January 2008

Occasional table visitor Jon has drawn my attention to this, the Indoor/Outdoor Smoking Helmet, believing it to be a device I first suggested back in 1996 when we had to share an office.

Close, Jon, but no cigar. Mainly as you don't smoke. This odd device seems to be an attempt to let you smoke outside in relative comfort. That was not my plan. I envisaged a contraption that would allow me to sit at my desk and smoke, with all the smoke being directed via pipes and vents and the like, to the great outdoors. To clarify my plan I must now fall back on the last weapon of failed inventors everywhere... The crudely drawn childish cartoon...

I hope this has cleared up any confusion. I will continue to work on the design for my device, as testing has shown a number of flaws. Suffocation being the main one.

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Do people stare at you in the street? Has someone nearly crashed their car because they were gawping at you standing outside your workplace or pub having a cigarette, when they should have been looking at the car in front? Is it getting on your fecking nerves and making you feel a teeny bit paranoid?

You, my friend, need to spend your cash on one of these lovely t-shirts.

Or you could buy a badge, which is cheaper but doesn't give my bank account the same sort of rosy glow. Either way, click on the t-shirt image or this handy link (www.cafepress.com/tonyblews2) and get your mitts of THE fashion accessory of 2008!

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Oh look, another social networking site. But, it seems, one with a difference.

This one is called "i'm like in with you", and makes as much sense to me as Quantum Mechanics would to an earwig. Sure its got lots of pretty colours and makes nice noises, but so do those things you attach to prams to keep children amused, and I grew out of those when I was about 32. Still, its not as bad as MySpace.

Anyway, if you can work this bloody thing out, please hesistate to tell me about it. And, as usual, if you want to sent me information about your latest medication offer, the address is hello@floppycock.org.

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Apparently one of Britain's most loved pubs is set to close. People are up in arms about this.

Sadly, the public house in question is a fictional one. From a soap. From a crap soap set in a ficticious part of an alleged Manchester.

"Oh," but these people moan, "you can't get rid of the Rovers!"

"Oh," I hope, "you fecking well do!"

I'm sorry, but the sort of sad bastards that campaign to save a fictional pub are the sort of people that should be excluded from our elections. Actually, I'd go so far as to say they should be excluded from the right to breathe.

If these couch-bound halfwits actually turned off their television sets and went out for a drink, maybe they'd realise that the pub trade is dying. And it's all their fault. Pubs are empty because of people sitting at home watching illusionary lives in illusionary pubs. Get out and live the life! Get a life!

You stopped us from smoking in the pub, so now come and drink in the smoke-free atmosphere. Alone, because we are all outside. In the smoking area which you have no right to be in, so just stay out. Ok?

Anyway, there are more important things in life to worry about than the demise of a fictional Manchester pub which somehow defies the laws of space and time (the toilets would actually be in next door's kitchen).

So I hope your Rovers Return becomes a Mexican restuarant, or a Chinese, or flats. It has happened to my local in the past, and I hope it happens to "yours".

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Why the hell would I want to join a group called "Make Brian Get His Hair Cut"? Maybe I should start a group called "Balding Longhaired Ukulele Playing Ex-Goths With Shite Cameras". No doubt I'd get 732 members within a week.

Ok, so I would like to be a pirate, because I look good in a pirate shirt. But i'm always going to be more Barbossa than Sparrow, so I'll decline that invitation too. Actually, i'm not even cool enough to be Barbossa. I'm not even the fat idiot who hangs about with the bloke from The Office. I'm not even as cool as the monkey.

I'm bored with your likeness quizzes, fed up with that world travelling bear, utterly tits-off with whatever you've written on my wall today, and not only cheesed off, but utterly fondued off with the whole bloody thing.

I'm about 3 microns (because saying "this far" won't work in a typed rant) away from deleting my facebook account. If you want to contact me, use email. Or the phone. Don't frig about using a crappy social networking site that annoys the teeth out of me so much that I will never need to see a dentist ever again.

Oh, by the way... Buy my book... but don't complain if its crap.

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