New Life Version...what are we on now? Four?

Hey peeps.

I am currently sat at my new desk and I thought it was probably about time that I wrote something to let everyone know that I'm not dead. I hope those of you I haven't responded to yet aren't upset. Family shit + new job - you understand.

Anyway, back to me, as is the want of this particular writer. I am now in the great city of Worcester! (it's here by the way http://bit.ly/HgNCQu - I didn't know either). It's quite nice actually. I'm in a nice, white, open office with high ceilings and about nine other people. Really small company. Oh yeah and I have a lab. It's all mine! (cue lightning strike) bwahahahaha. I'm still in the process of getting the hang of it but I'm sure I will. I've reorganised things a bit so far, moved some machines around, made it make a bit more sense. I think I've done alright for week one.

And I'm living in a hotel in the centre of town, which is pretty swanky. Less than a minute to the bar from bed. I can live with that for a while. Though it is of course lonely, so I have been online and on the phone quite a bit. And I bought a couple of games to play, which is always lovely. The problem I keep finding, however, is that I'm not simply satisfied with a game being all I do. I know that's silly - I grew up just playing games, but somewhere along the way, in my teens, I found that I liked the TV on as well. I like watching(ish) and listening to a TV whilst I labour between checkpoints. But that doesn't work with 'proper' games with story. It's fine with FIFA - I've got that mastered - but LA Noire last night kept interrupting my viewing of Wrestlemania, and that's just not on. Nobody puts Rocky in the corner.

I don't really want this to become a really long piece about the minutiae of my life here - it's much more fun if I tell you all individually, that way I can improve my telling of it and add jokes until when I tell the very last person, they'll be in stitches.

Needless to say, there is a girl amongst those nine other office dwellers and she is not unattractive. This is god news. She seems nice too. I don't know anything about her personal life yet, this being Day 4, aside from the fact that she lives in Birmingham and has housemates. But I also know that she has pretty green eyes, and that's all I really need to know. Any more than that might put me off. I don't want to know that she has a boyfriend and six cats and enjoys hiking up hills and pogoing back down. Scratch that. The last one - if that's true, I want to know. That's pretty epic.

Leave me a comment on here or Facebook cos they make me smile. There's a good reader :)

Love you all. Now fuck off.
The Dan

A Sport Named Whiskas

This has been pretty overdue, so sorry to all the…ermmm…one regular readers, for my uselessness. I shall endeavour to be better from now on.

So what’s new? Well many of you will know that I am now unemployed once more. Yep, quite the talent I’ve got there.

And it’s my own fault – I had a bit of a nervous breakdown and got £100 out of a cash machine on the company credit card to use on t-shirts and booze. In my defence, those are the two best things to spend money on though – especially when the t-shirts feature one Mr Scott Pilgrim. Yeah they still kick ass. They’re taking the edge off being a useless waste of oxygen for the time being.

So, in summary, Cambridge was shit. It didn’t work. Lots of posh people on bicycles. That’s really all I could see there. The main problem was that I wasn’t living in the city. I was living in Royston, about 10 miles south. It’s a shithole. Please, never go. Well, that is, unless you just want to sit around in a knock-off Wetherspoons. That’s all there is there. And I was living in a bed and breakfast for three months. Lovely as it was to not pay rent, get my washing and ironing done and not be tied into a contract, I could never relax properly. And I was always eating out at the pub because I had no means of cooking. Yeah, doesn’t sound too bad, until you see my waistline. I’m a tubby fuck right now, and I don’t like it. Couple that with the shaving of my head – it’s getting thin and I can’t afford haircuts right now – I’m starting to look worryingly like I did when I was 20, and nobody wants that, least of all the female population of the UK. They want pretty, confident Dan. They told me so – there was a protest outside my flat. It was weird, but flattering in a sort of backhanded way.

So what else should I talk about? I guess I should tell you all that I’m back in Portsmouth. That feels good, I have to say. Back by the sea and more importantly, back amongst people that I don’t just despise. Makes a big difference. Plus there’s the Honest Politician here, and that means £3 doubles with mixer and free pool. Can’t say fairer than that, can you? I bet it’s making a few of you wonder if you should move to Portsmouth. You should. Be near me. I’m epic.

Also, I’m on antidepressants. May as well throw it out there to those of you that don’t know. They’re really good – totally unexpectedly as well. I turned them down a year or so ago because I was in the “those things are fucking stupid and you get addicted to them” camp, but now I’m realising why they are actually, you know, prescribed by doctors. If I hadn’t been on them, I would almost certainly have fucked up immeasurably and been on the verge of suicide right now. I don’t think I’ve got the balls to kill myself though. It’s supposed to be a coward’s way out – and I get that – but really, it must take at least a bit of cajones to throw yourself in front of a bus or go buy a rope, ceiling hook and learn how to tie a noose. I’ve always wondered how suicidal people know how to tie nooses. Especially pre-internet. I mean there’s probably a tutorial on it on Youtube for it now, but it doesn’t look incredibly simple. Knowing me I would tie this piddly little thing that would snap as I kicked the stool away and all I would end up doing is spraining my ankle in the fall.

I have been feeling funnier in the last couple of weeks, since I got back, especially when riffing with Chris, but forgive me if this isn’t coming across right now because I can’t recall all of the hilarious stuff I’ve come out with. Just trust me, it was fucking funny. Oh oh oh. I have to tell you something that’s been tickling me for three days now – Chris told me that he has a new cat in his house now, and it’s been named – not by him, I must add – Tennis. That’s not an autocorrect error. That’s not my mind accidentally slipping out of my ear mid-sentence. That is a cat. Named. Tennis.

Tennis.

Tennis.

Drink that shit in. Is that not the most ridiculous name for anything you’ve ever heard ever? I mean, aside from a sport. Though it’s not got that lovely Ronseal logic of football or basketball to it, it still sort of works. I guess if you were to apply that basis of thinking to the world of tennis it would be racquetball, which is already a (rather similar) game. Or maybe runny-thwackyball. Or, judging by the last women’s game I saw, possibly gruntball. They do love a grunt nowadays. It’s all well and good when it’s a lithe Russian 18 year old, but when it’s a beastly Hungarian with arms the size of my legs, it’s just damn intimidating, and it puts you off your stroke.

Yeah, ok, resorted to lowbrow humour there. Apologies. Maybe I should stop now while I’m behind. After all, I have got my big telly back now, and there’s an awful lot of Assassins Creed Brotherhood to be played yet. And FIFA. And Mass Effect 2. Mmmmm games. Maybe I won’t bother getting one of those job things for a while yet. I’ve found I quite like sitting.

Until next time, when I promise I’ll try to make it funnier.

Dan-gerous.

The Return of The Dan (once again)

So, welcome back Me! Nice to see you again.

Thank you Me, that’s very kind of you to say. But I think you’re a bit of a douche.

Sorry to all (both?) of my regular readers for this taking so long to get around to. I’ve been shit. I have no real decent reason to excuse my absence. I’ve been busy…ish. This new job is fairly hectic. Actually that’s a lie. It’s just taken it out of me, mentally. For a while it really was hectic. I spent an entire week with some Chinese colleagues which was fun, but tiring. Up to Sheffield, back down the next day, meetings, tours, talks, training, dinner out each evening. That made it better. I actually had steak five nights in a row. Needless to say, I’m getting a bit fat.

But anyway, that passed. Well, after the Poland trip it did anyway. That was interesting, but just really quite Polish. You have to wonder why you’re in a meeting when the people on the other side of the table can’t communicate with you. But I was. So I just sat there and looked polite, all the while trying desperately to stay awake.

Now, though, it’s all got shit. They don’t like me, basically. They think I’m lazy and uninterested. Which I suppose is fair…mainly because I’m not that interested. And I’ve always been lazy. But aside from that they should really appreciate me, no?! I’m double-layer awesome, whatever that means. I’m like an awesome sandwich…with salad…and mayo…and…I think I ruined it.

So I had a disciplinary, where they basically wanted to sack me. Which is always nice…especially when you’ve just started to feel like you’re doing some half-decent work and starting to feel a part of the team. But oh well. Woe is me. I told them that I was depressed – which I am – to explain matters, and it’s down to the company doctor tomorrow to determine if I’m a big fat porky teller. That, and if they fire me, can I sue them under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. That’s right bitches, I’m disabled now! I might try and get into the Paralympics next year. I reckon I could take a guy with no arms in the swimming, something like that.

Not really sure what else to say. I’m not gonna go into everything that’s happened. I wanted to write about Nick’s wedding and the Weezer gig but too much time passed really and it’s not at the front of my mind. Brief recap then: I Best Man-ned the shit out of the wedding. Totally knocked it out the park, and looked sharp in my suit. Fuck yeah. And Weezer – well, the ticket got delivered to the wrong address. So instead of it arriving at work the day before the gig, it arrived in Portsmouth. So I had a choice. Do I discard my beloved ticket to my beloved Weez or do I act like a fucking madman and shuttle run to Pompey to fetch it?

…So halfway down the motorway, having taken a half-day at work, I start questioning how ludicrous this all is. But hey, gotta do it right? I went to the post office, grabbed the ticket, high-tailed it to Richmond, train to Vauxhall, Tube to Brixton…bit of fried chicken, couple of pints…and then they came on.

And boy did they ROCK! My lord…just…incredible. They opened with Undone. That beautiful little drum start…mmm…I might have made a small mess in my pants. Then it just continued getting better. And better. Jonas. Scorcho. Pink Triangle. The Greatest Man That Ever Lived. Then, just as I thought it couldn’t get any better…Only In Dreams followed by fucking PARANOID ANDROID! Yeah I just about exploded.

Ok enough of me geeking out. For many of you the previous paragraph just contained an awful lot of random words placed next to one another with initial caps, but to me it was simply one of the greatest nights of my life. Worth all the day’s driving. Worth the £50 petrol, the £10 train ticket. The overpriced beer, the sweat making my t-shirt stick firmly to my man-bosoms. It was all just amazing. If I could live that night again I would do so until the day I died. And I would die happy. Sweaty, but happy.

Ok this hasn’t been that funny but I’m gonna try to get better with that. Hopefully these antidepressants won’t dull my genius sense of humour. That would just be punishing the world needlessly. And the world didn’t do anything wrong, did you? No, you’re a good world. There’s a good world! I might have lost my mind. When I find it I’ll let you guys know.

Peace and love.