The Blog of Lone

Work

Has been a looong day at work today.  Weddings always tend to be, but what doesn’t help is accidentally turning up to work two hours early.  Don’t get me wrong, the work isn’t all that hard (well, except for having to move loads of pianos around), but those extra two hours turn a bearable eleven and a half hour shift into a tiring thirteen and a half hours.  There’s only so much coffee you can drink before starting to shake like a heroin addict going cold turkey, and I reckon I was pushing the boundary line.

As predicted there was lots of cringe worthy granddad dancing, by people of all ages.  You know the kind of dance, where someone who has never heard a song before bop shuffles with slightly flailing arms, totally out of time to the music.  Just imagine your geriatric uncle Bob trying to dance to hip hop and you’re on the right tracks.  But it’s a wedding, so I guess it’s expected and acceptable.  The only memorable things were when the groom broke down crying mid-ceremony for five minutes and the bride’s wedding dress, which made her look like an all star quarterback in American football (think the White Witch from ‘The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe’ film).

Search

With all the wonders of cutting edge technology, which in this case involves a gang of bowler hat wearing monkeys locked in a dimly lit room, selotaped to top of the range laptops, smoking enormous cigars and drinking nothing but dry Martini’s, I can now find out exactly what goes down in the vague cyberspace recesses of the Blog.

One of the cyber monkeys on his fortnightly half hour break.

One piece of gnostic illumination that particularly tickled me was being able to see the key words people are putting into search engines in order to find the Blog.  While ‘blog of lone dixstock’ (Dixstock being an annual event reported on uniquely by the Blog) is perfectly acceptable (I bet I can even name the person doing that search), I do worry about whoever found us by searching for ‘lone mad blog’ (possibly a bit insulted by that one), and I’m positively scared to imagine the person who searched for ‘get it down zulu warrior’.

Funny Link

Think you’re bored? - Trust me, compared to these guys your life is a thrilling roller coaster of excitement and cake.

Peace and pickles.

Life/Thoughts

This week has mainly been very dull.  Sitting in front of the computer all day applying for jobs isn’t a healthy lifestyle.  Have been trying to make up for this by going down the gym, but it’s not something I enjoy.

At the gym there’s always guys, and girls, who watch you out of the corner of their eyes.  You can tell the ones.  They wear fashionable gym clothes, cut to show off their muscles/breasts/tight stomachs.  They mark you.  Mark the clothes you wear, the weights you lift, how much you sweat, what you drink.

For these people the gym isn’t about keeping fit, it’s a huge exercise in vanity.  They’re the worst kind of physical image Nazi, judging others by their own warped morals.  They pour scorn on the overweight people who are genuinely trying to get fit on the treadmills and hang out in their own toned, fashionable, tanned, bunches by the free weights.

Judging people by their looks is a bit of a personal bugbear of mine.  I’ve known gorgeous people who were intelligent and interesting, and an equal amount who were vacant and dull.  Same goes for those thought of as not traditionally gorgeous.  One of the most annoying things I can remember was when an article of mine on this topic was sold.  A few days later I checked up on it, and the guy who had bought it hacked it to pieces, keeping almost only the words such as ’sexy’, ‘gorgeous’, ‘attractive’, ‘beauty’ etc.  He then used it as the front page for a porn website.  Pleased, I was not.

Quiz

Went to a huge charity quiz tonight.  Was entertaining.  Only two things of note to report.

1:  The year’s supply of beer to be won would have lasted me two weeks at most.  Either this makes me a drunkard loser, or the organisers very stingy.

2. Out of the 500 people there, I was, literally, the only one to be able to recognise a picture of the current Poet Laurette, Carol Ann Duffy.  I’m not sure if this makes me a freak, or everyone else uncultured.

Work

Got to work tomorrow.  This isn’t a bad thing as I need something to entertain me, and working weddings can sometimes be entertaining, although I have a feeling this one will not be.  Terrible dresses, worse dancing, lots of free wine, and a total lack of inhibitions do often add up to much comedy viewing for the bloke who has to stand there and watch the guests while occasionally serving a few drinks.

Funny Links

Never trust your mates.

Ps.

Just want to say a big thank you to all the Blog Monkeys out there for reading, and especially those new to the Blog who have been leaving great comments.  Thanks to you guys the Blog is now 1458.62% more popular than it was last week.  Wow.

Peace and love.

Hanky waving, blacked up old folks, beards as far as the eye can see, wenches, men in drag, bells, stick fighting, hog roasts, fiddles and banjos.  It’s got to be a Folk Festival.

The Tenterden Folk Festival took over my little country town for the weekend.  Lots of odd people with pewter tankards tied to their belts, bells on their legs, beards on their chins, black on their faces and ribbons in their hair swarmed all over my normally quiet backwater in a riot of ale induced folkishness.  Not even my normally dead local pub was safe.  Friday night my local had some fairly decent folk singing going on, which bizarrely ranged from folk songs to Gregorian chant to blues.  It felt a bit odd having to fight for my usual seat at the bar when normally I’m the only person in the place.  Even Ruby the bar dog was all out of sorts.  Seeing as it was so busy my landlord mate asked me to work the next day, and never one to turn down work and a free ham sandwich I did.  Apart from having a whole troop of morris dancers practising first thing in the morning, it wasn’t too busy; it was actually a disappointingly dull day.

I got to watch the main procession of folk dancers, morris men, musicians and weirdos through the high street, which was nicely traditional, even down to a huge guy with a long beard dressed in a frilly pink frock with his hair in ponytails.  England is traditionally eccentric it seems.  Ale was drunk, songs were sung, feet tapped, and dances danced.

In totally unrelated news.

Also have recently got tenuously back in touch with someone who was for a very long time one of the most important parts of my life.  It’s nice to know that even if it is just via a few text messages, we can still be civil and nice to each other.  She has one of those good souls I was rambling about in the last post, and it’s good to know even after everything we put each other through we’re still able to remain true to ourselves and treat each other well.  It’s a poor reflection of what might have been, but a damn sight better than how things could have ended up.  I’m proud of us.

Funny Videos:

Pole Dancing, it’s not for everyone.

It’s not how I teach, but it seems to work.

Peace

Went shopping.  This for most people is a regular, normal, occurrence.  For me it’s a rarity.  I hate shopping with a passion.  Nothing fits and I don’t like any of the clothes that do.  I get intimidated by shop assistants with their trendy hair and skin tight jeans.  I just want to scream in their smarmy fashionable faces, “where are the real clothes, the ones that fit normal people!  Stop being so bloody emo and superior!”.  Shopping can be a traumatic experience.  It leaves scars, and not all of them are mental.

That said I did manage to find myself some decent clothes that fit.  They even look good.  Which is a step up from the usual ‘it keeps me warm’ category that most my clothes fall under.  To go with this new presentable Lone, I’ve formalised the accidental beard shaving of last week and decided to go clean shaven for a while.  I look young, almost normal.  I’m also in considerable lower facial pain.  Perhaps young, clean shaving, and lightly bleeding will attract the opposite sex, but I doubt it.

I did manage to attract an older lady who was trying to sell me glasses though.  Got myself a new, un-sat on pair, which look rather good.  Was told they were ‘young’ and that I looked very ‘now’.  I don’t think I’ve ever been ‘now’ before.  I’m not sure what being ‘now’ entails.  Should I be Twittering on a Blackberry, or reading Dan Brown on an EReader?  Somehow I ended up with the lady selling them to me calling later on to ask if I needed anti glare, and to proclaiming her love down the phone.  Slightly odd, but also confidence boosting.

All this job seeking business is tiring.  I know exactly the job I want, but can’t find any vacancies for it anywhere.  The job I want, really want, is to be Bernard Black from Black Books.  If I work on the Irish accent, I’d be perfect for the job.  So if anyone finds an advert for an ill tempered, misanthropic, heavy drinking, literate, scruffy, inhumane, humorous and egotistical book shop owner with a comical human plaything and a gorgeous female friend please let me know.

BlackBooks

Funny Video:

This made me laugh.  A lot.  Mixed Martial Arts Fail