Tuesday 26 April 2011

Extreme End of an Era

So having decided to take some time out visit some ‘far out’ places I find myself skulking around the big apple. As with most American things its all about neon lights and adding excessive EXTREME adjectives.

So what does one do here in this GRAND and HUGE city?

Well, being a hungry hungry hippo I decided that finding the best food was a great way of viewing the city.

Racking my brain trying to find what great food we should be looking for and I came up with 2 items of food burgers and pizza.

So where does that leave me?

A full hundred inches of deliciousness later, I can safely state that burgers here are tasty but pizza, get it in Europe and you will me more taste filled gloriousness there.

Americans do not seem to understand that tomato sauce does not come out of a can and that it must be made with tender loving care and contain many tastiness ingredients.
Anyhow I will stop now and go and explore and eat a little more so that I can give more interesting comments

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Why being a best man is a good thing.

As mentioned earlier, very briefly, I have managed to be conned into going to a friend’s wedding. To top it off, conned into being one of two best men.

Two you say? Yes my friend is of the greedy sort and well, one is never enough, thankfully he did not get two wives at the same time.

Anyhow I digress, unable to sleep thanks to this snore monster next to me I am forcing myself to be awake and suffer the risk of blowing out my ear drums for the extended trip that I am going to suffer.

Why would being one of two best men be a good thing, well only one of them has to give a speech. As the other one felt reticent in writing, I jumped on the prospect and said that they would have to speak why I said. Him being drunk at the appointed time meant the speech was a little less offensive than originally planned. So much for me ruining his reputation, this survival instinct played good.

The other perk is that you get to do important things and therefore have the opportunity to feed your ego, and to top it off you get a present. Well maybe not traditionally but you do if you were at that wedding. Hence I have acquired a new old man item in the form of a pocket watch. Something that one always want but can’t justify buying, if you are under the age of 150.

So what else is good? Well you get to dress up, sign your life away and can justify talking to all the nice women using the excuse that as best man you need to be ‘sociable’ to everyone. No one minds really… unless you get caught! Besides you are there to take the blame of doing silly things away from the groom, who is stuck on best behaviour seeing as his ball and chain is there watching his every move.

So there you have it not really nice clear reasoning, but I think it might be best sticking to being a best man for a while, unless there is that mysteriously absent lady who is supposed to be one for me, decides to turn up.

Signing off

Lemon Tree Man

Why being an ex- communist is good.

Hello all, I find myself writing to you from a rather crapped Eurostar train. Having been away for a while at a friend’s wedding, I have neglected updating the blog. Being in a 3rd world ex-communist country, access to the miracle of the interwebs has been virtually non-existent.

Yes, you need to belong to the elite of the nation in order to qualify for Internet. I have to say, and being brutally honest, I really did not miss the Internet. I had no compulsion to repetitively check my e-mails, no desire for Facebook and no need to sit and watch another funny cat video.

Although being stuck on this overcrowded train due to exceptional weather conditions ( ie winter) and being stuck next the largest smelly snorer I would really like to see another funny cat video or even just have some music to drown out the snore orchestra, which seems to be growing and growing and growing.

So why would I go to an ex-communist country to attend a wedding, well my answer is simple, because now that it is an ex-communist country they serve meat and potatoes without the obligatory cabbage.

Yes it is true no more cabbage, it is important to note that these now capitalistic countries no longer feel the need to stuff themselves full of this noxious plant. Yet the industrious and efficient Germans and a large part of the lazy good for nothing French still do so.

So what does this tell us? It is an indicator of immigration, countries that consume mass cabbage do not emigrate to the UK. How many new French of Germans do you see?

Compare that to the number of ex-communists?

See my point?

If we decided to forgo the boiled cabbage with our Sunday roasts we might as a nation, be able to immigrate and conquer desirable places by sheer desire. Let us be honest with ourselves, all the nations that consume lots of cabbage are stagnating and honestly are constituted of lazy good for nothings.

Whereas the cabbage free nations are growing! How else can we explain China’s growth it is not a cabbage loving country, their definition of cabbage is boiled salad…..

So help me create a better world today and give up on cabbage.

Providing tomorrow’s world today.

Signing off

Lemon Tree Man

Friday 19 November 2010

Slash Dot Sickness.

Well here we find ourselves again, however this time with too much to say and 105 fever. So lets start at the beginning.

I am 4 hours away from the start of my holiday and for some insane reason have managed to catch the office bug in the last two days. Pray tell how am I supposed to deal with this? I am about to love many hours of holiday time to recovery.

I am not saying that you should fall sick during company time, god forbid this, I have been on the wrong side of this situations to many times to want to repeat it.
This is more about sod’s law; for those less educated it’s Murphy’s law, sod being a much more interesting person than Murphy the Irish New Yorker. It could be referred to as Karma for those spiritually inclined.

I am forced by taking vacation in the doubling of one of my colleagues workload, the company of course does not want me to work and pay me for vacation that I do not take, as it would amount to me taking it twice.

Now my preferred solution is that I get my vacation and that my silly customers learn that miracles come only sometimes and not all day every day. Well at least the miracle box machine needs to refuel sometimes.

Ok enough about the boring stuff... let us talk about advertising. I was walking down the tube ( Metro) the other day admiring the adverts, they are posters. Posters are inoffensive and to be frank the only form of advertising I enjoy.

To my horror I saw a poster for one of our ex-squadies turned pop star’s new album; this brought forth this unique thought, here we go suicide music round two. Yes depressing no? I don’t want to see depressing stuff on my tube walls.

A point of reference for the foreign people. James Blunt was a phenomenon after returning from war and making a song about being miserable, dumped, random love etcc…. All the things an Englishman should never talk about. English men have no emotions, do not show or express emotions, certainly not in public.

Needless to say he was a success with our emotion starved chavy women. Hence why he decided it would be a good idea to do another sing song. I don’t want to hear his new woes. Maybe he will sing about how now he is famous he can’t go to war anymore because all the enemies of the state will recognise him and shoot him for being a queer emotional whore. The truth is no one likes him and our soldiers would probably get rid of him and blame the enemies for being the first soldier to be WEAK.

Other exciting adverts include, the opera, mobile phones, the theatre and you guessed it charity. IF charity firms can pay to advertise, then why don’t they just save the money and use it for a good cause? A real charity will not need to advertise.

Signing Off

Lemon Tree man

Friday 5 November 2010

The Joy of News

In a world where scandals and disasters are the feeding force that our readers required, we wonder at the potential for happiness.

Today the news talks about engine failure in an Airbus A380, how the new ink cartridge bombs were 17 minutes away from exploding, how the new alliance between France and England is relating to Nuclear testing and how this is bad and of course a comparison of our testing and Iran’s needs for testing. Notwithstanding some flag burning for good measure.

Let talk about the least useful item of news; flag burning. What exactly is the point of burning flags; we know that Americans pioneered this during the civil war. Now it seems it is a symbol of protesting nations to show hate for the west.

But what benefit do we get from burning these icons, which represent the pride of our respective nations? It is not only the other nations’ populace that indulge in this little habit but it has been seen done by our own people in our own country. The majority of these fire hazards are created by naturalized people who seem to be at odds with our culture.

But other than making bad smells and a mess that the street cleaners need to sort out, what benefit is there really?

Would it not be simply easier to vote for a different leader who will change policy? Oh yes I forgot, it is now part of human rights to vote, so this means that the criminals we have spent many months locking up are now free to vote. How can we vote to change when the people whom we decide should not be in society get to vote and make their lives easier?

Other than flag burning what kind of protest can we make? My belief is if you burn flags you do not deserve to be part of a nation, you simply are no educated enough to have the benefits of being part of a society.

How would people feel if we started burning their flags just because we could? It would be a public outcry and we would be branded as being barbaric and inconsiderate. So why does this not work both ways?

Does it always need to boil down to jealousy? I want what you have but can’t have it so I will make sure you don’t get to enjoy it either?

Despite all the long meaningless text there is a reason why I am talking about this. I just find it frustrating that the news only talks about such inconsequential things.

Another example, if there are people stuck in a collapsed mine, the news does not report on the superhuman effort required by the rescue people who risk their lives to save the trapped miners, no the news reports that it took X time to get to them? Why do the reporters for five minutes not put down their cameras’ and microphones and help the diggers or get some refreshments for the rescuers so they don’t collapse.

All in all, this lets me claim that I don’t read the news. What is the point? I don’t want to know how much more misery there is in the world. Other people can tell me with great glee as it seems to be what drives them to have fun.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, if news is that important there is someone who will pass it on to us as they won’t resist telling everyone they encounter.

So help me change what we call news and aim for more cute kittens and success stories by boycotting depression.

Signing Off

Lemon Tree Man

Trains

Most people I know dislike public transport, I am inclined to agree, it is dirty, crowded and inefficient as well as the most costly method of travel around our capital.

But sometimes, and this is very rare the trip becomes enjoyable, regardless of how many sardines get crammed into the can.

Why do you all cry out?

Well it is really simple, if you a people watcher, not pervert psycho who letches mind, someone who like to see the differences in people and what interesting behavioural patterns can be discerned; you will get to see some really nice or interesting people.

For example this morning I am presented with our regular gaggle of people, plus a few one timers.

So for the regulars, there is always one passenger who intrigues me. It is a she and she sits there holding her jesus phone about 10 inches form her face watching some program/tv show and makes faces. Sometimes its smirks, sometimes smiles all with an excess of frowning; while occasionally taking furtive glances at all the people round her.

I find this very amusing, for a number of reasons, why on earth would you want to watch anything on a jesus phone on the train and who on earth watches comedy at that time in the morning? Most people are just sitting there dreaming of their next cup of coffee; never mind summon the intellect to watch a TV programme.

The other interesting fact that I can discern, for all the train regulars, everyone has a preferred seat. So we all scramble in order to get said seats. It is very funny if I am honest, admittedly most of the regulars always gets seats as we all live so far out of the capital that we have no problem with sitting down for a long commute.

There is another regular on the train, who starts at my station and changes once with me and the get off to take a third train. This poor man takes at least 3 trains every day and every day he sits in exactly the same seat and nothing changes, he never reads the paper, never listens to a jesus phone or a zombie machine, just sits there half asleep smirking.

Then you have the larger lady that takes the same route as I everyday but refuses to talk to anyone, and just buries her face in her book all morning and phone people using her new model jesus phone.

Finally the gaggle of working mums and pregnant ladies who huddle and talk all the way into town and refuse to acknowledge anyone else unless they are pregnant…..

Just think this is just what I see from my station, what else you can see from yours? Why do you not all have a look see and tell me what fun and joy you can derive from the morning trip in to work and the homeward trip.

If there are people you see every day then I challenge you to say hello to them and see if they will talk to you.

Let me know of your successes and failures.

Signing off

Lemon Tree Man

Thursday 4 November 2010

Cultural Soups

So a fiend ( note not spelling error….) of mine has been suffering from pains of indescribable intensity; hence being forced onto a liquid diet.
Now in my world a liquid diet is great, we eat many beers… but I suspect they would not find it quite so noutricious.
So they put on their apron:



And started cooking a childhood staple, ABC soup. Now for me this means:




But for them it means:



Which in my book is sweet and sour soup :P not alphabet soup!

Ah well we will need to teach those strange people what the ABC looks like.

Signing off

Lemon Tree Man