7 Reasons

Tag: wit

  • Pearls of Wisdom

    Pearls of Wisdom

    It’s Sunday.  This is Marc.  I was thinking last week (as I occasionally do) and something occurred to me.  I love writing 7 Reasons.  I also love dictionaries of quotation.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if I combined the two?  The answer was emphatically yes.

     

    I decided to fire up the Randomator (it’s up there at the top of the page where it says “Randomator!”) and harvest a few 7 Reasons quotes on various aspects of life and living.  Here – in the order that I found them – are some 7 Reasons pearls of wisdom on an array of topics.

     

    On sharks:  “In my 27 years, I believe I have sleep-walked only once. And even then it wasn’t a very exciting sleep-walk, I just went looking for the bathroom in the lounge. I couldn’t imagine doing that every night though. Which is what a shark has to do. Apart from it swims instead of walking. And it rarely ends up in my lounge.”

     

    On St Peter: “It is generally accepted that 156,000 people die everyday. That’s about one every 1.8 seconds. I don’t believe that Saint Peter has the stamina to sit there all day every day shouting out names. When does he sleep?”

     

    On Viagra:  “When a man takes one Viagra pill, his penis assumes the shape of the number 1 for a considerable time. Therefore, if a man takes seven Viagra pills, his penis must assume the shape of the number 7 for a considerable time. I’m not sure why anyone would want a 7 shaped penis – unless they wanted to make love to someone round a corner – so it’s probably the wrong number of pills to take.”

     

    On the Dutch: “Dutch people are fantastic.  They’re tall, which is more space-efficient than being fat, and they speak many languages…”

     

    On supermarkets:  “A supermarket is not a place for mankinis and it is certainly not a place for jogging in them. No one wants to see that while deciding what to have for dinner. Apologise. Immediately. And then cover yourself up with a parsnip.”

     

    On measuring time: “I have no idea exactly how long I was in the kitchen, but I do know that I had a ginger beard when I emerged from it.  I had one when I went in too, but I was definitely in there for a very long time.”

     

    On supporting England:  “My heart has sunk so many times I am amazed it’s not lodged somewhere around my groinal area.”

     

    On the pole vault: “…it’s a sport which involves physically exerting yourself until you’re panting and thrusting a long, rigid shaft into a box before you briefly soar heavenward and eventually end up lying sweaty and exhausted on a mattress with a horizontal pole.”

     

    On popemobiles:  “A popemobile is visible from quite a distance.  Even when there isn’t a pope in it.”

     

    On new planets:  “I want a planet that is 100% water. Not ice, water. I want a planet that looks like a sausage. Or, even better, a planet that morphs into a sausage from its 100% water state.”

     

    On Christmas: “When the children burst into our bedroom at six o’clock this morning and jumped up and down on the bed screaming “It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas!” we were very moved. We don’t know whose children they were, or how they got into our house, but we were moved.”

     

    On polar bears:  “If you do insist on dating a polar bear, then you have to understand one thing. You will never be able to use your bath again.”

     

    On flamingo farming:  “With the new flamingo farms, it will be possible to stumble across fields full of pink clusters of gangly birds – all year round.  This will brighten up the landscape no end, especially at sunset.  Countryside campsites will become countryside camp sites where you’ll be able to enjoy the countryside camp sight of intense pink colours in tents (pink coloured).”

     

    On the Sinclair C5:  “Always a bit annoying having to get out of your vehicle and push it up a hill isn’t it? Which is why the Sinclair C5 should have come with a tow rope. Or a map that just showed hills that went down.”

     

    On Annie Lennox:  “Annie Lennox has got a problem. If her heart keeps going boom whenever she walks into an empty room – and it has been at least 25 years since it started – she needs to do one of two things. Go to the doctors or avoid empty rooms.”

     

    On philosophy:  “If a butterfly beats its wings in a forest in China does a tree fall on a deaf person on the other side of the world?”

     

    On the French:  “The French have dainty little feet. It’s a well known fact, in my mind, that they spend 56% of their time in the bathroom moisturising their toes.”

     

    On Foursquare:  “foursquare iPhone App Would Like To Add Your Current Location. Jonathan Lee doesn’t. He is very happy doing some work at home without the whole of foursquare’s Jehovah Witness community knowing where he is.”

     

    On rhymes:  “They say that nothing rhymes with orange, but this doesn’t seem quite right to me:  Nothing rhymes better with puffin.”

     

    On candles:  “There are always candles on the table at dinner parties but no one knows why.  I don’t want to singe my arm hair every time I pour some wine or pass the salt.  Why would you want to put a fire on the table?”

     

    On Nelson:  “Fancy losing a battle to a bloke with one arm and one eye. Do you know how difficult it is steer a ship with one arm and one eye? That’s pretty lame France.”

     

    On parenthood: “There are toys everywhere.  And if you have children, you have to get rid of your toys and replace them with stuffed animals and pushchairs.”

     

    On Turkish barbers: “…a middle-aged man – shaking and hyperactive from far too much strong coffee – holding a cut-throat razor to your jugular and gesticulating wildly, millimetres from your face, while he asks you where you’re going on holiday this year?  Then he sets your ears on fire.”

     

    On ironing:  “There are only so many movements you can make with an iron – assuming you are doing the job properly anyway. Right to left or left to right seem to be the only options. I would love to do top to bottom, but whoever invented bras made it impossible.”

     

     

     

     

  • 7 Reasons to go to the Football Match

    7 Reasons to go to the Football Match

    the_football_match

    1.  History. You get no sense of history watching a match on television.  If you go to the Milton End at Fratton Park though, you can see an impressive recreation of the football experience in Victorian times.  If it weren’t for the presence of “ladies” and the absence of flat-caps and rattles I would have believed I’d gone back in time.  They even exhorted their team to “play up.”  Nobody’s done that since colour was invented.  I think I saw Dickens in the row behind me, sitting between a Muffin Man and an urchin.

    2.  Perspective. When you watch televised football, most of the footage is shot side-on from the main stand.  This gives a good perspective on the game and gives you a tactical overview of events.  You can get this at live football too, by sitting in the centre of one of the main stands.  If you prefer excitement, however, nothing beats sitting behind the goal that your team is attacking.  The spectacle of watching your strikers shooting at the space directly ahead of you is unsurpassable.*

    *If your strike-force contains an Aliadiere or a Voronin you can replicate this experience by sitting near a corner-flag, the one furthest from the barn-door and the cows-arse.

    3.  Wit. There’s much wit and humour to be heard at live football.  There are funny chants, heckles, pithy observations and bawdy asides.  Wigan are considering signing Chilean defender Waldo Ponce in January.  I may move to the North-West and buy a season ticket.  It’s a name with enormous humour potential, the best since Celtic signed Rafael Scheidt.

    4.  Alan Green. Supercilious hectoring blabbermouth Alan Green might be at the match but don’t worry, it’s quite noisy there and you won’t be able to hear him.  Also, he won’t be able to talk over everyone in the crowd whose opinion differs from his own, which is at least 97% of them – the ones with eyes in their heads and functioning brains.

    5.  Advise. You can’t help your team by watching the match at home.  At the match you can, by shouting.  If you’ve spotted something the players haven’t, or developed a new tactic that your manager hasn’t considered, you can let them know instantly.  Who knows?  You may even change the course of the match with your perceptive insights.  Or you may not, like the man next to me three weeks ago who bellowed “Get the ball!” whenever his team weren’t in possession.  He is presumably the man that warnings on coffee cups and rear-view-mirrors are for, I had wondered.

    6.  Pedestrians. Football matches are dangerous places for cars. Tannoy announcements often seem to consist of an endless stream of car-park calamity. “Can the owner of a silver Ford Focus (they’re all silver), registration number xxx xxxx please go to the car park as their car has its lights on/has its windows open/is parked in the way/is on fire/has rolled away/has the keys in the door/has been struck by the opposing team’s bus/is being vandalised/is playing Radio 2 at an immoderate volume.   Militant pedestrians love hearing this litany of automotive adversity, it may be why they go.

    7.  Comedy. When you watch football on television, the cameras aren’t following the referee and often miss it when he does something funny, like falling over.  I can’t think of anything that is funnier than a referee falling over, except for a referee falling over a dog…or a referee falling over a linesman…or a referee being chased by a rogue elephant…or a referee being satirised by Ian Hislop…or a referee slipping on a banana skin dropped by the fourth official…

    There are many things funnier than the referee falling over.  The ref falling over is still very funny though.  If you go to the match, you may witness it.