"Just Put It Down There"...

My family received a lovely 40-inch plasma screen TV from Santa this year. Our chimney was a bit of a tight squeeze though, so Dad pulled some festive strings and got it delivered free with John Lewis. God bless middle class values. The reason for the new telly was because the other one went and broke last year. I won’t beat about the bush - I was a bit disappointed with the lack of drama it died with. There were no explosions, flames or Carbon Monoxide emissions one would expect from a telly on its way out. The people on Eastenders just went a bit green. So purely for that reason, we haven’t tried to fix it. We took it to the tip instead.

The tip is in the middle of an industrial estate in the heart of Southend, surrounded by small, failing businesses with rubbish logos. The only one that isn’t failing is Keymed, a dominating glass and metallic building that my old girlfriend’s Dad more or less owned. It makes medical equipment used in hospitals and other places, like dentists and that. She did work experience there once and broke a two million pound medical machine. They put her on CD packaging after that.
Also near the tip is a carpenters, a marble dealer, and directly opposite, a Jewish cemetery. This makes me feel uncomfortable. I always thought it a bit tactless that they decided to place a Jewish cemetery just across the road from the local dump. Them poor Jews. God forbid the day someone gets it all horribly, horribly wrong, “I’m sorry to hear about your loss Mrs. Freedman, but we just don’t know how Marc ended up in Glass and Plastics.”

The tip really isn’t the ideal place you want to find yourself in. Everything smells funny and the whole place looks and feels grubby. The crushers look like ATATs fresh from Star Wars and the “Recycling Advisors” walking round are about as likely to help as Bin Laden in a charity shop. Nonetheless they still took our shit telly. We both agreed there’s no way they’ll let that go without trying to fix it first, and to be honest they’re welcome to it. Even if they can’t get it working, I’m sure it’ll make a wonderful bathmat for somebody.

The TV we’ve got up and running now works perfectly fine and everybody’s happy. We can hear what they’re saying at the same time they say it now. We don’t have to pretend we’re watching a badly dubbed Japanese action film. The people on Eastenders are still green, though. I’m starting to think they’re just like that.

Houses, lots and lots of houses...

My downstairs toilet took a revamping a couple of months ago. It now is orange – bright, bright orange. The toilet seat, bog brush and even the bog roll is all a lovely shade of tangerine (we’ve used up all the fancy paper now, hello Charmin Ultra, you pale-coloured excuse for a bumwipe). In fact the only thing that isn’t orange in that 2x1 metre room is a small stain of puke put there by Tom Beale the night we all got hammered at my crib. How he managed to get a little bit above the door handle I’ll never know, but respect points for bouncing it that far off the toilet rim nonetheless.

The house I live in has actually taken a battering. It used to be semi-detached, but after our next-door neighbour’s husband died she sold it to us for some knock-off price. I think he died in the room that’s now my bedroom actually – what a lovely thought. I also went through a phase of unscrewing all of the plugs in the house when I was small. I thought that unless I did, I’d end up as a younger and slightly crispier Desmond Tutu. Now I look back on it, it’s kinda obvious that if anything was going to kill me, it would be the act of actually unscrewing a plug socket and ripping all the wires out. But when you’re little it’s a necessary risk, if not a bit fun.

As I write this, I’m lying in the guest bedroom on a double bed with my legs as far apart as I can get them. It sounds kinkier than it actually is; I just enjoy the room I don’t get at university. In those cells you don’t get the luxury of not being able to feel the bed planks underneath. I’m still waiting on a reply to my request for a new mattress. I might deliberately sabotage it so all the bed springs pop out and I get a lovely new one, but give it a couple of months and it’ll do that by itself. I won’t feel so bad about milking em for all they’ve got then. Our hoover is also a bit rubbish too. When the bag is full, the hoover simply stops working. Thing is, we have to apply online for a new one, which takes about five days to actually get results from. Sounds a bit like hygiene-fail if ever I saw one.

Richard Search, head of accommodation, if you ever read this, the views expressed are not my own but simply a series of spelling errors made by my elderly and senile secretary that I’m dictating this to. Your hoovers are of immaculate condition and the system you run is very hygiene-friendly and does not in any way piss me off. Whilst I’m here, I’m sorry but it was me that cracked your Batman coffee mug you left on your desk. If it makes you feel any better, I think I did do a good job selotaping the handle back on though. I think it adds character.

Jumping The Rug

I own a Jesus mug. I’m no Christian though, more agnostic if you’re going to be a bit arsey about it. It was bought for me for my 16th birthday by a mate. He tippexed out the “Jesus” from “Jesus, I trust you” and scribbled on “Guy” in pink crayon. It was a lovely idea, but not too well thought out. It came off in the dishwasher, leaving me basically with a cheap mug with holy J. Chrizzle on it. It’s still my favourite though. The only problem is that whenever I drink Ribena out of it, it drips down the side and looks like Jesus is crying blood. I don’t like that much. I also have to lick his face whenever I take a sip. I’m definitely going to hell for that. Soz babes.

When I was little, my parents made me go to Sunday school. Maybe it was because they thought if I turn out to be the next Hitler, Stalin or Katie Price, then at least my arse is covered. I had that old S.S. card. My earliest memory of Sunday school was inside a dusty side-hall with a group of Sunday school mates (no doubt all dressed in woolly jumpers and worn-out Velcro sandals). The stuff they made us do was crap. We were made to stand on one side of this sickly green rug, whilst René the 80-something-year-old S.S. General stood at the other. We were told we were on Earth on our side of the rug and on the other was Heaven. How do we travel across that dusty, stained, inherited-from-some-dead-dude mat from Earth to Heaven? Of course the answer was by praying daily, forgiving trespassers and loving Jesus. I was only eight - I said motorbike.

Christianity- in fact religion in general- is fading. This is a bit bad I think. It always guided people towards living well, which was never that awful. Yeah a few took it a bit far and that, like Hitler and his lot. But they kinda jumped on the Christian thing because it was a bit more popular than Nazism. More people knew about it, I suppose. So as we become a Godless society, standards are slipping more than Jesus trying to ice-skate in his sandals (turn the frozen lake to wine, then we can all have a bevvy whilst laughing too). I spotted today that parents are giving their children alcohol at home, “fuelling binge-drinking” at a later age. The question has got to be asked though: is this seemingly poor way of living because of the way we live nowadays, or was it there the whole time and Christianity did a good job blagging that we’re all Perfect Peters?

So alcohol campaign groups (known to many as trouble-makers, bored-and-retired or nuns) are saying that because of the “pocket money prices” of alcohol, kids can get hold of it no problem at all. Je disagree, what a bunch of deluded virgins. There is no chance in hell an 11-year-old can rock up to an offy and get alcohol just like that. No way at all. I tried it once, but it failed big time. Grow a beard, wear a large coat and leave a suspicious red button in your hand, go to an airport and you won't come close to how Fail the whole jabazzle was. I left with nothing more than a J20 and a pack of mini cheddars. While I'm here, if you can tell me where I can find these “pocket money prices”, I’m there. I’ve never found one. Ever. Perhaps if people are concerned about teenage drinking, they should buy them an old green rug for Christmas. Or Jesus mugs. Ribena, anybody?

Guy-In-A-Box

I won't lie. I proper belly-laughed when I heard some guys off my course got stuck in the lift of the Media School a couple of weeks ago. That stuff never happens to you. So when you fall to the same fate (in the same poxy lift ironically) on your own, the humour suddenly stops being so humorous. Especially when the very reason I'm in that lift is to go home for a shower and a poo.

A lot goes through your mind when you get caught in a metal box. Embarrassingly enough, my main worry was that I left my Facebook on in the newsroom, completely open to what has been coined as "Frape". This is the bastard child of "Facebook" and "Rape" - Frape. Anything can be typed into your Facebook status or to anybody else's in fact, that could land you in a lot of the brown stuff I was thinking about at the time. Usually there is no attempt to hide it nor make it seem like you. I won't disgust with the details, but next time I drop a meatball on a hairy carpet the three second rule doesn't apply. I'm not eating that.

As I ponder what I'll look like decorated over the walls of the lift when it crashes down to the ground, I start to worry about other things. Did I leave the oven on? Did I leave the iron on? Have I got asthma? No, it's fine Guy, you don't do ironing. Then the woman comes on loud-speaker just as I'm feeling better and kicks me in the teeth with this little gem: "Lift out of service. Please exit the lift". What a bitch. Any tips on how I do that, Houdini?

All this stuff that was sloshing round in my head happened in the space of about 40 seconds, but it felt like at least three minutes. The bitch then decided she'd had enough and took me back to the ground floor, crazy socks and tacky scarf not covered in Guy-mush like I thought. Underwear was though.

Spiderman, Lyme Regis and Jedward - A Multi-blog...

Jyothi Rai is India's "spiderman". He gets this name naturally because he can scale buildings very quickly, even with a small break dance in the middle! Pretty swish.

Check this out:



This is what I'm doing with my life at the moment- simply browsing on youtube like some kind of audio/visual pervert. As for my life recently it's been interesting to say the least. Friday night saw the collapse of Lyme Regis car park, and after spotting the pictures on a well-known social networking site (...) myself and two mates headed down to take a peek. We interviewed people and firemen etc being proper little journalists and then headed back to write it up and ring everybody. Turns out we broke the story to the BBC, ITV and the Echo so good times on that front! We had to be up at 9am at Lyme Regis the next morning to be filmed about it though. Bad, bad times on that front. People are beginning to get worried about the safety of Lyme Regis itself, and so they should really. People have been reporting pan-fires that didn't set the fire alarms off, faulty fire panels and gaps in the stairway, creating a huge wind tunnel that would feed a fire like a Big Mac. Not meaning to scare anybody who might be reading this and lives there of course! I don't envy you though.

So I found myself in the newsroom again on Saturday night, finishing off the law essay I should have done Friday night, just in time to catch Edward nearly stack it jumping through paper and Calvin Harris up-stage them. What an excellent end to their X-factor run. Except they're still going. I believe ITV picked up on the success of John Sergeant and his rubbish dancing getting viewers, as did Simon Cowell who in the words of Freddie Harrisson "values ratings over talent". Well said. X-factor unsurprisingly will be swamped with essentially tacky acts for next year (if they get that lucky) and Simon will regret ever meeting the Irish ladyboys. As for Jedi-Jedward, the longer they muck around wasting people's time and kicking out perfectly good acts the better- more people I can blitzkreig for voting to keep them in once I obtain world domination status. And good on Calvin, he may have made a sharpish exit after that stunt, but god damn it was funny. And when he comes on, you know you're pretty crap. Just leave.

Crazy Horse and Crazy Kilts

I have recently come under fire from certain senior members of the Larsen family about my swearing on Blogger and Facebook. It seems like language can be hurled at me, but can't be broadcast back out. Apparently it's a turn-off to employers who might be researching me to see how suitable I am for a job. Pfft, and what employers are we exactly talking about here?

It's not like I am misrepresenting the public domain anyway. Half the people that Charley Bray and myself interviewed yesterday whilst getting views on binge drinking were cursing left, right and centre. It was a case of Ctrl+replace the word "Tw*t" with "imbecile" a lot of the time, in reference to Phillip Laing urinating on the war memorial. Some of the other quotes were a bit more special however, and we certainly were practising our "serious faces" when they came out with them. These are just a few unedited quotes, for your eyes only, that didn't quite make the cut...:

"He's a tw*t. Simple as, isn't it" - Tom Rooney

"Theres no violence as such, but it gets to a point where it’s violent" - Watz Iyentar

"To be honest if people wanna drink theyre gonna drink. Like if people are going to do drugs theyre going to do drugs. If people wanna go eat roast dinner they’ll go eat roast dinner" - Bob Sweetmore

"It costs you 50 quid to be sick in this taxi" - Bill Buckley

"My child binge drinks on milk!!" - Louisa Yates

"What? Take my picture? Ohhhh no! I've got a thing about it. Do you know the native Americans? What about the chief Crazy Horse?! He never had his photograph taken because they thought that would capture his spirit. I'm a big believer in the native Americans" - Alf Perry

A short blog/long facebook status

Apologies for not writing yet another awesome blog. If any of you reading this are Journalism students at Bournemouth University, you will understand why! My days have been spent for around the last week completing what can only be described as a "fuck-off essay" to be handed in tomorrow, and I am sat here in the newsroom waiting for my dear friend and colleague to go through and check my work. The essay title? What are the effects of competition on the quality and diversity of media programmes. My question? What are the effects of giving a shit.

Writing for me at the moment is not exactly something I want to be doing. I've been doing it literally all day and frankly am only on here to stop myself melting of boredom. Waking up before ten o' clock is bad enough, let alone slogging out all day something which realistically nobody cares about. That said, if a small child and my essay were both hanging off a cliff and I could only save one, it would be the essay any day. I'm not a racist, I just put badass effort into that!

Hannah is here with me as I'm writing this, telling me about her predicament back home- bloody brummies. I hope she reads this now and appreciates the fact I didn't make a ginger joke about her. If Ash was here, she'd have shaved her hair off by now. I can only guess that the situation has deteriorated, I could swear she picked up her phone to read a text message before it even vibrated. Oh, and apparently the German market starts on Thursday back at her home. She looks genuinely upset about that. Facebook status update over.

Hardcore Media Law

I was sat in Media Law this afternoon, as I am on most Fridays. Key phrase - most. Not many people bother to turn up, let alone listen, after the first couple of lectures. Our lecturer repeats himself and all the stories, anecdotes and "unique whips" that come with it. So much so that a Facebook group has actually been set up to showcase all of his top-rated and favourite quotes and sayings. Seems boring? Yeahpppp. That's how we get our kicks.

There was one piece of useless and inappropriate information that did catch my attention though. My lecturer's random question of the day that seems to crop up completely from left field was this: What is the most commonly used word on the internet? Law-related very valid question, I know. Typical answers such as "A" and "The" were assumed by most, so we all pressed Apple + Tab and carried on slagging him off on Facebook.

His answer. The answer to the most commonly used word on the internet - Sex.

Sorry what?

At the mention of this word, every student's head (typically) shot up from the shorthand exercises we were given earlier. A reference to sex in a Media Law lecture was like Christmas in Israel- it just never happened. Especially from a man you wouldn't blame for forgetting what sex actually was at his age. Facebook lost half it's online population in that split second.

Because apparently, 70% of the internet is entirely made up of porn. Rubbish, tacky, occasionally excellent, porn. Man's greatest invention, a complex system more powerful than any other imaginable to the human being, is actually filled up with cock-sucking, boob-wanking, bukaki-drenched S & M hot action. A waste of human resources? Perhaps. Catholics certainly wouldn't agree, as we see in the educational documentary "Monty Python - Every sperm is sacred" sketch, still to this day played in primary school classrooms to avoid "the banana lesson".

What does this say about us then? Does it say that we are still "driven to pursue the continuance of the human race" and the only way we can safely do this is to keep the pipes clean? Points for effort, but no. What 70% of the internet being made up of sex actually shows is one basic fact - that we are all f*cking perverts. Including my law lecturer, who will most likely sue me for "defamation" after this. Do I know what the consequences of this are? Hell yes I do, say it with me now. Two years imprisonment, unlimited faaane. He can't sue me for it being the truth because it's not. The 70% fact is wrong. After this blog, its 71 actually.

Sat-Navs and Jersey Plots

It interested me to read this morning that scientists have discovered a new, larger ring that runs around Saturn that has never been seen before. According to the BBC News website, the extra ring is "probably made up of debris kicked off Saturn's moon Phoebe by small impacts".

All this begs one very simple question. If these scientists at NASA are really as savvy as they say they are, sprouting from tip-top universities such as Harvard and Yale, then how comes they didn't spot this f*ck-off circle around Saturn slightly earlier?! Science is not exactly my forte, but if you gave me a telescope, pointed it in vaguely the right direction and asked me to take a look, I recon I could point out that this tree has one more ring in it's trunk than Buzz and Woody admit to. After all, we're not dealing with something the size of a Hula Hoop here, are we. So next time you find yourself floating around in space, don't rely on the Satnav to get you home, because chance's are it's shit.

The best story I read today even beats this though:

"Drugs baron found guilty of conspiring to import £1m of cannabis into Jersey by boat from Amsterdam"

I don't smoke weed, cannibis, skunk or grass. In fact, I try to avoid anything that cows would also eat. That said! I'd like to offer a piece of advice to this gang, should they ever stumble across this. IF you are going to import that many drugs into one single country, would you really, really start with Jersey? Jersey?! I'm hardly known back where I come from as a drugs warlord, but anybody with sense can see that importing all these drugs onto what is essentially an island somewhat limits one's options. The chances of escape should you get busted are pretty low when the furthest you can run away from Jersey is the end of the pier. I'm also not sure that of all places in the world, where drugs are rife and people kill for a line or a spliff, Jersey has the highest demand for weed.
What is the most ironic actually is that Amsterdam, the one place in the world where I would expect weed to be in the most demand also happens to be the one place they attempted to smuggle it out from! What was this escapade? Lads, I have a plan. Lets take this weed from a country we can smoke and sell it completely legally, to an island off the coast of England and sell it to the wrinklies and ferry-drivers. Top plan. And this is the ring-leader who "police still consider him to be one of Britain's most wealthy and influential criminals". If that's the case, then fuck me dealers are thick! Enjoy the spliff whilst you've got it, otherwise it's going to cost you a ferry ride and a stick of rock too.

I want to do a poo at Paul's!

I've been at university for nearly three weeks now, and my room is finally starting to smell a bit (you were right Mum, you can't recycle cereal milk into chedder). I removed the bowl of soggy Weetabix but it wouldn't leave, so we had to go to Asda's.

What was supposed to be a ten-minute round trip ended up being a three hour spend-a-thon. This consisted of a cycle of insisting on saving money not buying luxuries and then spotting Captain-Rocket lollies on special offer (three for a pound!). I finally spotted the spray stuff with that advert with the kid needing "a poo at Paul's", but it was too expensive. I also thought insisting on taking your trousers down "only at Paul's house" was a little rapey. The product is called "Touch and Fresh". Touch and Fresh? Er, back on the register.

The little glass ones that don't spray randomly and make me jump were a lot cheaper. I picked up the lavender and chamomile one to take a look, but was then blitzkrieged by my housemate because lavender and chamomile is "a fucking annoying smell that would put me in a bad mood". Funny that, I never knew smells induced periods? We went for Morning Mist, with a fiver riding on it smelling better than the other one. We didn't think how we'd know which smelt better, but we weren't going to start smelling plastic packaging in the middle of Asda's to find out. We see fit lesbians in that place all the time. We didn't want to cramp our style.

The smell in my room since replacing the penicillin-farms with air-fresheners has actually improved. Having my housemate stroll in my room without knocking, sniff, smile and then leave again as if he'd never been there wasn't pleasant. Him doing that when I'm standing on one leg putting my pants on is even worse. Knock next time. In all fairness though, it does smell damn good in here since Madame Mist arrived - thanks Glade. You're better than Johnson's, "a family company". Fucking queers.

P.S. Here is the video of the Touch and Fresh. You can decide for yourself if Paul is a maggot-fondler or not...:



P.P.S. ^^ Sorry about that. Apparently Paul can violate videos too! Here's the clever one that told her mummy what he was doing:

The P90X Chin-Up Bar

After settling into university, my housemate and I both agreed that keeping in shape would be an issue. However, funding this issue would also become an issue. Students aren't exactly renowned for being money-making machines, and the gym costs are a little excessive. We therefore got thinking. How do we keep in shape (or get into it even) without busting the bank? Running is far too time-consuming and often leads to embarrassment if running in public. Even in Bournemouth, there will be somebody driving past who will find my beetroot-coloured face amusing. Getting up early to avoid this isn't even an option, and hitting the gym without paying will also get me in trouble.

Googling this one night, we came across the P90X chin-up bar; a clever invention which hooks onto the door frame without needing to drill holes in the wall to keep it in place. Our student house deposit would therefore be safe, and the bar would be mobile so when Ben isn't using it, I can. We compared it to it's main rival, the JML IronGym, but the P90X was cheaper, and JML only reminded me of the Ped Egg. For twenty-three quid, it was a good investment.

The bar itself comes with more screws and holes than a French orgy. Assembling the chin-up bar (after working out what went where) ended up burning more calories than actually using the thing, not to mention the exercise used in catching the free bus into town to get a spanner. The first impressions were not so great. When I'm actually using it however, it seems fine. My muscles ache after a measly number of pull-ups (weed) and I'm out of breath from just hanging on it. Going to the gym in college was clearly a waste of time knowing I did jack over the summer. Fail. I suppose in conclusion, apart from forgetting it's on my door and hitting my head on it, the P90X proves itself to be a safe little bit of equipment that doesn't break the budget - just my door frame.