Lord Andrew

In other celebrity-related news, mrs househusbandnot and I were extremely entertained that one of the contestants on The X Factor referred to Andrew Lloyd-Cabbage-Head as "Lord Andrew" on the show the other night. Americans? Don't you just love how they just keep on being wrong. Not that I am at all biased because I had to explain what The Council Of Europe was to an American audience the other day. ("It's like, well you know, got 47 countries in it, and they, well, debate stuff, but none of it is legally binding, but it does means something, kinda, in a 47 country kind of way, and some of them are Dutch...")

Not a lot else today people. I finished Half Life 2 over the weekend with my brother in law's assistance. I am a deeply cheap date when it comes to X Box. I have been playing Half Life 2 since Xmas. My weekend success was accompanied to jeers of derision from mrs hhn on the other sofa, as her brother jogged through sections of the game that I have been stuck on for weeks. And he and I did a bit of Xbox Liveing, which is a bit odd and creepy playing games with complete strangers across the airwaves. In a vague pretence at having a life, the three of us did discuss going to the Rock Against Racism gig, but am glad to report that we didn't actually manage to get off our arses and hung around eating jaffa cakes and X Boxing and watching crap TV aka X Factor instead.

Anyone got any good ideas what I could buy my father in law for his 65th birthday btw? (And yes he has all the aviation simulation games and accessories he needs already. Darn, I've married into a gamegeek family. Excellent. )

And..

...I just saw a sheep in a playground near Russell Square

And The Waunch didn't pick up on my typo in my headline yesterday...

And my mate (*& has just secured me tickets for Massive Attack* during their Meltdown thang at The Festival Hall...

And mrs househusbandnto woke me up at four am this morning because she wanted to hear me say 'muesli'...

And, and, and...

*Yeah, yeah. I know. But they are great live,and (*& and I have had quite a lot of fun at the Meltdown thangs over the last few years. One of the highlights involved me deciding to talk to Bono when I was twatted. Another involved one of the best gigs I have ever seen (Tricky and Lee Perry together, which shouldn't work, but did. Karma Coma Dwop..)

Raspberry Bonbons Scottie?

I was sitting in Russell Square having some lunch just now, trying to read a big old document I am writing an article about. A bloke came up to me and said: “Excuse me. I know you are busy. But I am conducting some interviews. If you were organising a Scott of the Antarctic expedition, would you include raspberry bonbons on the menu?”

I have nothing else to report today.

Shakespeare, Sister

I assure you there is nothing very Shakespearian about modern Denmark, or indeed me in modern Denmark. (Anyway, I don't buy the whole Shakespeare thing. Sure, I muddled through a handful of his plays at school, and kinda pretended that I thought they were deep. But, are they really? Really? And I don't buy whole Shakespeare wrote the only eight stories that ever need telling. Did he write the screenplay to 28 Days Later? No. Did he author The Diggingest Dog In The World? Er, no. Purple Rain script? N[o]. Any of the Hitchcock movies? NO. Did he ever drag his bearded little ass over to his desk to engage in anything on modern man and his struggle with his ipod? Or addiction? Or man on man lurve? Or religious war? [Sorry, just been reading The Second Plane.] Or living with wolves? [Or anything on animals come to think of it.] Or detectives? Or serial killing? Or the dilemmas facing a band forced to reform in order to make money although they hate each other? Or being unable to cope with winning the lottery? Or having cosmetic surgery and marrying a computer hacker who has overextended on his property portfolio? Er...no, no, no and...no. He didn't even know how to spell his own name. And a good line here and there does not make for eternal fame. If that was the case, we could/should be studying Howard Devoto. I'd go with Marlowe. And anyway, Shakespeare has kept a lot of actors in work for far too long, treading the boards with big balloon pants and billowing white shirts thinking they are up to something profound, rather than just making tits of themselves and boring the arses off of the groups of sixth formers forced to watch their plays when they would much prefer to be reading manga or playing Xbox or getting off with girls/boys.)

Making Sense Of Your World

Recovering as we all are from that flurry of Smithiesness – And which of you loonies thinks we should give money in our wills to Moz and Marr? Any donations should surely go to Rourke and or Joyce? I am reminded how Moz dismissed Rourke from The Smiths. It came in the form of a note left by Morrissey under the windscreen wiper of his car, saying “Andy, you have left The Smiths. Good luck and goodbye, Morrissey”*. - we should move on back in the real world, rather than remain within the distant memories of our teenage years lying on the bed in our bedrooms thanking God that The Smiths existed.

I am glad to report that mrs househusbandnot is on the mend, as evidenced by the pile of magazines on our kitchen table on my return home last night. Grazia? Yep, good, although it is printed on weird paper. Heat? Yep, always good for a two minute read and a reminder that I have no idea who most of the people they are writing about actually are, other than Callum Best and that Hilton beast. Time Out? Yep, always useful in a thank you God that I don’t have to go to The Jazz Café tonight kind of way. Psychologies Magazine? Er, hang on mrs hhn. Are you trying to tell me something by buying this publication? (which has the strapline of ‘Making Sense Of Your World’ btw) And it is open on an article about whether or not you really know your partner. (I didn’t even dare to read the other well thumbed article on sexual honesty.)

But we got through the evening, with – or without – the expert advice offered by the stuck in the `70s quacks who write for Psychologies Magazine. (‘Talking Bollox About Your World’) And watched last episode of Shameless and that frankly v odd programme about people going to a clinic in Birmingham with their embarrassing medical conditions and complaints.

And are now preparing for a trip to Denmark tomorrow evening. (My sister lives there, not in nice and civilised Copenhagen, which is populated by some of the best looking people in the world, and where one can sit at elegant cafes , sipping good coffee and watching the world go by in a most civilised manner, before heading off to one of a number of great galleries and restaurants. No, my sister lives on the mainland of Jutland, where people marry their cousins, where the next village to my sister is called Dark, where the only industry appears to be pig and mink farming [there is a mink farm near my sister’s place, just left out of Dark], where the people in supermarkets are so unsocialised that they have no sense of personal space and will stand completely and entirely so close to you that you think they want to have sex with you [or your wallet], where the food consists of..yep, you guessed it, pork and what I can only imagine is mink pate, where it is bone-snappingly cold 11 months of the year, where the next door neighbour wears a tshirt with Gays Deserve AIDS on it, where there are only two tv channels the first of which’s broadcast schedule consists of re-runs of a kids’ programme with two rather ropey looking glove puppets [I think they are supposed to be a dog and a bear] hitting each other, where my sister bought a dog last year which was sold as a terrier/Labrador cross but actually turned out to be a wolf/great dane hybrid giant hound that leaps on people and breaks their arms he is so big, and where the definition of entertainment is waiting until Xmas again when you can scare the children with the Xmas tale of the nasty black man who is going to come and steal their toys.) This is going to be mrs hhn’s first visit to Denmark…


* This just in from The Waunch: “Dude, the will thing on hhn was me, by the way. "Johnny Marr and Morrissey in your '"Will. I am. It was Really Nothing"' compared". I dunno, pearls before swine, innit?”

What Difference Does It Make?

Re "Madam B here, darned you hhn, your beloved is poorly and you snipe away like a thorn in a jockstrap - have some pity and tend to her you MAN"

I know. I know. (Most of the post was an excuse to have a Smiths song as a title anyway.) The minute I posted yesterday's post I felt bad about it. I can report back that I went home and made mrs househusbandnot sausage sandwiches last night, and spent some time thanking her for coming to Denmark with me this weekend. And generally tried to be nice, as I avoided the piles of tea cups and other ill-related litter around the flat.

So sincere apolgies to mrs hhn, who incidentally did say last night, when I had gotten off the phone to various people, "When you are on the phone it sounds like you are actually being nice to me when I am ill." I will try and be - rather than just sound - nice this evening.

Still Ill?

So as The Pope prepared for his first visit to the USA, Britney crashed her car again, Gordon Brown faltered, The World Bank warned against food shortages, Prince wrote another song about me, butterflies spread their wings on mountain sides in Malaysia, and tigers yawned in India...mrs househusbandnot got sick.

Which in the grand scheme of things should not be such a big deal. But in this scale of things it is. You see, mrs hhn - when ill - turns into a bloke. She lies in bed or on a sofa, hating the world that made her (him) ill, lashing out at anything and anybody (that would be me btw) that comes within lashing at range. She makes mad demands like wanting tea and fish soup at the same time, hates the world some more, and explains that technically no-one has ever been in such abject pain as she is.

This would be okay if I reciprocated with the gender reversals at this stage. But I don't. I can't. I remain resolutely male, bored by other people's illness, angered after the first three demands for tea/soup, irritated by the detritus of the patient (tissues, apple cores, empty mugs etc.), and constantly reminding myself that actually this is not real pain, not pain like I have felt in my life as a sick man.

So what with the staring down of each other, the quiet and not so quiet sulks, the general butlering around after the corpse on the sofa, the recognition that I am a crap nurse (which annoys me, and annoys mrs hhn), and the utter tedium of watching someone being ill, not a great weekend really. I have escaped to the office this morning to let mrs hhn continue her man illness alone.

Re: "Being nice to mrs hhn isn't a job, it's a privilege, surely?
And I've done the Writing the Words for the Back of Crisp Packets job, and it's turbo-money for old rope. Any crisp manufacturers out there, I'm your man."

As ever The Waunch(is this blog turning into TheWaunchnotisshouldbe?)puts his finger on the burning issues of the day, the first of which was addressed this morning at hhn HQ as mrs househusbandnot and I were preparing for our day...

hhn: "So, in theory anyway, now that I have run your bath, made you tea, and been downstairs to get the delivery of organic vegetables, I have been a good husband, no?"

mrs hhn: "It is not what you do hhn. It is the manner in which said tasks are performed. And it is not a competition."

hhn considers witty or pithy response to this, but can't come up with anything stronger than "I am only in competition with myself, so it is a competition".

Thus begins another day in the lives of hhn/mrs hhn.

And the crisp packet copy thang? Indeed The Waunch has done this. The place where I always go for my pre-gym coffee stocks the very same crisps for which he wrote the copy. So I think about him and crisp packet copy and his crisp packet copy most days. What I have thought has gotten no further than `There are the crisps that The Waunch wrote the packet copy for.' Actual and factual, if not edifying or illusitory.

So this crisp packet goes into a bar, and asks the barman...

Jobs...

...I've been thinking about*

Dog Walking
Those Blokes Who Clean Public Phones In The Middle Of The Night
Inventing New Fireworks
Blogging
Testing New Versions Of Rez (google it)
Inventing New Airlines Menus
Writing The Words For The Back Of Crisp Packets
Being The Duke Of Edinburgh
Hard Core Wrestling
Developing The Software For The Quite Ridiculously Complicated Canteen Swipe Cards At The Court Where I Have Been Doing Jury Service
Living A Lie
Dog Whispering
R and D For Ribena Inc
Coffee Tasting (I met someone who did this once, possibly the maddest person I have ever met)
Being A Community Police Officer
Henry VIIIth Impersonators
Cloud Bursting
Badger Culling (Shame on you sir)
Life Coaching
Inventing Different Forms Of Stress Balls
Being Nice To Mrs HHN
Designing Train Tickets
Being One Of Those Complete Knobbers Who Paint Themselves Silver And Stand Still On The Embankment
Whatever Madame B Does
Prince's Chef
Prince's Anything
Theatre Critics




*Not in a I'd Like To Do Them Way - although I'd go for the firework inventing. More in a just thinking about them, and the fact that people get up in the morning and go and do these things.

Waunchery

Strike a light. hhn just got clever (And there was me going to get back on track with thoughts on last week’s demonization of sausages as a health risk, some predictable gags about judges wearing women’s underwear, and a few other cheap gags about jurors and me being a juror etc.)

A few qualifiers to the hhn interregnum – or should I say justitium or tumultus* - while I was/am out doing jury service, and The Waunch was/is at the helm (Fyi, I am technically still on jury service until next Tuesday but happen to have a day off today, so you can all look forward to some more The Waunch musings should he feel so inclined.)

1) I believed the April Foolery about Carla Bruni becoming a style advisor to GB
2) Her husband should have surgery to make him a bit taller
3) Remind me where you went to University Waunch?
4) I absolutely don’t believe mrs househusbandnot’s story about her April Foolery when she was at university. This is a woman, dear readers, who has such a ferocious belief in right and wrong that she would probably engage in citizen’s arrests if she was not such a nice woman. (Although, I am glad to report that she did engage in some excellent criminal activity a month or so ago. She can provide details, when she is not busy engaging in conversation with Madame B that makes even Madame B look vaguely savoury.)
5) The Waunch seeing himself as `a kind of wise but kindly trendy uncle-type’? A comb over does not make you avuncular dude. It is pity, not respect, in their youthful eyes The Waunch. I should know. I see it most days myself when required to engage with anyone under the age of 35.
6) And further The Waunch thoughts: `if I wanted to write a blog, I could have started my own long before now. The fact that I haven’t is due to a natural timidity, or modesty, which people who normally only see me when I’m in a socially enthusiastic mood – which, to be fair, is most evenings – might find difficult to believe.’ Calling Nick Bartle. Comments please.
7) Will Anonymous who wrote about Tumbleweed Central Population The Waunch please contact me for this month’s - no year’s - prize for funniest thing on hhn.
8) My favourite story about The Waunch’s time in Hong Kong is the story Mrs The Waunch tells of the regular knocks on her front door early in the morning from the local shop keepers complaining “He no good. He bad for business”, their problem being that The Waunch had yet again almost made it all the way home, but had once again failed on the last leg and fallen asleep in a shop front near his apartment.

And just in case you are feeling I am on a The Waunch bash, don’t. He is a good man, and rose admirably to the hhn challenge.

*Fuck you Will Self

April Fools’ day, by Avril de Poisson

Was April Fools’ Day ever really fun? I only ask because yesterday was so emphatically self-serving and smug that I feel like I need to towel myself off after consuming the British media all day long. Was there a newspaper or website that didn’t offer its consumers a ‘prank’ story of such utter banality that it made you want to weep blood?

So we had Carla Bruni to become style advisor to Great Britain, Nicholas Sarkozy having surgery to make him as tall as his wife, the face of Big Ben being replaced with a digital display and weight-loss cream that had to be used while wearing special socks.

And then added to that steaming heap, you had the huge companies that think that displaying some humour – and I use the word loosely – will flog more of their awful shit. Guinness offering a backwards pint which was all froth, with a head of stout (‘For One Day Only’, just in case you didn’t get it). BMW had a car that electrified dogs that pissed on them (one that electrocuted the herd of douchenozzles that drive ‘beemers’ would be more to my liking) and Google offering a web application that can predict the future. Give me a break. The normally sainted YouTube stole someone else’s joke (sorry, internet meme) and made all their front page vids link to a Rick Astley clip. Kill me now.

And the BBC offered us flying penguins. Look, BBC, I’m not that stupid. I know penguins don’t fly. So your joke doesn’t work. And if you think it does work, on lots of people who aren’t me, then you should be slapped for being so patronising. With all your resources, couldn’t you have put some real thought into it? Although someone there managed to put together a smart piece on stories in the news that sound like April Fools’ stories but actually weren’t, including a smoking turtle, pay-per-view cremations, and tattoos for the teeth, which provided a far more lucid and ironic commentary on the world we live in than flying penguins and Gordon Ramsay forswearing swearing.

The whole April Fools’ thing has just become a lazy shorthand for having a sense of humour, like those ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps!’ signs by peoples' desks that thankfully I never see anymore.

There probably was a golden age of April Fools’ jokes: The Guardian’s supplement on the island of San Serriffe was clever and convincing. When the BBC did its Spaghetti Harvest thing, that fooled lots of people. But yesterday had Alistair Darling playing a lottery scratchcard in a newsagent, Daniel Craig saying that James Bond should be bisexual, and the US scrapping the dollar and joining the euro. Don’t any of these highly-paid media professionals credit us with a scintilla of intelligence? It would appear not.

As it happens, I do remember once when I had fun with an April Fools’ joke. I used to live on a small island about an hour’s boat commute from Hong Kong. The island was, because of the difficulty of getting there, a haven for hippies and artists and writers, who revelled in its relative isolation (and the absence of police). There were a lot of big infrastructure problems going on in Hong Kong at the time – airports, bridges and so on -- and my flatmate came up with the idea of persuading people that the MTR (the underground system) was going to extend its lines out to the Outlying Islands. So he had incredibly convincing posters made (he worked for an ad agency), in full colour, in two languages, with maps and perfect logos, explaining that construction was about to start imminently.

Late at night, after the last ferry had come in, we pasted up the posters outside the ferry terminal, not just on our island, but on all the other Outlying Islands’ ferry terminals. We got up early the next morning to watch the three or four thousand deeply-isolationist reluctant stoner commuters digest the bad news, that paradise was ending, as they shuffled to the ferry. It was chaos. The joke was simple, believable, and beautifully executed. Everyone fell for it. There were questions in the Legislative Council. Later that day, it made the TV news, and, we heard afterwards, had been mentioned in British newspapers. In their roundup of all the wacky April Fools’ pranks from around the world. Which kind of killed it for me.

Anyone got any better stories? Journalists need not apply.