All that comes with it

Bon Bon was originally meant have the guest post slot on the sixth of May, however her post didn’t plop into my inbox until a week or so ago. But that’s OK, it’s only natural that she starts to forget to do a few things at her age.

For anyone who hasn’t checked out Bon Bon’s blog, I heartily recommend you do so now. She is a fantastic photographer, witty raconter, and more importantly she regularly publishes pictures of scantily clad women. In fact there’s one there now - go quick!

But when you get back from ogling girls in corsets come back here and have a go at the game Bon Bon has created. I’m rather anxious about the results.

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Mad Libs

Not being much of a writer, I’ve chosen the direction of a Mad Lib as my guest entry. This way, more intelligent people than myself will be doing all the real work. If you’re unfamiliar with Mad Libs, all you need to do is write down examples from the list of grammatical words, then place them in the story that follows in the same order. Keep in mind, the more ridiculous the word, the more nonsensical the storyline. When you see NOUN vs. NOUNS, it simply means to use a plural form. Ladder vs. ladders. Got it? Here we go…

NOUNS
EVENTS
VERB
ANIMAL
NOUN
VERB

ADJECTIVE
OCCUPATION
VERB
NOUNS
NOUNS
ADJECTIVE

VERB
ANIMAL
ADVERB
VERBS
FOOD(S)
ADJECTIVE

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All I really know about Dan is his love of fast NOUNS, and his fear of EVENTS, and his inability to VERB before breakfast. As a child, a(n) ANIMAL trampled his NOUN, which could explain why he refuses to VERB in public.

By day, Dan is a ADJECTIVE-mannered OCCUPATION, who enjoys VERB-ing pantsless, leading coworkers to keep their NOUNS locked up in his presence. He’ll find anyone willing to talk about NOUNS, and how to keep them ADJECTIVE. People seem to like him just the same.

His home life is rather quiet. Evenings are spent VERB-ing (with) the family. The kids have requested a pet ANIMAL to which Dan has ADVERB objected to. The one vice that bothers Kerry is he often VERBS while eating FOOD(S) in bed. But no man is ADJECTIVE, so she loves him just the same.

Now if we could just get him to keep his pants on.

There was a time where Whit was omnipresent in the blogging world. Wherever you went he was there first, spraying witty erudite comments around the blogosphere like an incontinent fire hydrant.

Those were the days before he went pro of course. Now he blogs for Fame Crawler, Dadcentric, the Disney Blog, Pernetricity, and Styledash. These days you have to pay for his comments. I’ve taken out the super saver casual reader plan. For just $9.95 a month he guarantees that he will read at least five of my posts and comment on a minimum of three.

And let me tell you this, it’s worth it. Because not only is Whit a marvelous writer, he’s a damn fine chap too. And on top of it all he has pretty good taste in music.

And here he is.

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When Dan first asked me to guest post over here I knew it was time for an intervention. Obviously the man had been drinking. Still, I’d never been to England before and who knows when the chance would come again, so I packed up my stuff, grabbed a fistful of U.S. dollars and swam to London. Did you know there are other cities besides London in England? They don’t tell you that on BBC America. 3 hours later I’m drinking Carlsbad beer from a can in Dan’s garden. He wouldn’t let me inside.

Anyway, I didn’t know what would be a worthy post. I didn’t want to half-ass it like I did over at Rattling the Kettle. That was uncalled for. Then it hit me- a podcast! Dan always does podcasts on his blog, what if I did one, but actually made it worth listening to? It was worth a shot.

So I made the podcast you’ll find below. I was pretty excited until Dan sweet-talked me into doing a podcast with him last week. Suddenly I have two podcasts under my belt and they’re both over here at Dan’s (insert additional under the belt jokes here).

Don’t let my rambling ways and maniacal laughter from the previous episode frighten you. I don’t talk much on this one. The real star is the music, not to mention a special appearance by the Honea Express Singers. All in all, I think it’s a worthy endeavor. I hope you do too.

Tip your waitress.
Whit

 

 Whit's Podcast [66:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (170)

Oli and I have been skirting the fringes of each other’s friendship groups for around ten years, but it’s only been in the last 18 months or so that we’ve actually become friends.

He’s a regular commenter on the blog, a enthusiastic member of the mighty Dales Walk team, and someone who obviously likes to bring things in right on their deadline (This post appeared in my inbox at 2:30am this morning).

He has his own livejournal site, and also a webpage containing some of his rather spiffing photography.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Oli.

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Thanks for inviting me to write a post Dan.  I was simultaneously very chuffed that you’d chosen me to contribute to your online opus, and a bit miffed that I didn’t get to go first.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks putting together lists of things that I could write about, but as I’ve read from other contributors, it’s best not to force these things, so I scrapped all the lists and decided to write about what’s going on at the moment.  And a few thoughts.

*****

I’ve just bought a new computer.
It’s got Vista on it - designed to make my life easier, and help consolidate all my daily functions.  Well, not ALL my daily functions but I think you hear enough about Dan’s daily functions, so I won’t go into that.
The thing is, it hasn’t made my life easier, and I guess that’s no real surprise.  It’s certainly not made my life worse, but since receiving it on Thursday morning, I’ve found myself being really quite grumpy.  The only good thing about the computer was its delivery time - ordered at 4.30pm Wednesday; received 9.15am Thursday.  Oh, and the fact that the hard disk doesn’t make horrific clunking sounds and refuse to turn on (the sole reason why I needed to buy another).

Now as I understand it, blogs are mainly used by people to tell their friends what they’ve been up to.  Sometimes they attract readers from further afield, and sometimes the more popular blogs amass a huge following from all around the world (hello everyone).
I read that blogs first started when some fellow decided to serialise Samuel Pepys’ diary (has he finished yet?), and the idea caught on.

Did Sammy P whinge about his new quill in the same way as me and my new computer?  Were the majority of his diary entries accounts of how fed up he was with various aspects of his life, or how he could never get that girl he fancied?  I suspect not, but I have noticed that the majority of blogs I’ve read feature mostly complaints and gripes, and seem to demonstrate that as a whole, the online community is not a happy bunch.

There are exceptions of course, and from what I’ve read on this here blog, we’re a contented lot (perhaps the main subject matter and the thread which connects the vast majority of posters, if not readers too, is the reason for this).

However, my experience of blogs, online messageboards and the rest of the real world has led me to the conclusion that we’d much rather complain than offer praise or thanks.
For the past 5 years, I’ve run a website for the students of St Andrews, and the main attraction of the site is the growing number of messageboards.  Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a trend on these boards, which is that almost every single discussion will dissolve into a bitter, argumentative slanging match, usually before the end of the first page, and I’ve come up with two  reasons why.

1) We don’t think enough.

It’s not that we don’t think of sensible strategies to argue or debate; it’s not that we don’t think of enough things to raise in order to prove our point; it’s simply that we either don’t think how our message will be interpreted, or we don’t think what the other person could mean.  I may be digging too deep, or I may be waffling (but hey, that’s another purpose of a blog, right?) but what I’m getting at is this:  If I write a flippant, off the cuff comment, and you read it after a bad day at work, you’re going to interpret it in a different manner from if the sun is shining and you’ve just been with the person you love.

Perhaps this could be resolved by being more eloquent, or being less ambiguous in our writing.  Perhaps we should post more things about the positive stuff that’s happening in our lives.

2) We frown while we type
(This one’s a lot easier to fix)

This student community website of mine causes me no end of trouble (including the occasional threat of a lawsuit for defamation*), heartache and frustration, but all of this fades away into nothingness when one person tells me that they chose the university in the town where I live because of the information they’ve gleaned from my website. Just one person every once in a while who says, “thank you”.

Which leads me to think:
I’ve seen shops’ websites with a “How to complain” page, but without “How to get in touch to say thanks”. I’ve seen stacks of complaint forms sitting in offices, but never a “thanks for doing a great job and providing the level of service I expect”.

What would happen if we started phoning or writing to the people who we buy stuff from to tell them that it’s arrived, and it’s exactly what we’ve ordered?
I’ll tell you - it confuses them.  They’re not used to it (at first). I’ve been doing it for a while now, so they’re getting used to it.  And my suppliers give me better deals.  And I get free stuff.  And I now receive “friendly reminders” instead of “final demands” if ever my accounts department is a little late with a payment.  And I get really friendly phone calls and twenty-odd minute chats from people who would previously have only spoken to me if I’d called them to conduct business.

And I become less grumpy.

And I realise that this computer isn’t trying to ruin my life, and although it’s not exactly making it easy at the moment, any frustrations that the computer causes don’t REALLY matter in the long run.

Here’s a thought - as you’re driving around today, smile and wave at people.  People you don’t know.  They’ll smile and probably wave back, even if they don’t recognise you.  Ring up someone who isn’t expecting you to, and thank them for something they’ve done.  You’ll both feel better for it.

A friend of the family had the following cross-stitched on a cushion (which I don’t feel invalidates the point in any way): Happiness is contagious - we get it from each other.

That’s another thing blogs are good for - overly sentimental rubbish that you probably should take heed of. Oh, and if you choose to post a reply, try not to frown as you hunch over your keyboard…

*****

So there we go.  The longest post I’ve written for a blog.
Even my own blog doesn’t get such a lengthy submission (truth be told, I only signed up to Livejournal so that I could access someone’s private
area). I hadn’t realised it was such hard work - I’ll regard your blog in a new light from hereonin Dan.

Although I suspect I’ll continue to skip the bits about your daily functions.

Oli Walker

Morticia is a a friend. Yeah she’s always been a good friend of mine. But lately something’s changed that ain’t hard to define, Morticia’s got herself a girl and i wannna make her mine.

No, wait… I think that’s Jesse. I always get those two mixed up.

Morticia is actually a friend of Kerry’s, although she has been commenting here long enough to be counted as my friend too I reckon. I’ve only met her in person once. We went to a Barenaked Ladies gig with her and her beloved Mr Pops, but she seems like a jolly good egg. Especially since she was kind enough to persuade her entire office to give some money to our Dales Walk.

In this guest post Morticia is attempting to break the world record for longest ever blog entry, clocking in at one thousand three hundred and eleven words. Unfortunately she just misses out to Xbox4NappyRash who recently racked up a staggering three thousand four hundred word on his diatribe about why Colgate toothpaste is superior to Aquafresh.

It’s all high quality stuff though. So why don’t you pull up a coffin, pore yourself a cup of tea from your Diana memorial teapot, and enjoy a little slice of Mortica.

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Lady Diane, Free Tibet Protesters versus the Olympic Torch and other
ramblings…..

Well I for one feel better that almost 7 million pounds of taxpayers money has been spent on the inquest into Lady Diane’s death. Not.

No doubt though, the conspiracy theory lovers out there are already cooking up the ways in which this inquest has been fiddled and nobbled by various shadowy security forces on the instructions of the Royal Family.

Mohammed Al Fayed appears to have backtracked from his position at the start of the inquest of ‘I will accept the verdict of this jury’ to something resembling his starting place of ‘all those who gave evidence are liars, MI5 are behind it all on the instructions of Prince Phillip, they told me they were engaged and she was pregnant….’

Why can’t it be accepted that if you get into a car being driven at high speed by someone drunk who is trying to avoid photographers and you don’t wear a seatbelt then chances are you will hit something and come to considerable harm/death. Even if you are a princess.

Those set of circumstances - failure to wear a seatbelt, drunk driving fall into my category of ‘no sh+t Sherlock’ and no doubt Sherlock himself would have been appalled at the waste of time, public funds and energy expended on this inquest, he’d have reached the same conclusion quicker than I can type ‘He never did say its elementary my dear Watson’ in the books.

I wonder if the man who went to the inquest and painted or got his sister to paint on his face ‘Diana’ in blue paint, because she came to him and he knew thats what she would have wanted thought of the outcome though. I shall have to see if he’s interviewed in the Daily Fail tomorrow.

I didn’t see any news today but I did hear a very impassioned protester on the radio shouting ‘Liberte Pour La Tibet’ earlier, somehow it sounded all the more powerful and strong for being shouted in french. It seems the protests in France did more to disrupt the procession too as I heard the torch had to be put out and put on a bus at one point.

I saw bits of the torch’s progress on the news yesterday though, bet all those police people having to run alongside it were knackered.

I win at being housewifey today too, as I did lots of ironing, made some soup and prepared some parsnip and celeriac for dinner and then Mr Pops cooked the dead cow to go with it and I made some rolled oat cookies too. Normal service of get in and watch re-runs of the human effluent known as Jeremy Kyle on ITV2 will resume tomorrow.

I was watching Batman last night - god I love Adam West’s voice and even if he is dressed in a silly outfit he still manages to look really quite attractive. In his Batman outfit that is, I don’t want to see him as Bruce Wayne in a jacket and check shirt - that doesn’t show off his chest or his manly chin, it just ruins it.

Anyway I was struck by something he said to Robin after he had rescued him from some very nasty looking but ultimately quite harmless plastic crocodiles. Robin was berating himself for being so stupid as to let King Tut capture him:

“Experience teaches slowly Robin and at the cost of many mistakes”

Wise words indeed.

A friend of mine showed me a whole website devoted to the sage sayings of Batman, I’m not sure if this one was on it but I love it. Think its going to be my new motto along with ‘what would Lady Diane do?’ and ‘que ferait Edith?’ I am also going to be adding ‘what would Amber St Claire do?’ to this category - she is the devilish minxy hero of Forever Amber by Kathleen Windsor, one of the most engrossing reads I’ve read in a long time.

I shall quote it if I wake up with a terrible hangover on Sunday morning after attending a Gin and Whores Part. Part Jack the Ripper Re-enactment but mostly having fun with chums and its thanks to the generosity of chums who are donating a lift and bed for the night that I am able to attend. Providing my stomach doesn’t decide to misbehave wildly between now and then that is. Its been a bit grumbly the past couple of days but hopefully it
won’t get any worse. Grumbly I can manage. Bent over double in intense pain I cannot.

I don’t think there’ll be much ‘ginning’ on my part though as I really can’t drink more than a glass or two of white wine at the moment. There definitely won’t be any whoring on my part either - unless of course Detective Goren, Gene Hunt or Batman attends in which case my vow of fidelity to Mr Pops would be broken quicker than you could say ‘tinker, tailor, soldier, twat’ or ‘to the batmobile’.

Mr Pops made me laugh this morning when I asked him what he had had for his breakfast, he’d said he’d had some toast.

“But we’ve run out of butter*” I said “so what did you put on it?”

He said he’d put marmalade on it and I said ‘eeuuw yuck’ as the thought of toast without butter is anathema to me, so he then said “but its alright I put sh+t on the other piece”.

Thinking of toast though, I’m reminded of toast toppers, I don’t know if you can still get them but they were all the rage at one time - before Pot Noodle became the snack of choice for the feckless, lazy, hungover, non tastebud owning types - little tins of what looked like vomit. I used to buy them and then leave it piled up next to someone who had been horribly drunk the night before to make them think they had thrown up. Ahh memories.

I cannot drive, I have taken lessons before but I was utterly hopeless at it, found it completely terrifying and was just basically crap in a car as anything other than a decorative passenger**. Perhaps if I had learnt when I
was much much younger but alas my parents were too skint at the time to pay for lessons for me and I didn’t think to prioritise having any - choosing instead to spend my very part time job wages on eyeliner and hair dye***.

I am however extremely good at road rage - Mr Pops will vouch for this, although I cannot drive I do know the rules of the road and my road rage at other drivers who do not follow the rules is second to none. However its not fair that Mr Pops has to do all the driving and me do all the shouting so I have decided to give it another go.

Another reason for giving it a go (aside from independence from public transport and so not having to put up with the significant and pungent minority of unwashed that use it, along with those that want to deafen all round them with their bloody awful tinny shit music) is that Mr Pops has promised to buy me a hearse if I pass my test.

That man sure knows how to motivate me :-)

_{*I’ve been a slack housewife this week and neglected to buy some more.
** I love the lady in the sat nav as she means I don’t have to try and follow maps anymore, even though she does sound like she is saying ‘course’ the roundabout and not ‘cross’ it.
*** not much difference between now and then really…}

For many people April the first has comic overtones. But for us it will always be a day for sad reflection. Today is the anniversary of Joseph Salmon’s death.

I want to thank Neil and Rachael for writing this guest post. Words can’t express how proud I am of my friends.

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Joseph

Three is the Magic Number; Three Steps to Heaven; Three Coins in a Fountain. As numbers go, three is a pretty popular one. Three seems to be a number which is just, well, right. It rounds things off nicely. We have had three children. On his last birthday our son was three. Three years ago our son died.

It’s hard to believe sometimes that it’s so long since we lost him. Come October, he will have been dead longer than he was alive and we’ll have yet another hurdle to get over. But that will be then and this is now. The fact is, on the 1st April we will be reliving what happened on the day we lost our sunshine, our first born child, our big boy. Joseph.

Joseph had been very happy when he went to bed on the Thursday night. He was tucked up in bed, he was kissed and cuddled, and he went to sleep. Had the Friday morning been like any other day, he would have woken up and carried on with his life just like he had done for the past three and a half years. But that was not to be. The hours, days, weeks and months, and now years that followed Joseph’s death have brought many changes for our family, but the one thing that remains constant is how much we miss him and how we ache to have him back

To all intents and purposes we look like a “normal” family. Two parents, two children. Nobody would know to look at us that we have lost a child. We still sleep, eat, talk, even laugh and have fun. But what we have running round inside our heads all the time, like a non-stop soundtrack is “Our child has died”. To have created a life, got through those first few uncertain weeks of pregnancy and produced a healthy, happy child who seemed to have all the time in the world to grow and develop, and then to have him taken away, was a cruel, harsh blow. It pulled the rug from under us and everything we knew, or thought we knew, about life was thrown into complete turmoil. In the few days following Joseph’s death, we spent a lot of time just sitting, saying nothing. It was as though the enormity of not only what we had just gone through, but would have to go through for the rest of our lives, was so great that the only thing we could manage to do was breathe in and out. Even that was an effort at times.

When we look back on those early days, it’s amazing to think that we have got to where we are now. Our second child, our daughter Lydia, will be starting school this September and she is a confident and happy girl. She knows that her brother used to live with us and we have told her that he lives in heaven now, and she does talk about him. But, thankfully, she does not feel the pain that we do and does not have the ache and the sadness to deal with every moment of every day. We are grateful to have her though and we know that, in the first raw weeks after Joseph’s death, if it had not been for her we would not have got up in the morning. There would have been no point. Little children have a way though of making you carry on. We have certainly found that to be true having since had a third child, Eve, who propelled us back into the world of having two children, and who continues, with her sister, to make us marvel at just how good life can still be.

So life does go on, even though it’s not on the path that we would have chosen. Without our boy we would have been very different people. He was the first person we loved unconditionally. He made us better people. He was funny, bright, affectionate, friendly, amazing. He was our lad. We miss the way he talked, the sound of his footsteps, the way he smiled.

We miss him every day.

Neil and Rachael Salmon
The Joseph Salmon Trust
PO Box 1538
Huddersfield
HD1 9LB

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As many of you know, In July of this year myself and ten others will be walking 78 miles in 6 days in aid of the charity Neil and Rachael have founded in memorial to their son.

The Joseph Salmon Trust supports parents who have lost a child by providing financial assistance to those who need it most. This may be to help with funeral costs or to allow the self employed a break from work while they come to terms with their loss. Grieving families have enough to deal with without worries about where they will find the money to say goodbye to their child or pay the next electricity bill. Nothing we can do can make their situation better, but we can do something to stop it getting worse.

The generosity shown to this cause by the blogging world has been amazing. So far we have raised over $1600, and the figure is still climbing. There is still plenty of time to donate if you have not done so already. You can either donate by credit/debit card via paypal here:

Or you can mail your donation directly to the Trust at the above address (if you’re not in the UK please don’t send a check as it is prohibitively expensive to cash).

You can find out more about the walk at the Dales Walk blog. As always if you want to reprint all or part of this post to promote the charity you are more than welcome to.

Thank you.