All 26 entries tagged Waffle

Cocktails For Teetotalitarians

My friend Dawn of 101 Wankers fame and awesomeness is considering giving up alcohol for the entirety of 2011! This is either the best idea ever or the most crazed scheme ever, more crazed than invading Russia or leaving the economy in the hands of George Obsorne. Oh.

Anyway, with this in mind, I wish to offer my 26 years of teetotalitarian experience with these exciting, non-alcoholic cocktails.

That’s not a natural colour for a drink, surely?

Mixer Surprise

Ingredients:
Whatever soft drinks are available at the party you are at
Other people who are drinking

To make Mixer Surprise arrive at the party early and pour yourself a cup of mixer. And another. And another. Feel free to mix it up a bit, have a glass of lemonade, then a glass of coke, then some fizzy orange. Repeat until all the mixers are gone. This will surprise the alcohol drinkers who will then drink even faster until they are drunk at 11pm and pass out in a heap whilst you spend the evening going to the toilet every 15 minutes.

Alcopop Emulator

Ingredients:
A soft drink or fruit drink (depending on whether you want it fizzy or not)
16kg sugar
Cough sweets
11kg sugar
Food colouring – neon if possible
21kg sugar
A subscription to a Hoxton fanzine

First take the soft drink or fruit drink and add some of the sugar slowly, being sure to mix it in. Melt the cough sweets over an open fire, mix them with sugar, and add it to the mixture. Add some more sugar, then introduce the food colouring slowly, mixing it with sugar as you go along. Finally make a label using pictures of twats and words from the Hoxton fanzine. Drink until the sugar absorbs all your internal organs and you vomit your innards over you skinny jeans.

Squash Roulette

Squash – any flavour
Water
Clear lemonade
Sugar infused water (lots of sugar)
Salt water
Water with a drop of fish oil it it

Pour out a glass each of water, salt water, sugar water, fish water, and clear lemonade. Turn your back whilst a mate adds squash to each then mixes them around. How many do you dare drink? Vary amounts of each type for added drama.

Tequila Sub

Ingredients:
Grape juice
Tabasco
Cabbage (boiled)
Lemon juice
Celery
Gummi bear

We all know what tequila represents. A chance to torture yourself, your tastebuds and your stomach in search of a mythical good time. No, all tequila ever induces is a headache, a burnt throat, a slight vommy feeling and a sense of mystery as to why the faff with the salt and the lemon. For the none alcoholic version, mix grape juice and tabasco with lemon juice and a hint of celery (healthier than salt) and glug it down in one. Then take a fistful of cabbage to simulate that just hocked up your dinner feeling and celebrate with a gummi bear instead of the worm at the bottom of the bottom. Repeat until amnesia.

Water

Ingredients:
Tap
Intricate system of sewage, water transportation and processing which represents arguably one of the greatest achievements of the Victorian era
An ISA

Pour yourself a glass of water. Drink. Repeat. Invest money you have saved from this free venture in an ISA which will yield a paltry rate of interest due to economic crisis but which will stand as a monument to your good intentions. Don’t buy bottled water because this will make you a twat and an environment trashing one at that.

: 04 Jan 2011 21:03 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A Bad Week To Be A Cat

Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-11068063

It can’t have escaped most people’s attention that, with floods ruining Pakistan, drug war tearing Mexico apart, and the government slicing services left, right and centre (but mostly left), the most important development in Britain this week has been… a woman putting a cat in a bin.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-11068063

It would be extremely easy to see this and react in one of two ways:
1) Get irate and angry at the terrible treatment the cat has received, and question the woman’s motivation and sanity.
2) Get irate and angry at the utterly trivial nature of the story, one which has blatantly only made it to the newsdesks because there is CCTV footage whilst other, arguably more horrific attacks on animals pass as small stories in local news.

Both reactions involve emotional responses, the first is disgust that anyone could do that to a cat, and second is disgust at the all-powerful meme in the press of ‘silly season’ – the summer months in which serious news is bumped from the pages to make way for stories of cats in bins (and if serious things still happen, ignore them).

In this case I do feel a little of both reactions, but there’s something else which bothers me more about this story.

Below is a link to a youtube clip of Charlie Brooker’s ‘Newswipe’ program. In it a forensic psychiatrist discusses how media coverage of mass shootings leads to copycats thanks to the media’s portrayal of the infamy, fame and outrage such actions can cause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8rMYyegT5Y

You don’t have to ven cast your mind far back to think of the last time criminal behaviour earned someone in this country a strange ‘heroic’ status – there aren’t many cases where a jealous misogynist like Raoul Moat can get to be a hero by murdering and maiming innocent people, but the media coverage somehow managed to make him so in the eyes of some.

And the relevance to the cat?

Put it like this, I expect a lot more cats will find themselves in bins over the next few weeks. It’s likely few will be caught on CCTV, it’s likely not all the cats will be rescued as in this case, and it’s likely that almost none of those cats would have been put in bins if this story hadn’t been in the press.

You can bemoan the mentalities of those who do this until you are blue in the face, but it does not change the fact that, at this moment in time, we live in a society where there are no universally accepted ways to treat animals. Sure, there are laws, but to think these are all obeyed, or considered necessary by 100% of the population, is naive. Even amongst those who were outraged at the cat in the bin there will be some who think it ok to eat meat and some who don’t.

So all that this has done is to ensure more cats will probably suffer cruelty in this silly season, for no obvious gain other than some hits on websites and some newspapers sold on the back of something which is quite categorically not news.

Sorry, cats.

: 25 Aug 2010 11:55 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Listageddon

Have you drowned in lists yet? As bad as it is when a year ends, when a decade ends the list instinct is even worse. I guess the only reason we’ve not revolted en masse at the pervasive nature of lists (a nature so pervasive that the last two entries on this blog were a list – I’m infected!) is because, for many of us, 31st December 2009 represents the end of a year and a decade. Just a year and a decade.

Ten years ago we had the end of a year, decade, century and millennium. Unless you’re a pedant and want to point out that actually 31st December 2000 was the end of those things. In which case sod off, I have room for one pedant in my life and that role is occupied by my father.

So before we all die of listageddon here are some lists which won’t make you want to remove your own face with a hedge strimmer:

Vice’s Albums Of The Year

A lot of what Vice puts out is shite. This is funny and true. Although Fever Ray should have been higher. Arf.

Britain’s Worst Train Stations

Useful to know so you can avoid spending any more time than necessary there, whilst lamenting their decline. Manchester Victoria in particular has potential to be really nice. Note also they’re pretty much all in the NW of England or London area.

Nine Most Racist Disney Characters

Good for a laugh, and a long, hard think.

Jay-Z – ‘99 Problems’

He has many problems. A list ain’t one.
Silence

Movie Bodycounts

Because there’s nothing more entertaining than listing the on screen death tolls for a film! Personally I dispute some of it (how can Star Wars have an onscreen total of 75 when we see Alderaan blown to smithereens in front of us?) but it’s hours of fun.

The NME Cool List

Because it’s funny.

Los Campesinos! – ‘My Year In Lists’

Just cos.

: 18 Dec 2009 18:00 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Decade In Review

A review of the 2000s, as seen by those who were there.

1st January 2000

Millennium bug causes world to end.

16th July 2001

World still ended.

11th February 2002

World still ended.

28th November 2003

World still ended.

3rd August 2004

World still ended.

29th March 2005

World still ended.

4th May 2006

World still ended.

18th September 2007

World still ended.

25th April 2008

World still ended.

31st May 2009

World still ended.

What a decade that was! See you in 2019 for our review of the 2010s!

: 15 Dec 2009 18:00 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Depressed Handle IV

The door handle has no opinion of big selling cinema, pointing out that the beauty of bad films is that they fund good films indirectly as their profits get used by studios to take more risks. I pointed out this was a tad idealistic as it only benefited films made within the big studio system, but the door handle did raise the valid “Pixar” point.

At this point I realised I was discussing cinema with a small metal mechanism.

: 12 Dec 2009 11:00 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Depressed Handle III

Depressed handle has a political mind!

Now that’s depressing… but this is even more depressing:

If ever a handle wanted to drop to the floor and hide under a rock…

: 10 Dec 2009 11:00 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Depressed Handle V

Terrible weather joke.

: 09 Dec 2009 14:00 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Depressed Handle II

What does it take to depress a door handle?

Especially when the door handle is between you and freedom? Do inanimate objects care about music? The sceptical might point out that handles have no ears. The sceptical also like to point out that ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ is just a load of melodramatic teen angst but they are wrong (apart from season 4 which is a bad as they suggest).

So I tried some depressing music on the door handle.

Now there are some who regard this album, Radiohead’s OK Computer, as depressing. Naturally this fails to account for the anger, satire and humour in the album, none of which is all that depressing really. Perhaps it is too easy to label Radiohead depressing. Anyway the door handle was unconvinced of the lazy stereotype and remain solidly un-depressed.

So I tried an album which actually is depressing, albeit whilst at the same time being very very good.

The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers. A testament to the state of mind of the very depressed lyricist Richey Edwards. Graphic, visceral and hard in parts to listen to, it’s a modern masterpiece of melancholy.

The door handle was unmoved.

Perhaps it really was deaf and cared not for music? Who’d have guessed that blasting music at a door would not result in it opening!?

But wait! What’s this?

Why yes! It’s When It’s All Over We Still Have To Clear Up by Snow Patrol. Most people won’t have heard of this album. That’s because it was made in the old days when Snow Patrol hadn’t yet become the biggest indie sellouts of the decade. I don’t normally care for indie bands selling big as long as it doesn’t change them too much, but Snow Patrol sold out completely after ‘Run’, removing all the quirky and weird and genuinely emotional bits which this album highlights so well. They barely even play any tracks off it live anymore.

It’s depressing because this album stands a document to a top little band, lost in a sea of selling out and X Factor covers. It is a relic of the before-time, before one of my least favourite musical developments of the decade.

Oh look, the door handle agrees! It too is depressed by all this.

Door handles are made of stern stuff but they crack eventually.

: 06 Dec 2009 11:00 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Depressed Handle

I noticed the other week that the shiny new toilet at work has a most peculiar sign on the door.

“Lift handle to lock – Depress handle to open door.”

The use of ‘depress’ amused me greatly. Whilst technically a perfectly sound use of the word, it did seem like a rather odd turn of phrase. How does one ‘depress’ a handle? If the handle cannot be ‘depressed’ will one be stuck forever in the loo? Especially galling if one only wants a number one.

What does it take to depress a door handle? Are they depressed by the same things humans are?

I find that depressing. It means I am old. But as you can see:

The handle does not find it depressing. This is probably because door handles have very little concept of time and find the human neuroses about aging most incomprehensible. Also chances are this door handle is in fact from the 00s so finds these 90s freshers most ancient.

So in conclusion, you cannot depress a door handle with talk of relative human ages. And thus one remains trapped in the loo.

: 05 Dec 2009 18:00 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

If You Watch "x" Backwards…

Got directed to this on the internet. It’s brilliant!

Anyone any more suggestions?

If you watch CSI backwards it’s about a bunch of infiltrators in the police force who hide evidence.

: 13 Apr 2009 17:00 |  Tags: Waffle |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem