New computer. Mac or Asus?

Asus of course. Slim, light, two USB ports, three other ports that I don't know what they are and, most importantly, not a Mac.

And to top it all I got it cheap. Apparantly there is a superficial error in the finish. I can't see it though.

To don't list.

I bet you've been wondering what I've been up to these past few days. I'll tell ya. Not compiling a "To Don't" list. I really must get around to writing a list of things I really must get around to never doing. I thought of writing a book called "100 things not to do before you die." But then I simply changed my mind. Why? Becaue I'm too damn lazy and, frankly, I'm not sure I could keep it down to only 100.

So far I haven't thought of a single thing to not do so I'm going to look around me and find inspiration in my surroundings. Not entirely unbelievably I'm in Nero's again. No work this week, so it's lying on the sofa singing "I got plenty of nothiiiiiiing....and nothing's plenty for me," practising cricket in the park, having a picnic and doing things with my noooo computer.

Anyway. Casting my eyes around the coffee shop and noting what my fellow human beings are up to, I present to you, a start on my "To Don't" list. Now let me see...... what's that horrible noise?....ahhh yes....
1) Don't talk nonsense loudly in an American accent and without leaving any pauses for your friend to get a goddam word in edgeways like a daft bint or something.
2) Don't be an annoying 6 year old kid with specs, pissing about, flapping your hands and being a general absolute bellend next to a grumpy 48 year old bloke writing a "To Don't" list.
3) Don't join a social network. No one's actually doing that here I just thought of it and put it down. And before you go getting all, you now, internetty, this is my "To don't" list. If you don't like it write your own.
4) Don't walk out of coffee shops assuming you are the only person on the planet and you don't have to look where you're going, when, in reality, you are in one of the most crowded areas of one of the most crowded cities in the world. If the altercation I have just witnessed is anything to go by, sometimes you'll bump into some other cretin, who is also assuming they are the only person on the planet so they don't have to ...blah blah blah, so on and so forth.
5) Don't be female. I have great respect for women. I mean how do they fit in all the things they have to do every day. Talk, take boody ages to choose a sandwich then, when they are about to pay for it, go back and change it for the same flavour sandwich but just a different one (Anna!), turn the simple act of paying for comestibles into a Sissyphean, accessory- assault course involving  being completely unprepared to pay for your coffee, despite having had to pay for your coffee many times before and then having to embark on this exhausting rigmorole.

Unzipping the handbag, searching its Tardisian bowels for your stupid purse, finding the stupid purse, unzipping the pocket devoted to notes, changing your mind, zipping it back up, unzipping the pocket devoted to coins, fishing out a really lot of loose change, starting to assemble exactly the correct amount from this motley collection of coppers, Euros, a hairclip, crumbs and a hair bungee (or whatever they're called - the elastic rings with stray hairs trapped in its rapidly-perishing rubber embrace), getting to within 2 pence of the correct total then realising you haven't got the right amount, pouring it all back into the pocket, zipping it back up, unzipping the first pocket and fishing out a tenner, handing that to the barista, accepting the change, putting the fiver back into that pocket, zipping it up, unzipping the change pocket, pouring the change into that, zipping it back up, throwing the stupid purse back into the handbag version of an event horizon, without a thought of starting a system where it always goes into the same place so it's easier to find next time, picking up the coffee, remembering that you haven't had your "free coffee" card stamped, putting the coffee back down, unzipping the handbag, searching it's cavernous interior for the stupid fucking purse, unzipping the purse, unzipping the pocket you have reserved for "everything under the fucking sun," locating the card, handing it over, getting it stamped, putting it back into the compartment reserved for "everything under the fucking sun except, you know, coins, notes and other stuff," hoying it back into the handbag version of a tear in the very fabric of time itself, re-pick up the coffee and depart.

6) If you're a planner in an advertising agency, don't use the term "Glocal" as a way of getting round having to ask the creatives to write yet another global ad, then on being asked how this is different to "Global," smile and explain patiently that everyone knows global ads are crap so the client doesn't want a global ad. They want a local ad that also appeals to everyone else on the globe. I shit you not.


By way of changing the subject and calming down a bit. Here is some DIY I did.

This is a wooden bathmat I made myself by buying a square of decking and sawing off two of the wooden slats. As you can see the space between the bath and the wall is too narrow for a conventional bathmat so I had to improvise. These are the instructions.
1. Buy a wooden square of decking £8
2. Saw the slats off.
3. Be pretty bloody pleased with yourself.

Hamburg. Zwei (two).

I'm back in Hamaburg again. Came back last week and I'm out here again this week. Not much to add apart from it's a bally sight warmer out here than the last time I ventured into Euroland. Last evening I was sharing a Duckstein or two with Rob (bloke I'm working with)  sat outside a bar in Hamburg's equivalent of Crouch End. Which is itself London's equivalent of a place inhabited by hippy dippy, yoghurt crunching, middle classes.
In a T-shirt. If you did that in London's Crouch End you would be in a wet T-shirt. Which for my one American reader is because it hasn't stopped raining in Britain since they declared a hosepipe ban. My mother really took this ban to heart and threw away her hosepipe altogether. Why? Incase they discovered it and locked her in jail. In her head the hosepipe was the horticultural equivalent of "drug parapenalia" and damning evidence of wrongdoing on her part. So we destroyed this, in my opinion cirumstantial, evidence of her not using her hosepipe by hoying it into the tip. "Better safe than sorry when dealing with the hosepipe police" is, was and always will be, her motto.

Anyway look at this photo advertising a show by two famous German comedians. Here they are taking the mickey out of Chinese peoples by adopting a face that is frowned upon in the UK. And China. But not Tibet. Anyway I bet it's a hell of a hoot.

All this toing and froing between Hamburg, Shanghai, London and Hastings has awakened in me a visceral hatred of an object and its users. Here is a picture of it below. *Shudder*




Look at this massive bellend. Man up. It's the size of half of a medium sized dog. Or a quarter of a large one. Or an eight of a lion or....you get the idea. It's small is all I'm trying to say.

On my flight over here a business man was trying to fit a wheelie bag into the overhead lockers. The bag would have fitted in, just, if there had been several factors in his favour.
1) He hadn't been a enormous douchebag (American for fucking idiot).
2) No one else on the entire plane had also wanted to put hand lugage in the overhead bin.
3) Everyone else on the plane hadn't also been a fucking idiot.
4) He hadn't been last on the plane and everyone's hand luggage was already packed in tighter than a nun's fan belt.
I settled back to watch the show. There's nothing I like better than seeing a wheelie bag user in distress. It's not an admirable characteristic but I make up for it by being hilarious (I bloody am), having a large number of amusing faces to deploy, being able to imitate almost any foreign accent in the world, having a big nose and shouting loudly when people only ever call me on my mobile when I am driving. Honestly - I only have to engage 1st gear to go from pariah to most popular man on the planet. (I often wonder if I am in the Thrueman Show and people only do things when they know it will most annoy me but that's a paranoia for another post.)
Anyway. He tried shoving - No joy. He tried moving back and forth - No joy. He tried a pitiful look at the stewardess - No joy. So he had to resort to the one thing he didn't want to do. Moving other people's stuff about to try to make room. It was like trying to do a massive 3D jigsaw puzzle, while a plane load of people and one grinning idiot looked on, while trying not to be a bellend but in reality being a bellend and while wanting desperately to shout "GO IN YOU FUCKING STUPID CASE!" ie. impossible.
Eventually his exertions resulted in someone else's case popping out, that person standing up and shoving it back in and the stewardess finally doing her job and taking the fucking stupid wheelie bag and hurling it out the window. Actually stowing it away somewhere (and hopefully kicking it for the entire journey).
Right. Back to work. Bah.