I could see my dad working here

Does it work for you?

According to the chat up line predictor website, my killer line that would get the ladies swooning is:

“Soccer players can go for 90 minutes and know 11 different positions. Just
thought you should know that.”

Yes, I've flipped

It's Pancake Day. Mmmm, Betty Crocker Bisquick pancake mix...

Get 'em while they're young

Up in Shrubbery today after celebrating Grandad's 90th yesterday in Wrexham. We travelled through Bwlchgwyn which claims to be the highest village in Wales. Ironically both me and Dad disputed that fact quite independently from each other, which apparently shows that I am indeed doing what everyone jokes that I'm doing and turning into him. (There's worse fates.)

One personality trait my Dad has that I definitely have inherited is a tendency to hoard stuff. But that can be quite interesting such as when he discovered the membership cards that Dave and I had as "founder members of the family stand" at Shrewsbury Town FC. (Don't ask!)

I don't quite know why they wanted a photo of me on the card, but here it is, twenty-two seasons on. It would seem that I started with the "sullen teen" posing quite early on in life...

Culture vulture on the loose

A week on from rocking along to Bowling for Soup, Cathy, me and the Russes enjoyed the Welsh National Opera performing Madame Butterfly. Again we were in the bargain seats and again we valued the fact that the Millennium Centre has subtitles for opera as my Italian hasn’t improved since La Boheme.

And how’s this for multicultural? An opera set in Japan where a main character is American, sung in Italian, with Welsh subtitles.

As previously, the set was very good and the performance was presumably good. People who had the look of more regular opera goers applauded enthusiastically at the end. But I did find the main male lead (who played the villainous American B.F. Pinkerton) very weak as a singer. He seemed to lack volume and charisma.

I found the undercurrent of a ‘disposable’ attitude towards the developing world was very culture-relevant. Pinkerton laughing about how he rented a property on a 999 year lease which he could cancel every month showed where the balance of power lay – and his attitude towards his bride mirrored that. She was his to use until he married a "proper American bride".

The real tragedy, as I saw it, was that Butterfly so desperately wanted to be an American, trusting her American husband to redeem her after she became a pariah for her cultural apostasy. Her betrayal by the man who never regarded her as an equal despite her sacrifices has huge parallels with contemporary corporate colonialism and is one of the most savage indictments of Western attitudes since Nick Nolte’s rant about how Africans don’t matter to the Western powers that be in Hotel Rwanda:

Colonel Oliver: [explaining why the world will not intervene] You're black.
You're not even a nigger. You're an African.

Shining wit

"I shouldn't joke about OCD, but I just can't help myself..."

That one made a couple of people laugh in the office.

Be my Valentine

One of my favourite Valentine’s Day experiences was a few years ago now, when my little brother was till at Uni. We were traveling back from the far North and stopped off to see him because he’d just been dumped and was feeling miserable. We took him out to tea at Pizza Hut where we were the only table for three in the place and the incredibly cheap candles sputtered wax all over the table in artistic patterns.

Why does this stand out? I think it’s because people can be so selfish on Valentine’s Day. It becomes all about you as a couple. I’d like to think that Cathy and I have a relationship that’s bigger than just the two of us – yes, we want to spend time together, but not at the exclusion of people who need some TLC.

Cath’s exciting gift today was a framed set of US stamps with the word “love” on; presented to her by a Mr Potato Head (which I’m sure will remind her of me). She gave me a mug that told me I was “the cat’s pajamas” – a mystifying turn of phrase that made me feel good nevertheless. Tonight our hot Valentine’s Date will be going to our life group where we’ll each be discussing a news story that’s caught our eye in the past few days.

Without wanting to spoil the surprise for anyone, my story is going to be about boffins finding the scientific equation to determine the “beer goggle effect” that makes women appear more attractive when you’ve had a few. I think the principle that I’ll draw from the story is “isn’t God great to give us beer to make ugly people more pleasing to the eye!”

Extending my vocabulary

According to Helen who I work with, her daughter calls a bra a “booby vest”.

I think I have definitely got to start using that term myself. It tells you everything you need to know about the complex and mysterious items that are women’s underwear.

Viv tells me that the German for bra is “Bustenhalter”. This, again, is a very useful word to know. (My favourite German word is “Fussballrowdie” meaning ‘football hooligan’.)

Bowling for Soup

BFS are hitting the big time. When we saw them 14 months or so ago, their support acts were absolute rubbish. This time round they were Wheatus (of ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ fame) and Son of Dork (of ‘one of the guys used to be in Busted’ fame), and some other band I’d never heard of, and missed seeing because we were late to the gig.

But we’d only really gone to see the Soup and they didn’t disappoint. They started with their anthem about growing up in a hometown, ran through some of their better back-catalogue and a couple of songs from their new album. I pogoed/shouted along to Come Back to Texas, 1985, Almost and Girl All the Bad Guys Want as well as my favourite – introduced as a song about Eric’s mom – The Bitch Song. The new stuff sounds not unlike the old stuff, and High School Never Ends is very catchy.

But the strength of a BFS gig is in the interaction between the band and the crowd, and even the band and each other. Stopping mid-song for beverage breaks and "the official BFS photo opportunity" posing time, is humorous and makes it worth going to a gig, unlike bands that just seem to want to play the same songs again and again in identikit concerts. The important point is that BFS seem to have as much fun onstage as the moshers offstage, which makes the gig fun to be a part of.

And any lead singer who launches into a rambling story about how he’s been warned not to call Welsh audiences sheep f***ers and then shouts "Good evening sheep f***ers!" has got to be a rock and roll hero.

[A big thank you to Sarah Mac who bought us the tickets for Christmas. You rock!]

Snow 2 - Frosty's Revenge

I got sent home early from work today because of the unexpected snow that surprised those soothsayers at the Met Office.

Of course, the day I get sent home would be the day I took the train into work. Fortunately Grangetown station is right opposite the garage where I’d left my car, which was now under an inch of frosty precipitation. The central locking motor has gone and it needs a new one, so it’ll be the pfaff of manually locking and unlocking doors for the near future, until they can order the motor in.

Driving in snow/slush is always fun/scary. But at least I got home at a decent time. Poor old Viv got stuck for five hours at the Coldra junction on the M4, a hideously snarled junction overwhelmed with traffic at the best of times. Valley lines 1, Motorway 0.

SNOW

So exciting, even Cath got out of bed to look at it!

Yes, that’s right. We have snow. Apart from a tricky skid in Grangetown at the beginning of my journey I loved driving in this morning. For one thing the trees and bushes were all dusted white. For another the roads were clear because most of the schools were shut and so the usual mums on the school run weren’t out.

It strikes me that the contribution to global warming caused by people driving their kids to school probably cuts down on the number of ‘snow days’, meaning that people have to drive their kids to school more frequently, increasing carbon emissions, thereby reducing the number of snow days… It’s a vicious cycle. But it could be broken if some of those little porkers were made to walk to school.

But anyway, snow. I love snow. I don’t love slush though. Especially when I step out of my car into a slush heap and it gets my sock slightly soggy. Not so good.

And the snow was an inspiration in more ways than one. Every Monday and Thursday we have an organisational prayer gathering (if people can be bothered to go to it). Today’s was on the subject of snow, co-incidentally. Actually the guy up the front, Roger (the VAT-Dodger) from Finance, admitted that he only decided what to talk about last night. At least he was honest. I’ve lost count of the number of times the person in charge has obviously panicked at the last minute, picked up their Every Day with Jesus and decided ‘you know what, this’ll do’.

It’s started to rain now, and the snow’s melting, but I reckon most of it will hang about until tonight when it will FREEZE and cause havoc. Hurrah.

Our questions define us

Gradually I’ve learned that our questions define us. Of course you can use questions for all kinds of comic laughs. There’s nothing quite as funny as a dumb question. So when someone in the office went to see the film The Queen, my question “What’s that about?” raised some hearty laughs.

But there are some other questions that will forever define some people. Like for example the question about the Rocky Horror Picture Show: “Is that the one based on Macbeth?”

Another classic is the question from Elaine: “Do they pluck chickens before or after they kill them?” (In fairness to her, some people probably do pluck them before they kill them, and we call those people BASTARDS!)

Then there’s my all-time favourite from a lady doctor friend of mine who really should remain anonymous when she asked: “Can you guess what toy I keep in my bed?”

It’s funny, but she doesn’t own any of the toys I suggested.

When stunts go bad

Saturday night and Irony Boy and I are flicking through the cable channels doing the three second judgment call on the dross that was on. That was until we started watching ‘When Stunts Go Bad’, car crash TV at its finest.

I think my favourite bit was when two Russian pilots in a flight display team crashed their Migs into each other. Both ejected safely, even though one plane was ripped in half and turned into a fireball before cratering the tarmac.

But then, the defining moment. One of the pilots has landed safely, his parachute billowing around him. As he lands he already has a cigarette between his lips. He steadies himself and steps out of the harness, lights up, shrugs his shoulders at the camera and saunters off as if that sort of thing happens every day.

No comment for the camera. No smile. Just a nonchalant drag of nicotine and a shrug. How cool is that cat?

After When Stunts Go Bad we teamed up for a co-op game of Halo2 and I found out that using two joysticks at the same time is as confusing as hell.