Monthly Archives: January 2010

Scones and yoghurt.

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That’s how my day can be summed up. I think I’ve probably had about 5 Activia yoghurt drinks at this point, as well as some Greek yoghurt, and two scones. It’s been amazing. I also tested my microphone, having faced it the right way round. It’s still rubbish. Looks like I’m going to have to splash out around £115 (around two weeks wage), for a decent one to make some podcasts at home.

That’s about all I’ve done really. I’m sitting around writing some more stand-up at the moment to test at my course tomorrow. I haven’t actually done a gig since last November, due to me having been fairly poorly organised recently, but I do have some booked at some point this year, so with any luck by then I’ll have the solid 5 minute set I’ve been working towards, that would be nice.

I wrote a short paragraph of a new thriller I’m going to be working on today too. It’ll hopefully make me the new Agatha Christie, or Robert Ludlum or whoever. Somebody like that. The thing about my writing is that it’s not good writing in the traditional sense, but instead, it’s so utterly dreadful that in an odd way it does become sort of good. That’s very much the route I’m having to pursue now, the route of being so awful that I actually come right back around and become good somehow. I’ve managed to derive a fair bit of stand-up material from how thoroughly inept I am, so thankfully my continued uselessness has some benefits. Anyway, with any luck I’d like to invest in a new microphone and have completed the first in this series of thrillers (and I use that in the loosest possible sense of the word) by the end of February. I think it’s going to be a crime thriller, but it could spin off in any direction at this point. Basically what I’ve done is, I’ve come up with the title first, and worked from there. Fans of Llamageddon can thus probably imagine the kind of monstrosity that it’ll be, probably on a par with the often forgotten ‘Jingle Bills’. Happier times.

Tonight I’ll probably treat myself to a ‘Moscow Mule’, which is made through mixing vodka and ginger ale. I don’t want to come across as a complete alcoholic. I don’t just spend my days at home mixing my Activia yoghurt drinks with shots of Jack Daniels, but I figure that while we seem to have some vodka and ginger ale in the house (and I don’t know why there is any ginger ale in the house, evidently at some point we’ve robbed the Famous Five), I might as well try one. It might be good. Maybe one day I’ll be known for my love of Moscow Mules.

“Ah, there goes Andy Ward, he sure does love a Moscow Mule.”

“Yeah, shame about his series of novels though isn’t it?”

“What series of novels?”

“You know, the ones based around a laboured pun that he was hoping would really propel him into superstardom and save him from that shop.”

“Oh Christ, yeah, I’d completely forgotten about those. Didn’t they burn all the copies five years ago?”

“Yeah. Suppose that’s why he drinks so many Moscow Mules. The raging alcoholic.”

“Oh my god, I think he’s spotted us! Run before he hassles us for ginger ale!”

Something to look forward to, being an old man with ginger ale dribbling down his chin, regaling pubs with the tales of the time he once nearly worked for Channel 4, but then didn’t. Spending my nights shouting abuse at Bobby Charlton’s house because Activia didn’t reinforce my skull like he said it would.

On the plus side, at least I’ll be outside, and that’s something.

A day of nothing.

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I’m fairly sure I’ve actually had a blog post called ‘A day of nothing’ before. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if, looking back through all the blog posts, around 60% of them were titled ‘a day of nothing’. That’s the life I lead. It’s always white-knuckle stuff.

Anyway, as the title suggests, I’ve not really done anything at all today. I’m starting to think that it’s not facebook that’s getting in the way necessarily, it’s just that I have a spectacular ability to waste time on all sorts of things. Today I just lay down and stared into space for a while. That was kind of cool. Didn’t really achieve much though. I was actually meant to be going out tonight, which was quite exciting, as I don’t really go out at all these days. I can’t remember the last night out I had. This is partly because I’m obscenely poor, but also because I don’t really know many people around where I live, having moved here after I’d finished sixth form, then gone off to university. I know some people now though, and we were going to go out into town to drink and do the usual things that I assume people still do on nights out, discuss monocles, sit by a roaring fire and take turns telling scary stories to all those gathered, drink sherry, maybe talk about the repeal of the Corn Laws, all that kind of stuff. That’s what people were doing when last I went out, I can’t imagine things have changed much since then.

Anyway, suffice to say, we’ve had to cancel going out this week, so what I’m going to do instead is sit down, watch Heroes, drink port, and maybe try and explain Sylar’s backstory to the dog again. It’ll be fun.

Also, further to my mind-numbingly dull microphone conversation with myself yesterday, I’ve discovered that my microphone may actually work better than I thought it did, as I may have been speaking into the wrong bit. I think if I turn it round and speak into the other side, the sound quality may be a bit better. I mean, I haven’t actually tested it yet, but this is what I’m hoping, otherwise I’ll just be stuck sounding like an overly polite dalek. Maybe I can use this to my advantage. Make recordings of myself and sneak up on elderly technophobes.

“HEY YOU!”

“What was that voice? Who are you?”

“This is the voice of the internet! Bake me a cake!”

“But my limbs are made of sawdust and breadcrumbs aggravate my gout!”

“Quiet! Or I’ll chip and pin your face! When you’re finished baking my cake I want you to knit me a jumper!”

“A jumper? Why would the internet need a jumper?”

“Sometimes the internet gets cold.”

“Are you sure you’re the internet, this doesn’t sound very convin-”

“DON’T TURN AROUND! FACE THE FRONT!”

“Sorry…”

“I want a Blade Runner jumper. Something futuristic. The internet appreciates futuristic threads, so you’d better be knitting with space cotton!”

“But I don’t have any space cotton! I don’t even know what it is! I’ve only got this ball of wool!”

“Then you’ll have to go to space! I’ll prepare the shuttle!”

“But I don’t wan-”

“FACE THE FRONT! I’M PUTTING YOU IN THE SHUTTLE NOW!”

“But the shuttle aggravates my gout!”

“LEAVE THE SHUTTLE ALONE! IT’S THE SHUTTLE OR THE PIT OF BREADCRUMBS! ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, YOU’RE GETTING GOUTERISED! NOW LET’S GO! THREE! TWO! ONE! BLASTOFF!”

[Explosion]

“Argh! Fire aggravates my gout!”

“You’re fired! Get it? You’re fired! As in The Apprentice? You see? That’s what he says! He says you’re fired! Funny no?”

“Stop it! Catchphrases aggravate my gout!”

“How old actually are you?”

“I’m 900 years old.”

“You should really be dead.”

“Death aggravates my gout.”

“None of this seems very plausible.”

“Not like space cotton?”

“You’re right, let’s end here.”

It’s not good that my first thought is about how I can use my microphone for evil, and bullying helpless old people into knitting me a limitless supply of jumpers. In my defence, I get quite cold sometimes, and, well… this isn’t really going to happen. I would however, absolutely love a knitted Blade Runner jumper, so if anybody is reading this and fancies knitting me one, as Captain Picard might say ‘Make it so’. And he’s got stacks of Blade Runner jumpers, the greedy rascal.

Anyway, it’s nearly time for Heroes and port, so I’m going to go now.

My microphone is rubbish.

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The heralded microphone arrived today, that I’ve been hoping will allow me to make lovely podcasts at home, and cart a laptop about the country like some kind of electronic David Dimbleby to revive the Llamageddon podcasts too. It came in a big box, which was very exciting. I rarely get parcels, and when I do they’re just full of severed hands and notes saying ‘I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER’, which has got quite tiring now. They can’t even be meant for me, I didn’t do anything last summer. I went to Edinburgh for a few days and did a number of shift at One Stop, I don’t know whose wrath I could have incurred for that. Presumably the wrath of a man who hates two things, haggis and convenience stores. They call him ‘The Convenient Haggis Killer’. If your Haggis isn’t overly complicated, to the point where you can’t even open it because it’s sealed with a cryptex, I’d lock your doors.

Anyway, yeah, the microphone arrived today. It’s a Logitech USB Microphone if anybody cares. I was very excited. I’d started planning podcasts I was going to release. There were lots of exciting plans. Then I plugged it in and gave it a try. It is, for want of a better word, bobbins. Spectacularly bobbins. I mean, admittedly, it only cost £16 on Amazon, but it had some really good reviews. People were saying things like “This microphone is surprisingly good for £16! Wowzers!” etc, and I thought that it would thus be a great product. It is not. Unless you want to sound like Robocop, and most of the time, I don’t. I had some Robocop pyjamas once, when I was around 5 or 6. I think they’re my favourite item of clothing ever. How I miss them. Anyway, the microphone. The final insult is that when it’s assembled, it actually looks like a giant middle finger. I can’t help but think this is deliberate.

Looking for better options, I can see that I’m probably going to have to fork out around £100 if I want something properly decent. This is a considerable amount of money when you’re working part-time in a rubbish job. I should really look into getting sponsored. Perhaps by Pure Waffle. There could be absolutely no more perfect sponsor for our podcast than Pure Waffle I believe. I’m pretty much already their spokesperson without earning any money. Anybody I’ve spoken to for longer than about 5 minutes will attest to this, and yet, as far as I’m aware, none of the many people I’ve recommended Pure Waffle to have yet listened to what I’m saying and actually gone there. It’s near Selfridges in London. Look it up on Google Maps, and when you go there, don’t let yourself by fooled by the nearby ‘Gourmet Wonder Waffle’ stands. They’re not what I’m talking about. Pure Waffle is pretty much the Mecca of waffles. Maybe I should organise a coach trip there. We’ll all pile onto our bus and sing songs about waffles, before we

I’VE GOT SOME SOUP DOWNSTAIRS!

Sorry, I just remembered that. I bought some this morning. I’m going to have some soon, that’ll be fun.

Anyway, we’ll pile onto our bus, and sing songs about waffles, then all bundle into Pure Waffle, to the delighted smiles of their patron, Mr Waffle (I don’t know his name, but he’s always there, and he seems very friendly), who’ll say “Andy, finally this sponsorship has paid off! Have a lifetime’s supply of cash!”, to which I’ll reply “Don’t be silly Mr Waffle! I’ll just have one of your pecan and butterscotch waffles and a glass of horlicks and we’ll call it quits.” Then he’ll probably say something along the lines of “God bless us, every one” and we’ll all eat the biggest goose in the city. It’ll be magical.

Failing that, none of you will actually turn up, apart from me, who’ll chug up in a dusty old megabus, vomit up a chair that I accidentally inhaled because it wasn’t properly secured to the floor, then proceed to be sworn at by Mr Waffle for three hours straight because the 200 customers I promised haven’t actually materialised.

Anyway, yeah. Maybe they’d sponsor us. I’m off to get some soup now. Maybe soup would sponsor us. Not Heinz or anything. Just soup in general. Llamageddon, sponsored by soup. That would make my life.

Facebook experiment.

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Today I have deactivated my facebook account. Probably only for a week, but who knows really? The point is that I’m doing it to see whether it’s really as much of a drain on my time as I think it is. Quite often I’d just log onto facebook and just mindlessly sit there doing nothing for ages, getting no writing done as I did. There’s a lot of writing to be done this year, especially since, annoyingly, I’ve recently discovered that the idea for the sitcom I’d finished has already sort of been done about 30 years ago. At least, I think it has, I’ll probably need to do more research into that. There are lots of other ideas to be worked on anyway, so with any luck, not being on facebook should help me do a bit of this.

So far in my time away from facebook I’ve not done too much of any great use, but then, to be fair, it’s only been about 4 hours. I’ve looked for laptops, and think I’ve decided on the one I’m going to get, so will try and acquire that within a week or so, which should allow the Llamageddon podcasts to get back on track. Though the recording quality from recording on a laptop will probably be lower, it’ll be both cheaper and easier than recording in a studio which we’d have to book in advance. We’ll be able to record wherever, which will mean we’ll hopefully be able to get them out fairly regularly. More regularly than the ‘once every 4 months’ average that we managed last year anyway. Being able to record anywhere also gives us the scope for more interesting things. Potentially. I say interesting things, in reality this’ll probably just be us sitting in a bar recording as we get progressively more drunk, leading to an altogether more aggressive version of ‘Jafar? Cakes?’ in which every incorrect answer is punished by a chair being thrown. Exciting.

In other news, the company I went to for an interview last week haven’t contacted me at all. This is very good news. It means they’re obviously taking their time drafting a lucrative contract full of exciting benefits. I can’t wait for it to arrive. In the meantime, I’ve got some exciting yoghurts in the fridge, some of them are chocolate, some of them are toffee. It’s really very exciting if you like toffee and chocolate, which I kind of do, so maybe I’ll treat myself to one of those later.

I can see that at some point in future, I’m going to have to make a blog post titled ‘yoghurt experiment’. I probably spend more time discussing yoghurts and eating them than I do on facebook. That’s the real drain on my time.

Anyway, things to do this week:

- Try and finish this new sitcom.
- Book some more stand-up gigs.
- Eat a yoghurt (I’ll tick this one off fairly soon).
- Maybe have some port? Does port assist with writing? Find out.
- Build a fort. A writing fort.
- Have some port in your writing fort.
- Find something else that rhymes with port. Incorporate it into your fort.

I’m an ambitious man.

2010 – A Good Year?

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This is my first post of 2010. Let me just say, there’s no evidence as yet that this will be a good year, but I’d rather hope it was. I am going to start optimistic and let the optimism gradually leak out of me like a morbid teapot. Anyway, what have I been doing so far this year I hear none of you cry? Well, let me tell you!

Nothing.

Actually, that’s not true, I’ve been doing a few things. Today I even had an interview. I thought it went ok, by which I mean I didn’t say anything particularly stupid. Oh, the times we were having, we all laughed, I sipped my water casually, as if to say “Hey! I’m sipping my water! Casually! I’m one of you guys! Eh? Eh?” Let me tell you, if we’d each had long enough arms, I’m sure we’d have all been sat round slapping each other on the back in a jovial manner. Alas, the distance between us was somewhat too large, and it would have been too disturbing to actually get up, walk across, slap them on the back, then slowly limber back to my seat in silence. Perhaps if I’d had Go Go Gadget arms then it would have been a possibility, but the fact is, I don’t, so it would have been even worse if I’d tried to engage them.

“And then I said, hey, that’s not a biscuit, that’s my cat!”

“Hahahaha! Good one! GO GO GADGET ARMS!”

[Silence]

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. ABORT! ABORT GADGET ARMS!”

“Ok, well… ooh, is that the time? Well, you know, we’ll… be in touch…”

“Thanks! GO GO GADGET HELICOPTER! BYEEEEEE!” [Crash through door]

It was something to do anyway. No doubt they’ll be in touch within a few days with the traditional ‘Well, thanks for coming in, unfortunately, there were a lot of strong candidates…’ etc, but hopefully not. Seeing as this is the year of optimism and everything, I’m going to predict that in a couple of days they’ll be in touch with a six-figure salary and a shiny jacket that says ‘KING OF THE BUILDING: ASK ME ABOUT MY GADGET ARMS’. This will happen.

I’ve also started another stand-up course. This is an advanced course, following on from the beginner’s one I did a few months ago that I’ve discussed on here. It’s great. Basically, every week I just get to get on stage, practice material and get feedback on it before I take it out to gigs. It’s a lot of fun, and everybody is very friendly. I haven’t actually done a stand-up gig since November now, as I’ve run out of bookings, but I’m hoping to get back into doing it soon. I should email more people. Maybe that’s what I’ll do.

I also hope to finish another script this month, which would be a hell of an effort, since it’s only 1/3 done, and there’s only 11 days left. Let’s make that a draft perhaps. A draft of the script would be nice. Oh, and also I’m hoping to revive Llamageddon for a better run over the next few weeks. More regular podcasts rather than just one every 4 months or so. That would be good. Maybe release some other stuff too. That would be super good. A good megazord. Anyway, I’m quite tired and I’ve got to go to work soon, so I’m going to end here. Bye!