Man Math and How It Made My Bank Manager Cry

Sorry about going AWOL. I promise it is nothing personal. Just I very rarely have the chance to throw myself into projects with very few distractions. I'm afraid that even this for that period was deemed one. However, I'm now back and I think the up coming plans could be quite exciting.

Oh, and before we start, if you want to see my breakdown of the Super Bowl and what you should be betting on, click here.

Anyway, to business?

To quote perhaps the greatest human being to ever live, Stan Smith from American Dad, I've been doing a lot of man math recently. All of us red blooded, hairy chested and slack jawed men love doing man math. We all know what it is. But for any womenfolk out there, let me explain the principals of man math.

 

The inventor of Man Math, also a man who should be captioned with the world 'derp'

Man math is where you use absolutely ridiculous justifications to talk yourself into buying shit you do not need and maybe only marginally want. You see a shirt you sort of want on a whim but can't quite afford? Man math says buy it and tell yourself that you wont get blind stinking drunk on Friday. Say you browse through the DVD box set bin at some high street store and see a few series of some show you've caught once or twice and sort of found interesting? You tell yourself you will save money at the weekend staying in to watch it and so buy it. You sort of see where I'm going with this – rather than save up and buy stuff, you use justifications you will never see through to just buy it as you're there.

I did some excellent man math today. I really want a PS3 because I am probably the only person I know not to have played MGS4 and desperately want Heavy Rain when it comes out at the end of this month. So, off to town I went. That was probably my first mistake.

Well, technically I suppose I went to two towns. The first I went to I thought had both a GameStation and a Game, plus is easier to park up and the like. Except when I meandered through the shopping centre, the GameStation is closed. Awesome, where the hell was I meant to get a pre-owned PS3 now? Anyway, I pushed it into the back as my mind as I left the house telling myself over and over and over and over once more that I was just checking out prices, not purchasing. Because of that it didn't matter if I couldn't scope out prices. So I just picked up Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360 and went to head home defeated.

That lasted for about seven seconds. I of course headed straight to another shopping centre.

Anyway, you can see where this is going. My quick “lets pop out and maybe get an Xbox 360 game, scope out places to get a decent cheap second hand PS3” quickly turned into “lets spend £245 on some rainy Tuesday afternoon.”

The man math behind it? Well, I have a few more invoices coming in over the next few days and I'll be staying in this weekend to play with my new toy. I will keep telling myself this over and over and over until I believe it, then be found drunk as a skunk at some bar on Friday. Good times!

Whoops!

Can you claim being too busy being creative as an excuse to  not be creative? Anyway, that's what I'm doing. You see, for the first time in a long while I have the house to myself. Seeing as how I'm self employed and all, that also means I have the office to myself and get some serious work done.

I'm working on a couple of new book ideas and I get a little odd when I start them out. I sort of work for 20 hours at a time, sleep the whole next day then do the whole thing over and over. I have sort of fallen out of sync with a few things. Sunday was a good example of that.

So, to make sure I can concentrate on other stuff, there shall be no updates until a week today. Sorry about that. But I'll make it up to you with cake!

My Car Mechanic Is Evil and Wants To Cause Me Harm

My car mechanic is trying to sabotage my life.

Yeah, I know. That sounds absolutely insane. It's up there on a par of saying things like 'My television is listening to my thoughts' or 'My cat is sexually abusing me'. It is possibly a comment that is not quite of the same standard of batshit craziness as something like 'I killed these puppies to show you just how much I love you' but it's close.

Anyway, my car had to have a service this week. Not entirely sure why, I mean apart from the fact it sounds like a lawnmower and you need to turn right to make it go in a straight line it is in perfect working order. But in it had to go. Well, that was the first step that mechanic took to trying to ruin my life. The roads out round my way are still covered in sheet ice from the latest unseasonable snow storm that has decided to throw itself my way. Getting it into the garage was an ordeal enough.

But it was when I got it back that the real issues began.

At first it was little things. Instead of having to turn the car right to go in a straight line, it has now been a bit overcompensated so I have to steer left a bit. That is hugely confusing. When I sort of stop paying attention driving, as we all do, it means I veer to the right as my arm goes back to the good old position I'm used to – angled right. That I can cope with. I can also cope with the fact that my car is now much, much quieter, meaning that I have to listen out to see if I'm having some quite high revs. The old cliché of the mechanic moving your seat just as you got it where you wanted it doesn't even apply here, as the guy who does my car is the same height as me.

No, the thing that really annoys me is that they changed my car clock. They didn't correct it, either. They completely fucked it. I used to know how the time according to my car clock – add on two hours and six minutes. Now, though, it is thoroughly confusing. I think I now have to take off 7 hours and thirty four minutes. I think.

Why in the hell would they change my clock like that? It confused the sweet Jesus out of me when I first realised. I nearly crashed my car trying to turn left to go in a straight line and check my watch. Each and every time I've driven since I have had a mild apoplexy looking at the time before realising its seven hours and thirty four minutes fast.

What is more confusing is the buttons that change the time from my dashboard are broken. How in the hell did they change it? What the fuck did they do to my car to change it? The questions keep coming, and frankly they are giving me a headache.

Ergo, my car mechanic is trying to sabotage my life.

The terrifying prospect – it has to go back in 4 months for an MOT. I'm thinking that I may get a cow back in return at this rate.

Secret Smokers In Snow Thaw Terror

Frosty the Snowman is not happy with your lung bashing ways

As Britain was once again awash with the White Powder of Certain Death, secret smokers awoke from their nicotine deprived sleep with a sense of imminent terror as they realised that simply covering a fag butt in snow is not a viable long term solution to hiding their habit.

The realisation came in the wake of an announcement from the Met Office that despite the fact that it appears all living memory had been replaced by a white, cold, traffic filled plateau of hell, within a week green would once more emerge into sight and people would once more remember how to laugh.

A jittery cold secret smoking man, who gave his name only as 'I have a whittled down icicle with your name on it if you say a word to my wife', told of the moment he realised that one day soon the great thaw would come and expose his dirty little secret.

“I was lying in bed, you see, having a gander at whatever posh speaking page 3 girl Sky Sports News had on that night, when all of a sudden she started nattering on about the football being re-scheduled for when the weather cleared up. It hadn't occurred to me that one day all this fake cocaine would disappear.”

“All I've been doing is dropping the butt on the floor and just swooshing some snow over it,” he continued, dropping his fag butt on the floor and just swooshing some snow over it, “but if the godforsaken day ever comes when the grounds once more return to the state where they can bear life my crimes will be exposed. I don't know what to do.”

“Do you know any variants on rain bringing voodoo spells?”

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown said that the latest round of snowy weather had brought the issue to the forefront of his next campaign manifesto.

“Along with halving the national debt by 2012 and never, ever raising taxes, we plan to introduce legislation that will make any snowflake caught on British soil subject to an £80 on the spot fine. Unless they left the clouds due to persecution, then they can go to the top of the homing list.”

The Great Big Facebook Conspiracy

I was having a ponderance the other day. It happens from time to time. I have a lot of time to think, and get an awful lot of it done while staring at the white pages in front on me that I really should be filling with text. It is both an awful burden and an absolutely wonderful curse and I love it, as a little bit of mental masturbation is always a lark.

What is more fun that thinking is completely off the wall thinking as, I will admit, that I do have a soft spot especially for conspiracy theories. Now, I'm not exactly the sort of person who sits at home refusing to use electricity because 'the man' is onto me, all the while eating cold tins of beans and wearing a tin foil hat. I'm not quite that bat shit crazy yet. In my autumn years I hope to achieve it, but alas for the moment I appear to be borderline sort of normal. Still, it's fun and pretty much just human nature to look into things – Do aliens exist? Did we really get to the moon? Was the Titanic an insurance job? Just how is Jared Allen's hair cool? That sort of stuff.

Last night, when I was once more failing to get to sleep, I did some thinking. In it, I came to the conclusion that Facebook is a massive conspiracy. Now, I know how mad that that sounds, but hear me out. I promise I'm not a nutcase who is currently sat in the bushes outside your window touching himself.

Just imagine for a minute, if you will, that you are some big powerful government man. There, don't you feel important? Looking over all the peons with a sense of unjustified superiority like that, whoa boy you sure are a big shot. But, I hear you say, what are all those zillions of people out there up to? What are they doing? Thinking? Interested in?

Also, just the other day, you happened to be having a nice informal, dress down top secret meeting with some of your bestest buddies in Industry. They were complaining that it was getting harder and harder to control the surfs, what with the advent of movable type. It was much harder to predict their patterns and advertising had become awfully broad spectrum (as anyone who has seen L'Oreal advertised on Kerrang! TV while then flicking to MTV2 only to see fish fingers being hawked will attest to).

If only there was a way to not only find out what people were up to but to also track what they were interested in. If only...

Now for the conspiracy bit – I really do have a hard time believing that something like Facebook sprung up all by itself. I mean, no doubt that the guy\guys (depending on which legal POV you take) who dreamt it up in Harvard did have nout but the best intentions for it at the time, but I find it a struggle to believe that in 4 years a business can go from helping a few Uni students keep in contact to gaining a massive, multi-billion dollar user base. Think of all the personal information that is kept on Facebook – they can word filter what you are thinking, track what you click on, see where and how you update and so on and so forth. And I mean sure, although it is not done obviously, Facebook does sell data. If I had a wager on it, I'd bet that that data was not just stuff to advertisers to see if you would prefer a red or green car...

But anyway, as I've shown already if I put money on it I'm usually wrong.

Assuming I haven't been hauled away in the dead of night, see you Sunday!

11 Predictions for 2010

Holy freaking meatballs, it's another year. I swear it only turned 2009 a few weeks back. Where did that year go? Where did any year go? Oh my god my birthday is in a few weeks and I'll be...

Anyway, hello. Welcome back. Did you have a good Christmas? Get lots of nice presents? Hope you didn't get a crappy jumper. That would suck. Hey, you know what would be fun? Seeing as how this is a new year and everything, let's have some predictions.

I hereby present my Top 11 Predictions For 2010

1. Somehow Labour will find a way to remain in power. Those guys are literally like vampires. They just will not die while sucking everything you have in the meantime. I think the only way to remove Gordon Brown and is coven from this earth is to go at him with a garlic laced spike.
2. Apple will help Sony in their battle against Microsoft. Lets face it, the video games and general recreational electronics market at the moment is massive. Apple can focus all they want on iPods and iPhones and iDontcares, but you know they want to overtake Microsoft as the number one computer company out there. Along the same lines, Sony will want their PlayStaion brand to beat out the Xbox one. What with a common enemy, those two have to have some middle ground.
3. Terry Wogan and Bruce Forsyth will fight to the death for the title of 'Britain's Grandad'. In one corner you have the softly spoken tubby fellow who will give you a Worther's Original, while in the other you have the cheeky wiry one who will tell you what your young mind conceives are a rude joke. Who will come out on top?
4. Formula One will allow drivers to listen to BBC Radio 2 while racing to give Schumacher a middle aged pastime.
5. Brett Favre will retire, un-retire, retire and then sign to pitch for the NY Yankees because his career just isn't complete without a World Series ring.
6. On another NFL theme, Peyton Manning will continue his transition into the role of 'comedic straight man.' Honestly, that guy can say the most serious sentence in the world and it's funny. Although that might just be his nose. Related – Owen Wilson will sue Peyton Manning over copyright infringement on comedic noses.
7. England will scrape through the group stages of the World Cup, win in the second round and then just as we as a country get some self belief, get knocked out on penalties in the quarter finals.
8. I'll get turned down for a US Green Card for the third straight year. All I want is to be able to stay in the States for more than 6 months at a time. Is that so much to ask?
9. Wayne Rooney, in the process of trying to teach his baby son new words, will have his vocabulary increase exponentially.
10. I will finally give in and fly all the way to Canada just to see a Colin Mochrie stand up gig. Related - Colin Mochrie will take out a restraining order against me.
11. Finally, I'm willing to bet nothing changes. Taxes will be too high, pay too low, we will all be scared about the nasty man in the shadows who wants to kill us to death and we will hide away from all this in a nice, warm cosy materialistic home pouring controlled poison down our necks. Because that is human nature.

It is still bloody snowing...

It is still bloody snowing.

It won't go away. For a brief period yesterday, it looked as if the torment would finally end. It looked as if the good old British weather would break, the rain would once again fall and it would wash all the sodding white slippy stuff away.

Oh. Hell. No.

Instead, all that happened was the temperature plunged and the rain turned to snow, which then settled on the newly frozen ground. Fan-fucking-tastic. I was almost looking forward to being able to drive places again. At least all this snow has done wonders for my petrol consumption, which is currently zero for the week. Seeing as how I usually get through half a tank a week, I've technically saved £12,000.

Oh, and this second snap of snow has come just before I need to go places to do visiting Christmas related stuff. Excellent. I was already dreading the motorway drives alongside idiot folk who believe you can still get into the fast lane with a Ford Focus laden with 5 people, 500 presents and two suitcases. Now I have to deal with both those people as well as the sorts who, because of a single solitary flake of snow on the hard shoulder, think that the maximum speed limit on a motorway should be 9mph. Fantastic.

However, despite all of these calamities which have befouled my existence this week, there have been two shining lights.

The first, and if I must admit most douchebagy, was I spent about 3 hours on Facebook yesterday commenting about how awesome it is working from home on everyone who updated their status from their phones stuck in snow bound traffic. It was amazing. Sure, I got a lot of abuse and will no doubt be given a number of savage beatings but it was totally worth it. Although I think that is just people being sore about stuff. I mean, if you have been stuck in a multi story car park for 4 hours trying to get out into a town centre, it is all in good fun if someone comments that they “can't hear you over the sound of being warm and comfortable.”

The second shining light to brighten up my week is a tad more emo. Christmas is finally here.

Last night, I threw some decorations up, wrapped up all the presents I'd bought folk that had been slowly been developing into a decent sized fort in my room and watched The Muppets Christmas Carol three times. Today I've done the grand sum of sweet sod all and tomorrow the visiting of relatives begins.

Christmas is here. Each year I think “oh, it isn't all that festive this year” and grumble a bit then the festive season hits about now and all becomes well in the world. No work, no worries, no nothing except food, friends, family, presents and a hearty old drink-a-thon.

That, my dear followers, is what Christmas is all about.

Merry fucking Christmas and I will see you on the 5th of January. If I've sobered up from NYE by then.

Lots of love,
Ben