Stephen’s Gawking

What does Stephen Hawking do in Amsterdam? Black holes.

That little joystick always leads him down the same alleyways…

Tube Pervert

Are you always trying to see a bit more tit or a little sliver of thigh on you way to and from work?

Do you quiver with desire when those semi-clad pretty young things on their way to a hard day of painting their nails and texting their friends from their desks hop aboard the tube?

Are you stumped at ways in which you can get a bit of eye-candy without being ousted as a tube pervert?

You need to buy the award winning self-help book 'Tube Pervert' now!

Tube Pervert will help you catch a glance when other pervs are limited to having a lonely touch through their pockets. It will tell you what are the best vantage points, the most secretive stances and the cleverest distractions to make sure that, however many stops you are on for, you get a right eyeful.

Praise for Tube Pervert:

"Before Tube Pervert, I was limited to getting my jollies by bringing on a copy of Nuts or Zoo, but now I can get a real glimpse of some twenty-something arse all the way from Piccadilly to Cockfosters!"

Mr A, Barnet

"Last week I got to gawp at a young ladies' red thong right through rush hour! She knew nothing!"

T, Lambeth

"You would be amazed at how many old ladies wear stockings! I know, because I read Tube Pervert!"

Barry S, Wembley

"Ah used to get chased by gangs ah Dads, but not anymore - Thank you, Tube Perverts"

Gary, Ealing

"Rush hour is the closest I've come to having full vaginal intercourse"

Bernard T, Wycombe

We're taking this cow & no one can stop us!

Blob's here!

Here are some pictures I'm doing for a children's placemat at work for some kids to eat stuff off.

Dusty Night Terror

“Who are you Sir?”
“My name is Mr Cherrick,
From Ryman, Hucklwitz & D’Troth,
We represent the interests of a Giant Moth”

R'mance

“Yeowgh!”
“Shh you, why all that din?”
“I said two, but you put all your fingers in”

Caption Competition

Submit your best captions for the chance to win a delicious prize, a hand drawn picture of you & any celebrity of your choice in an erotically charged situation.

We Found it in the field.

Welcome to Introversial. Again.

In 1666, Samuel Pepys* documented London in all its seventeenth century glory. Well, sort of:

"I went out to Charing Cross to see Major General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition."

He was like the blogger of his age. Pepys was most famous for writing an account of the Great Fire of London, but he did more than that. He had a go at women, he talked about farting and he drank too much. He was like a one-man Nuts Magazine, circa 1670.

He documented the ups and downs of the day, mused a bit and generally wrote what he knew. This is what Introversial will do - it will be a diarist of its day, but will probably write less about houses that were burning down with children in them. And maybe more about farting. And if, fingers' crossed, there are some more hangings at Charing Cross, Introversial will be there, documenting for the ages.

Also, Pepys did drink in the Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street a fair bit, as does Introversial. If that pub was serving the same toxic piss as it is now then somewhere in London there may be some missing chapters of old Sam's diary, where he yells at his wife, craves a kebab and then pisses himself.

We don't know what Samuel started his diary, probably why this blog has been created - a mix of boredom, narcissism, egomania and the desire to get his point across. He, like Introversial, probably got bored of his desk job, saw what other diarists were up to (farting, shagging, burping and such) and thought he would have a pop at it. So here it is, the diary of its day. In 450 years from now, kids may be dissecting this very post and writing a little comprehension on it. On a computer made of lasers in space.

Introversial in London is the same as Pepys diary. It sees what other bloggers are doing and scoffs in the face of mediocrity and badly spelled anecdotes - the time is now to create a fucking good blog that's funny. Welcome to Introversial.

*pronounced 'Peeps', as in "The paedo peeps into the little girl's bedroom from the vantage point of a big tree"

We are all going to die

Set your coffee down gently. Okay, I have some terrible news for you. Terrible, horrible news. We are in the midst of a pandemic in this City, one which will pretty much bring society to its fat bloated knees. In a bitter twist of irony, it’s the tiniest being on Earth that is the most powerful.

SWINE FLU. N1H1 motherf*cker.

It’s here, in London town, ready to finish off what the Black Death and the Nazis started.

It wouldn’t be scary if it was just flu oh no. And it isn’t scary if the virus just has a code (SARS? Please, that only killed the Chinese.) We had Bird Flu, but that just screwed up Bernard Matthews. No, this monster needed a name that envisages terror. The pig, the animal people most want as a pet but don’t have, is now the source of the world’s most deadly virus.

This is how it starts, the old apocalypse, a gentle stream of news reports providing the hacking, snot-filled background music to your everyday life. You’re not really listening that hard to the Swine Flu warnings as you’re more concerned with buying a load of coloured jeans from Uniqlo and going up to Shoreditch to eat a soft cheese sourced from Peru. Then it turns out you have an acquaintance that’s caught it, but that doesn’t really phase you as whenever you met this kid he always had an off yellow tint, he was never one of Gaia’s foot soldiers.

So, you buy a magnum and forget about it and oh look, Peaches Geldof went a disco last night. Thanks, London Lite. All the while micro terrorists are zipping through the tube lines and handrails, declaring a tiny Jihad on your immune system.

The Government are setting up committees and hotlines and getting a lot of grief for not giving clear guidelines for pregnant women. This debate doesn’t seem to have much to it – pregnant women should avoid public transport at peak times and crowded areas. Hardly rocket science is it? Not getting on the tube while duffed up should be good advice anyway. There’s no place for a bump at rush hour - I’ve seen someone pour a frappe in a Louis Vuitton handbag and that’s worth much more than a baby*. It’s difficult down there at the best of times, especially without the threat of a highly contagious disease breeding in amongst the squalor of London.

If this is the end of civilised London society then it won’t be all bad. I’ve long since held the notion that I would thrive in a post apocalyptic landscape, living in Big Ben, living off tinned peas and firing buckshot at mutants. I’d marry the one of the only beautiful girls left in the world, then chuck her when a slightly prettier one comes along (don’t judge me, it’s Darwinian).

So this is it. Some reports suggest 100,000 people will die, some say slightly less people will die of Swine Flu than regular flu. But who cares? This is it, the end of days. Go and tell that girl in accounts you want to do horrible things to her in the break room, steal something from Boots, tell your Mum you hate her, rob Topshop, do anything – because tomorrow you might have quite bad flu.

*We’ve looked into it.

Fizzy Milk

Fizzy Milk.

The wheel reinvented, Jurassic Park set loose. That's right, Fizzy Milk. Coca Cola is set to launch Vio, a carbonated milk.

Coca Cola "scientists"* have developed the drink at the firm¹s laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia. The only thing it will curdle in its 8oz aluminium bottle is the boundaries of your mind.

The Times says one of Coke’s copywriters claims it tastes “like a birthday party for a polar bear”. I would have thought that tasted more like butchered seal and ozone, but anyway. Perhaps a better tagline would be “like a birthday party for a polar bear who’s mind has comprehended it’s approaching extinction with acute lucidity”.

It comes in four “natural” flavours: peach mango, berry, citrus and tropical colada (straight from the Colada tree). It has 26g of sugar a bottle, and 1.5g of fat.

This is it. Seriously, It¹s the End of Days.

Some of you readers will be already reaching for your gas masks and baseball bats, ready for the impending maelstrom of discontent. And good on you - science has finally destroyed nature.

Someone takes a sip they think: “Huh, Fizzy Milk? not bad”. Then, a week later you¹re having a coffee, avec fizzy milk, when some axe wielding lunatic comes smashing through the window of a Café Nero screaming GOT MEEELLLLLK?’

Milkmen will be pushed from their cabs as the hoards upend his cart, dancing naked on its ruined, milk-stained corpse. Cows will be set alight, punched to death and garrotted as the fields are stained with red.

People will come to fear the moustache, a sign of the fizzles, a madness induced by the realisation that everything is nothing, up is down, milk is fizzy.

Someone has a lovely bottle of fizzy milk. Then they start thinking “Wait a sec, why can’t I ride my bike into the sea?”. The financial markets fall, everyone sinks into depravity and primitive stupor. Statues of the Virgin Mary in the Vatican begin weeping fizzy milk. Soon you'll be having sex with your pets while your Mum, caked in her own defecation, watches while drinking a fizzy latte.

Everyone starts chanting, “Fizzy Milk Fizzy Milk Fizzy Milk Fizzy Milk” in anticipation of the arrival of a giant moth to take everyone away. It never comes.

I can¹t tell you how dark this is.

*Not really scientists. Men and women who try and cure cancer are scientists; people who put the rover on Mars are scientists. People who fanny around with sugary liquid aren't scientists. Their "lab" will look like Professor Burp's Bubble Works and they will all wear over-sized top hats.

Credit Crunch Tales - Terrance of the tree house

Terrance lived in the tree house for several reasons: solitude, the escape from modernity – but mainly it was because of tax and a hefty credit card bill.

Terrance had certainly lived the high life. He was only an assistant at a local B&Q (a bad one at that), but that didn’t stop him living like a millionaire. His house had all the mod cons – SkyPlus, HD TV and a six-slice toaster. Women would be showered with gifts, friends would receive expensive birthday presents – but the dream had to come to an end one day.

The credit crunch came and Terrance fell off the debt merry-go-round. After narrowly escaping a bailiff, Terrance retreated to the local forest. He spent a few nights sleeping rough, but soon realised if he was to carry on his Robin Hood lifestyle he would have to find a new home. He found an old oak tree and planted his flag.

Running away from his troubles, Terrance became a tree person.

Terrance’s idea of problem solving was escaping to the woods. He had done this when he failed his GCSEs, when his Dad left and when his football team had been relegated. He even ran away for a week when his Mum told him he couldn’t have a second slice of gateaux. But this was the first time Terrance had decided to become full-time feral as a means of solving his problems.

His days at B&Q were not wasted – stealing supplies from the warehouse, for which he still had keys Terrance went about building a tree home. He built a fairytale home where he could run away from his debt problems and live tax-free. But it is a lot harder to build a liveable home inside a rotting tree than Terrance thought. In the end, after several attempts to make it like an ‘arbour-Ikea’ Terrance settled with a mouldy shit hole with windows.

He tried to make pets of the squirrels that shared his domicile. They didn’t acquiesce – they bit him, stole his cereals and pissed all over his toaster. Since then squirrel and the man have led a cold war of attrition in that old tree - Terrance ate one of their babies in the spring, so the squirrels gave him rabies by September.

Terrance can’t go back to the modern world now. He has sunk too far into the wood - he is a Wildman or Sasquatch, a myth that financial advisers tell their indebted clients. And he still owes Barclays around £7,000.

Maybe if you wander down to the woods one-day, you will see Terrance in his little home. He hasn’t had a job for a while, and can’t bring girls back to his tree home, so he spends most of his days unkempt, searching the wood for discarded porn.

Political Satire

Gordon Brown’s had a tough few weeks, there’s no denying that. Apparently the odds aren’t that great that he’ll be the Prime Minister by the weekend. He’s even taken to giving press conferences without a belt or shoe laces, looking forlornly out of the window trying to catch site of Albion.

Is it too late for him to claw back his leadership when he’s facing attacks internally and externally? It’s definitely touch and go and we all know that no amount of Alan Sugar will make the situation any sweeter. People don’t want to hear about the Prime Minister’s concern for the singing potato, Susan Boyle either – tell us more about the chap who claimed for a moat.

Here are three tips to Gordon Brown if he wants to last the night out:

1. Master the smile. He never seems to have grasped the concept of the smile I know he grew up in Scotland but this is ridiculous. It wasn’t made apparent until he was stood next to Barack ‘the zillion watt smile’ Obama at the G20 summit. If he want’s people to like him simply try and smile without looking like you’re trying to relearn it after an accident.

2. Stop talking about celebrities. As already mentioned, appointing Alan Sugar is a gross error. His appointment as business czar isn’t necessarily the way to go about it (I’m fairly sure a large proportion of the county must watch The Apprentice and think he’s a cunt). Also, 'the people' aren’t that endeared to Susan Boyle, we like watching her yes, but in the same way we’d be fascinated by the discovery of a hairless calf with one eye screaming “kill me”.

3. The easiest quick fix solution, it’s been staring at him in the mirror all along, like a sad looking marble. Simply pop out the eye and wear a patch and for added affect wear some dark velvet gloves. No one will fuck with the Neo Pimpernel.

Politics, Performed in style of John Hegley

Gore-den Braun
As in Eva Braun, Hitler’s Bird
Small with blond hair
I bet she wore real fur
A tenuous link to Margret Thatcher*
Apparently she wasn’t that good at her job, Sir**

*Pronounced ‘Fat-Churgh’ to tie in with the above line.

** I was born in ’84; I’ve heard she stole milk and something about the Falklands, can’t say I’m that clued up. It’s embarrassing really.

Pie Rate

He saw that I’d stopped eating my pie
I tried to stay cool
But we both knew I’d noticed he only had one eye

‘I like my women like I like my coffee…’

Me & Lee were messing around the other day (As in word play, not “God, my wife must never know of our forbidden love”) and came up with a few different takes on the old “I like my women like I like my coffee…” setup. For your information we’ll be coming soon to a Working Men’s Club near you, as this line seems to intrinsically lead you down a misogynistic/racist one way street:

I like my women like I like my coffee…

Ideally not fully of semen.
White and cold to the touch…
Slow roasted.
Immediately after a game of rummy.
Thrown against a wall.

Yeah, I think there’s a reason this sort of joke has died out a bit. Either that or I’m just a massive bigot.

I did a politics degree...

The Government?
I doubt they’d ever repent,
They seem positively hell bent,
On letting our economy ferment,
Like some hideous yeast,
Infection

Sean...

Sean is possibly my best friend
With him I would totally commit to a week long cruise
Although, our friendship was tested when I dreamt he had boobs

The Electric Ballroom

“Hey man, how’s tricks, are you free later?”

“Yeah man, what’s the skinny?”

“Fancy heading down to the Electric Ballroom in Camden?”

“Not really”

Red Nose Day

(As a disclaimer before I enter into a rant, this isn't about charity for one second. To prove this I made sure to donate £10 to Oxfam before slating Comic Relief)

For all of you not in the know, Comic Relief was invented about 25 years ago by some British comedians to give to African charities. They sold red noses, did silly sketches and it was wholly honourable. Now it has become BBC's biggest 'charity event' of the year and has taken over every facet of consumer media for a few weeks every other years. 

Celebrities like Kate 'yes, I can laugh at myself, honestly'  Moss and Jonathan 'I better be getting paid for this' Ross do oh so hilarious and fantastically altrustic things so as to help raise money for African and UK charities. Big corporations like Subway, Walker's Crisps, Sainsbury's and British Telecom are now in on the scam and sell a load of Red Nose related shit, a small percentage of which goes to charity.

A few years ago they took just four of the participating celebs and guessed at their total worth; Sting, Bono, Chris Martin and Paul McCartney totalled in the region of £1.5bn. That's just four of them - add to that maybe 100 'celebrities' and you would probably have a total well over £2bn. This year Comic Relief raised £40m.

Now I am not knocking raising money, far from it. Any attempt to make people give more to those who need it more and slightly level up the global financial see-saw should be commended. And that £40m came from the wallets of the British people, who have had to bail out a few banks in the last three months. It's the hypocrisy of Comic Relief that needs to be highlighted and stamped out.

Subway is a global, multi-billion dollar firm. It makes fucking billions every year from selling unhealthy sandwiches to the masses, no doubt buying their produce from the cheapest source at the expense of the poorer half of the earth. Now that's capitalism and you can argue about that all day, but offering 31p in a pound by flogging cheap Comic Relief ringtones and then trying to say its a 'giving' corporation is disgusting. All it did was get more people in buying special 'Red Nose' meatball marinaras for £3.29. And how much of that £3.29 went to charity? 5 fucking pence.

Sainsbury's too needs to be shown for the two-faced shitting empire it is: slowly killing the UK farming industry, making thousands unemployed while at the same time selling coffee, sugar, bananas, beef and spices that have mark ups of thousands of percent but only cost them pennies - at Africa's expense. But giving a few pennies to the very continent it is screwing over through Jamie 'I'm even more obnoxious with this fucking nose on' Oliver and his over-priced foods.

Comic Relief, like most celebrity charity events, allows these horrid uncaring people seem caring while at the same time improves their profile and most importantly gives them yet another stage to promote their self-brands. There is no honour in it and there is no grace - the two things that charity should be based on.

Charity is important, and the Government should do more to make sure the haves give a lot more to the have nots (maybe tax multi-millionaire fuckers like Gok Wan and Cheryl Cole a bit harder, for example). But don't try and scam from the indebted and the poor through corporate bullshit and celebrity endorsements. Comic Relief is another thinly-veiled way for those who have everything to look saintly while those who have not continue to be the victims.

CHICKEN AND RIB TIME! Kebab and Burger Centre

It doesn't make sense does it?

Every day I see this sign outside the restaurant as I come out of Manor House station and it drives me crazy. Think about it. 'CHICKEN AND RIB TIME!' says to me this place sells chicken and ribs. And that's fine, there definitely aren't enough places in London that sell fatty meats. If I wanted chicken or ribs, I would definitely consider an establishment that is promoting itself as a place where both chicken and ribs are ready to go, ready to eat, any time. All the time. There is even a picture of a chicken, holding a rib, looking at his watch. Perfect.

But then they are telling me it's a 'Kebab and Burger Centre'? This makes no sense, my Turkish friends. You just told me, not three inches ago, that your restaurant ticked along to chicken and ribs. It's 'CHICKEN AND RIB TIME!' for God's sake. And now it's a place for burgers and kebabs too? Does the watch-wearing, rib-guzzling chicken know about this?

Why not call it 'CHICKEN AND RIB AND BURGER AND KEBAB TIME!' or the 'Chicken, Rib, Kebab and Burger Centre'? Or just 'Takeaway Hut' or 'Top Foods'?

So what are you better at 'CHICKEN AND RIB TIME! Kebab and Burger Centre'? Is it chicken and ribs, or is it burgers and kebabs? I mean you are a burger and kebab centre. But you are also a place where it's chicken and rib time.

It bugs me so much, every night, that one day I am going to smash that sign to fucking smithereens. The go next door for a kebab, because they are just called 'Manor House Kebabs', and you know what they are good at.

Heroin Chic

There are certainly a few odd looking people in London. Big, fat, weird, smelly, scary, skin-diseasey odd looking people.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not penning this from my ivory tower. The whole 'scratchy beard, pale complexion and hobo hoodie' look I sport definitely harks towards some sort of serious chemical dependency.

That said, undeniably there are some curious looking folk within zones one to six. Public transport seems to bring out the best of them, especially the Number 29 from Wood Green. It’s a bendy bus, so you know people aren’t paying to get on.

Here are some of my favourite spots, so far:

· Future Lady: I saw her today on the way to the tube. She was dressed like someone who had travelled back in time to prevent a nuclear holocaust and was desperately trying to replicate the fashions of the time, to minimise any anachronistic slips. Giant head phones.

· Bad Mum: reading a copy of ‘What Every Parent Needs To Know’, using a map to the Child Appeals court as a book mark and drinking a can of extra-strength lager. Good luck with that one, Chief.

· Japanese uber-tasche:A tiny little Japanese fellow who was immaculately dressed, with possibly the best moustache I have ever seen. It was grey, and curled up at the sides. Me and Lee followed him down Bond Street for longer than was cool, trying to think of elaborate ways to outflank him and photograph his facial horns. He must get that every single day.

· Shoeless: He just didn't haven't shoes on, on the steps of Nelson's Column. He looked, well sad.

Dermatology

"When the horns came through, the skin condition made a bit more sense"

The Gods of Fate

Have things got bad? Have I had to seriously consider what a penis might feel like against my gums while fingering a filthy £20 note? Well yes, they have.

Why is it that when you’re in the straights you feel more desperate? Is it the loneliness? The claustrophobia? The unexplainable horniness?

I decided to tempt the Gods of fate today. The soul crushing drudge of working through the recession in a complaints department made something snap, and I brought a scratch card.

I delay it; not straight away, you see. I like to divide up the fictional money in my head, imagining how the £100,000 would be spent: How many hookers are too many? Are you alright not giving to your div cousin? Do people still have a problem if you wear mink?

After finally imagining travelling India and living a life of intellectual pursuit, there’s scratching to be done. Using a pound coin is a no-no, for two reasons:

I don’t want to anger the Goddess of Luck by being brazen with my wealth.
I don’t have one (sob).

Best go with a 50p, not too flashy but not embarrassing like a 2p. 

Scratch. £100,000. Scratch. £25. Scratch. £400. Scratch. £1. Scratch. £100,000. Gasp. Scratch. £900. Fuck.

Then comes the self loathing. It’s instantaneous and heavy, like a giant bird shit on your head while all the cool and attractive people laugh at you with their white teeth and muscles.

“Do you want a can?”

This guy on my bus last week was a full blown nutter. I’m not a fan of that word; never the less, this big mad-fox-eyed Shaun Ryder look-a-like managed to plunge the number 29 to Trafalgar Square into a state of panic. He was a real life nutter.

Everyone had a strained look of “I’m really trying to pretend this isn’t happening, although I am acutely aware that this might end in me getting kicked to death” as he paced down the bendy bus. It was happening though, but luckily it didn’t end up in an old lady getting a kicking. 

When something like this happens though, my mind instantly leaps to all those photos from the internal cameras on public transport where some anaemic looking, shirt wearing office worker (i.e. me) gets stabbed in the neck with a William Hill pen 47 times for politely suggesting to the maniac that maybe listening to Dub music really loudly and yelling might not be for the morning commute, it might be suited slightly better to say…3am, in Fabric.

Anyway, aside from randomly shouting at people, calling them “trannies” and declaring “Yeah, I was raised by Yardies, bruv” this chap was having in-depth conversations with himself along the following lines:

“Do you want a can mate?”
“Yeah, I do, can I have one of yours?”
“Yeah mate, no problems bruv”

This is the sort of teeth gritting tension you don’t get on the tube, only the bus attracts this level of terror-inducing psychopath. He managed to shut off an entire section of the bus and keep everyone firmly away from his vicinity. And all it took was an external/internal monologue, some wild golf ball style eyes and a lifetime of substance abuse.

"I really love metal!"

“Work for Bread”

I got really depressed the other day at work and walked all the way to the BT tower, for a bit of fresh air. It was a nice walk, serene even.

Work seems to have become an actual ‘toil’ recently, a word that conjures up images of Russian peasant women, covered in dirt and ploughing away in barren fields grafting for a loaf. Okay, it might not be exactly like that, but it’s been a bit much recently. Long hours and bigger work loads have led to staff morale dropping through the floor. Not that it was ever massively high anyway but I distinctly remember that there was a period where people weren’t randomly bursting into tears in the kitchen and weren’t being as short with each other:

“Let me hold that door for you”

“Yeah, you will wanker”

Its all fun and games though isn’t it, what other options are there around? Not much, although I have toyed with the idea of making extra money on the side by dressing as the late husbands of wealthy widows. It won’t be hard work I imagine, dressing in old suits, going for walks along the pier and listening to the wireless with them at Bridge club. And even if they did want to rekindle a certain carnal fire…I’d still probably prefer it to coding invoices.

21st century disorder

Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution, is warning that social networking runs the risk of making people: "devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance."

"As a consequence," she adds, "the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity."

God, the future sounds grim. I mean it's quite like this already; there are people in my office who have all these traits, plus a really loud voice.

But taking a step back, aren't we already like this? I mean I don't like reading anything longer than a pamphlet, I lie about celebrities constantly (really, ask me about what Cliff Richard does on holiday) and I don't care about almost everyone. I also have a very shaky sense of identity. Well I spelt my name wrong recently.

Maybe I am already one of the first victims of the Internet? Maybe my brain is too far gone, my life just a series of Twitters and YouTube clips of monkey masturbation. Soon we will just be reading electronic copies of Jade Magazine, named in honour of St Jade of celebrity, Facebooking about Zack Efron's nipple extensions and filming ourselves blogging about Bebo. We will define ourselves by our status, Google will tell us when we can shit and Apple will fight Microsoft in a vicious robot war in space. We will pray to the Gods of the little broadband indicator in the top corner of the screen, ordering Ebay vouchers off of Amazon and Skyping all our followers on webcam. 

Or maybe not. Maybe Lady Greenfield should realise people always have been self-loathing, egotistical, vain, stupid, naive twats, it's not the Internet's fault.

Philip

Philip works in London, he loves London.

He wakes up at 6:45, kisses his wife on the cheek and hops in the shower. He dries up and puts on a suit with a shirt a tie - blue shirt, white shirt, pink shirt, grey shirt.

He eats his cereal, drinks a glass of orange juice and reads the Daily Telegraph. He tries to finish the suduko, but he can never get there before 8:15, when he walks down the street, left, right and along the alley way to the train station. He waits halfway down the platform, near the sign post and gets on the 8:28 to Waterloo. He sometimes gets a seat, sometimes not. He reads the London papers, emails some of his colleagues on his blackberry and even listens to his ipod.

He gets off at Waterloo, gets on the underground and takes the Bakerloo to Marylebone, where his office is only a three minute walk from. He walks into the office, waits for the lift and takes it to the third floor. He walks to his desk, usually at about 9:15 and begins his day as an accounts analyst.

At 11am he will have a banana. 1:30pm he will walk down to Regent's Park, call his wife and eat his ham sandwiches.

Philip gets back to Waterloo at 5:45pm, back on the train and then home. He kisses his wife as he gets in, sits down and watches the evening news. He and his wife will eat supper, talk about their day and then go to bed.

Philip takes off his tie, takes off his shirt and brushes his teeth. He returns to the bedroom, takes off his trousers, peels off his garter and stockings, takes off his thong and puts his pyjamas on. He turns out the light, kisses his wife and falls asleep.

Yoghurt on a packed tube train

Yes, dear blog fan, yoghurt on a packed tube train. Just imagine it.

I was on my way to work this very morning and had just bagged myself a seat. Feeling particularly chuffed with myself, I looked round and noticed the woman in front of me pull out a big tupperware container full of yoghurt. It was huge, big enough to fit about 4 hearty sandwiches. Certainly too big for yoghurt.

Anyway, she then opened up the container and began spooning the goop into her mouth. It was smelly, probably probiotic or something, full of friendly bacteria and bifidum digestivum. The train kept bouncing around, as trains hurtling through ancient tunnels tend to do, every bounce and knock adding to the mess on her face. Round this fully-grown woman's mouth, on her hand, her bag and even a little tiny bit on the pole next to her. The more we rolled along, the messier she got.

Our eyes met for a brief moment. I glared, hoping to get across how completely and utterly disgusted I was. I don't think my distain got through as she carried on eating regardless, flecks of yoghurt splashing round her mouth as someone innocently and understandably bumped her spoon-wielding arm.

After a few minutes I couldn't bear to watch the macabre show in front of me, like a sad 'You've Been Framed' clip that has gone on for way too long. Luckily it was my stop and I hopped off, a little saddened by the fact that you can't choke to death on yoghurt, no matter how hard you try.

“I love you so much I want to put you in a little box under the stairs”

So, what better day is there to end up in Victoria Station, tears streaming down your cheeks, looking at a faded ‘If you don’t like your life you can change it’ poster?

Yes, Valentines Day! Nothing quite says ‘Jesus, I didn’t think I’d still be looking at your tired old face’, like being herded into a restaurant and staring at other, more successful examples of functioning relationships. Then again, it can be an exciting time for new love, getting to know the girl you met during that mad confidence trip you had (which oddly coincided with the burning nostril you had the following day):

“Do you want some olives?”

“No, I don’t like them”

“Really?”

“Yes”

"I did not know that. Fascinating."

Electrifying stuff. This year Valentines Day unfortunately landed on a weekend, meaning that people sort of have to be out any way. This led to a lot of blank stares and a lot of couples realising they would have had more fun at home watching blue collar saturday night TV without the cheap flowers, bad poetry and fizzy wine. Because let's face it, if you are in a couple, Valentine's is shit. 

But it also saw a larger volume of lonely, desperate ‘we’re alone and completely not bothered, let's get fucked up! Wooo! Who needs love! fuck romance! More tequila!' crowds that are completely bothered and are weeping inside. Girls dancing to the beat of their biological clock, and boys drinking their way to another evening alone with a kebab and poor quality porno. Because let's face it, if you are single, Valentine's is shit.

There does seem to be something ever so slightly tragic about it all, a day to celebrate all that we strive for and never reach. But I suppose going out and bursting into tears is better than doing it in your own flat, where you’re really near the gas oven.

“Let’s stone the fat one to death”

Who’ll win, the Tigers or the Sharks? I literally don’t have a clue but I’ve just spent an hour wildly glued to the drama of Channel 4’s Shipwrecked, back for a rip roaring 100th series.

I’ve never really seen it before; I think I caught some of the first series years ago. Like all reality TV though, it’s been warped into some grotesque spectacle making the original incarnation look like a Victorian ankle showing in comparison. I remember watching a chap having to drown a chicken in the beautiful ocean; he didn’t resign as a recruitment consultant in Swindon for that. Still, I remember the look in his eye immediately after he did it. It was a fascinating mix of wild eyed masculine emancipation and loss of an innocence he didn’t know he had.

The producers of the show clearly felt the same semi-sexual voyeuristic thrill I felt and decided to take the show in that general direction. The new series therefore takes a finely profiled collection of narcissistic clothes horses and puts them on a beautiful apparently empty (aside from all those wires and production team members) desert island. They then fanny about doing things that they look like they’d struggle with anyway, like washing and feeding themselves which they all seem to have done for them in the real world.

Thus far we’ve been introduced to a selection of interesting folk, none of which you’d trust with anything important, you probably wouldn’t risk putting them in charge of a tin of beans. We’ve had a chap who described himself as being without sexuality, like some sort of giant, Liverpudlian flower. Although, when he says he has no sexuality he really means he’s gay, the panic that flashed across his eyes when he was asked the question was magic. Also, this one’s borderline brain dead, if it wasn’t for his hyper emotional reactions to fairly mundane, obvious things (“Oh my…GOD”) like new people visiting the island then you’d be forgiven for thinking you were watching a pickled foetus in the bowels of the Natural History Museum. Also, on hyper emotional reactions, selecting a leader isn’t the most devastating, emotionally complex and demanding issue, it’s easy, pick the one who has laces that they tied themselves. I’d love to expose this tribe to some real emotion. See how they cope when they find out that a serial killer has battered their family to death (“No...WAYYYYYYYY, wait a minute, I’ve got a text”).

There also seems to be a few posh people on, having not seen it much, I’m not sure if this is a theme. Lot’s of big house, polo playing arseholes who pronounce ‘really’ as ‘ra-AGH-herrrrrr-lay’ and it takes them literally about a week to knock a sentence out. They all see themselves instantly as the leader of the dirty proles. The thing is that they are equally clueless, but in a different, more aggressive way. Y’know, the sort of tone that got centuries of colonial expansion done, and managed to pay off the family of that girl who cried “rape” at Joshua’s polo party.

Anyway, it lit a flame in my chest watching this show and Introversial will be following the heartache, bitching, and incessant conversations about nothing over the next few weeks. I’m hoping that this group of people will be the ones who break reality television. We all know its coming, one day something will horribly wrong and television will have to rely on proper television shows again. Hopefully, this series will end with Mark (big hair, androgynous and a body like a toddler) running wild eyed into the ocean to embrace an icy death after having raped and killed Sonny (literally nothing behind the eyes, could potentially have shredded wheat for a brain).

Twitter

"Shall we put the blog on Twitter?"

"What the fuck is Twitter?"

"I don't know."

"Let's not then."

(If you understand Twitter, please enlighten us. It seems like something we should be doing, but we don't understand it and it scares the bejesus out of us.)

Pitch

"So what's the movie about?"

"It's about a dog hotel."

"A dog hotel?"

"Yeah, you know, loads of dogs in a building, causing havoc."

"Ok....I'm not convinced...."

"Well, you see these kids make a hotel for all the dogs..."

"The kids make this? Oh right, is this a Pixar thing, because that would work. Talking dogs, maybe set in the future? We could really go to town on the fur, maybe get John Cusack in, even Nicole Kidman. It'd be a smash!"

"No, this is real. We use real, trained dogs."

"Ok, so let me get this straight. The kids make a hotel for all these dogs and they just run round for an hour thirty? No talking dogs, just some kids cleaning shit up?"

"Yeah. I call it 'Hotel for Dogs'"

"Get the fuck out my office."

From the wilderness

Do you know what I absolutely hate about London? The immigrants. Wait a sec, not really. If you want that sort of stuff you won’t find it here. Well, possibly from Lee (does every punch line need to be “Yeah, and then they went home”).

I’ve been a bit quiet of late, not entirely sure why. It’s resulted in me being an emotionless drone for the past week or so. A bit like Data from ‘Star Trek’, he knows that emotions exist but can only try to emulate them. Like how he has the cat, he’s only stroking it to but could just as easily crush its skull. Yeah, a bit like that.

A few things have got me recently, brought me round like smelling salts. First off, don’t wear sunglasses on your head at this time of year. I know that solar rays may be present even when it’s cloudy but c’mon, not after Monday’s Ice age.

Second, I just ate two of those Jelly Beans. The brand that are pretty amazing and actually taste like the flavours they’re meant to. They have a little recipe book in the inlay where you mix them to make things like ‘toffee apple’ and ‘fruit punch’. Anyway, whichever ones I blindly put in my mouth, they came together to taste exactly like shit.

Finally, Valentines Day is just around the corner. No doubt my schedule will be as free as a bird that night. I’ve told a friend at work to buy me a card and pretend she didn’t. I also suggested that me and my housemates all stay in, shave our faces and turn the lights off.

Soon...real soon.

down with the sickness

I have some sort of hideous, disgusting disease this week, and I have been advised to blog about it.

It seems to be a stomach bug, because that's where the symptoms and the pain are centered. I won't go into further details, because it's horrid and smelly and has left me eating just banana bread and going to the toilet 12 times an hour.

I probably caught it by eating a) food off the floor b) gone off food or c) from licking a handrail on the tube. I'm joking! I don't eat off the floor.

It hit a peak around 4am today when I became delirious and was sweating profusely. I got out of bed, and was particularly worried because I had pretty bad chest pains to boot, and they are never good. Especially when you are 24 and eat pork scratchings on a semi-regular basis.

So in my panicked state I did what all sleep-deprived, delirious people do at 4am: I went on a web doctor website. I typed in my symptoms (vomiting, diarrhea, fever and a tightening of the chest) and I got up a few diagnosis:

Ebola

Stomach Flu

Legionnaires disease

Pancreatic cancer

In the cold light of the day, I could probably safely assume I have stomach flu. But at 4am you don't think straight, and my chest really hurt. I started feeling for lumps, but realised I didn't know where my pancreas was. I couldn't rule out ebola completely, because I did stand near this guy on the tube who looked like he lived with apes. And I don't know what Legionnaires is, but it sounds like something off of House, and I watch lots of House.

I would go to the doctor, but London seems to be full of people with sickly kids who have booked before me, so I can't visit one until June. So I am stuck with webMD and the unnerving feeling that I have ebola.

It's very cold rain, for fuck's sake

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Yes, it snowed today. No one died, nothing exploded but everyone acted like it did. I honestly heard someone compare today to the 7/7 tube bombings on an imaginary richter scale of tragedy/amazement/excitement.

London shut down. It was like the 9th circle of hell mixed with 'The Day After Tomorrow'. But Dennis Quaid didn't come and save me, oh no.

The newsreader on BBC London this morning was almost cuming in her knickers she was so excited, she really wanted to smile. Most of the tube lines had delays and the buses were suspended. The buses were suspended, people. They did weather reports every five minutes. They even brought out some weather people who never get air time, they looked as excited as the Farming Correspondants did during the foot and mouth crisis.

London was brought to it's knees. Once the greatest City in the greatest empire this world has ever seen, reduced to a husk because of snow. Last year I was in Kocise in Slovakia. It's a fucking shit hole, like all of Slovakia (don't believe me? Go on, go. You'll regret it) Anyway the day I was there the city saw 8" of snow in 4 hours, it was a proper blizzard. Everyone was working, and my train was bang on time, no one complained.

No one came to work today. I mean it was snowing, you can't expect people to brave the arctic weather can you? I went in, as did all my colleagues, but we have a newspaper to print tomorrow, so we had to. No one else's job seems to matter in London, so everyone else stayed home. I am sure plenty of people could have come in, no I know they could have, because I did and I even got a seat on the tube. But a good percentage of London work in sales, which doesn't really matter. They were not missed.

Oxford Street was packed with shoppers, too. They braved the arctic weather. Finsbury Park was packed, too. Packed with drunk people playing in the snow. Well, it was mainly mud by 5pm. So they were playing in mud, drunk.

Some wit drew a cock on the front of the car outside my house. Bet they didn't go to work either today.

Where's the Gap?

“What’s happening, why can’t I feel my feet? I’ve never seen anything like this before! The endless blanket of white…”

“None of us have. Get indoors, somewhere dry and warm. You can’t feel your feet because you live in London and therefore you’re wearing delicate little plimsolls. Save who you can but if anyone falls…let the blanket of death envelope them”

That’s how today started, with a suspension of tubes, buses and sanity. Bill Turnbull had a mad look in his eye this morning, giggling away. I don’t think he had any trouble getting into work; he sleeps under Moira Stewart’s desks.

I toyed with the idea of not going into work, staying at home with a load of tinned stuff to outlast the winter. However, being a five minute walk from Finsbury Park oddly meant that it was far easier to get to Euston than normally. Also, if I’m being really honest, it turns out I’m naturally gifted in the snow. Like a beautiful snow leopard, you should have seen me bound.

The rest of London seemed mixed up in a flurry of excitement, panic and wonderment. Loads of people were taking pictures, making snowmen, drinking hot chocolate and laughing. I just ate an old skittle from down the back of the settee; “credit crunch”.

Introversial Loves Paul Burrell

The first in our 'Introversial Heroes' series, documenting our favourite human beings on this earth, is Paul Burrell.

For those who are not in the know, Paul was Princess Diana's butler. When she was alive he did really important things like iron her bra, make her some mint tea and pick up after her budgie*. Paul, like all of us, really really loved Diana. But unlike all of us, he stole loads of boxes of her stuff and kept them in a cupboard for years. And wore her underwear.

He made a name for himself, after Diana was murdered*, by going on TV and talking about Diana. This developed into Burrell going on TV and talking about folding napkins and eating bananas with a knife and fork. He wrote about 22 books, all about Diana, and he also had a flower shop, with loads of pictures of Diana on the wall. Oh yeah, he also says he's not gay. While in his flower shop, with loads of pictures of Diana on the wall. And while loads of gay blokes keep telling the papers they shagged him, with documentary evidence of the fact.

Problem is, we don't care about Diana that much any more. We, as a caring nation, have new obsessions to pull at our heart strings, like the skinny one with the big head off of X Factor and Karen Matthews, the fat woman who unsuccessfully kidnapped her own kid for money. So Paul has fallen out of favor, so he's not on TV anymore. And that's bad for Paul, because Paul loves being on TV.

So Paul has begun to tell the world he knows something. We don't know what he knows, and he said he will never say what he knows. He is getting back on TV because he keeps telling people he knows something, but he won't tell what. Genius.

The thing is, Paul doesn't know shit. Paul was a big fairy who was good at shining silverware and picking up corgi poo. He realised he had shot his load soon after Diana's suicide* so he had to keep making stuff up. And he really, really loves being on TV.

Introversial loves Paul because he really believes he knows a secret, a secret that could rock the very foundations of this sceptered isle. He just hasn't thought what it is yet. But while he thinks of something he is going to hold onto Diana's stuff for a bit longer, for safe-keeping.

Remember to tune in next time, blog fans for another Introversial Heroes. Each edition will come with a 'cut out and keep' face of our hero, like the one of Paul, up there. After 36 weeks you will have enough faces to poster a very small, sad bedsit.

*These facts may or may not be true.

What have you been up to?

"I've just been listening to Candle in the Wind a lot"

Look at it, Richard!

I had to add this link to the blog, it's the funniest thing I have read in a long while.

My co-worker said I laughed like Beavis and/or Butthead while I read this. That's how good it is.

Thirteen fucking pounds

Thirteen fucking pounds.

Thirteen fucking pounds. £13. For 18 pictures processed at Snappy Snaps.

That's 72p a picture. 7" x 5", matt with no border.

I left 18 of my favourite pics from my recent travels in Snappy Snaps, one of the few remaining photo labs left on the high street, thinking it might be £3.50, maybe £4. It's 18 little bits of paper. They don't have to go to a dark room, they don't need to buy red bulbs. Nope, a spotty twat called Dean can just press print. He doesn't even have to do that, oh no, Dean is a workshy little bastard; dean just 'Ctrl + P's.

So for about 3.45 seconds work, a one hundredth of a colour ink cartridge and and 18 small pieces of paper, they charged me £13.

Thirteen fucking pounds. And some of the pictures come out shit.

So what have I learned? Well, yet again London has pushed me up against a wall and buggered me with its prices. I've also learned that rent is expensive in the West End (their excuse when I asked why they had just raped me) and I have learned that I am still stupid enough to hand over the money.

Dean is probably out now, spending my money on weed and Sainsbury's own brand cookies. While I am here with some below-average print work. Thank you Snappy Snaps, thank you.

A few things...

First off,

I'd just like to make a full and personal apology on behalf of Lee. This thing of ours, this torrent of hatred/self loathing with some pretty pictures has become very 'Chris heavy' of late. Lee's gone rouge, off the radar smoking cigarettes and hanging out in Beat nik clubs. I've tried to have a quite word, let him know we have a reading public who want their length of Lee (Hi Rob!). He doesn't care though, tries to say that things like working extra hours, being married and having a social life are what's getting in the way. He knows it's not good enough and will send anyone who e-mails in their postal address a picture of himself topless, looking out of a window at a sunset. It was an early marketing ploy, we've got two cases full of them so please write in.

Also, this morning was one of the worst hangovers of recent times. I had tears in my eyes and a rip in my stomach lining. The reason? Singstar. We've had this PS3 just sitting in a Tescos carrier bag after a house party we had ages ago. Turns out that Singstar is actually the perfect night in for four lads in their mid 20's. Me and Lee were by far the weaker duet. We did decide that although we might not sing the 'Singstar' way, we had the most feeling. The other two were going for 'consistency' and 'tone' but they did not look as good kneeling on the carpet with their tops off. I'm fairly certain I could feel Jimmy Morrison's proud hand on my shoulder, "finally, someone to take over my mantel". All this was going on as we banged through 9 bottles of wine, drank some whiskey and smoked cigarettes, then we started investing in songs. Downloading Bowie and Toni Braxton. I love David Bowie, like asking girls to sing the first few lines of "Jean Genie" in bed like him. Didn't sing it though, too drunk. Too drunk for David Bowie, I literally feel ashamed.

...We've already planned the next one. We're all going to buy £5 worth of songs each, really build up the back catalogue. All I need to do is reign in my showboating.

Tom's Pic

Hello,

Have look at the above picture, drawn by Tom Kollmann. We attended the same Cartoonin' class at the back end of this year. I love this picture, it's so grimy, full of movement and feels of a time & a place. The plan is to get it printed onto a t-shirt at some point but at the minute I don't have enough money to buy basic food stuffs. Although I do have £7 sat in scratchcards. Recession proof!

"Lady luck is fickle but a lady is allowed to change her mind"

The Fifth

Tuesday the 20th of January 2009,

A historic day, I mean...just wow. That's right, Battlestar Galactica finally made it's way back onto our screens. I never thought I'd see the day, hadn't even let myself dream about it. 'Hope', such a soft fragile world, often feeling like a small plant growing from dead, nuclear soil. Even the slightest breeze could take it away. On Tuesday it felt like something in the universe went right for once... I got to look at Adalma's grizzled face again.

It was an amazing hour of television but my God, it was bleak. Bleak like the husk that is Earth or wherever it is. If people weren't killing themselves they were trying to, looking a bit miserable. It was powerful though, stark and real (well, as real as space ships and robots can be). I think watching it might have actually stung a bit at one point. The use of 'Frak' has never been more blatant either. I'm sure in series one it was used far less frequently and the meaning was less obvious. Series 4 isn't 'fraking' about with lines like "She was fraking everyone in the fleet". It just means fuck and there's no two ways about it. I'm also fairly sure there was a reference to the urethra in this weeks episode.

There is one problem though which detracted from the feeling of sheer unbridled awe, Iggy Pop. Weird, gnarled skin bag Iggy. His lust for life style persona used rather nonsensically to try and sell me car insurance. The guy looks as if he's never worn a t-shirt, let alone driven a Fiat Punto.

That aside, that Barack chap became the President. I won't go on about it, too many people are. I saw these two fruity Brit lads who went all the way over there to see him being sworn in. That's a bit much, watch it on Al Jazeera like everyone else. I have his book, and his action figure. If you're ever on the 253 towards Camden in the morning, keep an eye out for a scruffy looking chap with hay like hair reading 'Dreams of My Father'. Note that he won't be reading a single word of it, he's just trying to catch girls eyes with a sort of "oh, this? Well, it's Barack's book - yes, I know" look.

CX

There was only 12 of them

Right

Everyone in London is right. Not one decision made by the 8 million is ever wrong. You are bumped into on the street because that was their right of way. So they pushed into you.

A woman just swanned passed 8, yes 8, people in a Sainsbury's queue. She didn't give a shit. She even looked round at us, as we stared at her, open mouthed, like she had murdered a child. A similar thing happened waiting for Oyster top-up on Monday morning, a fat bastard just walked past and jammed his sweaty coins into the machine with his sausage-like mitts.

But she was right, and he was right. Everyone is right and you are wrong.

The tube magnifies this bloody-minded arrogance. It makes even the nicest person a cock of megalomaniac proportions. That's my spot, I am going to get on this train and this is where I am going to stand. So fuck you and fuck you. This is put to the test when a hauty middle-aged twat twitters: "Can you move down, please". No, fuck off Grandma. My spot, I'm right and you can kiss my arse.

The trouble is rarely are people right. In fact 99% of the time, London is wrong. Of course, I am right, but everyone else is wrong.

The end is nigh!

Okay,

It’s the end of the world. I’m not sure how exactly but it’s happened. Possibly in an obvious, ‘disease’ related way, a plague we hadn’t made provisions for or was too aggressive to combat. Maybe it’s something more elaborate, a ‘Triffids’ style astrological blinding of the whole human, thus rendering us at the mercy of those giant man eating plants.

Either way, you’re either the one person, or one of the very few who have been spared from the cull of humanity. A pretty heavy thing to think about really, something me and my friends talked through in a Weatherspoons. What exactly would you do in that situation, imagining you woke up one morning and found that over night humanity had ground to a halt?

Perhaps it might all be too much to handle. Thinking about the entire collective history of the human race may tip you over the edge. One of my friends reckoned that he’d top himself within the hour (although, secretly I think that’s just because he couldn’t live in a world where there’d be no one to listen to him). Every book or piece of history would be nothing; you’d be all that was left as an example of humanity. That’s a bit too much responsibility, I was sick on a bus once, it oozed down the aisle towards some kids. I felt dead low.

I reckon I’d do some right odd stuff if left to my own devices for too long. Even spending an afternoon by myself results in me developing new words for universal language, wearing odd clothes and drawing all over myself. And the masturbation, red raw my little fella is. I think in this setting I’d go royally off my rocker, I’d build a shrine to the forgotten age, old music players and Andy Warhol pictures everywhere. A bit like Camden Market I suppose. Listening to music on a crackly old gramophone, drinking tea from a china cup while the Gherkin falls into the earth. Oh, and I’d definitely be wearing a cravat.

I also decided I’d have a wander down to the MI5 building, have a read of some secrets. When it was pointed out to me that I’d most likely be unable to get into all the digitally encrypted files we decided to settle for going down to Buckingham palace and having a tug over the Queen’s pillow.

Here’s a list of what we’d get up to pending near obliteration of the human race:

Ride a little golf cart. Everywhere.
Go down to Oxford Street and set Topshop on fire.
Find Tommy Cooper's fez (What, ride a golf cart without a fez?)
Asphyxi-wank at No. 10, then remove that big gold sceptre from Parliament and put it in the cart.
Go to the arcades in high heels.

Tears for fears

"By the end we were both crying. I think it was then that I realised the whole 'gay' thing wasn't really me"

A support group?