it on the little conveyor belt. Why is this a half-hour long process? And why is my bag always last? And why do I only spot it when it’s passed me which means I look an idiot running after it?

June 4, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why A Barbecue Is Better Than A Microwave

Given the weather we have had so far this year, the chances are you’ve already had a barbecue. If you haven’t though – and you still insist on taking your microwave to the park for a picnic – then you really need to pay attention. Sitting on the sofa this week is Robert Plastow. A man who has important things to share about nuclear attacks and leather. Yes, we know, you like him already. Here’s Robert:

This isn’t Robert. This is a Beefeater 900 Series Classic 3 Burner Gas Barbecue. But you knew that.

1. Friends. Having friends over to hang around your microwave for a few beers isn’t as thrilling as having a BBQ party. For one, you’d need quite a big kitchen and quite a big microwave. Even then the anticipation of fervent hunger wouldn’t be as satisfyingly met by the nonchalant ding of a microwave as it would be by the crackle and hiss of mesmerising flames as they lick the dripping fat from a perfectly cooked burger. It might be quicker but microwave cooking is about as sociable as J.D Salinger impersonating a hermit crab in an underground bunker with the lights off.

2. Outdoors. Unlike a barbecue, you can’t take a microwave to the beach or to the park. Barbecues can be portable, which means that if the sun is shining you can be cooking over a mini fire and dining al fresco wherever you are. The great outdoors becomes your friend as every landscape becomes a potential dining table where you can feast upon the bounty of nature in both body and mind. Meanwhile, back at home your microwave sits in the kitchen like a dormant robot awaiting the signal for the rise of the machines and the ensuing mechanical apocalypse. (If you have been taking a microwave to the park for a picnic recently, you should talk about it with someone who knows you well and who you feel comfortable around. Ask someone whose opinion you value and see if they think you need to be referred to a therapist.)

3. We Are Man. Sitting by a fire and cooking flesh brings out the masculine caveman instinct, whereas sitting by a microwave probably gives you ball cancer. There’s no medical evidence to support this claim but I challenge any man to happily sit naked on top of a microwave whilst it nukes a spud for 10 minutes straight. Whereas BBQs are different. Men throughout the ages have been more than happy to hang around a fire whilst perpetuating an overused stereotype of primitive masculinity attached to carnivorism. Grunting and farting as they proudly cook another creature’s flesh, it’s easy to see why men prefer to assert their dominance over fire and beast alike rather than frying their nuts in accurately timed bouts of microwave radiation.

4. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Microwaves could destroy Australia, while barbecues make it what it is. You can’t throw another shrimp on the microwave. Not unless you want it to rot along with all the other detritus that has been lost in the sands of time behind your beeping radiation cupboard. Australians would lose their entire culture if microwaves replaced barbecues. They wouldn’t survive the cultural upheaval and havoc that newer phrases would wreak on their well-established parlance. Can you see an Aussie saying “reheat another plate of leftovers in the wavey mate”?. Australia, in its very being, is itself an argument for the prevalence of barbecues over microwaves. Would you deny the culture and population of an entire country for the sake of a conveniently cooked ready-meal?

5. The World Of Leather. A microwave ‘leatherises’ meat. Try cooking a steak in the microwave and see what happens. Seriously. Go and spend a good chunk of money on a really nice fillet steak and put it in your microwave set to max power for 5 mins and watch it shrivel into a poor impersonation of a mummified chihuahua. Alternatively, season and lightly oil it, then flame grill it to perfection over the glowing grill of your beloved gas barbecue. If you eat the one from the microwave you’ll be confined to the smallest room in the house whilst your barbecuing friends will be drinking all your beer.

6. Nuclear Attack. A microwave destroys the nutritional value of food, whereas barbecues lock it in behind walls of chargrilled deliciousness. Microwaving is not called ‘nuking’ your food without reason. When nuking, you are heating your food through a process of molecular friction, which destroys the delicate molecules of vitamins and phytonutirents. And that’s SCIENCE. Read it and weep. You might as well take something really healthy, sniff it and then eat warm cardboard – it is pretty much the same experience you will get from microwaving your food. I challenge any microwave fan to a scurvy cook-off. You try living off of microwaved food alone for 3 months while I’ll take my vitamins barbecue style. Whoever gets scurvy first, loses.

7. Active Pursuits. Microwaves are the tools of the obese and lazy living dead. Get up off your fat bum and barbecue something before the last vitamin in your radiated body gives up and dies. Get outside, breathe in the air, enjoy the sunshine with all its energy giving vitamin D and use your fat covered muscles to drag your grill out of the shed before they waste away. Barbecuing takes time and has to be done outdoors which means you get the benefits of both exercise and of being in your evolutionary home: nature. You remember nature don’t you microwave fans? Or are you too removed from it in your automated, mechanized matrix of sloth to only recall images of the outside world when beamed to you through the pixels of an electrified screen? Get outside and barbecue now!

May 28, 2011
7 Reasons We Will Not Publish Your Guest Post

This is not your usual midweek post. It’s more the kind of topic you would expect to read on Russian Roulette Sunday. Unfortunately, we just can’t wait until Sunday. This needs to be addressed right now. Before something really bad happens.

We don’t like to brag, but we get a lot of guest post enquiries. So much so that neither of us have had to make up an imaginary US-based doctor who likes paragliding for a long time now. The enquiries we receive generally tell us a lot about a person. And they tell us a lot about what we might see in a submission. For the last eighteen months we have made it our duty to respond to every single enquiry. Sometimes about two weeks late, but we do respond. The time has now come that this must end. Replying to enquiries such as the one below is a complete waste of time. A bad enquiry will almost always lead to a bad submission.

The following email has been received a number of times, from a number of different people. It’s a template. Templates are bad. If you want to write for 7 Reasons, never ever use a template. Here’s why:

Dear Editor of “7reasons.org“

1. Greeting. We’re not so wrapped up in self-love that we expect every single guest post enquiry to come from a regular 7 Reasons reader. As such we don’t expect the author to know the trials and tribulations of our lives – that we so aptly share on a daily basis. We would have thought, however, that if you were really keen to write for 7 Reasons, you’d at least have done a bit of research. Just maybe to find out who to address an email to. It’s really not that hard. We have a useful ‘About Us’ page and a very helpful ‘Contact Us’ page. Even if all you do is read the ‘Write For Us’ page, logic would surely dictate that writing Dear The Team sounds so much better than Dear Editor of 7Reasons.org. We’re not feeling the love with that.

I enjoyed 7reasons.org and found it very interesting. The language used here is very easy to understand and in good language.

2. Charm Offensive Fail. This is patronising and doesn’t make sense. “The language used here is very easy to understand,” because we can write in sentences you mean? And what does, “in good language” mean? If you’d written, “in a good language” then at least we’d have known you rate English above French, but just to say, “in good language” is completely bemusing. Not even Marc’s enigma machine could decipher it.

So I was wondering if you would be posting more articles on Contact Lenses(including brands & types etc.) if so then I would like to be considered as guest writer for your site. I would love to write on Contact Lenses for about 350 to 400 words.

3. We’re A Website. This is good, referencing previous posts makes us think you might just know what we’re about. But then you go and spoil it by suggesting you want to write “on contact lenses”. What sort of pen writes on a contact lens? Given that you’ll probably be able to fit a maximum of one word onto a contact lens, that’s a minimum of 350 to 400 contact lenses too. And one other thing. We’re a bloody website. Do we look like we accept submissions written on eyewear?

The article will be exclusively written for your site and will be unique. And will not be published anywhere else.

4. Doubtful. That’s nice. Unfortunately, we’re not sure whether we believe you. The enquiry template you have used is far from unique. How do we know you haven’t got a 7 Reasons template?

Thus resulting in majority of bangs to your site.

5. Bangs! Excuse me? Between us we have over twenty years of experience using the internet. And we are pretty adept at it. We know about the front and back ends and we know that in worldwide web parlance a cookie is not something you can eat. What we have never come across though is the term ‘bangs’. We assume it means ‘hits’. But even then why are we only getting the majority? Where are the minority going?

In return I would only accept an in link to my webpage.

6. Demands. That’s a shame because we were going to offer you an elephant on a unicycle. We suspect you mean you’d like a link to your site somewhere in the post, but again, to get on 7 Reasons, it helps if you can write.

Please let me know if you would be interested in allowing us to write a post for 7reasons.org.

7. Snarky. Are we interested in giving you permission to write for us? The whole ‘Write For Us’ page really indicates that you have permission to do that. It also, for those in doubt, indicates that we are interested in receiving guest posts. Perhaps our ‘Write For Us’ page isn’t clear enough for you? Or perhaps you’re just a plank? The thing is, we know what you mean here, but you’ve irritated us so much in the rest of your email that now we are just in the mood to be awkward. Don’t give us the excuse next time.

So, in conclusion, if you wish to write for 7 Reasons do your research and make sure you can write. We won’t tell you again.

May 26, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons The Earth Could Really End Today

We were close to the end of the world yesterday and today we are mere hours away from a good rapturing. In light of this I really admire you for coming back to 7 Reasons when you should probably be saying goodbye to your loved ones. In keeping with the end of the world theme, today’s guest post is an extraordinary look into another seven ways the world might end today. It’s written by Greg Buckskin, a writer and blogger for Comcast.USDirect.com – home to Comcast Cable Deals. At least that’s what he does when he’s not skiing the Utah powder. After the nice picture below, it’ll be Greg.

For many fundamentalist Christians, May 21st will be their last day at work—or on the planet for that matter. Harold Camping, owner of the $100 million Family Radio Christian network, has predicted that May 21st is the day of the rapture—the end of the world when the righteous will be taken to heaven and the wicked will be left here on earth wallowing in misery until October 21st, when the earth will finally be destroyed for good.

Although Camping’s predictions have failed in the past (he also predicted that the world would end in 1994—oops), he has many followers who are backing him up, selling their homes, quitting their jobs, and budgeting their last cent to run out on May 21st.

Who knows, maybe the world will end on May 21st. I’ve been wrong before; I thought Arnold and Maria would be together forever. But most likely, May 21st will be just like any other day, except for the lamenting cries of those who went into huge debt so they could live it up until the 21st and thought they’d never have to pay it back. However, there are tons of other ‘real’ ways the world could end this weekend, or even in the next half hour. These events would be so random that I’ll bet none of us ever even pay it much mind.

1. Nuclear War. Stanford Professor Emeritus Martin Hellman figures that at any given moment there is about a 10% chance of the world ending in nuclear war. That’s a bigger percentage than most of us have of dying from common forms of cancer—more than 10 times bigger in most cases. There are still over 25,000 nuclear weapons in existence today. North Korea, Iran, some pissed off fundamentalist who finds one of Sadam’s WMDs buried in the desert somewhere—theses are all likely candidates and extremely unpredictable. How is your bomb shelter coming along?

2. Asteroid. We all know that Armageddon was a completely unrealistic movie, right? I mean who would hire an oil rig captain to blow up an asteroid? Well, it may not be so far from the truth. Right now scientists from NASA and other organizations around the globe are predicting that asteroid 1999 RQ36 could have as big as a 1/1000 chance of hitting earth in 2182. When you think about the vastness of the universe, that’s actually pretty good odds. If a big asteroid took out the dinosaurs, why couldn’t we be next.

3. Super Volcano. We all learned about volcanoes in 3rd grade science class, but most of that curriculum focused on places like Hawaii and Mt. Saint Helens. Chances are your teacher didn’t tell you about the super volcano that is Yellowstone National Park. Only fairly recently have scientists discovered that Yellowstone is a giant caldera, an underground volcano where magma has been building for hundreds of thousands of years. The last time a super volcano erupted (75,000 years ago in Sumatra), it exploded with the force of over 10,000 Mt. Saint Helens, covered the world with ash and brought about a global ice age. According to calculations, the Yellowstone caldera explodes about once every 600,000 years. The last explosion was over 640,000 years ago. Yikes!

4. Disease. Bird flu? Swine flu? Forget about it. What about airborne HIV? Or some new disease that has not even developed yet? If you’ve ever read The Andromeda Strain you know that all it takes is for one virus to mutate in exactly the right way to kill us all instantly. Then the zombie apocalypse hits, and it’s every man for himself.

5. Gamma Ray Burst. Gamma ray bursts have been observed in far distant galaxies for many years. A Gamma ray burst generally happens as a star goes supenova and can release more energy in ten milliseconds than our sun will release over its 10 billion year lifetime. Most of the observed bursts are in galaxies that are billions of light years from earth. But what if a closer star decided to explode (or our sun) and send a beam of high-energy gamma rays our way? We’d be space dust before any of us even knew what happened.

6. Global Warming. Global warming is a slow phenomenon compared to our short human lives, but it can be a rather quick event in the earth’s life. A warmer planet won’t simply mean that we can’t wear long pants anymore, it will change the entire way the planet functions. It will disrupt plant growth, extend the life cycle of many animals and insects, especially those that live in tropical regions and carry diseases like malaria. It also increases air pollution and causes flooding and wildfires and increases the size a magnitude of tropical storms—think Katrina, but on a scale that would cover all of North America. Currently, about 150,000 deaths can be attributed to global warming. If we don’t watch out, we could face a slow death by a warming planet.

7. Big Robots From Outer Space. So this one is a little more far-fetched. But astronomers are discovering new planets all the time, some that could even support life like earth’s. In fact, recently, Gliese 581g—a planet similar to earth—was discovered only 20 light-years from our solar system. Who is to say that life does not exist elsewhere in the cosmos, that they may be more technologically advanced than ourselves, and can travel the stars? And if there is one thing I’ve learned from watching movies, it’s that aliens rarely come to earth just to see what’s here. They usually (much like we are doing right now) have destroyed their own planet and are looking for a new home. And they don’t take too kindly to the natives. Will they send giant robots to annihilate us or will it be pod people to snatch our bodies? I don’t know. All I can say is, “watch the skies.”

May 21, 2011
7 Reasons That Having A Baby Can Be Hard On A Man
It’s Saturday. Or, as we call it around these parts, Richard O’Hagan Day. You see Richard, apart from being a fine writer, is on a mission. A mission to become the third permanent member of the 7 Reasons team. He may not have mentioned it out loud, he may not even realise it himself, but given the sheer number of O’Hagan works we have in the 7 Reasons ‘to be published’ vault, his sub-conscious wants it. Badly. Just take a look at these figures that show the origins of submissions and their associated percentages.
- USA – 28%
- UK – 23%
- Australia – 5%
- France – 3%
- Canada – 2%
- Pakistan – 2%
- India – 2%
- South Africa – 1%
- Muppetville – 1%
- Richard O’Hagan – 33%
Exactly. Incredible. And rather disturbing. Which is a shame really because the writer of The Memory Blog isn’t disturbing at all. He’s a great writer with lots of useful advice. Which he will now aptly demonstrate.

Three Men And A Byron

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. It is something along the lines of “He’s a man (allegedly). He knows nothing about how hard it is to have a baby. How DARE he try and offer an opinion on this.”

To which all I can say is, bear with me*, ladies. There’s a point to all of this. I am a father. Marc of this parish has just become father to The Legendary Byron Sebastian Fearns. And Jon has just got engaged, which means that fatherhood is marching towards him with the grim inevitability of a giant spider with a particularly juicy fly snared in its web. There are some serious points which he needs to be aware of, as do any men out there without issue. There’s a big temptation to think that the difficult bit comes around nine months before the birth, but that’s not the case. Once the baby arrives, life is hard for a man.

1. Being a Role Model. You’ve spend the last few decades of your life belching, breaking wind and yelling when you want to. Sorry, but there’s someone else in the house to do that now. Your role is now to be a positive role model for the child, which means an end to coming home bladdered at 3am and trying to make toast using the DVD player, no popping out to the shops and vanishing for three days, and absolutely no supporting Manchester United. (Unless your offspring will be Charlie Sheen’s grandson, in which case you’ve a family tradition to maintain. And even Charlie draws the line at the last thing).

2. Expense. Everyone says that babies are expensive. They’re not. It will be years before they crash your car, or you need to bail them out. People who look after babies, on the other hand, really are expensive. You will find yourself forking out hundreds of pounds a month just so that you can go to work to earn the money to pay the people who look after your child whilst you go to work. It is a cycle more vicious than the one that resulted in a baby in the first place.

3. Pain. Once your female partner has given birth, nothing on this earth is going to convince them that you are enduring any kind of pain whatsoever. The Black Knight in ‘Monty Python & The Holy Grail’ wasn’t brave, he just knew that he was never going to convince his Lady that having all of your limbs lopped off justified reaching for the Aspirin. Being a father means never being able to complain of a hangover again.

4. Language. Whilst we are at it, you might as well brace yourself for the fact that ladies in labour are not always the politest, and that you may be about to learn a few new words. All of them directed at you and several of them anatomically improbable.

5. Empathy. For many years, you and the prospective mother of your prospective child have lived in harmony, anticipating each other’s needs and desires. Having a baby will put an end to all of that. There are two questions that you should never ask a woman in labour, and one of them is “How does it feel?”** You should never ask this question, because you will receive an answer which puts you in the one situation in which you are unequipped to empathise. The answer is “Like the worst period pain ever”***

6. In-Laws. If you produce a baby, your in-laws will visit. Need I say more?

7. Space (Lack Thereof). You might be thinking that the saying that babies might be small but they need a lot of stuff is some sort of urban myth. There are certainly many urban myths about having a baby and you’d be right to disregard them**** but not this one. Work might expand to fill the time available, but nothing beats the rule which says that baby stuff expands to fill the space available. There’s a great temptation to think that you can get around this by moving to a bigger house, but it won’t work. There will still be stuff everywhere. And what is more, you’ll have to work more hours to pay the bigger mortgage, meaning you need more childcare, meaning that you need to work harder to pay for the childcare, and so on until death, really.

On the other hand, children are great fun and the hardship is well worth it. Yes, even the bits where she swears at you.

*I said bear WITH ME, not ‘bear down’. Stop it! Now! Think of the carpets!

**You’re not old enough to know the other one

***There’s actually a question on Facebook which says ‘Which hurts more, having a baby or a kick in the testicles’, which has only been answered by bigots and idiots. And the teenage daughter of a friend of mine, who has experience of neither.

****Disregard any books you might be given, too. The babies can’t read them and so have no idea what to do
May 7, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Build A Fortress From Furniture

Remember those great days when you’d put the chairs together, turn the table upside down and grab ever available cushion in the house? That’s right, when you were making a fort. You probably haven’t done that for a while have you? We can’t help but think that’s wrong. Which is why we are delighted to welcome Ewan MacDougal to the 7 Reasons sofa. He’s going to put it right. And given that he spends most of his time playing around with Furniture 123’s living room furniture, he probably knows what he’s talking about. Here’s Ewan:

The relaxed ambience of The Keep

So over the last two or three years I’ve regressed, I don’t think it’s that uncommon – something to do with not wanting to be called a grown up I guess, anyway I’ve noticed a definite increase in the amount of toys I’m buying, cartoons I’m watching* , Dinosaurs I’m absent mindedly doodling**. I’ve even suddenly got an obsession with wanting a pet tortoise, mostly because I think it will look like a baby dinosaurs. In essence I think I’ve become about 7 years old (which is actually about a third my age). A few things are different about being 7 this time around though, one is that I have a job, so I can buy the big box of second hand dinosaurs from eBay without being forced to save up for a year, and another is that I now live with “contemporaries” rather than “parents” meaning that when I decide it’s a good idea to scrap the traditional living room lay out in favour of a fortress built out of living room furniture. The idea should theoretically be open for discussion rather than immediately vetoed as it was in 1994. So here are my seven reasons why having a fortress in place of living room furniture would be infinitely better.

1. End To Classism. So nearly everyone I know around my age in this area lives in basically the same pre furnished rented house, if they’re paying a lot the furniture looks quite nice, if they’re not it’ll smell a bit damp and has the odd hole. Basically you can walk into any house and instantly know what they’re paying and judge for your self if you’re socially better than them. I believe this is unfair, I believe that we should judge people not by the tatty state of there furniture but by the quality of there posters and there DVD / CD collection. I’m no historian, but I am vaguely aware that communism made similar attempts, and tried to get rid of this kind of class signifier. Where they went wrong, however, was to try and standardise everything***. How boring. No, no one wants to live in a generic living room, so instead let’s let creativity flow, let’s all spend our free time draping sheets over armchairs and turning sofas upside down. Let’s make tents out of cushions and barricades out of book shelves. I want all our furniture over turned and torn apart until it no longer has any value as furniture, but instead must be appreciated for the creativity and effectiveness as an awesome fort.

2. Privacy. So windows, yes I guess they were a good idea, the whole day light thing and being able to see what’s going on outside are all pretty handy traits. The trouble is though windows work both ways, people can look in at you whilst you’re looking out. I’m part of the anonymous internet generation.. by that I mean, I’m not always that sociable. I’m not that sociable and some times I have shameful TV taste that I don’t want the neighbours and passers by to know about. Curtains might be a temporary solution, but let’s face it, if I start closing the curtains every few hours; it’s going to look suspicious. Net curtains will work for some purposes but you can still see TV screens. The only real way to find privacy in the 21st century is to build a fort. Forts are all about secretness. The more secret a fort is the better, and let’s face it even if you have nothing to hide, pretending that you have can be really fun. Watching the lunchtime news under a duvet canopy with headphones, knowing the postman won’t even bother ringing your bell to deliver that parcel because it’s so obvious you’re “out” is incredibly exciting.****

3. Home Security. When I was growing up I never actually built forts, I built hide outs. I think this is probably because of my pacifist parents thinking that fort was too violent a word. However you’ll notice that I’m arguing that we build a fort. Why? well simple, reason 3 home security. Part of being a grown up now means that if a big nasty robber decides to break into the house, it’s now my job (as probably the biggest boy in the house) to defend us. What happened to the idea that Mum and Dad would always be able to protect you from everything? Despite my excellent Batman knowledge, I’m not sure how easily I can fend off these villains, so I need every advantage possible. Having an intricately built fort in the living room, with all kinds of escape hatches, hidden home alone style weapons and booby traps that only I, as architect of the fort, know the locations of would defiantly be an asset. These villains probably have all kinds of murdering experience, but when I’m hidden in my fort they’ll have no idea where I am, then when they least expect it, KAPOW I’ll pop out behind them with a water pistol filled with slippery oil. I’ll squirt them and the floor behind them. The shock will make them slide on the oil and they’ll fly all the way out of the house. Problem solved!

4. Exercise. One of the reasons why I’m a bit nervous about taking on all these villains is that I’m probably not in my peak physical shape, I’ve never been to a gym, and running seems incredibly boring. What I really need is some kind of obstacle in my living room that I had no choice but utilise several times a day. One of the arguments I’ve heard against building a fort in the living room is that it’d be like having a “blinking obstacle course in the way.” Well I think it’s in the whole homes interest that we are able to defend our selves against any attack, therefore the extra exercise we will get from this obstacle is indisputably a good thing! Anyone who doesn’t want it is surely in league with the murders and robbers and should be treated accordingly.

5. Squatter’s Rights. I only work part time*****, as a result I don’t earn that much, therefore paying rent seems to take a rather large amount out of my pocket. I’d rather not pay it to be honest. I don’t claim to understand the intricacies of squatters rights, but I know it has something to do with being allowed to live in a place for free if you stay there for a long time without being kicked out first. I quite like the idea of living in my home for free. I think if I just stopped paying the rent though Mr Shake the landlord would probably evict me fairly quickly. Now if I had an incredible fortress that I could hide in, filled with midnight feast supplies and spy holes, I’m sure I could hide from him with out being caught for literally hours. I’m sure that means that eventually squatter’s rights would be declared mine and I’d be able to live in my fort forever. Maybe I could even raise a family there?

6. Safety In Wartime. We live in uncertain times, terror attacks, a recent wave of revolutions, people over reacting to reality TV shows. War could break out at any moment, and with most WWII Anderson shelters turned into garden sheds, and 1950’s nuclear bunkers being kept top secret, a well built living room furniture fortress would probably be my place of choice to feel safe when the sirens go off. Shelters with walls made from pillows and blankets are going to make for a far more comfy retreat than the cold out door and underground shelters of the past, and let’s face it, in this age of advanced nuclear weaponry they’ll probably be just as effective.

7. Just Because. Building forts out of furniture is an awesome fun activity and anyone who disagrees is just a big loser face!

*My Batman knowledge is now amazing!

** These dinosaurs by the way tend to be locked in epic wars against robots, there pretty incredible!

*** Also maybe labour camps, mass executions and those kinds of things were a bad idea too? I think there traditionalist view of forts missed the point.

****Where as having a basement room with no curtains, where your woken up every day off by the postmen peering in your window and knocking on the glass to deliver your house mates parcel is not fun.

***** Perhaps the free time this leaves me with has contributed to my desire to build a fort

March 19, 2011