Hard cheese

There comes a time in a man’s life when all he can expect for birthdays is booze, socks and James Bond DVDs. But sometimes, a dad craves something a bit more substantial. It’s time to bring out the big guns.

The Pong Cheese Pong Box is hardcore quattro formaggio. Take note of the write-up:

An awesome selection of our most revered and most feared cheeses. These rogues are not only among are best sellers, they are also our strongest, smelliest and most oozy creations.

This wonderful box of cheese 'superstars of smell' makes a great gift idea but would also be more than suitable to send as an act of revenge!

Each order comes with a warning: they say it's best to make sure that you are in to collect the cheese and claim no responsibility for cheese that's been left to fester on a warm doorstep for a day.

This is where I shoehorn in a gag about revenge being a dish best served cold.

And speaking of Revenge...

Apocalypse Soon

I’ve granted myself until the end of the world to write this post. Unfortunately, that doesn’t give me as much time as I would’ve hoped.

Had my diary stretched three-and-a-half years into the future, there’d be a big red pen mark around Friday, 21st December, 2012. The remaining 10 blank pages I could use to make a chatterbox - that would be nice. Only it wouldn’t be nice because I’d be dead and you can’t enjoy a chatterbox when you’re dead.

The aforementioned date is, of course, when the Mayan calendar stops. Big deal – my calendar ends on 31st December THIS YEAR (and seems to be stuck on May). But then Mayans weren't a bunch of lazy halfwits with scratch-and-sniff trousers with a 12-month VW Campervan jobbie like me. Or the flesh-hungry primitives awaiting the salvation of Catholicism of Mel Gibson’s (god-awful, if you'll excuse the blasphemy, Mel) Apocalypto. They actually built pretty cool pyramids and shit, don’t y’know.

What happens when Mayan time runs out is unknown, but the doom mongers (as apposed to the fishmongers, who’s remit is mainly fish) are getting excited. That’s great, it started with an earthquake, bikes and snakes and airplanes, Lenny Bruce is not afraid; honeybees, eagles and otters are all fucked; swine flu; knitted soft toys; reality TV; zombies; Vogon Constructor Fleets; cats and dogs living together. CGI is going to kill us all. Or maybe nuffin.

Wikipedia's take on it is more definite:

The world burns in flames.

But while I’m here picking bits of toothpaste out of my t-shirt, there are thankfully those amongst us who are more proactive. Joining apocalypse-battling John Cusack are the likes of portly whistleblower-cum-21st century David Ike (and possibly Jesus) David Shayler, who will not stop "until the truth has conquered the New World Order." Unless there’s a Gregs the baker on the way.

How about other self-appointed saviour Rob Bast, then? He offers some practical advise on his website:

Most home owners have fire insurance, even though they do not expect their house to ever burn. They have it because losing their home and contents would be devastating, and insurance is quite cheap.

The human species does not have an insurance policy that covers a global cataclysm in 2012. Until governments, organisations or high-worth individuals make an effort, my intention is to do the best I can, because at least 1 person out of 6 billion people should make an effort.

Good work, Rob. The rest of you need to get your finger out. That’s all I’m saying.

And now for something completely different

It's been a while. To be fair, in the last month, I've been to Basel, Brussels and Vienna. That's not really a boast – I was mostly working, innit (except Basel, where I was climbing mountains, swimming in rivers and getting off my face on spas and shit).

I was in Brussels for maybe six hours, long enough to find the cashpoint in the station.

Vienna I spent a bit more time in. Stunning city – looks like it was built yesterday, supposing yesterday was 1850. Ultravox didn't write a song about it for nothing. Anyway, there I broke a toilet with my own poo: true story.

So yeah, the point I was going to make is that despite all the neglect I lavish on this blog, I'm actually doing a pretty good job, comparatively. According to Caslon Analytics, some Australians who research stuff when they aren't slapping shrimps five times the size of those found in British waters onto a barbecue grill in a stereotypically brash manner, 60 to 80% of blogs cease to exist within a month of conception. And most of these probably have some sort of purpose, other than mine which seems to just needlessly fill the internet with more words.

What I am offering is diversity. Outside a Raphael Saddiq gig, the sight of a slightly hairy 30-year-old white dude of average height is about as eventful as an episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. If this was a bell curve, I'd be sitting right at the top, admiring the view.

But in the world of blogging, I'm an anomaly. I'm chronologically challenged, genderly transgressive and I DON'T GET EXCITED ENOUGH. In fact:

The typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life. It will be written very informally (often in "unicase": long stretches of lowercase with ALL CAPS used for emphasis) with slang spellings, yet will not be as informal as instant messaging conversations (which are riddled with typos and abbreviations).

Teenagers have created the majority of blogs. Blogs are currently the province of the young, with 92.4% of blogs created by people under the age of 30. Half of bloggers are between the ages of 13 and 19. Following this age group, 39.6% of bloggers are between the ages of 20 and 29.

Better still, one commenter notes that blogging "remains the dominion of geeks, wittier-than-thou twenty-to-thirtysomethings in Manhattan and angry gay Republicans." At least I'm not a Republican.

This all means the odds against me actually getting off my arse and posting this are astronomical. So if you're reading this, think yourself lucky. Or don't. Your choice.

Bad hair day

Sodium laureth sulfate, cocamidopropyl betaine, propylene glycol, PEG-55 propylene glycol oleate, sodium hydroxymethylglycinate – smile, it’s simple. Eh? That’s what it says here.

I’ve spent the last week working out my tax for last year. In such a situation, anything poses a potential distraction – not even imagining the most ludicrous claim in line with MPs’ expenses. Just anything to keep me away from Excel. Setting up fiendish real-life Heath Robinson mousetraps. Snorting Lemsip. Sniffing out BSG plot loopholes. Jogging. Christ, I’m even writing a blog.

And now I have in my hand a near-empty bottle of my sister’s Simple Regeneration Age Resisting Facial Wash: Green Tea Goodness. And I’m reading the ingredients (“our special blend”). There’s over 30 of the fuckers.

When your grooming regime consists of wondering whether or not to take a set of clippers to your head, face and all, once a week, cosmetics kinda slip you by. But my girlfriend’s latest obsession has lead me to deduce one thing: the beauty industry is pretty ugly.

Take the ingredients listed above:

Sodium laureth sulfate [SLES] - a detergent and surfactant found in many personal care products (soaps, shampoos, toothpaste etc.). It is an inexpensive and very effective foaming agent. It is also a known irritant.

Toxicology research by the OSHA, NTP, and IARC have supported claims by the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association (CTFA) and the American Cancer Society that SLES is not a carcinogen [phew]. However, SLES and SLS, and products containing them, have been found to contain very low levels of the known carcinogen 1,4-dioxane, with the recommendation that these levels be monitored. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers 1,4-dioxane to be a probable human carcinogen (having observed an increased incidence of cancer in controlled animal studies, but not in epidemiological studies of workers using the compound), and a known irritant (with a no-observed-adverse-effects level of 400 milligrams per cubic meter) at concentrations significantly higher than those found in commercial products. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration encourages manufacturers to remove 1,4-dioxane, though it is not required by federal law.

Cocamidopropyl betaine – not harmful, but an extract from fungi, namely Trunk Rot. Yum.

Propylene glycol – “known also by the systematic name propane-1,2-diol, is an organic compound (a diol alcohol), usually a faintly sweet, and colorless clear viscous liquid that is hygroscopic and miscible with water, acetone, and chloroform.”

Potential health effects:

Eye
Causes mild eye irritation. Contact may cause irritation, tearing, and burning pain.

Skin
Causes moderate skin irritation. Contact with the skin may cause erythema, dryness, and defatting.

Ingestion
May cause gastrointestinal irritation with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Low hazard for usual industrial handling. May cause hemoglobinuric nephrosis. May cause changes in surface EEG.
Inhalation

Low hazard for usual industrial handling. May cause respiratory tract irritation.

Chronic
May cause reproductive and fetal effects. Laboratory experiments have resulted in mutagenic effects. Exposure to large doses may cause central nervous system depression. Chronic ingestion may cause lactic acidosis and possible seizures.

PEG-55 propylene glycol oleate - moderate hazard depending on product usage. Contamination concerns – ethylene oxide, 1,4-dioxane. Restricted in cosmetics; use, concentration, or manufacturing restrictions - Not safe for use on injured or damaged skin. May contain harmful impurities. Toxicity hazards: suspected.

Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate -

* Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate is NOT a natural preservative.
* It is actually a skin and eye irritant.
* Not recommended for sensitive skin.
* No long term studies on the effect on the skin.
* Not many research studies done on Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate PERIOD.

And you smear this stuff on your face. My girlfriend tells me that this stuff is at the better end of the spectrum, designed for people with sensitive skin. Blimey.

Since this is the internet, where in true geek conspiracy nut style the truth is out there, there’s a whole community of bloggers dedicated to unravelling the ingredients of household cosmetics. Lots of inspiring everyday folk turned biochemists who go “no poo” – this means they don’t use shampoo, which is very bad, but also resulted in comical schoolboy tittering from me. All of these people know more than a lazy dude with no hair and a tax return to do.

And there are companies doing good things, too. Take Aubrey Organics. Better still, Dr Bronner’s are some old school Victorian elixir maker turned modern day pharmaceutical activists. They’ve actually taken companies that have produced goods falsely advertised as organic to court.

They also pose the question: can you get high off soap? I don’t know but fuck Excel, I’m going to spend this afternoon finding out.

Taking the piss

In folklore, the streets of London are paved with gold. And talking cats – you can’t move for the buggers. Only in reality, the capital has the UK’s highest rate of unemployment. Which might explain another fact they don’t tell you about London: that wherever you are, you’re never more than 10 metres away from a toilet attendant.

The toilet attendant isn’t a phenomenon unique to London – they exist beyond the M25 as well. But there is a sense of social mobility to having someone turn on a tap for you. If you stumbled into the gents in a nightspot in, say, Portsmouth, to find a dude willing to pass you a towel rather than jab you in the eye because he thought you looked at his cock – maybe I did, what of it? – you’d know you were in one of the city’s flashier venues. Or at least that’s how the club sees it. But in London any old pisshole – literally – can have a dude who will insist on squirting soap into your palms, and expect a shiny monetary deposit on his little metal tray as recompense.

With a sigh, this was once more the sight that greeted me in the bogs at the hardly-sumptuous 12 Acklam Road last week when I rocked up at Book Slam (which otherwise was skill). I may be a relatively recent arrival in the Big Smoke, but I know how to operate a tap, thanks.

Even without the presence of an attendant, I’m sometimes shocked by the number of blokes who post-piss (or dump, even) bypass the sink and head straight back into the pub, to shake hands, pinch crisps and grope members of the public. Add a leering fella on a stool offering lollipops (who actually wants sweets stored in a toilet?) with a plate lacking your coinage and the percentage darting straight out the door no doubt rises higher than I can wee.

Now, I’m blessed with both a mighty thirst and a bladder that a shrew would laugh at. Rather than deal with an attendant or avoid washing my hands altogether, I have been known to risk near-accidents and suffer some fairly painful tube rides home. But not this time: I was going urinate and I was bloody well going to wash my hands and all.

So I gave him a pound. But only after I pissed on it.

Watch this space

Playing catch up isn’t as much fun as, say, playing Russian roulette with the cast of Hollyoaks. Provided you don’t lose.

Once again I was a bit slow on the uptake, but I’ve since been binging my face off on space crack. Now I’m only 10 episodes from the end of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Which is good because I still have 10 episodes to watch. But bad because I still have 10 episodes left to watch.

I can’t amble through the internet looking for clues because everyone already knows what’s happened and seem to take delight out of ruining it for me. Even Obama wants to spoil it. Bastards. All of you.

Then there’s the pricks that haven’t bothered watching it yet. What is your problem? You’re falling over yourselves to pour The Wire through your eyeballs just because a couple of Guardian journalists won’t shut up about it. But because BSG is all about robots and space and shit you can’t bring yourselves to watch it. A billion hours of televisual stimuli isn’t healthy whatever it is, but there’s more nutritional value in one hit of BSG than an entire season of 24, for example.

I don’t know much about TV programmes to be honest but I have seen Taxi To The Dark Side, from which I can only conclude that 24 is some form of training video for US interrogation operatives somehow unleashed on the world. BSG meanwhile managed to critique the Bush administration exactly by being about robots and space and shit. It's close but not too close, so they could get away with it.

I have some issues with BSG. Some people (Wired, particularly) have commented on its strong female characters. I can’t help thinking this is misleading. Where the male leads appear complex, especially as the programme hurtles anxiously towards its climax, the women just come across as nutbags. Especially frakking Starbuck.

Also, why are the only black people all fat god-fearing simpletons?

And why don’t more doctors smoke big fat cigars when they treat patients? Oh. Right.

Otherwise, from the distance of space (which tastes of raspberries, btw), this series sticks a mirror right in the face of humanity and dares it to peer in, take a long look at itself and draw a deep breath. Look at all the greasy blackheads and congealed sandwich crumbs! Look at them!

On reflection, even IKEA might be ahead of me on that idea.

Who watches the watchmen?

Us, as it turns out. You and me – the plebs with the cameras. (Sorry, this isn’t anything you won’t have read somewhere else these last few weeks, I’ve just finally got around to writing about it.)

As you’re probably aware, there was a bit of a shindig in London town the other week. A bunch of world leaders rocked up on the promise of free sandwiches. And some peace-loving crusty-types smashed up a bank and headbutted police truncheons. Or at least that’s how it appeared through the gaze of the media. Unless you were reading the Guardian Twitter feed, in which case you were probably keeping abreast of what outfit Russell Brand was wearing.

I happened to be next to the bank in question on that afternoon at the very moment all the fracas occurred. Although I was round the corner and didn’t see the actual break in – I assumed people were taking pictures of Russell Brand. Hence the CS gas thrown into the crowd I felt at the time was a bit of an overreaction.

I did see a dude spray a heart onto the side of said bank, which was nice, and a wall of police officers arrive on horse back – in fact, I was amongst the last people to flee the area before it got “kettled”. Imagine me explaining to my boss why my lunchbreak overstretched by eight hours.

What was missed on the day: most of the people there were either peace protestors or curious workers who just dipped out of Eat. One such man, Ian Tomlinson was knocked over by police officers and left to die.

It took (illegal) photographic evidence from members of the public to reveal this – weirdly, all the CCTV cameras in the vicinity had been switched off. And various officers were seen without identification marks on their shoulders.

Meanwhile, embarrassingly, two Austrian tourists get their holiday snaps confiscated. So go the anti-terrorism laws…

Now the police will be investigating themselves to review whether their tactics were heavy-handed and whether officers are justified and proportionate in "the use of force" when dealing with protesters.

The force is indeed strong.