Now I’m a less-fat nerd.

Still not a hipster.

But basically I loved Independence Day when I first saw it. In fact, I went to the cinema to see it something like four or five times. I was 12. It was perfect for me. In the year it took to come out on video, though, something happened in my mind. Something like the Kevin transformation ala Harry Enfield.

I found when we bought the film on VHS (HAH A HA HAHAHA THE PAST) that I no longer enjoyed it. I found it stupid. Irritating. Jingoistic to the point of causing offence. I still laughed at “welcome to Earth”, because that’s funny. But generally speaking I had ‘matured’ in that year and become someone who was above it.

I felt like that for a long time. I didn’t watch the film again for years. Then university came around, and with it exposure to exactly the kind of attitude I didn’t even think of – I’m not even sure I knew of. That attitude was to switch your brain off and  just go with it.

So what if it’s all about America saving the world (because they are the world)? So what if all the foreigners are represented as hideous stereotypes? So what if you can destroy an entire alien battleship just by blowing one single gun up? So what if ALL OF IT?

Oh, but I won’t allow criticism of the ‘hacking an alien ship with an Apple Mac’ thing, because that was explained in a deleted scene. PLOT HOLE: FILLED-ish.

And straight after it I’ve watched District 13: Ultimatum. Today is a good day for not needing my brain.

It’s been a week of the sorts of power foods that homely-looking tossers talk about on shows and adverts where they say “natural” and “organic” and “cunt” a lot. If health was a thing it would be rebranded to be called “Ian” and anything healthy would have my face on it.

Which would be unfortunate, as it would discourage people from eating healthily. Who would buy something with my face on or in it? Well, aside from the readers of all the fine magazines I’m in, obviously. At least, the ones that do feature my face.

Anyway, my nutritional adventure has taken me to such lows as a bit of chicken with some brown rice all the way to the highs of Far Too Many miniature potato waffles, a burger and even, earlier today, a Pot Noodle (with a triple Bounty for dessert).

Basically I am the healthiest person alive and my new diet of mini potato waffles (they’re like potato waffles but smaller) means I will lose weight and gain muscle and be healthy and change the world and go to bed.

I think just the last bit is true there.

Nevertheless, I am struggling to think of a topic as a result of having other things on the brain, trying to plan for the next few weeks/couple of months, wondering how I’m going to afford anything and other such inconsequential tripe that doesn’t matter to anybody apart from me and those involved with the things directly.

Oh, I’m also spending some time wondering why Stewart Downing gets to play regular football for Liverpool. Maybe it’s King Kenny’s ultimate troll against the Scouse fans, proving that they’ll love any piece of shit that pulls on one of their shit shirts.

Anyway, just listen to this and laugh along because it’s exactly the same as Ricky Gervais saying ‘mong’ OH NO WAIT:

(Clue: he had polio. It was actually making a point. Because I know a lot of dullards need this kind of thing explaining to them, rather than looking for the information themselves. I hate you all.)

It means you can opt out of purchasing items from dodgy places. But you can’t always do that, unless you’re… I don’t know… more caring and careful than I am, I suppose. Real people can pay attention to the companies they don’t buy from – I just don’t buy Nestle or Iams.

Definitely changing the world here.

But then there are times when you can allow yourself to break the rules, and times when – even though they make clothes entirely from baby skin and the tears of newborn calves – it can be justified that you purchase something from them. That very situation popped up today.

A walk to work, as I am known to do with my steely thighs pumping away, was accompanied by a shit-ton of rain (note: not a metric shit-ton). Rain I do not fear: it does not bother me. I could walk through it for ages without it ever effecting me in any meaningful way – I’d say as much as 38 minutes before I’d have to give up.

Today I almost had to give up early, as my trainers had decided they no longer wanted to have a bottom on them. I like to think I get my money’s worth from trainers, and it seems I got a bit more from this pair as they have worn through in two places on the left shoe.

This meant a very wet foot indeed.

I had to salvage the situation – personal comfort was at stake, as well as the fact that some people at work were forced into seeing my naked foot. That’s when the decision was made. A soggy walk was had, the store visited and…

Today folks, Primark saved my life. For dirt cheap.

(Also I got a new hoodie and some socks)

‘A phenomenal discharge of aural symposium, defying genre and defining vivacity in a way only the work of Proust or Van Damme could truly even hope to mitigate towards equalling’. It was the only thought that traversed its way through the canals of my mind, electro-pistons firing in unity with the literal religious experience the throng-shaped masses were currently enjoying.

‘Transcendental doesn’t cover the sheer glorious verisimilitude of these ecclesiastical showmen’ I added using my brain, because it was just the right thing for my brain to say. While I achieved a genuine state of nirvana – literally – using just my own grey matter and the snapping synapses I previously mentioned using different words because I’m so good with words, this performance of composers, instrumentalists, singers, guitar-threshers and drum-singularities devastated the very notion of notions, fundamentally altering our state of existence as we know it, as we ever have known it and forever will be, now bereft of consciousness in the new age of enlightenment.

Three miracles of harmonious discord were born, lived a life and died on stage – while some of the intellectuals and comrades in our joint aural endeavour simply could not beholden the true majesty of what was taking place to the front of their ocular cavities, many were almost sharing parity with this very writer, though none could sincerely state they had equivalence with a mind so well-trained in the epithets of our sheer unfulfilled continuation.

Subjugation, eroticism, timorous, vehemence, ostracised, neo-classical antagonism laced liberally with agnosticism. Richardson Richardson. Beef and ham.

What the life-affirming experience taught me on a purely intellectual level is that philosophical debate is a requirement of any polite discourse and the conjuration of impossible mathematical hypotheses is something no discerning user of a carbohydrate-heavy mindset could do without. Such is the musical trope of our time, such is the parlance of our very being, such is the majesty of prosodies.

Oh, there was a band too.

7/10

Now that’s a consummately adult thing to do, don’t get me wrong. I’d go as far as to call it ‘grown up’, except I’m not eight years old so I don’t actually say ‘grown up’. The decision to register with a local doctor so I can make him or her pretend to give a shit about my pathetic, unimportant problems is something no self respecting Big People should do without.

But I’ve lived here for two and a half years, and I’m only just registering. I have also never registered with any other doctor at any other time in my life, aside from the obligatory uni registration which I only did because I wanted those two doctors to shove their fingers up my arse.

Too much information? Nah.

Alas, it has come to be that I think I’m going to have another utterly brutal headache during the night. The warning signs have been and gone and, if it’s the condition the internet tells me it is (“explosive head-cancer-AIDS syndrome”, or something) it will roll around at the same time it has struck two times before – about 3am or so.

Yes, I am being a bore and talking about something that isn’t interesting to anyone other than me and my future GP, but it’s just something playing on my mind right now.

I mean, what if I embarrass myself in the doctor’s? What if they ask me for my previous GP’s name, address or anything else and then kick me to the curb when I say “I have no idea about any of these things, I used to go just so I had someone to talk to”, even if it is a lie?

Maybe I’ll just pretend to be an immigrant, then I’ll get all the healthcare and benefits and jobs and houses and anybody who had even so much as a pang of genuine agreement with this sentence towards the beginning can kindly piss off from my readership now, thanks.

How I’ve swung this to be a Grauniad-themed ending I do not know. Night, y’all. I’m sure I’ll be whining if the mega-headache does indeed roll through town.

I have seen there are some shows about supposedly real people doing supposedly real things, and Gary’s station has something to do with Geordies on it. I know this because I just saw an advert that told me as such. I also know these things are popular enough to actually be watched by about 12 people. Possibly more. Possibly less.

I have no idea.

Anyway, I’m going to follow a similar path with my suggestion – imitation/flattery and all that, plus I know how all people who have any involvement with the creation of new TV like their trends (also the whole ‘not having to actually think of a new idea’ thing).

Basically, it’s a shoe-in to be accepted, and once on the air it will become the most popular TV show in the world.

It will star me, obviously, and will be one of those ‘super-real’ shows where it’s not actually real but we pretend it is. I’ll actually be told to do all of the wacky things I get up to, and I’ll probably be given money to do said things, but that doesn’t matter.

The show will be called ‘Fat Tosser In A Dressing Gown’. Each week will see an hour-long show following my adventures in sitting here, in my dressing gown, building up fresh stains. I’m hoping to get a gravy stain by the end of this week, two more tea stains by February 23^rd and possibly some blood by February 24^th (possibly related to tea stains).

How can you say that would be anything other than the greatest TV of all time? OF ALL TIME.

Also it will make me a millionaire, which I’m alright with.

Not with money, I should say, as I always try to keep hold of that as long as I can.

Oh, and food. Don’t touch my food. It’s my food.

And underpants. I rarely share them.

But even with these altruistic notions of goodwill, generosity and equal treatment of any and all I still fall into certain traps. Traps like doing ‘unselfish’ things because they actually benefit me. Like thinking ‘I hope that person is happy with whatever they’re doing’ when actually I mean ‘I hope that person will leave me alone now’.

Is it possible to be truly selfless in an act? A question postulated many years ago by the finest show on philosophy that’s ever existed, Friends. A question that wasn’t really answered that well. Is it, though? I don’t know.

I’m nice to people because I think I should be. But for one thing I’m not nice to everyone, and another thing I’m nice to people because it means they’ll usually be nice back. Is that me getting something out of it? Yes. Meaning it’s basically selfish.

In fact, when people do things that can be seen as genuinely selfless – I think I’ve seen a couple of things here and there that would count as such – I see the person doing them as a bit of a fool. Yes, that means I’m a complete twat, clearly, but I do. It seems stupid to do something and get absolutely nothing back from it.

Still, whatever. I’m thinking aloud rather than making any point here. I’ve done selfless things. Of course it’s possible to do things and not get anything out of it, just for the sake of doing the Right Thing, doing What Needs To Be Done or doing something just to get a laugh. Well, no, that’s selfish. I feed off laughs.

I should do stand-up comedy at some point. Unrelated point, that.

I can only apologise for this blog. I am very tired and still feeling the after-effects of too much of the sauce last night. We are, after all, professionals.

No it hasn’t – that’s a lie. I’ve always massively appreciated it.

Still, the blackout did scare me into a mindset of ‘the internet could end at any minute, better take in as much of it as I can’. As such I’ve been trying to memorise most of Wikipedia for the last… ohhh… thirty minutes or so. Have to say with a hangover and very little awareness of how to read right now I am struggling.

Apparently the Boshin War was something to do with… porn?

Ah, no – just getting my opened tabs mixed up there. Sorry.

I reckon this project, which I am now dubbing Project Wicked Peado, won’t take too long to complete. In fact, if I keep at this whole reading thing my calculations have me as having memorised approximately 37% of the site by 12pm tomorrow.

Not bad going for a street kid from Manila. Even better going from someone like me.

I’ve just decided to change the project’s name after having re-read what I just christened it. It is now known as Project Wicked Cool Paedo. That’s better – less likely to be misunderstandings there.

More Wiki-knowledge I’ve just learned: NAMBLA – the North American Man/Boy Love Association – isn’t a construct of South Park. It’s real.

Something else I’ve just learned from Wikipedia: America is fucking insane. In the best and worst way.

Fuck SOPA, PIPA, the DMCA or whatever it is (I haven’t got to that yet in Project Wicked Cool Paedo, so I don’t know what it is) and anything else that aims to protect the financial interests of the few over the free-sharing of knowledge and creative endeavours of the many.

Well, the creative types, at least.

See I, while not the most perfect example of exactness and care, pay attention to things. I’m not the most insightful, I’m not the best judge of character (though I am up there with the best), I’m not the best at reading people or noticing the really small things.

But I make sure when I write a CV, when I write a letter, when I write a pitch to a website or magazine, when I send hate mail to celebrities – I make sure I get the facts right. I make sure I get the turns of phrase right. I make sure I spell names right.

I thought this was normal. Turns out I’m wrong. Turns out I was foolish and full of naivety for believing that surely nobody in the world would be utterly moronic enough to, say, email my magazine with entirely the wrong magazine’s name following the word “Dear”.

You’d think, if you’re thinking of emailing a magazine called a certain thing, you’d make sure you put the name of said certain thing at the start of it.

See I’m clearly of a different class. If I’ve ever emailed my mother, it has never began “Dear Darren Ambrose”. Why? Because I pay attention. When I ring up the boss of the local Best One to complain about their phenomenal lack of Pot Noodle variety on show (one complaint a week, every week) I don’t – knowing his name is Yannis – ask “can I speak to Frenzal Rhomb please?”

When I write a covering letter for a job I don’t put [insert company name here] for the name of the company – I have genuinely seen that. I don’t talk about how much I love the place, the magazine, the people, the whatever, then get a very basic fact about them entirely wrong – especially something you can find out about with the most basic of research.

But apparently people out there make these mistakes. And like Reno Raines, I’m going to don a sweet leather duster and travel the world, eliminating them all for the good of mankind.

That’s what he did in Renegade, right? I can’t be bothered checking.

*I can’t remember where I’ve stolen that from.