Lewis, the only estate agent for me
House move last month, which meant plenty of time to spend with my favourite estate agent in Norwich, Lewis. My love for Lewis is boundless and I genuinely couldn't see myself negotiating with another lettings agent.
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A warm greeting
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I love Lewis because he has an orangey bowl haircut despite the fact that they went out of fashion in the 90s, and a wide mouth, and it makes him look like Zippy.
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I love Lewis because he’s slightly afraid of me since I got a little stressed when the wily cad trapped me in a sticky web of logic while arranging the flat. He now gets colleagues to call me with bad news.
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I love Lewis because he enjoys saying ‘sewperb’ all the time like a wine waiter at The Ivy, and I want to maintain the culture of fear so I say “Lahvly” like a van driver, and we end up trapped in a feedback loop of poorly-pronounced superlatives.
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I love Lewis because he’s incapable of properly pronouncing ‘inventory’, so he had to keep telling me that the flat wouldn’t be ready in time because the ‘infantry’ wasn’t prepared, bringing to mind historical military disasters.
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I love Lewis because everything about his firm handshake and roguish charm screams "I frequent high-class nightclubs, and am most comfortable in a silk kimono".
Spam
I love how spam has changed.
Once upon a time it was sufficient to merely write HOTNAKEDCHINESEMEN repeatedly and bob's your uncle. But now, with the coming of WordPress and the marvellous blogs that brings, spam has to look almost genuine. Someone has taken some time to write spam comments that to the casual observer look sweet, considerate and worth marking as 'not-spam'.
Nice read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing some research on that. And he just bought me lunch since I found it for him
So let me rephrase that: Thank you for lunch!
I almost marked as safe this comment because I loved the idea I had given someone a free lunch. If only there was such a thing.
I am really loving the theme/design of your weblog. Do you ever run into any web browser compatibility issues? A number of my blog visitors have complained about my website not working correctly in Explorer but looks great in Chrome. Do you have any tips to help fix this problem?
Funny you should say that, I have spent almost an entire hour customising this theme.
if you are knowledgable in any area construction engineering feel free to improve upon what you see we would greatly appreciate your contribution.
Picked out the subtle undertones did you? I'll send you my CV...
Unfortunately, spam's greatest downfall is that no matter how genuine it looks, spam will always have to have a profile link to HOTNAKEDCHINESEMEN.com
I am pleasantly reminded of http://xkcd.com/810/
Have a nice Wednesday afternoon
Naked and on the internet
According to the laws of internet-averages 3% of you reading this right now are naked.
I feel it's time we stopped ignoring you, stopped pretending you're one of us. It's time to address the elephant in the room. The big, sweaty, naked elephant.
The Portsmouth Polytechnic Book of Things and Other Cool Stuff describes nudity as "best avoided" and "possible cause of The Black Death circa 1350" but a few of the pages around there are suspiciously starting to stick together.
The problem is I am attempting to write a witty piece about nudity at work and I must go to great pains to make sure I don't look at any inappropriate content. Thus I must swing this into a list of possible Google searches that I can make genuine excuses for later.
Things I Can Google At Work
- Naked Ambition - "You did say I must try harder, I'm researching how"
- Big Black Cloche - "Re-creating last weeks scavenger hunt on The Apprentice"
- MILF - "I thought it stood for Managing Incandescent Light Fittings"
- Girls Gone Wild - "Gone Wild for buying Light Fittings, amiright?"
- Swinging - "I was look for fun garden furniture"
She loves Black Cloche
Shopping: Godawful
Her indoors had to take me for shopping. She made the point that so many of my jeans had gone through at the crotch I was starting to frighten the horses. I loathe shopping – I have no interest in looking fashionable
I bet this is cool. But does she walk on her face?
But what makes the whole experience harder is the lat-thin, skinny jeaned cretins who scoop up their pastel cardigans and hosepipe jeans then swan off to enjoy a miniaturised coffee without a thought as to sizes. In fairness, if you resemble someone who just survived three weeks in the Amazon with three cashew nuts and a curly-wurly, any form of clothing will hang off you.
I don't want to sound deluded here - I could probably lose a stone or two and still remain warm in winter - but clothes are not designed for me. Standard 38-inch jeans and end up feeling like I'm putting the skins on two monstrous bratwursts. 40-inch jeans leave me with so much space I could fit the key members of an oompah band in with me.
It was worst in Next, where a man who looked like a cross between Pete Doherty and a loofah tried to find me some jeans that wouldn’t challenge decency. He took me to a secluded corner of the shop and, looking like he'd just been asked to frottage his grandmother, handed me what looked like two denim sacks.
"Perhaps you should try these - loose fit. They're relaxed in seat and thigh."
This suits me well. I am intensely relaxed in seat and thigh.
"Can I get these jeans please? I want to look like a cross between a crack addict and a tv aerial."
Tom & Robin – Inappropriate Lyric Police
"Right said Fred,
Both of us together,
One each end and steady as you go."
Also known as The Spit Roast
"You see the trouble with Fred is he's too hasty. You never get nowhere if you're too hasty."
Right Said Fred, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5XX9LX2es4
Things not to say when denied sex
"Why not? It'll only be quick!"
"But you said you liked that"
"Fine I'll go find someone who will"
"That's not what your mother said"
"Oh go on. Go on go on go on go on go onnn"
Suggestions in the comments please. Oh go on...
Sequels
I'm sure I've moaned about this before but I recently read the excellent post by my favourite game critic on how to do sequels really badly (i.e at all) and it's set me off again.
Sequels will fail purely because any good story, let's say Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean (yes I'm man enough to say I enjoyed this film), sees a collection of unlikely heroes becoming unlikely friends for a day to combat a common enemy and possibly gain riches but only for a day.
With a sequel we are led to believe that after a certain amount of time, typically a few years, this bunch of people just happen to get together again for another episode. The problem is, with such an unlikely bunch, they are unlikely to react the same way. It is lazy writers, lazy producers and lazy directors that decide to throw together these big names as you follow each of their stories individually until they all meet up again - but instead of a thrilling story you're forced to watch these tiny, uninteresting snippets until something interesting happens and/or explodes.
I'm sure I read/heard and now wrote somewhere that stories should be character driven not plot driven. The interesting thing is the interaction between characters and how they deal with situations, forcing a plot onto them to get things going is the equivalent of a five year old's story "and then we went to the park, then we had ice cream, then I wet myself" whereas a proper grown-up story would tell of the excitement building in the car journey, how mum and dad argued over who was to pay for the ice cream and the wonderful warm feeling inside that expelled outside and ultimately ruined the day and the carpet.
If anyone ever dares to suggest there has been a film sequel better than the original I dare them to name three. I'll even give them Terminator 2 (Star Wars films are a long debate) for free. Noone has succeeded so far, and so I give you, my solitary reader, this challenge.
Incidentally Robin has kindly pointed out Mass Effect 2 and Assassins Creed 2 are good game sequels but I've played neither so he can shove it.
Oh, and Porn doesn't count.
Websites that didn’t take off
It's all a bit hit and miss which sites become successful. Tom & Robin takes a look at some that, for some reason, just didn't prove popular
YouTuba
"The best website for your collaborative brass instrument needs"
WikiPaedo
"For self-policing mothers who like to share information"
GeoTitties
"Ethically sourced Porn"
tomandrobin.com
"The #1 name in real estate"
Oh oops that's a real one
Robin: Here to solve your rap mysteries
Hopefully this post will have gone up. I say hopefully, because I've had some woes with technology. You know, the kind of technology woes that it would be really funny to blog about on a website. If you could make it work.
So we're back at T&R Towers, pledging much entertainment. Please let us know what you make of it, and keep coming because there's always a chance, despite all that's come before, that we'll get better. We're also most welcoming if anyone else wants to contribute articles, gold, or bodily fluids.
I've got a couple of things to come up shortly, but in the meantime please enjoy this summary of what I learned when the 322nd best rapper in the Philipines crashed an unrelated thread I was chatting to a friend on.
Educational beyond belief