Tag: seven reasons

7 Reasons That The Top 100 Boys Names List 2010 is Intriguing

The ONS list of the most popular baby names in the UK during 2010 has been published and there are some stunning results. We’re not going to look at the girls names (because they could be used for a second post), today we’re going to look at boys names. Here are seven reasons that the list is intriguing.

1. Political Impact. The name Cameron has steeply declined in popularity. In 2000 it was the 24th most popular boys name; in 2009 it had fallen steeply to number 52, and in 2010 it fell further to number 61. For the sake of political balance we’ll take a look the opposition too: Ed hasn’t been in charge for long enough to be of any use, so we’ll look at the name Gordon. Gordon is such a deeply unpopular man…sorry…name, we’re discussing names here, that it doesn’t appear on the list at all. Not in 2010, not in 2009 and not in 2000. It turns out that Gordon has always been deeply unpopular. Oh, and as for Nick, who cares? Nope, me either.

2. The Unusual. The name Kayden, which languished at number 1425 at the turn of the millennium (who knew that the word millennium had two Ns?) has rocketed up to number 99 on last year’s list. Now I don’t know any Kaydens and nor, I fervently hope, do you, so I wondered if there was a famous Kayden responsible for the increased popularity of the name. It turns out there is. She’s called Kayden Kross and she’s a porn actress who got into the business because she wanted to buy a pony. People are naming their boys after a porn star. A female porn star. That is weird. They would have been better off naming them after the pony.

3. F1. The name Jenson has risen in popularity over the last ten years from 273 up to 96. This can surely only be attributable to the popularity of Jenson Button. The name Lewis also appears at number 27 on the list. Okay, so it’s decreased in popularity a bit over the last ten years, but it’s still a very well-used name. As for the name Fernando, well that appears nowhere, which is how I like it. It goes to show that the British public do have some taste. Despite the weird porn thing.

4. Alexander: A safe name; a solid name; a sensible name; a reliable name and some might say, a dull name. But that just isn’t true. The facts tell us that the name Alexander is more exciting than you (okay, I, mostly I) had previously supposed. From its year 2000 position of number 21 it went on a rollercoaster ride in which it plunged to number 22 in 2009 and then, in a monumental upswing of fortunes in 2010, scaled the list back to number 21. Breathtaking. Turns out that Alexander isn’t as dull as we thought it was.

5. Noah. Over the past ten years, the name Noah has risen from number 134 on the list to number 18. I’m sure we all know a Noah*. But I’m not keen on this name at all. In fact, I firmly believe that the popularity of this name could be a consequence of society having become increasingly more noisy over the past ten years. After all, it’s easy to mishear a mumbled reply of cluelessness when near heavy traffic, a mobile phone or a laptop:

What shall we call him, darling?

Noah, dear.

That’s certainly more probable than everyone making the same feeble joke about a boy being born or conceived at a time of heavy rain, isn’t it? I hope so.

6. Robert. What the hell has happened to Robert? It’s at number 90! When I was at school it seems that approximately a third of all boys were called Robert but now it’s only the 90th most popular name in the UK. Here are some names from last year that are considerably more popular than the name Robert: Ethan, bloody Noah, Jayden (which is the correct spelling of Kayden), Riley, Logan, Tyler, Finley, Mason and Kai. Kai! Who the hell knows more Kais then they know Roberts, Robs, Robbys, Bobbys and Bobs? In 2010, Robert has plummeted so far in popularity that it’s lower on the list than Caleb. How many Calebs have you ever met? It turns out the only thing you can do to have a less popular name than Robert is to be called Gordon or be related to me.

7. Self-Interest. One of the most striking things about the list itself is that none of my immediate family are on it. I’m not on it. My son’s not on it. My wife isn’t on it (the girls version of the list, obviously). Fred and Rose make the lists – despite the exploits of the West family – but no one that shares my surname is on them. I can’t help but feel a little left out. Does this epic societal rejection make us the least popular family in the UK? Should we change our names by deed poll to sensible conventional names like Harley, Hayden, Jayden, Kayden or Kai? Are we going to be cast adrift in a lifeboat or exiled to the Isle of Wight? I suspect it’s going to mean that we’re just going to have to continue spelling our names out to people, but still, it would be nice to be loved.

*That’s a top clothing and accessories bit of wordplay especially for girls, right there.

July 28, 2011
7 Reasons Not To Have A Bat In Your Dining Room

This may come as something of a surprise to regular readers of 7 Reasons, but we’re not experts on everything that we write about. Often, our pieces contain much speculation and conjecture. Today’s piece, however, is different. Today’s piece is written from experience. If you should find yourself in a dining room with a bat, this is exactly how it will go down.

1. Surprise! As you sit in your dining room on a quiet Saturday night catching up on missed television programmes using the iPlayer, you’ll feel relaxed and at ease. You’ll take a sip of your drink and languidly stretch out your legs. You’ll stifle a yawn and stretch out your arms. Eventually, you’ll lean back in your seat and glance up toward the ceiling light, to ascertain what is casting the strange shadow that you have seen from the corner of your eye for the past few seconds. Then you’ll scream involuntarily and bolt from the room and slam the door shut behind you. A large bat flying around your dining room will come as something of a surprise to you.

2. Disbelief. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Your wife will enquire in a startled manner, somewhat surprised by your shrieking.

“There’s a bat in the dining room.”

“What?”

“There’s a bat in the dining room.”

“What?”

“Bat!” (You’ll flap your arms about miming flight at this point). “Dining room!” (You’ll also point at the dining room.)

“What’s it doing in there?”

“Flying around the ceiling lamp and watching a documentary about Stalin.”

Rather disbelievingly, your wife will go to the dining room, open the door slightly and peer through the gap. On closing it very quickly, she will then announce that “there’s a bat in the dining room”.

3. Spin. Anxious that you should always see the positive side of any situation, you’ll start brainstorming. A bat in the dining room could be a good thing, you’ll think. A bat in the dining room would mean that there would never be any insects in there. A bat in the dining room would ensure that you could write in there with absolutely no chance of interruption: You could look at the internet with no chance of interruption! A bat in the dining room would…be a bloody great bat in the dining room. It turns out that the elephant in the room is that there’s a bat in the room. There’s no upside so good that it can surmount the fact that your dining room contains a bat.

4. Whimsy. Having established that having a bat in the dining room is a bad thing, you’ll turn your mind to what the hell to do with it. “We could call the RSPCA”, your wife will suggest.

“We’re not being cruel to it. We’re being inconvenienced by it.”

“Perhaps there’s a local bat group.”

“Yes, maybe they could send some sort of bat man.”

“A dog warden?”

“Or, we could call Commissioner Gordon and he could raise the bat-signal. Perhaps we could…”

5. Motivation. “…Oh my god!”

“What?!”

“My gin and tonic’s in there!”

6. De-batting. “Darling”, you’ll say, “We’re just going to have to man-up and deal with the bat ourselves…In you go.” This motivational speech will fail to make her deal with the bat on your behalf, so you’ll have to work as a team. You will close every door in the house (so the bat can’t start terrorising you in other rooms) and your wife will peer back into the dining room. She will find that the bat is still flying around in there, fluttering in haphazard circles around the ceiling light like a terrifying and gigantic moth. A behemoth*. You’ll formulate a plan. You will run in, raise the blind, open the window and run out again: Your wife will be in charge of opening and closing the door. You’ll take a deep breath and steel yourself for the task. Eventually, though too soon for you, your wife will open the door and you will burst into the room and stride toward the blind. Startled by the sudden presence in the room, the bat will realise that flying around is not a safe thing to do and he will decide to land. At the very instant that you arrive at the blind, the bat will land on it, inches from your face. “Aaaarrrgghhh”, you’ll scream as you run out of the room. Your wife will close the door.

You’ll realise that another plan is called for. If you raise the blind with the bat on it, you’ll just squash the bat. You’ll have a flat bat. And bats, if you flatten them, appear bigger. So, if you can’t raise the blind and open the window, you’ll have to trap the bat and remove it. Having rummaged in the kitchen cupboard for a suitable container for a considerable time, your wife will emerge with her Tupperware bat-trap. This time, she will be in charge of trapping the bat, and you will be in charge of the door (yay!) and the lid (boo!). You’ll open the door and your wife will stride in and head toward the blind with the container held out in front of her. Arriving at the blind she’ll cover the bat with the container. Now that the bat is safely contained, you’ll enter the room clutching the lid. You’ll slide the lid slowly and carefully between the blind and the Tupperware box and affix it. Phew.

7. Post-bat. As you breathe your sigh of relief the bat will let out a heart-rending squeak. Your wife will head into the back garden to release the bat and you’ll be in charge of the back door (yay again!). The moment that the lid is removed, the bat will flutter out and your wife will scream and run toward the door, which will cause you to laugh. Briefly. Eventually, having congratulated your wife on her brave conduct in the face of a big, scary bat and having closed every window in the house (twice), you’ll return to the comfort and security of Josef Stalin and your gin and tonic. Then you’ll discover that the bat has left you a “present” on your white Verner Panton stackable chair.

So there you go. That’s roughly what will happen if you have a bat in your dining room. I don’t recommend it.

*You’ll be inordinately proud of that wordplay.

July 26, 2011
7 Reasons To Get A Winter Beach Body

It’s the summer, and chances are that, right now, your thoughts are turning to holidays, with all of the indolent ease, languor and sheer carefree bliss that they entail. Unless you’re standing in a branch of WH Smith and gazing at a magazine stand consisting of dozens of covers featuring airbrushed pictures and article titles such as “How To Get The Perfect Summer Beach Body”, in which case you’re probably experiencing something akin to terror. But don’t panic, you don’t need the “perfect summer beach body” for your holiday; in fact, it’s infinitely inferior to the winter beach body. Here are seven reasons why.

1. A Winter Beach Body Is A Safer Option. And safety in the sea is important. When I was a svelte child, learning to swim, one of the things that all of my friends and family spent many hours teaching me to do was float. “It’s simple”, they would say, “you just stretch your arms and legs out and relax”, and then they’d just lie there, on top of the sea. Then it would be my turn: I’d stretch my arms and legs out, relax, and soon I’d find myself floating serenely. To the bottom of the sea. I would sink like a stone every time. But if you have a winter beach body, you’ll be difficult to sink and, should you get into trouble and find yourself floating away from the shore, you’ll be easier to spot from the beach or a helicopter. Your chances of surviving your beach holiday will be manifestly better than those of summer-bodied people.

2. A Winter Beach Body Makes A Statement. Getting a summer beach body is easy, anyone can do it. But getting a winter beach body takes a considerable investment of time and money and requires technology too. You can use it to flaunt your wealth and status. What does your winter beach body say about you? A winter beach body says that you can afford to dine well; a winter beach body says that you’re a car owner; a winter beach body says that you live somewhere modern festooned with lifts and escalators; a winter beach body says that you can afford twice as much suntan oil as anyone else on the beach; a winter beach body says that you might own a Segway. A winter beach body signifies affluence and ease.

3. A Winter Beach Body Is Practical. You might be holidaying in Britain and for that, a winter beach body is the better option. On British beaches, where people consume ice cream to warm themselves up, you’ll at least stand half a chance of not dying of hypothermia or exposure. What’s the last question that any family in the UK asks before they head off to the beach? “Have you remembered to pack the blanket”? In this country, insulation is most important thing that you can take to the beach. Winter beach bodies have more of that, built-in.

4. Getting A Winter Beach Body Is More Fun. You don’t need to starve yourself or drink eight litres of water a day to get a winter beach body. You won’t have to visit a gym either, unless you’re going there to use the horizontal bar (the one with the bottles on it). You won’t have to spend the months leading up to your holiday eating only beetroot during daylight hours (except for every second Tuesday, which is miso soup day) and you’ll never, ever have to eat celery.

5. A Winter Beach Body Requires Less Hair Removal. As the possessor of a winter beach body you’ll be less inclined to wear a bikini made from a shoelace or a pair of budgie smugglers so small that they can barely contain your budgie. This means that there’ll be less hair removal, which is good as hair removal is the most painful experience known to man (and the second most painful known to woman). I would sooner break my fingers with a piano lid than tweeze a nose hair, let alone pluck one from down there, beneath my trousers. A winter beach body means less pain. Or fewer pain, to be correct about it.

6. A Winter Beach Body Frees You From The Beach. With a winter beach body, you might find that you’ll want to spend less time on the beach, away from all of those preening show-offs. This is brilliant, as no one actually likes the beach. It’s uncomfortable, being made of either stones (which hurt) or sand (which chafes). It’s boring, as the number of people busy ignoring it and burying their noses in their books demonstrates and it’s frustrating, as your chips will be stolen by a seagull. If you spend less time on the beach, you’ll have more fun, and you’ll get to eat all of your chips yourself. Unless you’re a man. Your winter beach body will liberate you from the beach.

7. It’s Too Late To Do Anything Else. Having blithely ignored every magazine at the supermarket checkout and every other daytime television programme telling you how to get the perfect summer beach body for the past five months or so, there’s very little time left. This is good, as getting a winter beach body is quick and easy. It won’t be the perfect summer beach body as depicted in magazines (which are only ever perfect in the mind of the beholder, and never in the mind of the owner), but it’ll be your body. Take it to the beach and enjoy yourself, or even better, take it away from the beach and enjoy yourself. Oh, and don’t read magazines.*

*Do, however, read websites.

July 22, 2011
7 Reasons Not To Throw A Foam Pie At Rupert Murdoch

You probably hadn’t considered throwing a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch. Nor, I must confess, had I, until Jonnie Marbles turned up at the House of Commons earlier today and threw a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch. Then I considered it. After a half a nanosecond or so of consideration, I came to the conclusion that throwing a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch is an imbecilic act. I know that most right-thinking people will probably already have come to a similar conclusion about the merits of throwing foam pies at Rupert Murdoch, so they need read no further; they can simply retweet this piece, press the Google +1 button at the bottom of it (and share it on other social media too) and go on their merry way. For all wrong-thinking people – that’s just you, Jonnie – here are seven reasons not to throw a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch.

Don't do this.

1. It Draws Attention Away From The Hearing. Hitting a man in the face with a pie is a dramatic and attention-grabbing act. Because of that, a lot of the focus of the coverage of the Murdochs’ appearance before the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, will be about the pie, rather than the important issue of wholesale corporate corruption that was being raised. Am I writing about the hearing? Are you reading about the hearing? No…well… yes, but only a tiny bit because I’m demonstrating how little we’re reading about the hearing because of the pie. Mostly what’s happening here is that I’m writing about the pie and you’re reading about the pie. I’ll also be reading about the pie when I edit this and eventually, once I’ve finished, I’ll be tweeting about the pie, even though the pie isn’t the point of the hearing. The point of the hearing is corruption. You’ve obscured that.

2. It Generates Sympathy For Him. With one blow of a pie, you’ve turned this man, the head of a corrupt organisation that has nefariously committed numerous despicable and illegal acts, into a victim; someone that’s deserving of our sympathy. Because, while every right-thinking person will abhor what was carried out in Rupert Murdoch’s name at the News of the World, that very same innate moral decency will cause them to see a frail, elderly man being subjected to an assault as an outrage. Because assault is an outrage, no matter whom it is perpetrated against. Even Rupert Murdoch.

3. You’ve Made Him Appear Lovable. It seems that making us feel sympathy for Rupert Murdoch wasn’t enough for you though. You’ve actually made him appear loveable. By provoking his wife to leap so rapidly and publicly to his defence, you’ve demonstrated that he is loved, and very loyally. You’ve taken a man that heads a sinister and morally-bankrupt organisation and caused us all to admire his wife’s love for him. In terms of public relations, you’ve accomplished more for Murdoch in five seconds than his own PR people have managed in the past five years. And you’re not even getting paid for it.

4. You’ll Look Incompetent. While I’m no expert on pie-throwing, I can’t help but think you’re not very good at it. You see, in my (admittedly inexpert) understanding of the act of pie-throwing, a pie is supposed to be thrown by the pie-thrower into the face of the pie-receiver, or victim as they are also known. But what’s going on in this picture?

That man appears to have been caught brilliantly smack in the middle of the face by a pie. But wait! That doesn’t look like an octogenarian media despot magnate. That’s you! You’ve attacked an eighty year old man with a pie and ended up wearing it. That’s possibly the worst throw of a pie in the history of pie-throwing. Throwing a pie doesn’t seem like a difficult thing to do, but you’re not competent to do it. You’re not fit for pie-pose (that only works if read in a New York accent). It was your big moment and you’ve ended up with metaphorical egg on your face. And actual pie.

5. Self-Publicity. It’s an oft-heard-phrase that all publicity is good publicity and this might be seen as having a certain truth to it. If you’re an idiot. For the rest of us, however, and I feel that I am speaking for the entire population of the planet here, you’re going to be forever known as the prick that threw the pie. Badly. That won’t help you with your comedy career. In fact, that won’t help you with any career, and certainly not one that involves throwing or pies.

6. The Police Won’t Thank You For It. The Metropolitan Police are reeling from the repercussions of the News of the World scandal and their reputation has been severely damaged by it, so sneaking into a commons committee that is being viewed by a vast worldwide audience and attacking a git with a pie is going to make them look feckless and incompetent right at the very moment that they probably don’t want to. Now, ordinarily, exposing institutional incompetence might be seen as a good thing, but not for you, because right at this moment, the Metropolitan Police are your landlords. They’re also your caterers; responsible for feeding you and bringing you the odd cup of tea. Probably, in fact, very odd cups of tea. Enjoy those!

7. “All The World Loves A Clown.”, according to Cole Porter. But that’s just not true, in fact, coulrophobia is one of the world’s most commonly professed phobias. What all the world hates, in fact, is a clown. A clown is a coarse buffoon who throws foam pies at people. That’s you. For some duncical, nitwitted, dunderheaded reason you decided to disrupt a long overdue attempt to make News Corp accountable for their actions by pratting around with a pie and you’ve ended up overshadowing an important hearing and distracting from the serious testimony that was being given there. You haven’t damaged News Corp and Rupert Murdoch, you’ve positively helped them. You are a clown. No one likes clowns.

July 20, 2011
7 Reasons Not To Have A Contact Form On Your Website

Okay, up above these words in the menu bar, there’s a page called Contact Us, and we’re beginning to believe that it’s more trouble than it’s worth. In fact, we’re beginning to think we should get rid of it altogether, and we’re coming round to the view that everyone else should too. Now we’re not self-appointed web experts or internet gurus; we’re humourists. If you have a website yourself, we can only advise you to free yourself from the tyranny of the contact form based on our own experience. And, from our experience of having one of the damned things, here are seven reasons to get rid of it.

1. You’ll Have A More Manageable Penis. One of the most frequent things that people use the contact form for is to attempt to sell us penis enlargement pills. And by frequent, I mean we get a lot of penis enlargement offers. In fact, if we don’t visit our inbox for a while it ends up chock-full of enlarged penises. We aren’t really interested in any of these offers (I have a child now, so I probably won’t even need mine for the next eighteen years or so), but it’s a lot of stuff to wade through and ignore. Well, I say ignore, I’m assuming that my writing partner Jon’s ignoring them too. Perhaps he isn’t, though. Perhaps Jon’s buying penis enlargement pills from everyone that’s offering them. It could be that since we’ve been running 7 Reasons, Jon has purchased so many of these pills that his penis has become a major Kent landmark. Maybe ruddy-faced locals in smocks are staring at his chemically-enhanced appendage right now and pointing up at it with awe. Perhaps it’s on Google Earth. Who knows? One thing’s for sure, it’ll be a major hazard to air travellers as the other thing we get offered almost every day is Viagra.

2. You’ll Get To Read Less Gibberish. When the contact form isn’t trying to enlarge our penises, it sends other stuff too. It sends gibberish. Most things containing the subject heading “7 Reasons Contact Form” look like someone just pressed many keys at once. Frequently, we get the message that “sdkjfkl;sdfjsjsdk;” wrote “sjklsdhfkjsdhfjksdfhsjdfhjlksfsdhthurthw”. This is not helpful. In fact, it’s quite scary that “mgklksfdlgjkhg” writes “mxvnbcxn,bvcxb,mvxc” and “hytfhtyhtfyh” writes “vbnmbmnmbnm” on such a regular basis. Our contact page is fairly dull, but it’s not soporific enough to make this many people doze off on their keyboards while they’re reading it. So perhaps this is just the law of averages. Perhaps one person a day actually falls down dead while looking at our contact form. They’re probably dying when they’re reading other posts too, it’s just that we won’t get to know about that. 7 Reasons could be killing them in their droves: We might be the greatest practitioners of genocide since Pol Pot*. Either that, or – I don’t know – but we only get stuff like this from the contact form, not via email or our comments section.

3. Your Life Will Contain Less Mystery. This morning, via the contact form, we received this question: “When does it start airing?” That’s it. That’s the entire message. But what does it even mean? When does what start airing? Is this an enquiry about my laundry? Is this an enquiry about Jon’s penis? 7 Reasons: The Panel Show? Who knows? Certainly not me, and I don’t want to wake up to a mystery of a morning; I’m not Quincy. I just want to wake up to find that it isn’t raining and that there are coffee beans in the house. I would be able to do that if it weren’t for the contact form.

4. Your Messages Will Go To The Right Person. Above our contact form we clearly direct people that wish to write for us to a different page containing a dedicated email address for guest post submissions. This is a (vain) attempt to try to limit the number of identical submissions we receive about car insurance (purportedly all from different people) and to get them sent directly to Jon – who’s in charge of guest post submissions – rather than to me. He’s more patient than I am. He’s calmer than I am. On receiving his ninth identical offer of a car insurance post in a day, Jon’s veins bulge, he turns red, he emits a sound that is part scream, part bellow and part mating call of a rhinoceros and begins to punch the nearest table or wall. I, on the other hand, don’t take receiving them nearly as well. So there’s no likelihood of these things getting used and we just end up getting rather worked up when we receive them. Well, I do.

5. You’ll Feel Better About Yourself. This is from the contact form:

***** wrote:

Hi

My name is *****.

I would like to ask you if its possible to buy the picture of the lemons in a

high resolution (300ppi 160mm x 200 mm).

And if you have it form a other place can you tell me where?

Greetings *****

This refers to a picture of lemons that – in the same way that approximately 99.99999999% of websites source their pictures – we got from Google Images. There’s no way of replying to this person (that amazingly managed to give us their own name three times during the course of a tiny message) without sounding sarcastic. “Dear *****, we did get it from another place. It is available here. Yours sincerely, the 7 Reasons team” would make us look rather mean.

We’ve also received this:

Do you stock a Thermos type water jug to use on invalids bedside, I can’t find one in cataloues.

That’s just heart-breaking. Could we, in all conscience, send a reply saying “sorry, as a humour website we carry no stock of thermal water jugs, could we tempt you with a mildly Francophobic t-shirt?” No. Of course not. So we either have to spend our time researching random queries from confused people or feel really bad about ourselves.

6. You’ll Hear Less About The Colour Of Hats. The other thing we frequently receive via the cursed contact form are offers of help. Technical help. Traffic driving help. Messages that variously offer to help us “engage strategic initiatives”, “harness value-added solutions”, “integrate visionary partnerships” and “orchestrate bricks-and-clicks infomediaries”. A recent message discoursed for so long about white hat SEO, black hat SEO and grey hat SEO that I almost lost the will to live and – had I been viewing the contact form – I would have been in danger of sending myself a gibberish message with my face. As it was, I began to think about purchasing a hat. What I wasn’t thinking about was taking anyone up on their kind offer to improve our website with their baffling and incomprehensible gobbledygook.

7. You’ll Receive A Better Standard Of Correspondence. Groucho Marx brilliantly and wittily advocated exclusivity when he famously said, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member”, and this can be applied to the Contact Form too. Because the contact form makes us too accessible. It’s too easy to get in touch with us. If it were more difficult to get hold of us, then we’d get a better class of correspondence, because the act of having to do a tiny bit of research to find our contact details and paste them into an email program could well cut out the spammers and raise standards. Perhaps the extra time and effort that this will take will cause people to reflect on whether they really need to contact us at all.

It boils down to this: If you have a contact form, it’s a magnet for spam in all its forms: penis-related-spam; gibberish-spam; spam that consists of bizarre utterances from the mad; spam that shouldn’t even be going to you; spam that is just flabbergasting or heartrending in its naivety; spam about hats. The one thing we rarely receive from the contact us form is any sort of meaningful correspondence. That all comes via email or Twitter. We’re going to be brave; we’re going to be bold: We’ve looked at the correspondence we receive via our contact form, and we’re going to disable it. And if you have a website that has one, we recommend you go back through your inbox and have a look at how much worthwhile correspondence you’ve received through it. We’re guessing it’s not as much as you think.

*The level of interest in our latest competition bears this out.

July 18, 2011
7 Reasons That Time Is The Enemy

I’ve just realised something. Something important. Something life-altering. Something that, though I was vaguely aware that it was so, I’d never really considered before. I’ve just realised who the enemy is and it’s not even the French! It’s that odious bastard time. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Time Causes You To Sacrifice Things You Hold Dear. Time – the scoundrel – causes you to miss many things that you dearly love to do. Haven’t played your guitar for a while, visited that spa or baked that cake? No? It’s because there isn’t time. You probably thought there was time – that you could fit it in – but time deserted you when you needed it most. And then time forced you to make the tricky decision about what to sacrifice because of your lack of it. Time has run out on you and made you the bad guy. If you find yourself having to make the choice to spend more of your time doing the washing up or the hoovering rather than spending your time doing what you really want to be doing, it’s time’s fault.

2. Time Forces You To Compromise. Time continually places us in compromising positions. Because of time, everything becomes a compromise: Should you do something quickly or do something well? Should you diligently hone your craft and produce excellence or just botch things in a hurried manner for a quick result? Time forces you to make compromises in every area of your life when you’d probably rather not. Time forces you to compromise every damned…er…time.

3. Time Makes Your Life Needlessly Difficult. We strive to be on time; not early nor late, because what is prized in our society is punctuality; being on time. This means that how you are seen in the eyes of your peers – your social standing – is held in the fickle fingers of fate. In an ideal world, it’s not difficult to be punctual, but we don’t live in an ideal world. Every puncture, every train breakdown, every tube strike, in fact, every little incident and accident that we encounter on the way to wherever it is we’re going could potentially make us late, which will affect how we’re judged by our peers; “He’s always late”, people will whisper, “she’s a terrible timekeeper”. Time sets you difficult to attain targets then rewards your inevitable failure with opprobrium.

4. It’s Never The Right Time. No matter what age you are, it’s never the right time. When you’re young, it’s never playtime, it’s always bathtime or bedtime or time to go to school. When you have kids of your own, it’s never bathtime or bedtime, it’s always sodding playtime and it’s never time to go home. Then when you’re old it’s always bloody bedtime and you’re in a home. It’s never the right time.

5. Time Is Bad For Us. Time is attacking you and I at this very moment. It’s doing all sorts of vile things to us: It’s turning us grey; it’s making us wrinkly; it’s making some bits of us bigger and some bits of us smaller; it’s making bits of us fall out and adding extra bits where there weren’t bits before; bits that we didn’t need; bits that didn’t want; bits that we’re going to have to spend even more time removing. Time is making the inside of your ears hairy right now for no earthly reason other than to mock you.

6. Time Will Kill You. Humans are fragile creatures and there are many dangerous things that we might encounter during the course of our lives: War, famine, pestilence, irate husbands, startled horses, out of control dirigibles, rogue hippopotami, a landslide, a flood, a furious baboon; there are all manner of things that can kill us. But one thing is certain, if, against all the odds, we survive all of those things then time will kill us. Time kills more people than all of the armies of the world combined. Time kills more people than every monstrous dictator that’s ever committed an act of genocide. Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Leopold of Belgium and Adolf Hitler were lightweights when compared with time. Time is a mass murderer. Time should be in a cell in The Hague. For the rest of time.

7. Time Is Addictive. Time, in the manner of an opiate, has us hooked. For after it’s turned us grey, caused us to sacrifice many of the things that we hold dear, turned our lives into a frustrating series of compromises, punished us for every little mishap that was outside our control, it still holds us in its thrall. Like irresolute crack whores we go running back to it, because we’re compelled to; we’re addicted to time. We can’t get enough of it. We can never have enough time. What every last one of us wants is more time. Time is our enemy, yet we can’t live without it.

As you can plainly see, time is an insidious and diabolically cruel outrage that humankind should wage war against. I’d lead the charge myself, but sadly, I don’t have the time.

July 14, 2011
7 Reasons That Seven Is Called Seven (probably)

Okay, people. You can’t have failed to have noticed that David and Victoria Beckham have had a daughter and that they’ve named her Harper Seven Beckham (unless you get your news from the News of the World, in which case time stopped yesterday). Now, we all understand why the Beckhams have named their daughter Harper; it’s because they’re aficionados that have been inspired by the American literary canon (and who amongst us wouldn’t rate Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird as a seminal work), but most people have been a bit nonplussed by their selection of the second-name Seven. As of yet, there’s been no official word on what the fuck they were thinking how they selected their newborn’s middle moniker so, in the best traditions of 7 Reasons (.org), we’re going to flail around and speculate wildly. Here are seven reasons that Seven is called Seven (probably).

1. They’re Big Fans! Well, we had no idea and frankly we’re a little overwhelmed and very flattered. You see, we have a number of American readers, though we know very little about them, we just know that we are read regularly in America. So, it’s possible that David and Victoria love our website and have named their daughter after us. After all, it’s easily possible that homesick Brits abroad would love to keep up with what’s going on at home and why wouldn’t the Beckhams want to know when one of the team gets stuck in a revolving door or the other one buys a new laundry bin? There’s no reason that they wouldn’t want to know that. None at all. Of course they’ve named their daughter after us.

2. Conception. The Beckhams are noted for naming their children for the place where they were conceived: Brooklyn was conceived in Brooklyn; Romeo was conceived in the back of an Alfa Romeo; Cruz was conceived on a cruise (spelling apparently isn’t their strong suit) and it’s easily possible that their latest child was conceived in hotel room number 7 somewhere, or (in a variation on the theme) at seven o’clock, or while watching Channel 7 (Australia). Or perhaps she was conceived near the River Severn. Whatever it is, it could be about the conception.

3. Dwarves. I know a bit about newborn babies – being the curator of one myself – and one of the most striking things about them is that they are tiny. Really, really little. Perhaps, as the Beckhams held their wee bundle in their arms, they looked at her and thought isn’t she small? Let’s call her Small. No, we can’t call her small, that would be silly. People will make fun. We’re going to have to take a more sophisticated approach than that. Let’s be clever. Let’s take the concept of small and be a little more oblique. What else is small? Dwarves! Let’s call her Sleepy! Or Dopey! No, we can’t call her that; it spoils a potential nickname. Let’s be a tad circumlocutory when we reference the dwarves. Got it! We’ll call her Seven.

4. Keeping Track. In the manner of farmers painting numbers on the sides of their cows (which is essentially a rural version of tagging perpetrated by ruddy-faced tweed-wearers in fields), it’s quite important to keep track of your herd. With the addition of Harper Seven Beckham, there will now be six members of the Beckham household. But thumbs are complex things, and when you’re counting to seven, it’s easy to make a mistake, right? After all, thumbs are only half the size of your fingers. Who wouldn’t find that confusing? Oh yes. Them.

5. Seinfeld. Okay, so maybe the Beckhams aren’t fans of our site: That would explain why the limited edition diamond encrusted version of our Blowers t-shirt remains unsold. But perhaps they are fans of Seinfeld. After all, George Costanza’s ideal name for a boy (or a girl) was Seven. Obviously, Jerry objected, but as he was the least funny thing in his own sitcom so it’s possible that the Beckhams ignored him. We have too. George is right.

6. Numerology. In 2011, the number seven is tremendously significant. We’ve done actual research and have discovered that, for numerologists, the number seven represents all manner of important stuff that we sort of skim-read. To our untrained eyes, it might appear somewhat similar to every other number and year, but to experts (and who’s to say that the latest celebrity craze isn’t Scientology or Kabbalah and that Posh and Becks aren’t, in fact, Grand High Poobahs of Numerology or Akelas or something ), it’s probably quite meaningful and important. And interesting. And had we looked at it closely, it might have seemed profound.

7. It’s Not The Worst Name They Could Think Of. I learned today of a worse baby name than Seven: also worse than Superman; and worse than Adolf. I discovered that a baby at my son’s baby group is called…Ian. That’s right, a baby called Ian. The boy Ian. Ian the baby. A name that’s only appropriate for a man in his 50s (or Ian Bell) has been given to tiny child. What sort of monster would name their child Ian? Never mind speculating about the name Seven, that’s a question we all need an answer to.

*The 7 Reasons team would like to congratulate the Beckhams on the occasion of the birth of their daughter, Harper Seven Beckham. Though we may have derived some humour from their choice of name (we are humourists, after all), we have nothing but admiration for their conduct as parents which, in an age where parenting skills often seem to be lacking amongst such a large section of the population, are an exemplary example to us all. Congratulations! But Seven? Really?

July 12, 2011
Win A Prize!

Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed 7 Reasons readers, people of the internet, lovers of SPAM; we have an exciting prize to offer one lucky person.

You may remember a reference from a 7 Reasons post earlier in the week to the giving of the gift of a tin of SPAM. Well, that didn’t go too well. Consequently, we’re now in the position to offer you, the reader, that very self-same tin of SPAM, though now with a slight dent on it.

The Prize (pen, notebook and table not included)

Sadly though, we haven’t had much time to devise a competition – and one of the team also has something of a headache – but we’ve realised something: That 7 Reasons readers are probably creative and resourceful people too. Accordingly, we’re setting you a challenge.

To win this tin of SPAM, which will be dispatched direct from Yorkshire, simply come up with a competition to win a tin of SPAM and send your entry to [email protected]. We’ll judge the entries and the winner will be the person that that has devised – in our opinion – the best competition. You’ve got full licence to be as innovative and creative as you like (in fact, we positively encourage it). Feel free to send illustrations too, if you feel they will enhance your presentation. We’ll announce the lucky winner next Sunday. We might even use the winning competition in the future.

So get your thinking caps on as fame, fortune and a tin of SPAM await you. Oh, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. See you tomorrow.

July 10, 2011
7 Reasons To Wear A Top Hat

Hello 7 Reasons readers. I’m almost breathless with excitement as I’ve just worked out what we should all be wearing and it’s…a top hat. Here’s why.

1. You Can Cause A Stir. The sight of the top hat was initially shocking; according to an officer of the Crown the wearer of the first one, James Hetherington “…appeared on the public highway wearing upon his head what he called a silk hat (which was shiny luster and calculated to frighten timid people)”, he also stated that “…several women fainted at the unusual sight, while children screamed, dogs yelped and a younger son of Cordwainer Thomas was thrown down by the crowd which collected and had his right arm broken”. Now, top hats are less shocking these days than they were in the eighteenth century, but you’ll still cut a dash.

2. It Will Make Us Better At Sport. Now it might not be immediately obvious why this is so and you’re probably thinking that surely a top hat would be a little cumbersome to wear during sport, and you’d be right too. But let’s look at what happened the last time top hats were popular; one of the most popular pastimes for urchins (after picking pockets, bursting into song, pilfering roasted chestnuts and suffering from rickets) was knocking the top hats off gentlemen by hurling things at them. Surely this would be just as much fun for modern children (and me, come to think of it). In fact, knocking people’s top hats off would be all the motivation that our young people would need to spend their time diligently honing their throwing actions, and pursuing them after they’d done so would improve their running skills too. If we wore top hats, we’d surely see an improvement in cricketing standards some way down the line.

3. It’s An Act Of Benevolence. When was the last time that you saw someone with a tall cylindrical head? That’s right, you probably haven’t, and do you know why? That’s because unfortunates with heads shaped like the funnels of steamships probably feel too self-conscious to leave the house. So what better way of restoring to them a normal, dignified life would there be than for us all to wear top hats? Then having a tall cylindrical head would cease to be a stigma for sufferers who could disguise it with a top hat themselves.

4. It’s An Egalitarian Act. At the moment, the foremost wearers of top hats in the UK are Eton schoolboys, but should Etonians get all the fun? After all, they get to spend years wearing a top hat and, eventually, they get to run the country too. If we want a more equitable society then we need to reclaim the top hat from the privileged few and wear it ourselves. We may not get to be in charge, but we’ll look bloody marvellous while we’re going about our business of not running things while in a really good hat. We’ll be recovering a grand traditional item of apparel that is as quintessentially British as cheese and chutney sandwiches or being attacked by a wasp in a beer garden. What’s more, we’ll be reclaiming it for the masses. That’s us!

5. It’s A Practical Hat. Nowadays almost everyone has at least one digital camera with them when they go out, but people rarely carry tripods. A top hat though, with its horizontal surface is an ideal camera platform. You can also keep your camera in your top hat as there’s a fair bit of storage space there. You can use it to store other things too; biscuits, a small owl, a good book, a book by Dan Brown, a series of smaller top hats ever diminishing in size: The list of things you can carry in there is boundless. In fact, ironically, the list of things you can store in your top hat is so large that it’s one of the few things that you won’t be able to store in your top hat. You’d need a cavernous hat to store the list in; a veritable behemoth of a hat; a hat the size of a house; a hat that you could get lost in. Where was I?

6. It Aids Peer Recognition. Most social groups have shared readily identifiable features that their members can use to spot one another. Hipsters can tell other hipsters by their shirts and glasses; MCC members can recognise other MCC members by their egg and bacon ties; gits can spot gits by looking into a mirror and seeing Piers Morgan, and 7 Reasons readers can distinguish other 7 Reasons readers because they are carrying their laundry basket around with them. If you wear a top hat, you’ll be able to spot your peers – other top hat wearers – in a crowd, from the other side of moderately high walls and in cars with sunroofs. You can’t put a price on the camaraderie of the hat.

7. It Helps Others. Want to help a humourist who’s just decided to spend his birthday money on a top hat? Of course you do. You can do that just by wearing a top hat, thus making him feel slightly less self-conscious about wearing one himself. Because I’d like to don a top hat and amble around the streets of my city without people pointing and mocking; without being shrieked at by hideous hen parties and being taunted by even more hideous groups of stags; without children guffawing at my distinctive and wondrous headpiece while shouting, “hat!”. I’d consider it a personal favour if everyone that has read this were to go out and buy a top hat today. We could start a revolution, or at least make me look a little less ridiculous, which would be no mean feat. Go now. Go buy a hat!

July 8, 2011
7 Reasons Not To Have Sex With A Penguin

Yesterday, we showed you some of the search terms that people have used to find our website but, as is often the case, no sooner had we posted that piece, someone discovered our website in a new, and not entirely unalarming way. Someone in the Netherlands (thus confirming at least one national stereotype about the Dutch) found our website by entering the search term “what to do if I had sex with a penguin”; a search for which we rank number one on Google. Now, we have no idea why we rank so high for this search term, it’s not as if the team spend their days thinking about – or writing about – having sex with penguins (until today) but, seeing as we rank so highly, we feel it is our duty to tell people not to have sex with penguins and to point out that it is wrong. Here are seven reasons why.

1. They’re Hard To Get Hold Of. I’m not thinking of the technical difficulties of having a dalliance with a penguin, you’ll be pleased to note – though they do look slippery – but more about their scarcity. In the UK, they are rarely seen in our waters which means that, for the casual penguin-fucker, the most likely place to find a partner is a zoo. Because of this, if you wanted to have sex with a penguin, you’d have to break into a zoo at night. If successful, you’d run the risk of being eaten by a lion and if unsuccessful, you’d face a very interesting conversation with the police, a series of eye-grabbing headlines in the local paper and a rather high level of public opprobrium.

This would be bad.

2. They’re Hard To Get Hold Of II. Or, you might decide to save yourself a breaking and entering charge by committing the act at a time when the zoo is open. Now, as a new father, I’ve recently begun to develop a fear of answering difficult questions from a growing son with an enquiring mind but, I have to admit that nothing I have thought of so far fills me with as much dread as the question, “Daddy, what’s that man doing to that penguin?” That’s the sort of question I definitely intend passing on to my wife. And I’d also prefer to be addressed as Father, but most of all, I’d prefer not to be put through it in the first place.

3. It Would Be A Backward Move. Penguins – though they might be confused with fish by the unaware and…well…me* – to the rest of humanity, are birds. But surely (and I’m sure we’re all grateful for this) no one in this country has had sex with a bird since the heyday of On The Buses in the mid-1970s. There’s no way we should start doing that again, that would be a backward step. Nor we should we address anyone as “Love”, though that’s a different post.

4. You Are A Man. Men shouldn’t have sex with penguins because if, as a result of your inappropriate interspetial intercourse, you should sire any progeny, you are in for a big shock: While fathers of human babies can usually get away with changing about one in three nappies and don’t have the equipment to feed a human baby (so can be pretty hands-off) as the father of a penguin you’ll be expected to go to the South Pole and balance your offspring on your feet for months. That looks tedious and you’ll miss a lot of cricket as you stand there with all the other penguins hoping not to get eaten by a polar bear and looking at the snow.

5. You Are A Woman. As a woman, should you end up bearing the child of a penguin you’ll…actually, I don’t believe that any woman has, at any point, ever considered having sex with a penguin. I just refuse to believe that women are that weird. Obviously I’m still open minded though so, if you are a woman that has considered having sex with a penguin, please let us know via the comments section. We want to hear from you.

6. Black And White. Penguins are in black and white and – for the most part – no one has sex in black and white, that’s just not the British way of doing things. Look at Brief Encounter: a mannered depiction of repression, subsumed emotion, inhibition and tea at railway stations. That’s in black and white, is there any sex in it? Hell, no. Want to take a penguin for tea at a railway station? Fine, that’s your business. Want to have sex with a penguin? Well you can’t. It’s not how we do things.

7. There’s No Future In It. When seeking prospective long-term partners, not smelling of fish is high up the list of things that people look for in a mate. There are other things that are up there on the list of desirable attributes too: Not having a beak; not having flippers; not having webbed feet (except in Dorset); not walking like a penguin in fact, not being a penguin are all right up there. In a game of Ideal Mates For Humans Top Trumps, the penguin card would be the one no one wanted to be saddled with. And if you were dealt a hand that contained both the penguin and the Ryan Giggs cards, you could pretty much abandon all hope of victory.

We don’t do eighth reasons around here but if we did, we would offer you this piece of information that comes to us courtesy of writer, solicitor, giant and friend of 7 Reasons, Richard O’Hagan. He tells us that under (the rather brilliantly numbered) section 69 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, having sex with a penguin is against the law. I briefly thought I’d found a loophole, but it seems that even though penguins can blow, that’s precluded in section 78. So it’s not just logic that says you shouldn’t have sex with a penguin, it’s the law too.

*They can’t fly, yet they do swim and they’re often chased by killer whales, how is that not a fish?

July 4, 2011