Zufriedenheit - Satisfaction

After selecting this entry and staring blankly at the screen for five minutes, I felt a poo was imminent and so took the opportunity to sit and ponder exactly what I’d write about. The only thing in my head was that Rolling Stones song, but given (quite embarrassingly) I know almost nothing about the band, it’d be a difficult five hundred words to blag. Sure Mick Jagger’s a strutting, womanising, narcissist, but there’s something about him you can’t help but admire. Probably the womanising actually. And of course Keith Richards swaggers around like he’s Jack Sparrow’s father and has a face more wrinkled than a hypothermic ball sack, but he’s still cool as fuck. There’s not much you can joke about without feeling like a bit of a jealous prick. So anyway, I was just about finished on the bog, still struggling to think of anything worth committing to keyboard, when it hit me how completely satisfying my shit had been. Apologies for lowering the tone, but you should have seen where this was going from that opening sentence. You’ve only got yourself to blame. Oh, and me. But it is true: that sense of euphoric relief you get after clearing out yesterday’s cereal, yoghurt, crisps and chocolate fingers (the biscuity variety, not human) is almost unrivalled. It does smell though, and not always pleasantly. Especially if you’ve got a terrible diet consisting of tray-in-the-oven food and sugary snack foods. Although veggies stink horribly too, so you can’t win. Not that there’s much of a game in it - only once have I awarded the Best In Shit trophy after both my housemates made particularly fetid deposits on the same day. One had definitely been eating a Fray Bentos pie, while the winner’s entry smelt more of cheap Asda sausage rolls and burger sauce. A worthy victor indeed.

So while we’re down in the lower echelons of taste, I might as well mention the worst thing about pooing at work. For me, my uniform seems to create what I can only describe as a shit-chimney, where the offending odours rise from the bowl and enter my loose-fitting shirt around the belly area. Then, travelling up the half-flesh, half-fabric vent, they exit by my top button, treating my face to a concentrated faecal gas-cloud. It’s not much fun, and it also makes me stupidly paranoid that my whole upper body smells that way for the rest of the shift. Anyway, the good news for you is I need to leave for work in ten minutes so this is ending right here. I just hope I’m sufficiently emptied for the night ahead.

Sausen - To Buzz

To buzz your tits off sniffing butane gas and glue-based products wasn’t too unusual for a Bradford kid when I was growing up. Fortunately solvents never appealed to me, so I never experienced the joys of a lung-freezing premature death. Although it’d make this entry tons more impressive if I had. However, one girl in my school did suffer such an end, prompting wave-after-wave of insincere pricks everywhere cashing in an extra day or two off, being bullshittingly too upset to concentrate on schoolwork. While I was unduly harsh at the time, liberally spreading my hardcore “Well she sort of got what she deserved,” spiel about the place - risking a severe beating from several of her former vaj-tenants - I never used her death to get an extra day off to play Resident Evil on my Playstation. Now I can’t quite claim the same moral high ground for when Princess Diana died, but in my defence I was on the last level and had a geography project to finish. You’d have done the same. Anyway, solvent abuse: it’s not just a cheap toddler/kiddy high, no! A couple of years back I lived in St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne with a bit of a dodgy drug and hooker-heavy past. The main pub, restaurant and club area there is Fitzroy Street - a place that still retains much of its quaint, vice-laden character. I worked in a greasy burger and burrito joint at its epicentre and was often treated to the delightful company of the paint-sniffing locals in need of change or freebies. One in particular used to zoom up and down the street on his mountain bike, cigarette in one hand, his silvery plastic huffing sack in the other. It was hilarious. One time he was even getting high on the tram, filling the carriage with his distinctive fumes and, as a result, my immature laughter. There was just something about his complete disregard for where he was and who he pissing off, coupled with his ever-present cheeky grin, you couldn’t help but smile. I think his name was Chris and he lived in a place across the road called The Gatwick Hotel. Not quite as two-star as it sounds, more sort of a one-fifth-of-a-fifth-of-a-two-star place, a fraction so confusing it must equal bad. Outside on an evening, most of his fellow inhabitants (including Mungo Jerry‘s Ray Dorset - or at least his stunt double anyway) would gather to smoke a range of fragrant substances, drink their way through gallons of fish-based boxed wine, and shout abuse at all who had the gall to walk past. It’s worth visiting Melbourne just for that really. So, as it fizzles out without any style, I’m aware this piece is lacking any sort of message other than don’t sniff solvents! Unless you’re making people laugh, in which case you might as well go for it.

Es Bewegt Sich Etwas - Things Are Beginning To Happen

A reasonably appropriate entry as I make my return to these Improvised German to English Writings after posting nothing substantial for almost a month. The usual excuse of writing stand-up will have to suffice - at the risk of being branded a self-congratulatory toss piece, I performed a twenty minute set a few days ago that went reasonably well. Especially considering it was over three times longer than anything I’d previously attempted. And it was only gig-number-four on my CV. Right, this simply isn’t good reading, and I categorically feel like a self-congratulatory toss piece now, although evidently not quite enough to delete this whole ego-boosting opening section. But anyway, the point was/is that things are beginning happen in my possible semi-hobbyist/part-part-time indulgence/slightest of slight money-making prospects - my dabbling in stand-up comedy. If that fails, there must be some cash in heavily-hyphenated/overly-forward-slashed or exclamation-marked (see later) sentence creation. That’d be ace. So what other things are beginning to happen today? Glad you asked, because serious nuclear destruction is potentially on the agenda. The thing that’s really amazed us shockingly-racist westerners is it isn’t those crazy Islamic extremists with suitcase nukes! Or even India and Pakistan ready to annihilate each other over 85806 square miles of fine woollen sweaters! [Although since researching that joke I’ve discovered the spellings of the disputed territory bordering those countries, and the sheep-sourced fabric are not the same, making the gag comically defunct.] So no! It’s in fact North Korea and this time they’re serious! Not only did they detonate a device as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb, but followed it up by several short-range missile tests. This of course comes after last month’s satellite launch-come-ICBM experiment that already severely pissed off the international community. Clearly shit-scary times to be living in South Korea, unless you like your summers bright and 300,000 degrees. Oh, and dead. The extra-scary thing is you really get the feeling the UN are ball-less and powerless to do anything about it. Is anyone up for invaded a country with more than a million soldiers and a proven nuclear capability? In any case you sort of have to admire Kim Jong-il. He’s taken the classically over-compensating and aggressive short-man’s syndrome to major extremes, and it’s made him almost untouchable. He’s got the (albeit forced) adoration of his people, and no one outside North Korea can do anything except call him a tosser and say what a very naughty naughty bad bad boy he is. Definitely an inspiration to self-conscious diminutives around the world. Were I short and lacking the perceived respect I deserve, acquiring a small, east-Asian country and installing myself as supreme leadership would be the first thing I‘d do. So come on Joe Pesci, just watch those Oscar-winning film offers roll in once you start enriching your own weapons-grade plutonium. No more lacklustre Lethal Weapon sequels for you, no sir!

Ein|Planen - To Allow For

To allow four people in the back of a minicab isn’t legal. Unless you get one person to either sit on someone’s knee or lie across the other three, striking an alluring pose while eating grapes the entire journey. Actually that’s illegal too. It has to be meat pies. Or a bowl of sick a la Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste. Granted, neither are that appealing, but it’s one of those ancient, unrepealed laws like killing a Yorkshireman with a wooden spoon at thirty paces on a rainy day inside a discount German supermarket - try it out in Lidl or Aldi if you‘re curious. Where is this entry going? Any suggestions? Well, were it in the back of an unlicensed minicab (without the company of four people, meat pies and sick), it could well be subjected to a serious sexual assault. And before uppity-ism forces you to stop reading with disgust, I’m not making light of that - of course it’s a grisly and abhorrent crime when done to humans (and most, but not all other animals), but we’re talking about a written, digital blog entry on the internet here. Textual assault isn‘t quite so serious. What’s the worst he could really do? Perhaps 4cing hmslf + hs txt spk into this sentence, while I struggle to beat him off (tee-hee-hee) to delete and re-edit? And yeah, all rapists must use text-speak because they‘re obviously complete pricks. Go figure. And on that non-bombshell, it’s time to leave this failed entry before it gets any worse.