Duh, duh duh, duh duh

My googling skills aren’t the greatest, but I can normally find something when I want it. I ran into a problem when i wanted to know the name of the music they use for arty stuff. You know? That one off of SMart? I could maybe sing it to you? Okay well you know the one.

I have met so many people who’ve wanted to know what it is, and no one who knew what it was. It really became one of those things that annoyed when i thought about it, and lots of music has done that. Other songs that have done that have been A Thousand Miles (you know, with that piano bit) Eye of the Tiger (you know, with that guitar bit), and then this, with the glockenspiel bit. Over the years I’ve probably spent hours looking for it, and never found it. It has caused all sorts of minor irritations.

Anyway, the only reason I’m going on about it is because I’ve just found out what it is. It's called

Left Bank Two by The Noveltones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcCHRW8G9yY

This is all I have to say.

Oh, and you’re welcome!

Americans are excellent

Americans are excellent. And the word excellent is not used enough these days. I digress.

I spent the last week skiing in America, which was lovely, possibly aside from the mountains of salt that I must have consumed over the week. There were many noticeable differences in the culture between here and the US, such as the multitude of ‘in your face’ adverts, particularly on TV. I must’ve seen an advert for a DVD called Lots and lots of Jets and Planes about 40 times. Yes, it’s just lots of footage of jets and planes. What more could you want?

One difference the struck me, however, was the average American’s ease at conversation. Several times, when a group of us skiing got in a gondola and a single American got in, within minutes the conversation was flowing. If this was England, no doubt the air would just be filled with an awkward silence that any British person is far too familiar with, but in the US of A, nothing can bring down their talkative optimism. They never shy away from a compliment, even if it is always “Hey, that’s awesome!” or “Hey, that’s cool!"

From my experience, every American is just like a socially confident seal, waiting to dive into the vast ocean of conversation. I, however, tend to more resemble a key characteristic of the socially awkward penguin. And as those of you who know me well will know, I am not a penguin.

A good song title

I like country music song titles. I also like lists. Here’s combination of the two.

1. Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye!
2. I Don't Know whether To Kill Myself or Go Bowling
3. If I Can't Be Number One In Your Life,Then Number Two On You
4. I Sold A Car To A Guy Who Stole My Girl, But It Don't Run - So we're even
5. Mamma Get A Hammer (There's A Fly On Papa's Head)
6. If The Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me
7. She's Actin' Single and I'm Drinkin' Doubles
8. How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?
9. I Keep Forgettin' I Forgot About You
10. I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well
11. I Still Miss You, Baby, But My Aim's Getting' Better
12. I Wouldn't Take Her To A Dog Fight,Cause I'm Afraid She'd Win
13. I'll Marry You Tomorrow, But Let's Honeymoon Tonight
14. I'm So Miserable Without You; It's like Having You Here
15. I've Got Tears In My Ears From Lyin'On My Back And Cryin' Over You
16. If I Had Shot You When I Wanted To, I'd Be Out By Now
17. My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, And I Don't Love You
18. My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, And I Sure Do Miss Him
19. Please Bypass This Heart
20. She Got The Ring And I Got The Finger
21. You Done Tore Out My Heart And Stomped That Sucker Flat
22. You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly
23. Her Teeth Was Stained, But Her Heart Was Pure
24. She's Lookin' Better After Every Beer
25. I Haven't Gone To Bed With Ugly Women, But I've Sure Woke Up With a Few

These are all genuine. And directly copied off http://humour.200ok.com.au/25cw_songs.html
Talk about lazy writing!

A few of my favourite things

This is a facebook note that I made a while back, which made me smile. As the French say.......here it is (in my experience they are all more keen to speak English than I am to speak French).

Thinking about my favourite things makes me happy, and I've never tried to list them before. I'll probably think of more but here are a few to get started...

• Wrapping up warm in loads of layers and going out of a cold day
• Getting lost in a film/book to the point where I genuinely think it's impossible to stop
• Having a conversation one-to-one and really getting to know someone i didn't know before
• Going back to sleep when the alarm goes off
• Listening to brilliant stand-up/story telling and never wanting it to end
• Hearing a really good song for the first time in ages and getting good memories
• Writing stupid songs which no one will ever hear
• The buzz of anticipation of people's feedback when you've made something brilliant

I'll keep adding to the list. I would recommend everyone made their own, it's therapeutic

Then I don’t need a jacket

Unashamedly for the second time this week, I’m going to point you in the direction of youtube, because it is quite simply funnier and more interesting than I can ever hope to be. Even if most of it is just videos of cats playing pianos. But it’s a cat……..playing a piano!

This absolute delight of a clip is only 10 seconds long, and will provoke different reactions from different people. Some people who seen it have just leaked a smile, or even stared at it straight faced, whereas someone people have, like me, literally cried with laughter. So if you watch it and you don’t find it funny, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong. It just means you’re dead inside.

One more thing, it’s definitely funnier the second time. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QLSRMoKKS0&feature=related

The Fairy Remanence

We had to write a children's story for English. This is what I came up with in 25 minutes, I haven't even proof read it, so it's probably full of mistakes. It's awful.

Once there was a distant, far away land, where the fairies lived. They were a mighty civilisation, all working together in harmony. They helped each other to be strong, and were respected in all other realms. Everybody else loved them. The dwarfs loved them. The gnomes loved them. Even the trolls loved them, and they weren’t known to be the loving kind!

Fairytown was under a large forest. Each fairyhouse was built out of a mystical material which could only be manufactured by fairies. It was pink and fluffy, and smelt sweet like sugar. The fairies called this Candy Floss. Each fairy house was built out of candy floss. Each fairy car was built out of candy floss. It was very popular with the fairies, as it smelled so yummy!

There was however, one problem with building everything from candy floss. If it were ever to get wet, it would all dissolve and waste away. This made rain a very serious problem. Nobody knew this better than Tufney who, as everyone knew, was driving her car one afternoon when it started to rain. Before she knew it, there was no longer a car to be driven. Poor little Tufney has to fly all the way home!

The rain has never been an issue, because the fairies made very sure that they built fairytown under a forest. This gave them shelter, shielding them from any rain that fell. One day there was a big storm, and the winds came. The winds swept all the trees away, and fairytown was no longer sheltered. All the houses melted away, as did everything else. The fairies were very sad when they realised they would have to build fairytown again. They came to the decision build the new fairytown in a desert, so there would be no rain anymore. Hurray!

Many years later, a small girl was out for a walk. She stumbled across where fairytown used to be, but she had no way of telling, apart from one little reminder. Under the stump of what used to be a willow tree, she saw something small and pink. She did not know what it was, but it smelled sugary and it made her happy. She went running back to her mother to show her, and her mother worked out the recipe, so the girl could eat as much as she wanted. And that’s how candy floss came to be!

Movies…

Films are brilliant. Wells some of them are. The thought that you can introduce an audience to a group of characters, then tell an epic story with them in less than two hours in baffling. Unless it’s the extended Lord of the Rings. Then it’s more like 18 hours.

The advantage that films have over TV is that because they are short, something meaningful has to be happening practically all of the time. Recently I watched the film 6 episodes of series one of 24. In this 6 hours, not very much happens. More precisely, 4 things happen. And none of them are particularly good.

What baffles me more is that a company can spend millions on a film, get the best actors in the world, have massive crews full of creative advisors and the like, and still come up with what can only be described as a pile. For further research, watch Valentine’s Day or New Year’s Eve.

However, the greatest films are those which are so bad, they’re good. Case in point, here is 19 seconds of The Room, possibly the best 19 seconds in cinematic history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S9Ew3TIeVQ

Writer’s block

For English, we’ve been given the task of writing a children’s story. It’s particularly hard to write for children, because they are stupid, and haven’t heard of most of my favourite words (such as assassin and nemesis, among others). Also, apparently it has to be appropriate for that audience, which rules out all those fun genocide ideas I had.

All the other ideas seem to revolve around the retelling of stories that already exist. The retelling of the Lion King but with tigers, the Tiger King (I am too hilarious), Hansel and Gretel with the twist that they are evil and the witch is good, and a retelling of Schindler’s List but with ducks. Trust me, it would’ve worked.

I still don’t know what to do. Point is, like everyone who’s tried to write a significant amount of anything, I’ve run out of ideas. That don’t involve ducks anyway. Which is the same problem I’m having writing this blog, so I thought that instead of getting stuck with writer’s block, I’d write about it.

I know, so self-aware and post-modern. It’s the kind of thing that a clever person would write. But worse.