The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing people he was funny.

Greekings Reeking Lums, 

Going down laughing is infinitely
preferable to just going down

6 months to go working on the big International Sports day, I'm pretty sure it will be great, but it also means the looming prospect of joblessness for me when its all done.  

Around the same time the final spent firework at the Paralympic Games closing ceremony falls back to Stratfords regenerated streets I'll be finished.  

I'll be looking forward to a rest, but you can only really enjoy a rest if you know its not an infinite one and you can actually still  afford to feed yourself.   

It doesn't help that my best pal and perennial Peroni partner has left, gone to till the soil in the hotel business, another mate discovered the escape tunnel that comes up in Abu Dhabi and my excellent boss too has found a seat in a lifeboat and has pootered off to the media business.  

Good luck to them.  

I did have a funny day at work a couple of weeks ago.  I volunteered to help make a security awareness video for the "firm"  which involved me, in disguise, in various security scenarios.  Now, we're not talking about active shooters or bombs on buses going off if the speed drops below 50.  Its more, your documents left in the printer and the value of ID badges messages.   

The highlight was having the videos, oh yes, there was a series of them, played in front 200 cynical, hard nosed security professionals that wanted to go home at the end of the day, but had been told to stay late and see our fantastic films.  So after 10 excruciating minutes of the silenciest silence I've never heard, and the reddest redness my head has ever been, I was introduced to the mute, humourless horde. 

I had to explain the content and talk about the messages, but decided to go for comedy instead, as I always do at inopportune moments.   "Hello, I'm Troy McClure".  I'm not obviously, and I did give my own name, "you may know me from such informational films as "Something Juicy to Read and Tailgating! Door to Disaster."   A new, deeper more spiteful silence enveloped the hall, "never mind, carry on I said to myself, at least they'll hear you".  "Well, I must say, I'm delighted that you all saw past the comedy elements in the films (and there were plenty) and managed to take on board the very serious messages contained within the films.  You cant get quieter than silence, but if gurning expressions could suck the residual sound waves that are above and below the human ears spectrum out of the room, then what we would have had is an audio vacuum, I may have come across as being slightly mocking, but still, no need for aggressive indifference.  I talked for 5 minutes, reinforcing our points, then closed with a bit of humorous self deprecation, which, even though I say it myself,  I'm not that good at.  " I must say, I've been working for this organisation for two years, I'll take so much away from the experience, after these films, I now know, dignity and credibility are not among them" .  And that was that, I had died, but had learned a valuable lesson, the security professionals of the UK wouldn't know funny if it was fisting them with day-glo Marigolds on.  That's a good thing, we don't want them getting distracted by comedy capers.  

Viva ze Revolution!!
Can we stop off at  Aldis on the way? 

I'll miss London if I'm honest,  I think it must be one of the best cities in the world in which to live.  I think that must be true because of all the people from every corner of the world that end up here.  I love that diversity, so many different looking people.  Until you get to the office door, you hardly ever see the same person twice, its a constantly changing canvas that you never tire of.  There was a guy on the tube the other day who was the spitting image of a young and fiery Che Guevara.  He had the khaki military bush coat, the wiry beard  barely meeting the adolescent moustache and thick unruly glossy black Argentinian hair poking out from underneath his beret.  He was trying hard to be Che Guevara I think, mind you, the Waitrose carrier bag kind of detracted, but none the less a good effort.  I really don't think Che Guevara would shop at Waitrose, would he shop anywhere in fact, or just live off the good will and charity of grateful liberated peasants.   There aren't many liberated peasants around these parts, all are still well and truly under the yoke of The Man,  so I guess Che Guevara would need to pick up some groceries, but surely he would support the little corner shop, or the ethnic fair trader.   

I have suddenly gotten Twitter.  I don't mean got it, like downloaded it and generated an account, I mean just twigged the concept and meaning of it, and its a hoot.  I was always reticent, I genuinely have a lot of affection for Facebook and didn't want to feel like I was being unfaithful.  And it sat there, in my favourites folder,  like a feathery lure, but one I was too wary to approach, not wanting to put the work in to get to know it, reluctant to invest in a relationship when I was perfectly satisfied with the one I had.   Facebook has let me find old and distant friends, keep in touch with ex-colleagues and maintain a watchful, ever anxious and sometimes mortified eye over some entertaining fun loving kids, mine I hasten to add before The Police get involved.   Twitters not for keeping in touch with friends you already know, its about reaching out to strangers, offering something that someone else may be tuned in to, or turned on by and creating friends,  well, virtual ones, or not, it doesn't matter.   It turns out, its a laugh, there are a lot of people with genuinely funny thoughts bursting out of them.    The trouble is, I get distracted, I've been meaning to write something for weeks and weeks but I end up spending all my inanity on social networks and none on the Reeking Lum,  must try harder.  

Lang May Yer Lum Reek 

Jings, crivens, from eating to bleating and carnage in between

Howdy Lums,


That's in honour of the Superduper bowl that was on when I started writing this.  I saw more of it than normal, at least an hour, which included about 7 minutes of actual play, before retiring to sleepy town.  I've only a vague idea of whats going on, but how can it not be a spectacle worth watching, its 65 aside and the sporty equivalent of head butting buffalo's.

January and February have been annoying months, well, I mean, more things than normal have annoyed me, and not January or February being annoying, though, thinking about it, they are shitty months, long, cold, wet, skint and full of annoying happenings.

Frankie and Bennys new  cutlery friendly
departure lounge menu

The first thing that really annoyed me was the dinner I snatched in Stansted airport.  

Starving and on a low carbs diet, I plumped for a steak from the generic Italian themed diner.   Let me tell you how arduous eating an airport steak is post 9/11.  Its because of the cutlery, the knife they give you is like the one that comes with a play-doh gift set.  It was going like a fiddlers elbow trying to get through that thing, I swear I expended more energy than I managed to take in. There was no cutting edge to the knife, so I have to imagine it was the heat generated by my berserk sawing that melted the steak into sinewy separation.  I nearly missed my flight with the time it took to eat that thing, and I couldn't lift my bag because of the lactic burn in my slicing arm.

Back to vaguely interesting things.  At work I was visited by a boffin from one of those secretive government departments that come up with James Bonds gadgets.  Or at least, thats what I'm pretty sure they do, and not as a colleague dismissively suggested, just sorted the WiFi in GCHQ.  This guy, with his pasty skin, ponytail and and long leather overcoat had obviously spent a lot of time watching Blade movies but it was also an indication that these people don't get brought to the surface often.  The language he used probably makes perfect sense deep down in the brain bunker as he and his chums try and reproduce all the technology from Star Trek but up here, among IQs that average less than a hundred, its like the white noise radio astronomers get excited about. And why did he want to speak with me?  I would tell you, but they are probably monitoring my keystrokes from space and the guy sitting in the corner of the cafe looks like a background extra from Underworld, so for the moment, I'll keep that to myself.

I went to the pictures a couple of weeks ago to see Carnage, excellent it was, genuinely laugh out loud funny despite the woman sitting next to me, pulling her phone out every 5 minutes to send or receive a text, or to check if she had received one, or even just to have a look at her screen saver, because it makes her smile or something.  

I've just invented an indiscreet i-phone user
   bludgeoning device  

This is almost as annoying as a ring tone.  In the darkness of the cinema, the brilliant light from her poxy       i-phone was an all pervading distraction, I began to feel like a bug, hypnotised by the light, getting drawn towards it with dreams of nirvana flashing across my mothy brow.  Nirvana for me though would have been grabbing her phone in mid-text and throwing it with all my might down the cinema.    I imagined it spinning   through the air in slow motion, like the femur in Space Odyssey, and as it landed, the entire audience, but one, two if you count her pathetic boyfriend, would stand up and cheer, hoist me to their shoulders and carry me all the way to The Office of Cinema Etiquette, where I would unveil a statue of me hurling an i-phone (other makes of phone are available and equally annoying).

I see faces...everywhere

That was annoying, but THE most annoying thing, and its really getting on my thruppennies is the language used in facebook updates.  Why do Scottish people, and remember, I am one of them, feel the need to write a status update as if they are a Broons scriptwriter, typing phonetically exactly how it comes out their mouths.  Now, phonetics is a wonderful teaching technique for three year olds, but if your old enough to work facebook, your old enough to write English.  I can, and often do speak in my home town dialect, and I can understand it like a native when its spoken to me, but its really hard to get your eyes around it when its written down.  And before anyone says " your jist aw saft noo yiv gaun tae london" " an ener hing, am gaun ooot tae get pished" " Jings crivvens n help ma boab PC Murdoch is gaun tae catch us plunderin aipples" or anything like that,  remember you write for others, whats the point of writing a status update for yourself, you already know what your doing, so it would be nice to read your status updates with all the letters in the proper order or at least, if your going for  "a braw Scots tongue" and that can be great. Example, DC Thomas has never been hard to read, but they don't mangle it and go out of their way to replace commonly used English words with some made up regional short cut.    

Saying that,

Lang may yer lum reek.

Come The Revolution, only in 140 characters or less

The new i-atollah pads on a stick gathered quite a following

Happy Thanksgiving Lums, 


I read an article about Thanksgiving the other day because I'm generally quite clueless about the whole thing. It was about the technology the early pilgrim fathers relied on to survive.  The author said "Barrels were quite big back then" like they were a new thing. As if a reformist James Dyson came up with the rolling box idea when in fact they had been a big thing for 3000 years or something.  


Anyway, back to me, another day at the foot of Mt Olympus, the radio alarm goes and I find my self punching the snooze button as if it dispenses Tromadol, not to cancel the day ahead, just  to delay it a little until I'm ready to wade throat deep into it.  


Delay it because my hypocrisy-ometer has been ringing like the bell on a bored budgies swing. 


What has been getting my goat is the governments plans (dreams) to criminalise social networking during times of civil strife or, in the view from their comfortably feathered nests, revolution.  
Its the usual jerky knee'd reaction that we should be used to by now from our elected populists .  Remember when there was a spate of baby eating devil dogs apparently snacking their way through a whole generation of the UKs carelessly placed children.  Shoot them, no, lets castrate them, what? No, we need to castrate them, then shoot them, then take all their teeth out and shoot them again.  
In the end, I think we went for licensing them at the post office.  A reasoned  position probably, though if we did shoot all those ugly, firkin chested, in bred freak hounds, would we miss them.  That will be a No, and why don't they have suitable legs, its like the conceptual design was presented with a potato that had cocktails sticks for walking on. 


Anyway, the inevitable reaction to riots in London this summer? Ban the kids from messaging with their blackberries, no more flashtwitters and lootbook status updates.  
I suppose its natural to immediately want to blame something, and the established position is to blame something new and synonymous with the young but hold on, social networking is perhaps one of the most valuable and inevitable products of the connected age.  To suggest the state should control it, censor it or deny it to those that are not deemed responsible is a prospect that seems totally foreign not only to the free, but to digital natives anywhere. Once we are there, or the laws are passed that allow it, what next, authorised press, no congregating in groups, permission to speak?   

Anyway, that's one thing, the hypocrisy that really pressed my begrumpled button is that a few months ago, we, including the government, were praising the brave souls in Tunisia and Egypt, lapping up their YouTube clips and live twitter feeds from Tahrir Sq, with claims that social networking is the new engine of democracy and social change.  
Maybe its that thought dawning on our governors that has got them a little spooked. Its strange we don't hear the reports to the same degree coming from Syria or Iran.  Either the press have been told not to report them, Arab spring fatigue maybe, or more likely, those regimes, that aren't afraid to machine gun demonstrators and drive tanks through villages and schools probably do a decent job of controlling access to social sharing platforms.  


Its not only the government struggling to come to terms with what the connected and newly chatty world means.  The Sun, that paragon of reporting virtue, with the comic timing of cancer, had to deny a rumour posted on Twitter this week, saying there was absolutely no truth in it, like that's important to them or something.    


Continuing on the theme,  apparently any two people on Facebook is only 4.74 connections away from any other. That means a Facebook friend of a friend of mine is likely to be a friend of a friend of anyone of the other 721 million users.  I don't really know what the significance of that is, if any. 


" Why sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London.  No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford"   


So said Samuel Johnson, though they say he had tourettes so he probably ended in a fuckity flourish.  He certainly would if he had to pay beer prices in Canary Wharf today, all that life can afford only applies to the robber bankers if they've had a good day at the trough snorting up pensions, still, it gives me ample opportunity to air my favourite aphorism to the barmaid, 


" Hey hen (I never claimed they would understand it) that pint (£4.80 by the way) I want tae drink it, no pit it on ma mantelpiece"  


Lang may yer lum reek.