Mistaken identity

Over Xmas some fool bought Mrs Graph a game called 'Identity', a most brilliant idea for making sure you have completely absorbed the marketing shite slung at you by capitalism from the cradle to the grave.

It's a board game in which you throw dice and move from beginning to end, with movement prevented or encouraged at various points through the introduction of a task; that being to identify the logo of some 'brand' or other from the version presented on a card, which has either had the name removed from the graphic, or is merely a fragment of the actual, full thing.

Anyway, on Xmas evening we were playing in teams of three; young people (Steppy, Steppy II and niece), middle-aged people (Mrs Graph, Mrs Graph's sister and Mrs Graph's sister's husband) and very old people (Mrs Graph's mother and father and, erm... me).

The young people were guessing. Unusually - as they seem to have been most readily brainwashed by the marketing profession (and were accordingly winning by some way) - they were struggling. What they had to go at was an 'x' with a small pinkish paw print above it, to the upper left. A fragment of a larger logo.

It was the logo for the catfood, 'felix'.

But they did not know that. Although at this point only Steppy and niece were in the room guessing.

Steppy II had been to the toilet.

But he came back and with all the swagger that a 12 year-old boy can muster he looked at Steppy and niece as if they were completely empty-headed numpties and he bellowed,

"I know! I know!

"It's Petsex!! Petsex!!"

He may never be allowed to forget that.

Once we've stopped pissing ourselves laughing.

Pulp friction

The other evening I explained to Mrs Graph that I had had, that morning, a very brief dream before being woken by the alarm on my phone. In the dream I was standing at a grand piano, and about to sing a duet with the pianist, who just happened to be the uber-cool former frontman of Britpop sensations Pulp.

In return for this revelation I was mocked mercilessly. Ridiculed isn't too strong a word. So intense was the drive for humiliation that the Steppy - home on her break from University - was brought through to the room to join in.

Now, I can accept that maybe it wasn't a cool dream; but I don't make them happen like that, any more than most other people do. Pah.

Worse though is that the very next morning, Mrs Graph decided to share with me her own dream of the night just passed.

"I was at a swimming pool. And it had a really nice lounge area. And I was wandering around the lounge when I saw someone I knew in the dream; so I sat down and had a really nice long chat with him. Guess what! It was Ronnie Corbett!"

How the hell does that work then?

Sticking point

We were swapping very poor old jokes over chicken and vegetable pie this evening. I went for the one about the man who goes into a bar with his giraffe, and begins buying rounds for the both of them, to the amazement of the bar staff. After eight pints the giraffe collapses in a heap on the floor. The man has two more pints and makes to leave. "Oi", yells the landlord gesturing towards the comatose animal, "you can't leave that lying there".

"It isn't a lion; it's a giraffe", says the man.

In the midst of this, the elder steppy proved once again what a towering intellect we have amongst us. "Here's an old one," said Mrs. Graph, "what's brown and sticky?" "Ooh, ooh. I, like, know this", yells elder steppy in order to prove she can actually remember something. "It's... it's... it's... a TWIG!!"

Words fail.




I thought it was the position of the Prime Minister...

A moment of clarity...

The elder steppy asked tonight, "Why isn't it called a teethbrush?"

Anyone who had an art...

Bananas are funny, aren't they?

Well, no. I actually don't mean they're funny in the 'laughing because they're amusing in a comedy way' way. They're not. Although for many years some people have been stupidly trying to convince us to laugh at them in a comedy way as if they are. But they're not.

And people don't look amusing dressed as bananas; and people don't slide on them in the street and fall over on their arses; and they don't appear in Woody Allen's best films.

No, I mean they're funny in the "Dear God, what IS that??" way.

There's one in our kitchen now, well past it's best, and half-covered in sequins.

Sequins!

Apparently that's called "homework".

I hate Art Students. The other day the elder steppy was explaining that she is doing a piece of art work at college which involves taking a cafetière, and covering half of it with glue and then coating the glue with ground coffee. How cool! What a statement! Something profound about the human condition... Do you see what that's about?

No. Me neither. It's ART. So there.

I may still be feeling a little grumpy today.

Anyway, I tried to help. I suggested she could glue the other half, and cover that in marijuana in its 'grass' form. Or maybe some hemp seeds.

Coffee.

Pot.

Coffee pot.

COFFEE - POT. Do you see?

Apparently that was "Like, STOO-pid. Derr".

I don't get art. Apparently.

And I hate Art Students.

This evening there was a TV programme about teenage pregnancy. One young woman decided - against the clear advice of the doctor, nurse and anaesthetists, to have a caesarean section under anaesthetic, which meant she wasn't awake as the baby was delivered.

The steppy announced, "That's, like, just so, like, weird. They could have, like, swapped her baby for someone else's and she, like, wouldn't have even, like, known"?

Bananas.

Wrongs in the keys of wife...

So last night, a Monday, the elder steppy stayed out until quite long gone 11. Upon returning home she discovered that the door had been locked (by her Ma) and that the keys had accidentally been left in it. This meant she couldn't get in. Ho hum.



Knocking on the door to attract attention is therefore required. Fortunately, I was awake and downstairs (probably writing some drivel about Jack Nance) and was able to let her in. However I pointed out quite gently that she might not be so lucky always and that it might not hurt to not be out until so late every night.

"I could jus', like, knock though. Derh".

"Well, yes, but my point is that people might be asleep and therefore.."

"But I could jus', like, knock?".

Ho hum.

I repeated this exchange (I have removed the word 'conversation' from this sentence because that really doesn't pass for conversation, does it?) to Mrs Graph this evening.

"Well, it was really my fault, as I left the key in the door".

"Well, sort of, but that's not actually the point..."

"No. The point is that I have to lock the door because I don't like it left unlocked and nobody else bothers."

Not only is this entirely untrue, but I have too to marvel at the way the steppy's antisocial behaviour became my fault in just two sentences.

That's genuinely amazing.

The question is, 'do you have a thing about bats, Mr Wayne?'

God Almighty. The elder steppy has just come back from seeing 'Watchmen' at the cinema.

"What did you make of it?" asked I.

"Fnrrrfff shnerf shnuffy nerfff", she said.

She mumbles. Usually with her hand over her mouth; so lip-reading is ruled out too. It's a result, not of shyness, but of massive laziness. She just can't be arsed to speak properly, as it would take too much energy to move her face that much.

Anyway, apparently, if you ask three times the magic spell works and translates "Fnrrrfff shnerf shnuffy nerfff" as "It was all right, like, I suppose".

"Only 'all right'"? I wonder.

"Well, yeah, like, I din't get why that bloke's mask kept, like, moving and that".

"What do you think Rorschach's mask is?" I ventured, almost afraid to ask.

"Well, it's like, just a piece of, like, old cloth, innit?"

"Why would it have those shapes though?" Oh, I am so much the pedagogue now...

"Well, it's, like, ink and that."

"But why?"

"Dunno."

I explain, and wonder aloud how an eighteen year old can never have heard of a Rorschach Test.

"I suppose I, like, have and that, but it's like, you know, one of them words I have, like, heard, but not known what it was".

"And were you never once moved to find out what it meant on those occasions when you have heard it?"

"Cun't be, like, bothered, and that."

I think someone once used the term 'fuckwit'.

Not the steps we take; those we send...

I am listening to Laura Veirs. The truth is that Laura isn't all that good. There are several rather better at what she does than Laura, sadly (for her).

And I am planning how best to spend a week away from home, with what will likely be unlikely people in a place where there is nothing else to do.

Laura Veirs is not the answer, although the new Howling Bells album might be.

I have just tried in the briefest possible manner (attention spans of 18 year olds being what they are) to explain to my steppy that going off to University on the basis of moving in with her father is a big mistake. Not because of him, although I think there is an issue there - what with him being a complete dickhead and all - but because the WHOLE POINT is not living wth parents, surely??


So that'll guarantee he gets her as a lodger then...