The hangry voice that starts our day.
“eat… EAT!” you shout while we say:
“It’s coming” as we drop the plate,
Desperate to satiate.
We probably should go outside
To give you some natural light,
But with contempt you view the slide;
The swings your kryptonite.
More hair than dad; more fair than mum,
My genes have made you hate the sun.
Squinting – “too bright!” you say with distaste.
So quick to scrunch up that face.
Immune to the playground’s draw
That puts the other kids in awe.
A tow truck parked across the street
Somehow has everything else beat.
Negotiations come with ease;
You have a trump card up your sleeve.
“I love you daddy” you flatter with poise.
Soon after encumbered with toys.
What today will be your mission:
“Divide and conquer” or “attrition”?
We start our day with “1 hour TV”
By the end it’s “infinity”.
Dinner comes forever later
You tell us “RICE! No food is greater.”
Veggies left in a deliberate heap –
“Try bribery” you speak.
By now you know the shower’s next
Yet somehow always act perplexed
Why do mum and dad insist?
I yearn for the day you don’t resist.
A story before bed you ask
“How ’bout Kai truck?” A simple task.
But the truck must ABSOLUTELY be blue
and also be made of chocolate too.
Not sure how mum could be so strong
With all your whims upon her.
Although each day with you is long
It’s nothing but an honour.
Star Wars Physics
Ok, so I’m on the bus home and I’m reading for shits and giggles about the Star Wars universe. It turns out that the flagship of the Imperial Navy in the original trilogy, could travel at a speed of… Wait for it… 100kph. What the actual fuck?
Anyone heard of Newton’s second law? So if I strap a rocket to my arse in a galaxy far, far away I will experience crippling G force for a while until I reach 100kph. Then I will… Continue to experience crippling G forces but not actually accelerate? Also, C’mon guys. If you’re going to pick a speed for your super badass star dreadnought, pick something faster than a 1975 Ford Pickup.
Diary of a Sociable Cat
The sun comes and goes. The food bowl refills. Sometimes they take initiative and keep it full so that my energy need not be expended in a gentle reminder. I do much like initiative, a much underappreciated quality in humans.
There are unfortunately other non-humans sharing the residence. Though they share the enthusiasm I have for a full bowl of chow, the similarities end there. The empty eyes of the white one betray the soul of something sinister. It seems I must accept their interminable hatred of my presence, just as I tolerate their tiny minds. No ambition at all.
There are new inhabitants in the garden abode. They have a small one coming soon. I have asserted myself and I believe they have acceded to my suggestion of making the garden abode my new headquarters. The bedroom appears to be somewhat less available for colonisation but I continue to lobby for free movement. They will find that I play the long game.
Recently they have acquired a mobility vehicle, for what I assume is the imminent arrival of the small one. I have taken the opportunity to establish a forward base inside due to its prime location by the main entrance to the primary structure, and the additional benefits of being stealthy, warm and delightfully soft. Their expressions when my encampment was discovered exuded amusement. I, however, am dead serious.
Showdown
“It is good to see you again, Don Bambini” said a deep husky voice that could only belong to Don Piccolo. It had the raspy characteristics of a lifelong smoker, normally not achievable at the tender age of 11 months. Don Piccolo ate convention for breakfast, along with mashed carrots.
Don Bambini narrowed her eyes. “And you my friend. It has been too long.” Playgroup was cancelled yesterday due to a shortage of staff. She suspected it was no accident. Power was being consolidated.
The husky voice began again; “Mummy has offered to host playgroup the next time we have a cancellation.”
And there it was.
Don Bambini smiled magnanimously, the toothless void a picture of purest smarm. The game had begun.
“Piccolo, my dearest. I hope you will be generous with the custard when you do. And remember who keeps the Drool School in line when you are sick. We have always complimented each other well.”
There was an abrupt change in Piccolo’s expression. The sparse wisps of hair blowing in the wind were in hard contrast to the still, dead eyes. Don Piccolo hiccuped and the silence was broken. He spoke at length.
“Do not pretend your own family has not been making moves. I see your unit arriving with cakes and gifts for the dimwits. You steal their loyalty from beneath myself and the other dons.”
Bambini scoffed. “Their loyalty is easily bought my friend. They would desert you for a Rusk and a shiny ball. Your position is precarious and you need my parents and their cakes. Yield or end up like my last enemy; silent and still forever.”
“We all saw what you did to the plushie, Bambini. It will not be forgotten.” There was a bitterness to the words. A pang of regret. Piccolo hiccuped again.
“You will cease your games and yield to me soon enough. They all do in the end.” Bambini’s arm moved to her nappy in a threatening manner. She pulled a crayon, sharpened to a razor sharp edge at the end. It was a purple one. Piccolo’s favourite colour.
“Surely you would not hurt a man of the cloth?”, gesturing at the cloth nappy he wore. His tongue rolled over his sly, gummy grin. He took a step back.
Another voice entered the conversation.
“Matilda! It’s time for your nap. What are you doing with that crayon?”. Bambini was swooped up in the arms of a giant tiny-headed dinosaur person. The daycare assistant had postponed things, but there was time. They had their whole lives ahead of them.
“We shall continue this later” she mumbled as she was taken by the dinosaur. Piccolo visibly relaxed in the aftermath, and was thankful for the extra absorbent lining of his all-in-two.
Best Pairings for Coding
API – IPA. Not only a good fit for the letters. It’s also a many-flavoured component, with versions and endpoints that kinda look like REST but are actually more like RPC, much like that friend who thinks he looks like George Clooney.
Message queues – red wine. One beautiful thing about red wine is looking at its colour before you use it to pacify your insecurities. That’s kinda like how message queues work, but actually not at all. You chew something up and spit it down a pipe and someone else picks up your package and tries to get it back to what it looked like before you chewed it up, and then do some stuff with it like make casserole. Casserole goes well with red wine.
Hosting – cider. Much like the sweet times you had in your youth that are now so very bitter a subject, cloud hosting is something nice to sip in comparison to the days of yore when you needed to do that shit yourself. Like cider, drinking a little too much will make you cry and want to get back into the beer (see below).
Algorithms – beer. The core of a developer’s enjoyment, writing algorithms never gets old. You can indulge a bit heavily and get violent, but all will be forgiven the next day when you wake up and remember nothing.
Database – whiskey. Much like the alcohol, you can get drunk on the fumes of a database. Some people get a whiff of mongoDb and they become your best friend. Always remember to drink the whole bottle before you begin, as database administrators require a certain level of paralysis to prevent them from getting up and going to do something more interesting.
Front End – vodka. There are just so many ways to drink it, from belly shots to cocktails mixed with Bear Grylls and the tears of children. Seasoned veterans down it like water, and you should not give them your proverbial address as they are much like door to door salespeople. Like the beloved spirit, you will not need much before you can barely understand which framework is the best choice and why you were born.
Debugging – punch. You really don’t know what you’re in for. If you made it, then you’re probably not too bad off, unless you made it while heavily intoxicated on any of the above. Sometimes someone threw up in the punch and you only realise after you finish your first cup. That’s a good time to rope someone else into having a cup.
Readablabla requests that you always drink responsibly, even when you are debugging intermittent non-reproducible bugs.
A Brief Hiatus
Although one could argue that my blog posting was never even as regular as a pensioner who forgot to keep up with their prune juice shots, it has been somewhat of a while since I posted here.
It would be nice to claim that in the meantime I have been working for the Illuminati to bend the future to something that doesn’t involve a narcissistic Cheeto pressing the red button, but the reality is that I was uninspired. I believe the ritual outpouring of meaningful and a whole lot more meaningless observations is good for the soul, so here I return.
It is mere weeks until I become a father, thereby unleashing my progeny upon this unsuspecting world. We have procured a small batman costume in the guise of a baby onesie in preparation for his training regimen. Babies are often underestimated in their ability to undertake tasks requiring coordination beyond flailing limbs randomly in the direction of the immediate object of their desire.
Coincidentally this is the means by which I found my life partner. It is a strategy that continues to be effective when the flailing is to th rhythm of the background music. I digress.
Operation deathbaby is well underway and we have backers lined up to invest in high tech babygadgets like the wooden block grenade, the nappyjet and the bulletproof bib. I am still working on the high chair command centre which will integrate to the network of cameras across the city in order for baby to plan their next move.
The most dangerous part of this gambit is the possibility of a rogue agent. Not known for their adherence to discipline, we can only hope to control the small human by the instinctive dependence they have on parental units.
If you or a friend requires the discreet and highly unpredictable services of a baby secret agent, contact me for a quote.
Baby Upgrades
Babies are a usually unwelcome soundtrack to our transit that we may personally resent but rarely voice it out of sympathy and/or empathy. Still, after a long day pushing paper, when we don’t have the excuse that the little babbling jerk carries on our genetic legacy, it might be tempting to resort to lines of thought slightly more judgmental than the average.
Mummy, get it under control or I’m going to impale you on my office pens.
Of course, baby/toddler is never at fault and mummy is most probably not at fault either. It’s just the way shit goes sometimes. Nature never really intended for us to share a carriage with a screaming infant at length – if you were in a cave with another family’s wailing kids you were probably trying to steal their fried gerbil stash. Just take the broccoli and the cheeky buggers would even have ushered you out of the beaded curtain at the entrance.
Please, come back anytime. Might I also recommend the delectable sprouts.
And so I put forward a possible solution. We use our knowledge on genetic modification, combined with our love of a deep bass (the voice range, not the shit blasting out of your Subaru Impreza’s boot) to alter the voices of the tykes in their pre-pubescent years. We give them Barry White’s throat strings (maybe Scarlett Johannsen or something for the ladybabies).
Hey sweet mama – how about a bit of that carrot puree?
Yeah, there might be some physiological side-effects like them having abnormally sized necks for the first few years, but we’ll work around it. Face it, it would all be worth it to have the little 3 year old in front of you on the train spit out “mum, I’m hungry” as Morgan Freeman. You’d starve your children just to her them complain to you.
The Final Cookie
The dining room was lit by that purgatory sepia that comes when the sky hasn’t quite decided to empty its bladder on you. Some asshole accelerated needlessly in the residential road outside as four separate senior citizens peeking out of their synthetic floral curtains, watching to make sure nobody parks in front of their house for more than the 1 hour parking limit, simultaneously flipped the bird at said asshole. Moments later a pigeon flew into a window. Nobody averted their gaze from the recently emptied tin perched on a slightly tea-stained doily atop a waxed mahogany tabletop.
Twas the 14th hour of the day, edging on 15th, and five fairly elderly people stood evenly spaced around the table, sizing each other up and each holding – with various degrees of sturdiness – handguns. What many people might call a Mexican standoff, and what few might call a capsicum stroganoff. It could have been that one of them had just released the most despicable wind in history, but the position of the fan would have led to a quick resolution of the culprit by some basic deduction of air flow in the room.
No, it was not flatulence that had these friends reassessing each other. It was something far more sinister. Like a crime scene from Sesame Street, there was an assortment of crumbs littered around and inside the tin, as if someone had scoffed the final member of the gourmet cookie collection all too hurriedly. There was, at this stage known to the occupants of the room due to some preliminary investigation: a strand of strawberry hair, a tuft of white wool, and a shred of pyjama bottoms.
A middle-aged man dressed in a “Reginald Peabody’s Club of Gentlemen” golf sweater, looking as if he was disgruntled about the others’ lack of formality, put forward an idea after a lengthy period of silence and gun-pointing. His chrome revolver was dead steady, held firm in the direction of the elderly and silver-haired Lassie McGee, who looked rather nervous in her red and blue spotty silk pyjamas.
“Don’t toy with us Lassie. Take off your pants. We’ve all seen you naked before anyway.”
Lassie’s favourite game was strip poker and she often hosted impromptu poker nights, not-so-subtly electing to adorn herself in the most minimal attire she could justify. She was wearing pyjamas this fateful afternoon because she had prepared early for the evening poker tournament that was to be held before things took a turn for the worse. Lassie didn’t feel the urge to go full monty in this particular instance due to the threat of imminent death by gunshot.
“I don’t need to show you my pants – I think we can all agree that red and blue patch of excellent craftsmanship can belong to none other than myself. That does not, however, indict me. I merely concede that I am myself, arguably more suspect than the two of you that do not have any visible evidence of treachery atop this crime scene. Notwithstanding, foul play cannot be eliminated from the realm of possibility.”
Selma chimed in with an objection. She was clearly one of the two being accused of framing, given her lack of a white woolen clothing item (Reginald was alone in this) and dark brunette hair (Ignatius was the only bearer of cranial pinkness in the party due to his chronic eyesight problems that had lead him to purchase Salmon Supreme Instant Dye).
“Nonsense. Any member of the Oakberry Book Club would know that we swear an oath of honesty as part of our pledge, and therefore cannot be guilty of such atrocious schemes.”
Daphne West-Jenkins II stood firm. Known for her gossip since outing Reginald’s fur fetish six months previous, she was adamant that she was incapable of keeping things quiet, including guilt. Instead of protesting her innocence, she attempted to gain favour by picking at Selma and the book club she wouldn’t shut up about.
“The only thing the book club swears is that they won’t tell anyone the only book they read is Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Ignatius’ semi-automatic pistol gradually repositioned itself with a smoothness that could only come with confidently wearing a head of pink hair at 73 years of age. Reginald would argue that he would prefer a head of pink hair to the expensive but poorly chosen toupee that had been glued to his head by his Parkinson’s afflicted ex-wife fifteen years ago.
Selma gasped as she saw the odds turning due to a simple jab at her Sunday morning group of closet sado-masochists.
“You defy logic by turning your gun on me due to irrelevant allegations! How do the guilty pleasures of my book group bring any light to this situation?” Selma stammered before quickly realising her error.
“Selma, Selma, Selma Bluebottom. Guilty pleasure is exactly the motivation for this cookie theft. We all agreed the last one would be divided equally after our tea and dominoes, but you just weren’t satisfied with a fraction of chocolate chip perfection, were you?” Daphne again attempted to shift the blame to whom she saw as a weakening and easy target.
Daphne’s gun shifted to Selma. She had been saving the gesture until this moment for maximum impact. It had previously been aimed at Ignatius, mostly because of his hair, but also his Monopoly moustache. Selma felt the pressure.
“Times like these the explanation is often the simplest. We have three incriminating pieces of evidence on the table. As much as it pains me to give weight to Daphne’s innocence as well as my own, I must point out that were either of us to frame someone, we would have implicated a single person overwhelmingly, or at least significantly enough to avoid this awkward situation. You all should know that my literary preferences are theatrical only, and do not represent my intelligence. Believe me when I say that I would have done a far better job of foul play given my appetite for it.”
A few expressions of disgust were heard as vivid images of a sexually ravenous pensioner being tenderised with a ping pong bat filled their minds. Her reasoning swayed them however, and after some changes in suppositions, Reginald found himself to be the newly favoured suspect. His unfaltering resolve was admirable, but still waters run deep.
“The window of opportunity was small. A few minutes at most, I would surmise. We were all absent from the room at some point in that period due to the wavering grasp we all have on our bladder control” suggested Ignatius. Such frank talk was not normally his style, but the stakes were higher than that time he accidentally mowed over Daphne’s friendly tabby after mistaking it for a patch of weeds. To this day she still believed he had been mauled by a squirrel – a fate believable knowing both the ferocity of the neighbourhood squirrels and the placidity of Mop the fluffy tabby.
A shuffling was heard from above.
“It couldn’t have been your father, could it Lassie?” asked Reginald quizzically, attempting to divert as many muzzles away from his not-quite-overweight-but-slightly-gelatinous body as he could. Lassie’s father Horatio was 99 years old and was capable of dribbling away his hydration so quickly they had an emergency drip stashed in his bedroom cupboard. He was still barely capable of walking without aid, but his grasp on reality was slightly less firm than the grasp he nearly permanently had on his genitals. He rarely ventured out of his room, preferring to watch Jersey Shore and shout obscenities about today’s youth, before regurgitating and throwing his half-chewed food at the TV. Lassie had the screen laminated to facilitate cleaning.
A buzzing sound accompanied by some muffled flatulence indicated that Horatio had decided to journey downstairs on the stair lift. The buzzing stopped and some more shuffling was heard. As the occupants of the dining room turned to watch him enter, they half expected him to die of a heart attack seeing the plethora of weaponry on display. Lassie knew him better and wasn’t worried.
Horatio’s decrepit frame hobbled around the corner to reveal an unusually joyful expression on his face. An acrid aroma drifted from the old man across the room as the fan hummed away. Noses turned up in the order of distance from him. He rarely bathed more than once weekly and it seemed he was overdue. A stream of congealed saliva hung from the collection of facial pubes decorating his chin. The audience watched and waited for it to drop.
Horatio peered at the tin on the table, smiling with malice shortly after seeing that there was an absence of cookie.
“So which one of you ate the last one? I hope it tasted extra sweaty – I rubbed my balls all over it!” Horatio announced, followed by severe laughter interspersed with coughing and spluttering. Ignatius wailed in disgust and quickly began to gag.
The ball of drool detached from its mucusy support and plummeted toward the ground. The house was filled with a cacophony as all the firearms roared in succession. Ignatius started firing, and Horatio took one in his wrinkly man-boob. Lassie shot a chunk out of Ignatius’ hair in vengeance. Ignatius spun his arm around to shoot Lassie but a second shot from Lassie to his head caused his finger to clench the trigger and a bullet whizzed through Reginald’s golf sweater and his gelatinous body into the cupboard of silverware behind him. Reginald’s final moments were accompanied by Barry White’s “You are the first, my last, my everything” and as he exited his body he laughed as he realised the final stage testicular cancer that had been itching to kill him can go fuck itself.
Another shot from Ignatius’ rigor mortis glanced off the fireplace and pierced Daphne’s heart in every way that Ignatius’ romantic advances hadn’t. Lassie had a sudden stroke as the heavy smoking she had engaged in during her youth caught up with her at a dramatically appropriate time. As a seizure took hold of her body, Lassie’s finger sealed Selma’s fate, with the first bullet piercing her femoral artery.
The now-spherical drool bomb splashed on the ground, inaudible beneath the thumping of bodies hitting the floor.
New Year, No Fear – How to Cope with Post Holiday Blues and Other Wisdom
A collective wail of agony echoes across the city as the year begins – a wail that sounds out at a frequency slightly lower than the bottom of our hearing range. However, some scientists in a lab are reading a significant increase in the latent low-frequency sonic emissions across the city and going “Hmm, I wonder what that could be? Mayhaps the narwhals are preparing an invasion?”
Why isn’t my ultra-low frequency sonic sensor working? It’s just showing me a picture of this bacteria that looks like pubes. The narwhals have sabotaged our instruments!
I’ll tell you what it is. It is the unibowel of our nation – the amalgamated spiritual whole of our individual bowels – unloading the mother of all beer turds on the idea of going back to work after the holiday. Somewhere, Joe Turnip sits at a clean desk with his laptop squinting back at him on this fine Wednesday, mulling over several thoughts which constitute a general feeling toward his employment that is far inferior to his opinion on women’s shoes. The thoughts may and probably include the following:
*Staring at the time in the bottom right of his Windows desktop that has a few documents opened that make him look like he isn’t dicking off*
“13:05 – a time that marks the magnanimous welcoming of the sweet embrace of the weekend being less than halfway from me. A weekend that is particularly full of sweetness, like aunty Fiona when she smokes pot.”
And her distinct lack of sweetness when you take her pot away.
“Seriously, fuck all those people who took their holidays after the new year and are still in the sun somewhere drinking what I hope is something contaminated with urine. I’m going to laugh when they go back to the real world. More time on break, more pain at stake. Mmm, I like steak. Fuck those people.”
“If I just type like this people will think I’m busy. Hmm, yeah I can totally afford to waste some time.I’ll make up for it later. There’s other employees that suck more than me. I’m just too depressed to add up these two single figure digits. Wait, that is actually my job. Why am I here? Better keep looking important – ooh look my random typing produced the word ‘ballsack’!”
I also got pretty close to typing “orgasm” too! Screenshot Tweet #randomtyping #statisticallyimprobably #ballsackorgasm
Jim and thousands of others will never make up for their wasted time. There are plenty of people spending hours just wondering how many other people are still on holiday, and procrastinating by building forts out of their erasers. Somewhere there is some dickhead winning a trophy or followers on instagram for building a scaled model of the Arc de Triomphe from erasers. You could be that dickhead if you commit.
Why would the universe place all this useless office stationery in front of me if it didn’t want me to become an artist?
Anyway, there are plenty of people applying the strategy of Cheddar Milestones right now. You could too, with easy payments of just $19.95 per week until you die! Hey, I gotta make a living too. Why Cheddar? Because it is the most beautiful word in the English language. Firstly, it sounds like “cellar door” if you have a severe speech impediment. Secondly, it is also describing the most awesome dairy product since some hairy yak left some milk in a puddle on the floor for safekeeping and returned in a week to find the ambrosia that is yoghurt.
Yoghurt ain’t got nothing on me bitch. It ain’t food if you can’t CHEW IT.
Cheddar Milestones is a unique and novel strategy that essentially capitalises on our ability to focus on short term goals more easily than long term ones, and our awesome adaptability to circumstances taking a turn for the worse.
- Focus on making it to morning tea
- Focus on making it to lunch
- Focus on making it to afternoon tea
- Focus on making it to the end of the working day
- Celebrate by doing shit – sell a kidney and enrol in a taxidermy course. Buy a beer and drink it like you stole it.
- Repeat until your next long weekend/sick day/annual leave, or until you run out of money. If the latter occurs, sign up to our course on “Managing Finances Effectively – a Guide to Selling Garden Gnomes”. See, we got it covered kids.
But seriously, by pacing yourself and dicing your meaty day into bitesize chunks, like Hannibal Lecter preparing breakfast from his recently deceased mailman, you too can fight the blues. If you get paid peanuts, MAKE SOME BUTTER FROM THAT SHIT. Invest it in garden gnomes. It’s a rapidly growing industry – see our course on “Investment Diversification Into Other Trades”.
Cheddar ain’t got nothing on me bitch. It ain’t a garden ornament if it MELTS UNDER THE SUN.
Anything better than cheddar is worth looking into, right?
Bah Humbug! A Seasonal Rant on First World Problems and Ceramic Elephants
I decided to compile a small list of differences/hypocrisies/annoyances that apply to the daily ecstasy that is my life. I am sure some or all of the items in this list have been covered by someone else in some other digital or analogue medium, however there is no harm in reiterating the most heinous controversies of our time. Things like:
1) A cripplingly incorrect assignment of binary states to clothing cleanliness.
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These guys call it “fuzzy logic”. That’s because if there’s something fuzzy growing on your clothes, it’s time to wash them.
Elaboration – I believe there is something in between black and white in this instance. Say there was a Tinder extension that segregated people – nay, quarantined people – for having been nothing but frequent and successful users of the application into groups. Imagine scrolling down the list of seductive profile pictures, excitedly scanning for your next lucky partner, taking into account this new feature. Scratch that, imagine you were ON the list and your dream girl/guy was scanning through it – I’d name examples but I don’t know what the kids these days are into… are pasty vampires still a thing?
I want you more than I want melanin.
So, say you’d been a bit cheeky with the bearded lady next door after a few too many shots of window cleaner, and you’d picked up some crabs due to her insistence to orally pleasure you at length. If ‘clean’ was STD-free, and ‘dirty’ was going to lump you with the folks with a bit of the syphilis, wouldn’t you want to be part of another group? The ‘little-bit-tainted’ group? Like the self-serve candy at your local sweet shop?
I just coated all your favourites with saliva, mucus and traces of fecal matter.
My point, as succinctly as I can put, being:
Jeans/Jumpers/: One wear* good, three wears getting smelly, five wears maybe wash it now.
Not ‘one wear need wash’.
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Yeah, I’m just washing these ones, because you touched them when you ironed them.
* ‘wear’ applies to normal daily use – this does not include activities like trekking through peat bogs, food fights and bathing in your arch nemesis’ blood while fully clothed.
2) A complete inconsistency when sharing/portioning/rationing food
Elaboration – I am a student of simple virtues. Virtues like getting the fuck to the back of the queue and inflicting severe permanent disability on those who park in disabled spaces when they aren’t entitled to. And of course, applying the same weightings to food distribution.
If there was a pie that tasted like someone fermented it in the armpit of an obese undertaker whose armpit was the source of his entire business model, I would have to eat 70-95% of it, depending on how nicely the gravy masked the musky flavours.
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When business is dry, I bake special cookies. I’m legally immune because I tell everyone I put blood and sweat into making them.
Why do I have to eat more? Because I am bigger and can eat more. I can’t argue with that statement, but I might try to negotiate the figure down, as I suspect in most cases such as these my portion ratio has been rounded up disproportionately to the ratio of our body weights.
I’ll take it like a storm drain in monsoon season, as I am wont to do, being a male in a relationship with the fear of invoking the wrath of the seven hells. However, if I’m going to ingest a majority of the heady contents of this pie, I’d like to apply the same rule to the double chocolate fudge cake heaven waiting for me in the fridge, lovingly covered with a layer of cling wrap to keep the latent fridge aromas (is that pork yoghurt I smell?) from penetrating its cakey goodness. So, 70-95% of that beauty is mine.
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Background: my portion. Foreground: my portion. Ok ok, your portion.
Wait, what? 50%? So, we are sharing it equally now are we? I proceed to slice through the fudgeness whilst choking back tears, daring not to argue lest I enter a debate on gender equality.
3) Christmas Shopping
Elaboration – shopping for things you probably wouldn’t want, the recipient probably doesn’t need, that exceed a calculated price threshold. This threshold is formed from a combination of your bank balance, the size of that nugget of generosity buried in your cynicism, how high your tolerance is for shops’ Christmas soundtracks, and how much you don’t want to offend the gift recipient/recipient’s parents.
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Ed can’t complain because he knows it’s better than the shit he got you.
Thus I wander the aisles, looking at things that should not exist in any normal universe that hopefully fit into my conservative gift price threshold of 4 dollars. Ceramic garden elephants that tell you to piss off when you urinate on them for those Friday night visits you so often have. Soap that smells like mince pies to seduce all those people who have not had enough mince pies by the time their gifts are opened. But something within me tells me that yes, I do need to buy one at the special reduced price. Something whispers “misdirection” to me, and for a moment I could swear this was not a good deal.
I walk out of the shop holding the elephant and soap triumphantly as I play hypothetical scenarios over in my head. My sister receiving the elephant and the whole family cackling with glee at the genius of combining generosity with humour. And for a moment we all forget that we have a pile of shit to carry home, a belly full of mince pie shit to come out when we get home, and the knowledge that some dickhead who decided to sell ceramic piss elephants is drinking champagne on a boat called “Esmerelda”.
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Life is a journey. We can’t all have an Esmerelda. But thanks to Chinese manufacturing efficiency, we can all have inappropriate garden ornaments in time for the New Year!
Disclaimer – I am in no way inferring that the majority of gifts I have received in my lifetime are useless novelty items that serve no purpose except a brief desperate moment of bonding over the Yuletide. I love you all at least as much as the half fudge cake I begrudgingly inhaled, and almost as much as the full cake I was cheated from. ❤ xxx
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