Education/Sadism

Okay.
I've been sitting on this one for a few days but now I want in.

Jenn Ashworth is running an MA in creative writing. I went to university for a bit and did most of a degree in English Literature with a few Creative Writing modules thrown in. It was alright, in hindsight, but I always wondered if it was really preparing me for the world outside. Arturo Bandini seemed to be having a hard time getting published, as did Buckowski.

It's alright working in a post office and getting really drunk and getting into fights and beating your wife, or flim flamming around LA eating oranges and complaining all the time about everything other than your implied toilet difficulties. Those things are alright if it's the fifties and if it's America. What we need now, and here, is a good old school of Hard Knocks.

Enter Ashworth University. The criteria and learning modules are explained in no uncertain terms here.

I'm going for it. I'm going for the torture, the self doubt, the loneliness, the endless repetition in the hope that, in the very least, I'll finish some stories. If I get published, that'll be a bonus, for I'll have Been Through It and Come Out The Other End a better writer, and a better person. Maybe.

Here is my 'author photo' what I took using the camera on my computer:


1. Black and white - CHECK
2. Arty - CHECK
3. Stroking of top lip - GETTING THERE
4. Glasses - CHECK
5. No smiling - CHECK
6. No teeth - CHECK





Apart from looking like I'm on my way to picking my nose, I think that'll pass. I don't wear glasses anymore. That must count for something.

Love Song For Nutella (or Sorry About The Marmalade)

Oh Nutella, how I have missed thee
You're back and I wish you would never leave again
I'm sorry about the Marmalade
She was just a hussy
That I picked up at Wirksworth Fayre
Now she's gone and she won't be back
(Until next year)
Oh Nutella, you never knew
How I saved the butter knife just for you
Oh Nutella, I love you the most
Man singing Jaques Brel at dry toast


I bought some Sunblest bread and it was less than a pound and that made me think of Dispatches and I walked out of the shop and there was a police helicopter overhead and the words "Wheat Crime" and "Grow Bag" flashed up in my head and I thought "Sunblest is only really any good for toast, I wonder what percentage of reconstituted cardboard there is in the average Sunblest loaf" so I went home and ate some toast and wrote a poem and now I'm going to read Joseph Heller to make myself feel better about ALL THE INSANITY IN THE WORLD TODAY.

Idea For Jenn Ashworth Book Launch

You know those lovely cinnamon-y biscuits you get with coffee at high class coffee shops? Those really nice ones that you could eat about a million and a half of. Yeah, them. It's them turned into butter.

Check it y'all.

On the side of the jar there's a logo that says 'de bedenkers' which I think means 'The Inventors'. Apparently it's this program that invented it. Then the company, 'Lotus', made it real. Now that's cool.

What I didn't know, but which is as cool if not cooler than all things mentioned previously in this post,is that Belgian people don't just dunk and scoff with these cinnamon-y biscuits that you get at high class coffee chops here, but are probably available free in hanging baskets hanging from every lampost in Belgium. No, they don't stop there. They wrap the dunked cinnamon-y biscuit in bread. Then they eat that. I'd probably add a swill of coffee for good measure.

I can't wait for breakfast.

Spreadable biscuits!!!

SPREADABLE BISCUITS!

I'm thinking about setting up my own TV show to popularise the concept of spreadable Bourbons, and see if UK biscuit manufacturer UK Biscuits is as on the ball as their Belgian counterpart, The Lotus.

Fin.

I Was Not Making It Up, It Is Real, I Am Not Weird.

I decided, this morning, having woken up really really early and getting most things I'd expect to do before lunch done by nine, I found this. It is a thing that I have been talking about for ages. Nine years actually. It is a thing that no-one else has seen and very few people believe I actually saw.

It is called 'Either/Or' and, as Wikipedia will tell you, "a surreal 1999 television comedy game show, which was broadcast on the digital channel UK Play. The show takes its name from the book Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard. It starred Simon Munnery as his League Against Tedium character and was a precursor to his BBC series Attention Scum!. The show was largely a launchpad for Munnery's unusual comic monologues."

I couldn't find a clip from it. However, while looking for it, I found this by Munnery: