Friday, June 30, 2006

Revealed at last - What Garfer looks like!!!

Garfer
Hold up a sec, are those....????

Right, I'm back and with news -

You may recall this...

and this...

Well, after 7 months holiday here in lovely Malvern in Worcestershire (plus a delightful trip up to see Garfer - which I will post more about later) the Freakin Green Elf Shorts are almost... almost ready for the photo comp - it's gonna start tomorrow - so please PLEASE mention it on your blogs and then I can finally get rid of the guilt, erm... I mean lovely elf shorts.

COMPETITION TOMORROW - TOMORROW!!

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Daddy, when will you be back? (again)

Image046

"Friday. Now for the last time, get off that fuckin' chair,
and get in the car - you're coming wiv me you berk!"


Friday, June 23, 2006

Is it the links? Is it the lack of comment reciprocation?

Or is it just because Angry Chimp ain't as good as it used to be?

I'm aware that the links bit on the side there has 'mysteriously' (in a clean out) disappeared. I'm also aware that a lot of you like being linked to, not that anyone comes here anymore...

So anyway, let me know if you want me to set a link up to your lovely blog and I'll get on to it when I'm back from Strontian.

Tina - special task for you, you need to tell me why you think you should still be top of the list - what with you having soooo many other suitors.

Johnny Five
Not just 'box office' poison Johnny... You're killing the Angry Chimp *ahem*

Off set with Johnny 5 version 1.2

Off set with Johnny 5.2.1

Johnny 5.2.2

Off set with Johnny 5.2.3

Johnny 5.2.4

Thursday, June 22, 2006

After hours at the zoo - elephant

Resting its immense weight onto its behind, Elephant sighed heavily.

“What’s up Darling?” enquired Chimpanzee, who had once again snuck out from his enclosure.

“Oh nothing,” replied Elephant as she gobbled down a half eaten apple which some shouty human child had tossed at her earlier in the day.

“Blurgh... Golden Delicious, yuck,” said Elephant spitting out the offending fruit, “You never get any decent apples thrown down here these days. Can’t remember the last time I had a Granny Smith’s, let alone a Braeburn.”

“Is that what’s up?” asked Chimpanzee, “The quality of the thrown in’s?”

“No, it’s not that,” said Elephant.

“What is it then?”

“Well, if I tell you, you must promise not to tell any of the others.”

Chimpanzee thought for a moment. Once the moment passed, he bared his teeth, scratched his bottom, sniffed the fingers he had used to scratch his bottom and then leapt up to the bars at the front of Elephant’s cage.

“To be completely honest Darling, I’m not sure I can keep that promise; y’know how it is, what with me being related to humans and that.”

“Yes, I know, I understand,” said Elephant gently nodding in sympathy, “They are rather gobby aren’t they?”

“Indeed they are!” exclaimed Chimpanzee, “And I’m only a hairs breath different to them; genetically speaking. So it’s highly likely anything you tell me will be round this place faster than a dose of ringworm.”

“Nevermind,” bellowed Elephant, “I’ll tell you anyway.”

Chimpanzee jumped up and down in glee for there was nothing he loved more than a bit of juicy gossip.

“Hippopotamus was passing by earlier,” started Elephant.

“Oh yes…” said Chimpanzee attentively.

“Yes,” continued Elephant, “Anyway, she walks past, I must have been turning around for a bit of a trunk scratch, and I distinctly hear her make a comment.”

“What was the comment?” asked Chimpanzee moving in closer so as not to miss a single word of this remark that has so upset his friend Elephant.

“She said, and this was out loud mark you, she definitely wanted me to hear it...”

“Yes, yes.” said Chimpanzee impatiently.

Elephant took a deep breath through her long thick trunk and pushed on with recounting the hurtful event, “She said ‘Blimey, with a bum that big you would need a whole set of luggage to give it a proper scratch.”

Chimpanzee sat in silent contemplation for a second or three, before replying.

“I don’t get it,” He said frowning as hard as he possibly could, which really was not that hard at all, certainly not by human child standards.

“Luggage, see…?”

“No,” replied Chimpanzee shaking his head from side to side.

Elephant looked around clearly now somewhat embarrassed by the whole thing, just as she was the week before when she told Chimpanzee a joke about an albino polecat and Chimpanzee had suggested that the joke was somewhat offensive.

“Luggage, luggage…” she said repeatedly, hoping the penny would drop for Chimpanzee.

“Err...” said Chimpanzee, confused.

With one long resolved sigh, Elephant decided to spell out her interpretation of what she believed Hippopotamus had meant. It was clear that despite Chimpanzee being considered by the inmates to be the brain-box of the place, he was clearing having a bit of an ‘off day’; which he had from time to time.

“She was saying my bottom was so large I’d need more that one trunk to scratch it; in fact I’d actually need a set of trunks, or indeed a set of luggage.”

Chimpanzee smacked his head with his outstretched palm, as he suddenly understood the comment.

“Oh I see what she’s done there, I get it now. That’s quite clever coming from Hippopotamus.”

“Hmm,” Elephant clearly did not wishing to give her arch-nemesis any ground in this matter. Least of all, give credence to the suggestion that her vicious comment was in anyway ‘clever’.

“Mind you,” said Chimpanzee with a shrug, “That remark’s a bit rich coming from her, especially with the size of her rear-end.”

“That’s true!” howled Elephant and she began to laugh, and with that, she felt slightly better. Good old Chimpanzee she thought, he always says the right thing when I feel down.

“Thanks mate,” said Elephant, “I knew you’d understand.”

“No problem Darling, see you tomorrow evening? Same time?”

“Same time.” confirmed Elephant.

Chimpanzee gave Elephant a wave goodnight before turning to head off to see his second best friend, Penguin. When he got to the ‘Do not feed the animals’ sign, he turned and shook his head in angry frustration.

“There’s nothing I dislike more than a overly critical hypocritical hippo”.

With that, he continued on his journey to see Penguin, who as it turned out was having his own issues with his a Puffin.

However, that is story can wait for another evening.

Elephant at night.
Elephant (taken with a night-vision camera)

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The Middle Class Child - 10.10.4

lizzie

Lizzie Jenkins-Strathmore is confused.

She believes that she loves her husband Marcus dearly, yes, yes she does.

Although this belief, however solid comes with the slightest nagging uncertainty that her feelings for her marriage is not the result of a love that has matured.

It is true that the passion, desire, the very joie de vie that once dominated every aspect of their union has now all but dissipated. That is normal, surely? After all this time it is so unlikely she’ll feel the same way she did when they first met at Durham University all those years ago. It was the subtle manipulation of the media, with it’s impossible yet commercially lucrative depiction of love that now suggests there is some wrong here.

Yes, she is certain of that. She is certain that both her and Marcus are above all that; for goodness sake, she is part of the media, only she controls her feelings, her and her alone.

Even with this rationale, Lizzie simply cannot shake the thought that it is at least possible that routine and her fear of change now masks the deeper, more worrisome possibility that there is actually no love here at all.

“This is nonsense”, she asserts, “This is the result of an innocent flirtation, nothing more”.

The ‘innocent flirtation’ had taken place a few days earlier. Whilst researching a piece for the London Standard on up and coming writers she’d met with an impossibly beautiful novelist based out of Shoreditch.

From the moment they had sat together in Starbucks (which he’d insisted upon as an ironic statement against the elitism of the literary classes) she had been immediately entranced by his all pervading enthusiasm, and piercing blue eyes. Eyes which she could have sworn were saying more to her than his eloquent explanations of how a socially deprived childhood and one good parent had driven him to understand, to experience and ultimately to write the great English novel.

He had not got there yet. His belief that ‘Shoplifters of the world unite’ was such a novel was all part of his arrogant charm.

The book was good, very good, but it wasn’t the great English novel. Yet Lizzie was certain that he would get there, and despite only knowing him for a few hours she felt a churning in her guts which she feared to translate, although she already knew it was her desire to be with him when he did finally get there.

When the interview was over, they chatted more casually,

“Are you married, Lizzie?” He asked before taking a long thoughtful drag from his Gauloise.

“Yes, yes I am”

“Children?”

“Yes one.”

“Girl or boy?” he asked leaning in much closer than before.

Lizzie could feel her cheeks flush like they would have done when she was a shy teenage girl and the cool boy in class was asking her to school disco.

“I have a daughter, she’s 10 years old”

“Exactly ten?” He pushed with a playful grin.

“Esmé is 10 years, 10 months and 4 days old”

He took her hand, placing his other hand gently upon her cheek; he looked directly into her eyes.

“It’s not possible you have a daughter that age, you’re a liar

It was stupid, ridiculous, insane even that such a cheesy action and comment should have had her question her whole life so deeply.

But maybe this man, this young talented, passionate man was her soul mate; not that she actually believed in anything so preposterous.

No. It was a simple flirtation. That was all. A simple innocent flirtation that had so very briefly turned her head from a functioning successful relationship that had produced a wonderful, lively and intelligent daughter.

“That isn’t true”, she thought, “I can’t kid myself anymore.”

The fact was if she was questioning her marriage then there was had to be a more fundamental problem than transitory lust.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Argentina 6-0 Herge Smith

Back from the World Cup, and to prove I actually went and not just pretending as an excuse not to blog for a couple of days here's my ticket - with my company's names slightly changed.

World Cup ticket

Yep - I saw THE match of the World Cup so far (if you happen to be into that sort of thing - which I ain't). Argentina took on and slaughtered Serbia & Montenegro, which was interesting seeing as how Serbia has so recently been such an expert at slaughter.

The Corporate Hospitality was shockingly exuberant - A PR girl for every Corporate slob, tons of top nosh, big leather seats just a couple of metres from our dining tabel - freebies including caps, document pins and a very fine World Cup commerative wrist watch - Lovely.

Do I feel guilty about being there? A bit, but it was an experience and I did work quite hard on the Thursday night and Friday morning - evening fielding urgent marketing calls upto and during the match.

An example of an urgent marketing call:

My colleague: "Herge, Boring industry magazine monthly have a deadline for that PR piece you promised months ago in just over 10 minutes; have you sent it?"

Me: "Not quite."

My colleague: "Er, how far have you got with it?"

Me: "I thought about it in the shower this morning."

My colleague: "Right, well that's just brilliant. What we gonna do?"

Me: "Just use the one we sent out at Christmas, change the reference point to the World Cup, change the quotation from the Marketing Director to the Sales Director and send a snap of the product from an alternative angle; job done."

My colleague: "Do you think that'll work?"

Me: "Usually does; hold on...."

My colleague: "What? what happened?"

Me: "Sorry, I was just being passed another glass of champagne."

Yep, what a wanker I am, or 'Wichser' as I was often refered to when I was out there.

I did see a shop called 'Pohland', which from a purely moronic Englishman abroad point of view I found hilarious.

Wormland wasn't quite as funny.

Argentina 6-0 Serbia & Montenegro

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Daddy, when will you be back?

Image046

"Sunday. Now get off that fuckin' chair!"

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Dave Cylon 5

Dave Cylon 6

Saturday, June 10, 2006

My great plan - UPDATED

Three great hatreds come to ahead today; Football (or saarrrcaaarrr for my American/ Canadian chums), Shopping for clothes (God bless you White Stuff online) and Town centres (any day of the week but particularly Saturday).

Problem is I'm going out to Germany on Thursday to watch some sort of sporting event, which is taking place as part of some corporate hospitality for the company, I work for; yes I know this basically means I'm in league with the devil. Believe me I've tried to get out of it but it's a bit of a Vito Corleone situation.

Anyway, one of the stipulations of the event is that I need some sort of 'smart casual' clothing. I don't have any smart casual clothing. I hate smart casual. Smart casual is worn by dull middle class fathers who have given up on their own appearance and now live their miserable subservient lives through their wives and snot nosed brats. I do the following only:

suit man
Weekdays: Marketing Executive 2nd class


Th' Yoof
Weekend: Very old indie kidult (who still dreams of being as cool as this lot).


So, a trip to town is required and seeing as how with my usual advanced planning I've left far too little time to order anything online.

As I said, I hate town centres and town centres on Saturday in particular. Town centres on Saturday are almost solely occupied by moronic consumer sheep that literally are chomping at the bit to spend every penny they earn on products and brands they are told to like (but Goddamn it I still want an iPod Nano!).

However, as luck would have it the England Football team are playing their first match today at 2.00pm. With the build up to the World Cup having far more intense than the Bush/ Blair campaign to invade Iraq nearly every man, woman and child has been brainwashed into thinking this is a defining moment in our depressingly blood-soaked and jingoistic history.

So the plan is:

1. Leave home at 1.30pm - the middle ground of the pre-match warm up
2. Hit Cheltenham at 2.00pm - all pubs/ bars and whatever filled by general populace all in a zombieesq trance ready to shout/ cheer/ go "Oooowww" at the appropriate time.
3. With the hoi totally occupied only the disaffected (such as myself) will actually be shopping, making this Saturday afternoon look more like a Sunday afternoon back in 1977 when all we had on this holy day was some horrifically long biblical epic on the ITV and a big box of lego to keep us occupied (all the shops were shut on pain of law).
4. Get some boring short-sleeved shirt, boring 'slacks' and nothing else.
5. Leave Cheltenham at approx 3.00pm.
6. Get home just as England loses it's opening match to the 'shock' of the nation.
7. Cook meat on BBQ ensuring it is burnt on the outside and raw on the inside.
8. Watch Dr Who.
9. Play computer games.
10. Go to bed.

I'll report on the success/ failure of this 'Guns of Navarone' style operation.

And remember; not liking football doesn't make you weird - but it doesn't help.

UPDATE

Major success. Smart(ish) casual items purchased - town quite empty, carparks very empty. Only slight incident when a couple of male shop workers quizzed me as to why I wasn't watching the footie "like a real man". Cheeky bastards. Would normally have retorted with witty comeback but felt a bit weak and defensive - plus was on the clock as the match was (potentially) drawing to a close and needed to be back home by the start of the post match analysis to count as a total success.



Friday, June 09, 2006