9 October 2010

Scanners

And then there's the "scan" thing.

Now mostly people don't share what the scan teaches them. Because it would challenge the orthodoxies of childbirth. And it might put some off.

But I'm going to.

It is as clear as day that by the time 12 weeks have passed and you can see a completely human-shaped human (which is the size of a fig) that what is happening here is not complicated.

Listen carefully.

Or read carefully, more properly. Sigh.

What's going on is this: women's bodies are acting as teleport chambers for humans that are being beamed naked across the multiverse (naked like in Terminator Two).

The reason they're that small is because it takes some time (nine months or so) for them to fully beam through.

It's a bit like a TV or radio signal getting stronger. Kind of like that whole Mike Teavee bit in the chocolate factory.

(I will not do any chocolate factory/pregnancy jokes at this point, nor at any other).

So that's the truth: Human. Beamed across space. Teleport chambers. Signal strength.











Well it makes more fucking sense than the explanation we use now!


When I write that "people don't share what the scan teaches them", I actually mean men, obviously.

8 October 2010

Funny thing, instinct. It looks exactly like guesswork

Anyway, at the moment we(e) realised that what we had been calling "the project" had (cough) successfully launched (cough) we both had an immediate, instinctive idea that we would be expecting a hegraph.

Dunno why. Just did.

This was strange as I have always been convinced before, that were I ever to be graph to a graphite it would be a shegraph.

So much so that I have discussed with Mrs Graph my reluctance to indulge in those awful undermining behaviours that seem to accompany so much girl-raising currently. Pink clothing, not as an option but as a constant. Nothing but stereo-typical girl toys and dolls, bland Disney songs, Bratz, faux-Yank accents brought on by those sickly twins and worst of all the bloody "Princess on Board" signs.

I fucking hate those.

"If I ever have a daughter", I announced one day, after Mrs Graph parked the car next to one, "I'll want a 'Future Labour Leader On Board' sign", I declared.





"How about just not having a sign", she replied.

7 October 2010

Marathon bar...

Anyway, my mother - grand-graph as it were - was told about graphite quite early. It was one of those moments where only the words "besides herself" properly explain her reaction.

We didn't tell anyone else for weeks after that. Mrs Graph thought we should wait until after she'd run her marathon.





She thought people would fret.

1 October 2010

graphite

Well.

Here's a thing. Mrs Graph is with graphite.

Yay!

We have known this for about eight weeks. This is terrific. Terrific. I am still shocked. I mean, not because it's a surprise. It isn't. It was planned and a deliberate decision and all that. But because, well.... fucking hell!!

At this moment graphite is apparently the size of a plum; about twelve weeks. Mrs Graph peed on a stick several weeks ago. It was supposed to take three minutes to give a result. She hadn't even finished the peeing when a cry came from the other side of the bathroom door, "I haven't finished yet and it's already told me the result!"

Me - "Really!? What is it?"







Idiot.

21 August 2010

Baled out?

I noticed too - and I don't mean to sound (how can I say this) callous here - but I noticed too, that at this moment of significant threat to the lives of 365 human beings (one for each day of the year) that...


No. It's too churlish.

That...

I can't. Even at this remove, surely it's too soon.

That...

I mustn't. It would seem tasteless.

















I noticed that His Royal fucking Capeness was too busy promoting what was then 'his' new film to bother trying to save Qantas Flight 30.

Bastard.

19 August 2010

Down, down, down on a burning wing of fire

Do you remember when that Boeing 747, filled with Qantas passengers travelling from London to Australia, apparently had an explosion of some kind which blew a hole in the fuselage?

That's not good.

For the passengers this was - understandably - a very frightening experience. The oxygen masks appeared in front of them as the plane was forced to drop rapidly from 29,000 feet to 10,000.

Passengers were shaking and largely silent, with some vomiting, as the cabin crew yelled at them to put the masks on.

How did we know that last bit?

Partly because it was in the papers. And partly because of the footage on the TV.

That's the footage on the TV with the words "mobile phone video" in the top left corner.

That's
mobile phone video.

Now correct me if I'm wrong (actually - don't; I don't like it) but doesn't everyone in the world know that having your mobile phone on on the plane is the - wrong - thing - to - do?

Don't they?

They do.

Not least, because - rumour has it - they interfere with the navigation systems.


So why the fuck would somebody who has just discovered that the plane they are on has a fucking great hole in the fuselage and is plummeting towards the earth very, very quickly, turn on the mobile phone so they can capture the moment??

Why???

Because - of course - their own little life is SO much more important than the safety of the other 346 passengers or the 19 crew, that taking video footage of everybody dropping like a stone is the natural thing to do, isn't it?

"Hey - yuk, yuk, yuk - I didn't make Big Brother, and I may die in a ball of flame because I'm fucking with the navigation sytems, but at least I'll get on the tee-vee! Neat!"


I suppose (and I've never seen a use for it before) that maybe that's why the mobile phone companies gave us 'Aircraft Mode'.

13 August 2010

Limiting One's Patience

I may have remarked before upon the taxi-driving classes.


I may have referred too to the difficulties some men seem to have with etiquette when driving.


So let me ask...

Why is that taxi drivers have no problem understanding "limit on public spending", "limit on personal taxation" and "limit on immigration", but "speed limit" seems to be completely fucking beyond them?

I only ask.

Diss, Respectful, Bastard

He really does get about a bit though. I see that he's on a March front page of the Norfolk Gazette. "Batman spares sheep farmers blushes".

I don't know why he bothers. Some in-breed is seconds away from being spotted with his dick in a spring lamb by passengers on Easy Jet flight 2565 from Ganja,
Azerbaijan, which is flying in low over Diss having been diverted to Great Yarmouth because Ipswich Airport is closed (due to fungus on the runway); so bloody, goody-two-batboots throws his cape around the philandering fool to prevent discovery?

Why?


I'll tell you why. Self-bloody-promotion.

It doesn't spare the poor sod's blushes at all. He is now having his ewe-poking exploits being read about by thousands, instead of maybe being seen out of the 'left hand windows just below the wing' by two dozen.

But it gets his royal Batness on the front page again doesn't it?


Thereby keeping me off. He doesn't seem to be in to take my calls, ever. Hardly respectful.


Black-suited, rubber-flaunting, utility-belt-posing bastard.

I've heard that's why Robin left.

It was 'me, me , me , me , me' all the ruddy time, from the old Cape-flinger, there.

Well, that and being made to do the same tired, old "Holy..." jokes.

Imagine bowling up in front of a big crowd and playing your part in the damsel-rescuing (somewhere like, say, Love Clough) and then having to stick - in front of all the sexy, young things of the Lancashire Pennines town - to a script which has you saying things like, "Holy Inappropriate, Batman!" and punching your fist into your emerald-gloved left hand.

They'd think it was silly, and you'd look daft.

So he left.



Well, that, and the constant imposition, by Batman, of buggery on the poor bloke.

He wasn't allowed to be saying "Holy Inappropriate Batman!" on those occasions now, was he?

12 August 2010

King, George, the thirst for fame...


"What kind of a world do we live in, where a man dressed as a bat gets all my good press"?

I often wonder this before I fall asleep. I'm sure I'd be much more of a global, household name if it weren't for Batman and his front-page-stealing, caped-crusading antics. He's on the telly right now being famous and narrowing down the opportunities for others to be similarly famous. Fame isn't like rubella - not everybody can have it at once.

I might ring him and ask him to stop the being famous thing for a few weeks; at least until I have established fully my own international brand.

Yeah. Good idea.

On a slightly different subject; I realise I missed out some celebrities what I have bumped in to and, as I now intend to join them in celeb-ness, it's wise to name them on the way up, so they're nice to me when I reach the top.

I once walked past author Stephen King in a street near New York's Central Park, and I once met George Melly.

In a pub.

Enormous bloke he was, with a very loud suit and a very large hat. A fedora, I guess.

I recognised him instantly, of course. I'd known his name, his face and his dress-sense since I was a small child. He was a huge, national, if not international, jazz-singing sensation. And good for him!

Especially given he was actually not all that good at the jazz-singing bit; and that he looked kind of like a cross between Liberace and Max Bygraves.

He was, however, a recognisable household figure. A unique, superstar brand.

He must have had Batman's number too.

10 August 2010

pseudograph's ordagraphs ordabee bedder


Those people I've met; they're all a bit C-list.

I hadn't realised that until I wrote them down, but they are.

It would have been nicer to have met some decent names.

Like Shakira. Or Shania Twain. Or Robert Mitchum. Or Elaine Paige. Or Elaine Stritch. Some A- or B-list stars. Not like the rubbish I've met.

Well, except Debra Stephenson. She's a proper star.




Me Mam recently unearthed my old autograph book. Derek Hobson. Neville Buswell (Ray Langton). Sue Jay (of ATV today).

That's a deprived childhood, that is.

The whole autograph book is saved only by the presence of the signatures of Midlands' Seventies greats - Nottingham's Bierkeller Oompah Band.

It can play hideous tricks on the brain...

This interesting blogpost http://enemiesofreason.co.uk/2010/08/10/every-celebrity-ive-ever-seen/ made me think about my own experiences with fame.

The last time I got close to fame was as I walked past the paparazzi outside a theatre in London.

Hundreds of them, shouting and wrestling; jostling for the best position on the pavement, fighting each other for space and exclusivity.

Flashes going off constantly, like the cameras going off in a stadium during the opening ceremony of the World Cup or the Olympics.

And the shouting! All of them yelling, yelling, yelling; desperate that the celebrity glance their way, so they might be captured in digital form for ever...

"Who was that they re shouting at"? I asked someone standing nearby...

"Coleen McLoughlin".

Which makes me think.... Who are the famous people I have met?

I once walked past Michael Stipe in the street.

But that doesn't count.

In no particular order, then... Robin Cook. Rolf Harris. Bob Geldof. Neil Murray (the bass player in Whitesnake). Eddie Tenpole-Tudor. Debra Stephenson (of Bad Girls and Coronation Street). Betty Driver (also Coronation Street). The bloke who used to introduce the Krypton Factor. Fish from Marillion. Jimmy Saville. I once spent a whole train journey in a carriage wth Iain Banks and nobody else, but only recognised him as we got off.
I once spent a night sitting in a pub at the next table to Bob Mortimer's. Paul Heaton. Frank Worthington. Kirk Brandon (tosser). The daleks (outside the co-op). John Prescott. Atilla the Stockbroker. Pauline Black (of the Selector). Mark E Smith.

That's twenty. Sort of. So that will do for now.





























GORDON BURNS!!!!

Hermits crabby

I am tracking a Ukulele on ebay. Cherry red with chrome bars. Yum.

It's in an auction. I like auctions. I love the thrill of the chase that comes with an auction.

I remember the time I tried bidding for Peter Noone.

You know, the Kennedy-looking one from Herman's Hermits.

Me Mam fancied him for Christmas, and - as he wasn't very big, and therefore wouldn't need much wrapping up - I thought I'd buy him for her.

He was on ebay.

I waited until the last twelve minutes of a seven day auction.

0 bidders.

Not one. "Starting bid 35.00 US dollars" - which is about 1 pound, seven and sixpence in English money.

So I bid that much. Surely Herman-boy would be mine.

And I refreshed the page every twenty seconds or so, to make sure I was still the wining bidder. And I was. I was!!!

I ignored the warning "You could still be outbid" because there were just
moments left! Noone was mine. Mine! I had him, parcelled, on the sofa.

All I had to calculate was how I'd get him to me Mother's in Bournemouth, through the post...












I was outbid with 16 seconds left. Not even time to submit a new bid.

Tsk.


Mind you, personally speaking, I'm not a fan.

I'd rather listen to the Monks. Or the MC5. Or the Stooges (Larry couldn't drum, and Mo couldn't sing, but, fucking hell, Curly could play guitar)!

So take
that, whoever pipped me with a High Noone bid. Something tells me
I'm into something good.

And you're into something shit.







Anyway, obviously I didn't want to disappoint my Ma, specially at Cliffmas, so I had to find her something equally small to go in the wrapping paper.

£8.50.

Francis Rossi.

24 July 2010

Vespax Vobiscum

It's not all men that are wankers. It's mainly just the ones with driving licences.

It's very simple. What my transportation lacks in ability to hold enough fuel to go long distances; what it lacks by way of sound system; what it lacks by way of windows... it makes up for in flexibility and acceleration.

It's a fucking Vespa. That's what they do.

It will get through smaller gaps than your car.
It will get away from lights more quickly than your car.

It is not a threat to your manliness, you knob-end, and it does NOT mean you need to fucking carve me up, and scream past me at fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit to get in front of me, because your "manly" pride is somehow offended.

You're a dick.

Every night I finish the journey home along a road where the presence of two schools means the speed limit (and you need to look up the meaning of L.I.M.I.T., knob cheese) has been reduced to 20 miles per hour. On this road, but by no means only here, every night some total plonker screams past me at over 35 just because they can't bear to sit behind a scooter doing 20.

Men with small penises, each and every one of them.

The other night I arrived to find a small girl, maybe 8 or 9 had been run over, and was screaming her poor bloody head off. She'll live, thankfully.

Wankers.

Rant ends.
Near death experiences probably won't.

20 June 2010

Guitar tuveer....

Last Sunday, the day before his birthday, the son of a friend came to visit. The friend came too, as the wean is only four.

Somewhere Mrs Graph managed to find a suitably-sized guitar that had been bought for Steppy II and forgotten about. Covered in dust, un-tuned and short of a string it was, but the wean immediately loved it, what with him being the son of a very musical mother.

Although he is left-handed and the guitar is not, that didn't stop him thrashing at the strings in as tuneless a manner as one might possibly imagine.

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.


After about twenty minutes - to be frank - the frink got a bit much. So, thinks I, a shrewd approach will stop the strum.

"Young 'un", says I, " I hear you're a very good singer".

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

"I'm a very good guitarist too. Listen".

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

"Oh, yes. Well, I can hear that you are; but what about the singing? Why don't you sing something for me?"

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

"I'm playing this, though".

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

"Well, that's true. But I'd like to hear your very good singing. What's your favourite song"?

"Without pause or glance up at me he said, "This one".

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink. Frink.

26 May 2010

Common, are we?

I have found myself with a sudden yearning to visit Tomsk. It's in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere, Russia.

This is largely @Konnolsky's fault, but it also has a lot to do with growing up with the fucking Wombles.

Although some might, I can't blame the Wombles for the environmental or left-ish politics I have in me; that's a reaction to my parents, being bullied at school and - mostly - the hideous injustices wrought by Thatcher; but they have apparently given me some hitherto unrecognised urge to visit places.

I suddenly realise that I've already been to Bulgaria & Tobermory. Perhaps now is the time for the rest...

A Wombling world tour would be very, very expensive. To visit the names of the first proper cast list would mean getting to Orinoco, Bungo, Tomsk, Wellington and Cholet in addition to the two I've been to.

Hmm.

It needs a plan.

But then, as well as that first five, there's also Cairngorms, Alderney, Shanxi, Adelaide, Stepney and Obidos from the second series.

Shit. It's a fucking nightmare! Do those even really COUNT as true Wombles?

And then, worse again! There are some really bloody obscure ones; Omsk, Culvain, Yellowstone Boston, Ness, Ross and Cromarty (The Water Wombles, it seems), Botany, Speyer and Heilbronn, Atlanta, and Idaho, Heidelberg, Hohenzollern, Cairns and Perth, Eucula, Dalai Gartok (!) Cousin Tokyo, Hirado, Dunedin, and Great-Great Aunt M Murrumbidgee...

And saddest of all there's poor Nanking. Fancy spending all that nameless time as a young and adolescent Womble, longing for the day when you can go to school having come of age, so you can prove to your Womble sixth-form mates that you're now the big man with your cool new name.

And then imagine arriving at Bulgaria's study, proudly stepping up, convinced the moment of cool adulthood has arrived and randomly sticking your pin in the atlas only to get a name that rhymes with wanking.

What a cruel bloody Womble tradition. The Wombling bastards.






Hmm. I may have over-concerned myself with Wombles.

Make good use of bad rubbish, eh?

17 May 2010

Enough (Eu)rope to hang themselves



Mrs Graph and I have discussed dragging Steppy II to
Tromsø. October-ish. Maybe.

We explained this to him this evening.
"Where's that?", says he.

Fair question.

But I - regrettably - decide he has to tell me. "Where do you think it might be?"
"Is it in Europe"?
"Yes".
"Is it in Hungary"?
"No. Not so far East".
"Is it in Holland"?
"No. Further North".
"Estonia"?
"No; a bit too Eastern again. North of the Netherlands and western-ish".
"Is it in Portugal"?
"PORTUGAL!!!? Where do you think Portugal is, that means it's North of the bloody Netherlands"!?
"Well, is it Macedonia then?
"Mass-a-bleedin'-Donia?? I hate to think what they're teaching you at school"!
"Well I don't know then. Is it in Alaska"?

God give me strength.

12 April 2010

Five Finger (re)Shuffle

"So Gordon... What did you really think of Blair?"

5 April 2010

A reshuffle

Our original choice for Chancellor turned out to be a complete donkey.

A safe pair of hands has been brought in.

2 April 2010

To introduce our guest Tzars...

This evening it was suggested, on the national TV channel, that there may have been some kind of 'puppet government' installed in Iran. This having been followed almost immediately by (the increasingly difficult to see) Question Time (smears all over the lens) it struck those of us gathered here at 'graph Manors that a puppet government would actually be a really fucking good idea.

Defence Secretary



Agriculture secretary



Foreign Secretary



Minister without Porkfolio



Chancellor of the Exchequer



Prime Minister



'Oh yes'.

21 March 2010

Fizziognomy

Those little sherbert saucer things have been flying about outside the house again today. I wouldn't have noticed except that for a while the sun was out and they were casting little shadows all over the front room; like a disco ball in negative.


It seems odd that they don't make any noise. So not only are they quiet, but they also must be environmentally sound.

So why don't we run cars on sherbert?

Anyway, I thought I caught sight of one of the Herberts that pilot them as I started from a snooze on the sofa to the silent cacophony of their centrifugal spin...

19 March 2010

Board senseless

There's a very small, humanoid, burrowing creature (which sings tunelessly during the day and can be heard gently snoring sometimes during the night) living in a series of tunnels - of its own making and design - in the concrete that acts as the floor of our house. It makes its way slowly about using a tiny, battery-powered torch it has attached to its head with a piece of elastic that I suspect was stolen from a pair of boxer shorts I used to own (which I bought in Next) and it tunnels with a pickaxe - about half an inch long (that I suppose it bought at Focus).

This whole scenario often causes me serious concern. It seems to me to be entirely illogical. Even, dare one say, utterly unlikely.






Why haven't we got floorboards?

4 March 2010

The Don Qui-Jacquette



It's on, I tell you. It's on...

http://pseudograph-pseudography.blogspot.com/2009/12/handbags-and-glad-rags.html

Oh, and RIP, Brother of the lesser-known Dingle.

10 January 2010

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?