Back with a recommendation

Hello lovers.

I'm still busy and stressed and still can't really write properly on here. But the other day I was shown a new blog. The best blog I've ever seen apart from this one and this one.

So I direct you to it now. The man is a genius. And possibly delusional. But it's the funniest blog I've seen apart from that chewbacca thing. The thing is, he's really, really fit. All hail Marrow.

Leflange admits defeat

Sorry not to be posting. It's the most horrifically busy time of the year for me, the stupid pitch is ongoing on top of my normal work, and I'm looking for a new job, which means researching companies and meeting people when I could be doing more useful things. Artegall and coolj have also pointed out recently that I appear to have completely lost my sense of humour, and this is becoming something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as my desperation to crack a funny leads to a 0% success rate.

All in all, I think it best I leave this for a while.

Womankind "shocked and distressed" as leflange accepts face transplant from Artegall's mother

Don't worry, bitches. It's temporary.

Actress speaks nonsense

Article from my online trade press...

Coronation Street's Tracy Barlow lends glamour to anti-fur campaign
by Daniel Farey-Jones Brand Republic 20 Apr 2005

Ford: starring in Peta anti-fur poster

LONDON - Kate Ford, the actress who plays Coronation Street's bitch from hell Tracy Barlow, is to feature in an anti-fur ad for controversial animal rights charity Peta.
Ford's image in the ad echoes her glamourous, super-bitchy character in the hit Granada soap. Wearing a red satin evening dress and gloves, she is pictured protectively holding a white rabbit. The copy reads: "Try telling him it's just a bit of fur trim."
The rest of the ad urges readers to boycott all fur and includes the address for Peta's FurIsDead site.
"I play a pretty cold-hearted character in 'Coronation Street', but I can't think of anything more cruel or cold-hearted than killing animals for their fur," Ford said.

Now I like to see a woman take a stand. But in answer to her final, argument-defying statement, I posit the following:

"Killing your mother for her skin."

Just as an example.

Shock and (B)Awe(deaux)

I may have mentioned that in addition to being a pretty serious mover and shaker, I am also the office DIY man, as the most able-bodied and youngest of the males.

One of my key managerial roles is to move boxes from the ground floor to the second floor, up two flights of stairs. Normally these boxes are filled with books, belonging to the boss' wife's publishing company.

This woman is interesting. She'll flirt with me sometimes, mostly to get something from me; on most occasions, however, she will treat me with utter disdain, quite literally turning her nose up at me when I say "Good morning."

Blonde, slim and confident, she was clearly a looker in her youth, and her CV shows a series of fashion magazines of the kind which make me automatically reach for a gun. I don't doubt that a discussion of my interests would send her into a deep sleep within minutes. She and I, we both know, are not the sort of people who normally interact. Antipathy occasionally rears up, but our differences are generally held in check by my slight resemblance to her young son.

So today, my face went

as she came downstairs, handed me a card (me and me alone), and placed a box on my desk. Tomorrow she leaves on holiday. As everyone looked at me with disgust I opened the card, which thanked me for all the lifting I'd done this year, called me "blue eyes" and wished me a merry Christmas. The box contains 12 bottles of rather nice wine.

I now feel as though I understand nothing.

But really, what a bloody nice thing to do. Great when people surprise you.

You ask, I deliver

Madame Voyeur, living up to her name, demanded to see the real girl from the last story.

Here she is, aged 34, looking remarkably like coolj's latest conquest (see links for details), or at least her younger sister.

Not to mention Paul Daniels.

Clarification

Regarding a misunderstanding that has arisen on the last post.

The woman pictured is simply one of the first pictures you'd find if you typed "Screaming woman" into google images; she isn't the crazy german-scottish bastard I'm writing about.

I really wouldn't put a picture up here of someone I know without their say so. It's not like I'm writing under my name, and most of the names of people I write about are changed too, through paranoia more than anything.

It would most certainly be mean of me to post a picture of the girl I wrote about. But more than that, it would be foolhardy. She was absolutely, 100% doolally and I don't doubt she could find out where I live.

Alvin, you're a dick

As a linguist, the third year of my degree was spent abroad. I went to a place called Chateauroux, which can be found in central France. It's a real shithole, described in the rough guide as a "grey and officious administrative centre, to be avoided at all costs."

Here's a picture of the lycée where I lived and worked for 9 months.

Nice, huh? The boy in the bottom right is almost certainly spitting, as this is pretty much all they did.

I had a decent time all in all, but there was one exception: a mistake I made early on and spent 8 months paying for. That mistake was the Scotch-German psycho.

Yoiks.

I had sex with this girl pretty early on. A fellow language assistant in the city (there were about 10), she was good-looking and quite sexy (until you actually had sex with her), and I wasn't getting sex anywhere else.

I made it extremely clear from the start that this was just sex: we'd hang out with the other assistants while we got to know the town, and shag when we were feeling like shagging. It worked very well, and she seemed extremely pleased with the whole situation, until I decided to stop it.

This is when she told all the other assistants (8 girls and 2 guys - I had no chance) that I'd told her I loved her, said we were going out, and callously used her for sex. Now, apparently, I wouldn't talk to her, and wouldn't explain why I didn't love her anymore.

Cue everyone I know in the town, except for one guy, stopping talking to me. But leflange, I hear you cry, didn't that mean you just made French friends? Here I smile knowingly. You poor, poor, fools. Didn't you read the next sentence in the rough guide about Chateauroux? No? Well, here it is: "It's inhabitants are renowned as the least friendly in the whole of France."

The whole of France.

Anyone been there? Yes? Good. So you'll know that that is some fucking boast.

Anyway, the next 6 months are not germane. Things improved after a miserable month or two, the locals finally warmed to my undeniable charms, and I never saw the other assistants other than accidentally.

In the last month I received an email addressed to all assistants. In a matey tone it asked us all to come to dinner at some guy's house. I didn't know him, but he clearly knew the assistants - thought he knew all of them.

So I went for dinner at this guy's house, and was forced into conversation with a bunch of people I hated, with the exception of the one guy who knew that Little Miss Mad's story was bullshit and whom I saw very regularly. Our French host was the best person I met in the whole 9 months: friendly, bright, funny, generous and totally unpretentious (unlike me). We got on like a house on fire, and he asked where I'd been for the last 6 months. Apprently he'd asked Alvin, the American illiterate who was English assistant in his school, to invite all the assistants for drinks one night. Why didn't I turn up?

"Alvin didn't invite me."

"Sure, sure. I guess you just had other French friends to see."

"No, Alvin just didn't mention it."

At this point everyone was listening to our conversation, and even Alvin was understanding most of it. Feet were shuffled, cheeks went pink.

"But all teachers' invitations went through Alvin after that. Is that why we haven't seen you all year?"

"Well, if all invitations have come through Alvin, then yes."

A week later, the truth came out from this girl, who said she felt really bad that there had been a misunderstanding. This of course led to hand-wringing from the other cunts, who realised they'd hung me out to dry in what we'd all agreed was the most depressing place any of us had ever visited. Suddenly I received emails offering one-to-one drinks; one of the girls offered to sleep with me, no strings attached (well, who wouldn't? Unfortunately, she didn't see any irony in this being her way of "making it up" to me); everyone wanted to be my best mate.

A further week passed, and we all had to go to some education officer's house for a final dinner. Here Alvin, the biggest nerd I've ever met ("H-H-H-Hey David, y-you smoke Malboro. W-We call them cowboy killers in the states. Know why?" I really can't guess, Alvin; please fucking enlighten me because I lack even the most basic imagination, you stupid, tedious prick), decided to smoke the peace pipe. Aw.

As we walked away, I talked to Nick, the only assistant with a mind of his own, and the ability to spot insanity right under his nose. Up came Alvin.

"H-H-H-Hey, David. I wanid to say, y'know, sorry for cudding you out. I didn't know it was lies, and if I had, I think we would've been friends."

"Why didn't you ask me if it was true?"

"Oh you know. All the girls felt bad for her and I was there and you kinda get carried along."

"AH. Fair enough. I understandnow. It must have been hard for you in that situation. Don't worry about it."

"Oh great, so, can we, like, stay in touch when you go back to England?"

"Fuck off, Alvin, you're a boring twat."

Fucking satisfying, let me tell you.