I Am Livid

As part of the ongoing fun-less month of Sober January, a few of us, including Mr & Mrs Fat Jim went to the local Cinema on Saturday night to see the new Tom Cruise film, Valkyrie.  I had been careful not to read any reviews, as I did not want to accidentally read a spoiler and find out if whether or not they managed to kill Hitler.

When we arrived at the cinema, there were two huge queues for the confectionery, but I can not enjoy a film without sweets, and Fat Jim needs and enormous box of popcorn so we took our place in one of the queues.

A few minutes later we noticed the other queue was moving much more quickly than our own.  As always, this presents a dilemma.  Do you jump ship and join the other one, or stick it out where you are?  The law of Sod dictates the one you are in will always move more slowly, so we decided to stay put. Then, we watched as a women, in the position we would have been in had we moved queues, began taking clear strides ahead of us in the race to the service point.

We had been queueing for ten minutes when we discussed shop lifting.  I mean, technically we had every intention of paying for our goods, but they were making it very difficult, and we were in danger of missing the trailers, which are often the best bit in Tom Cruise movies.

“I could create a diversion for you?” offered Fat Jim as our plan began to take shape.

“Like what?”

“A domestic disturbance of some kind.  I could slap the missus about a bit?”

“No you fucking will not!” replied Mrs Fat Jim, reminding who was boss.

“OK, how about a bit of shouting and running around?”

“Excellent.  Go!”

“I’ll do it for a tenner.”

“You want to charge me ten pounds so I can steal less than three pounds worth of confectionery?”

“Well, when you put it like that.  But I am offering.”

Unfortunately, I have a rudimentary understanding of economics, and so declined this generous offer.  I will however take him up on it if ever I want to steal a TV or a car.  Ten pounds for a public diversion is actually quite good value when you think about it.

As we finally got to the front of the queue, we noticed that there were three members of staff servicing the other queue, and only one child approaching puberty serving ours.

“Do you realise there are three people serving that queue, and just you on this one.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s funny isn’t it.” replied the tattooed and lip-ringed child.

“No, it’s not remotely funny.  We’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes.”

“Oh yeah, sorry,  I didn’t mean it like that.”

“We might miss the trailers, and they are generally the best bit in Tom Cruise movies.”

“I’m sorry, again.”

We missed the trailers and the film began with a statement that it was based on a true story, and no, they did not kill Hitler.

Podcast 15 arrives with not one, but TWO celebrity interviews!  Cliff and I talk to Internet superstar and Bloggie nominee Scaryduck, and I chat to some midget who was on the tele recently.  I impress Cliff by becoming the worlds first (and therefore best) Podcast illusionist, Cliff gets delayed on his commute by the Queen’s pet, and we delve once more into the history books to pick up the big stories on this day from years gone by.

The new podcast feed is here, clicking on which should give you various subscription options.  And despite me doing my best to balls everything up, you can still subscribe in iTunes by clicking this link.  We may have lost our podcast page (and any nice reviews you wrote about us), but we hope to get that back in the coming days.  Those of you still doing things the old fashioned way can listen by pressing play below.

We are also now on Twitter, and you can follow us here.

 

 Using your Illusionism [32:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

All around the world there are species of animal on the verge of extinction.  This is a shame, especially when man has had an effect on the species’ survival.  They really should look to stop what this man is doing.   He is causing a lot of problems.  A discussion of the plight of endangered animals due to the impact of this man led to a friend them correcting me when I mentioned someone who had sponsored a Panda.

“You mean GIANT Panda”

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do.  It’s called the giant Panda.”

I am pretty sure this is just a marketing ploy, because I don’t think they are giant at all.  Not that I have seen one in real life, but they do look like small-ish black and white bears.  Admittedly, a lot of things look quite big when stood next to a Chinamen (I am still convinced the Great Wall of China is a bit like the M42), but surely calling them ‘giant’ is stretching it a bit?

So I did some research and it turns out they were correct, they really are called Giant Pandas.  Which begs the question, where are all the normal-sized Pandas?  Have they already died out?  It would be typical of our society to focus on the freaks and ignore all the normal animals.  It is the X Factor and Big Brother generation in all it’s glory.

So I did a little search, and there was a smaller panda.  Do you know what it was called?

It was called The Pygmy Giant Panda.

So it was still a giant, but it’s a bit of a small one.  However, calling it The Panda would never do.  How would they raise millions world-wide for research into a species with such a common sounding name as The Panda?  No, they have to sex it up a bit.  The Little Big Panda sounded too native-American I guess, and the Mini Massive Panda sounds a bit silly.  I am pretty sure The Titchy Enormous Panda also made the shortlist, but none had the ring of it’s final name.

So Pygmy Giant Panda it is.  Once again pandering (ahem) to societies need to embrace the freaks.

Have you seen the new Virgin Airlines 25th anniversary advert?

It is a celebration of 25 years in the business, and ends with the tag line, “Still red hot”.  The advert is a 90 second message which is essentially saying, “Come and fly with us, because you will definitely want to have sex with all of the the air hostesses, and you women passengers will want to shag the pilots.”

I suppose it’s true that sex sells, so I should not be surprised.  But personally I think it is false advertising.  I flew to Barbados with Virgin last summer, and there were some right dogs serving the drinks.  I was in cattle class, admittedly, but still.  They were still very good at their jobs, don’t get me wrong.  I just didn’t want to have sex with them.  I do not know if they wanted to have sex with me, it never came up.

Virgin are setting themselves up for a fall with this campaign.  How many horny travellers will pay that little extra to fly Virgin only to find themselves being served peanuts by Anne Widdecombe’s ugly sister?  Of course, there are people who like that sort of thing, and pay good money for it, but why travel across the Atlantic to get fed by ten ton Tess?  There lots of websites and private members clubs you can visit if you are into ugly fatties.  Probably.

Anyway, if you happen to work for Virgin, and look like the cabin crew in the video, feel free to get in touch to correct me.

This is a short promo for the Angry & Cliff podcast, it’s less than two minutes long and includes a couple of snippets from recent shows along with a couple of our new jingles.  I’m not sure what it says when after five hours of podcasting, our highlight reel is just over ninety seconds.

Really, I am posting this purely to gage the extent of my balls up referred to in the previous post.  I would appreciate it if you could let me know if you received it as normal by whatever method you use.  Ta muchly.

The new feed is here, for anyone not previously subscribed:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/iamlividpodcast

All being well a new episode will be out next Wednesday as usual.

 

 Standard Podcast [1:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Do you remember last week, when I went through a bit of boring admin, and I told you all that once a year I tend to get a bit bored and like to play with things in the background?

Well, I decided to have a little play with things in the background.

And I fucked it up MASSIVELY.

Or rather, Feedburner fucked it up massively.

By using Feedburner’s swish new email subscription service (thank you to the eight of you who have subscribed so far) I invalidated the podcast feed, so those of you who have subscribed in iTunes, or one of the other podcast services, would no longer get any updates.

Long story short, I thought changing the feed name to something more memorable, like Iamlividpodcast would fix it.  Which it did.  Hooray for me!

Until someone pointed out that all of the subscribers to the old feed would now disappear and would no longer get any updates.  Booo for Feedburner!

Any normal person with a long history of covering their tracks would simply change the feed name back to what it was, and disable the email notifications, thus ensuring you would never know about their fuck up.  Alas, I tried that, but it wouldn’t let me (it says the old feed name it is already reassigned, which it clearly isn’t).

So this is the position in which I find myself.  Cliff and I have a podcast, but no-one will be able to listen to it (unless you listen to it through this site).  If you happen to be one of our few hundred listeners, we would much appreciate it if you could update your subscriptions to this feed http://feeds2.feedburner.com/iamlividpodcast.

If you know anyone else who listens, but doesn’t read here, perhaps you could pass on the message?  Feel free to miss out the whole EPIC FAIL bit, perhaps you could say it is a new and improved service or something.  Big me up a bit.  Lie.  I don’t care.

You might get this message more than once in the coming week as I will be updating the feed details all over the place, so I apologise in advance if you keep hearing what a fucktard I’ve been.

Just when we were starting to get the hang of actually making the podcasts as well…

We took our seats in the pub and I looked at my watch.  It was 10:13pm.

This Friday night was something of an experiment.  Myself, Fat Jim, Mrs Fat Jim and Amy were having a night out as part of our Detoxification January.  This involved zero alcohol for the entire evening. Nada.

We had been out since 7:30pm, and it was slowly dawning on me how much funnier my friends are when I have been drinking.  It is lucky I am so funny at all times and at all levels of sobriety, otherwise the night would have been a complete write-off.

We sat in the busy pub with our soft drinks in front of us and chatted. The typical Friday night discussions on topics such as “Would you eat a fat person for a hundred grand?” or “If you knew you would definitely get away with it, what is the worst crime you would commit?” were summarily dispensed with.   Soon, we had covered all of our working weeks, our recent DIY experiences and we had taken the piss out of a friend who had joined us and was actually daring to drink real alcohol.   We then made detailed plans for our first night out at the end of January when our detox was over and when we could all drink again.  We argued, at length, about the perfect time to commute from Windsor into London in order to minimise traffic, length of journey, busy trains and tubes.  We also debated the pros and cons of of carbonated mineral water versus still as an alcoholic beverage substitute (we agreed the bubbles give the impression it could just be a large G&T).

Finally, we ran out of things to talk about and silence was again upon us.

I looked at my watch.  It was 10:19pm

Podcast 14 sees Cliff and I rise to the email challenge to make our podcast “a bit more like those radio ones”.  We have jingles, celebrity endorsements and even a bit of music.  In between all that uninteresting stuff we discuss President Obama’s first twenty minutes in office, our experiences with horse riding, and what it would be like if we all used Facebook techniques in real life.

As always, you can listen to it below.  You can also get the podcast feed here, find us on iTunes here, or join our Facebook group here.  You can also drop us an email at podcastREMOVE_THIS_BIT@iamlivid.com.

 

 It's just too difficult to stop [30:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“Why is he still outside?” I asked. “He’s been out there ages.”

“He’s scarifying the lawn.”

I had never heard the term scarifying before, and it sounded absolutely terrifying.  I had images of my friend jumping out on the lawn shouting “Boo!” or running around with a sheet over his hard pretending to be a ghost or member of the Ku Klux Klan.  I wasn’t sure of the botanical benefits of such an activity, but I am about as far from green-fingered as it is possible to be (brown fingered?), so how would I know?

As it turns out, my assumptions were completely wrong.  Scarifying is merely the process of getting dead stuff off the the grass by poking it repeatedly.  In fact, it would be fair to say that it is possibly the least scary activity on the planet.  Unless someone has hidden land mines in your garden, which would admittedly up the adrenaline levels a notch or two.  Thinking about it, I would actually pay good money to watch someone scarify a minefield.

It got me thinking about the person that came up with this name for the activity of “clearing up dead shit off the grass”.  They were obviously trying to sex it up a bit.  Or possibly even trying to impress a woman.  Women are well-known for reacting positively to men who thrive in dangerous situations; firemen, secret agents, inner-city schoolteachers etc. so what better way of making your potentially dull vocation sound more exciting than by giving one of it’s more boring activities a dangerous sounding name?

The more I think about it, the more I think these professional gardeners might just be geniuses.

I am stood at the bar in Paddington station with half an hour to kill till my next train.  I may not have mentioned it much, but I am not drinking during January, so I have the embarrassment of ordering a mineral water to look forward to.  I am sure my liver is thanking me.  Silently.  And with nothing outwardly noticeable.

The middle-aged man in front of me at the bar looks familiar, but I can’t place him.  This is annoying because I am good with faces.  Rubbish with names, but great with faces.  Very often I will see some obscure actor on TV and point out that he was previously that guy in that show about the thing, you know, the one with the woman in it.

He orders a Guinness and some nuts.  As the barman finishes pouring his pint he says, quite generously in my opinion “…and take one for yourself.”

“Thanks, what sort of drink are we talking about?” queries the barman.

He is surprised at this question, as am I.

In the olden days people would regularly tip the barman, and “have one yourself” would mean take a few pence, or “two bob” as my Dad says.  Not any more, clearly.

The man shrugs his shoulders and looks at me.  This is when I recognise him.

“I didn’t realise that offer would be a negotiation.” I point out to the guy who plays that nurse in that thing in the hospital on the BBC that is a bit like ER but with uglier actors.

He chuckles and says to the barman, in uncertain tones, “Three quid?”

“Thanks very much.” concludes the barman.

He goes off to his table and I take my refreshing and healthy, yet completely unsatisfying, mineral water to a nearby table.  I take out a book and begin to read, with just twenty two minutes to kill.

A few minutes later, the guy who plays that nurse in that thing in the hospital on the BBC that is a bit like ER but with uglier actors asks me if I would mind keeping an eye on his bags whilst he goes for a cigarette.  Of course, we are both in the entertainment industry, technically, so I feel it would be churlish to refuse on the grounds that he has been on television.  I agree, but point out in tones that show I am also in the entertainment industry, that my train leaves in fifteen minutes, so I can only wait that long till he returns.  I would not miss my train for him, even though he is the guy who plays that nurse in that thing in the hospital on BBC that is a bit like ER but with uglier actors.

After ten minutes I begin to worry.  Cigarettes do not take that long to smoke, surely?  Perhaps it is an elaborate ruse, and Al Qaeda have taken to disguising themselves as the guy who plays that nurse in that thing in the hospital on the BBC that is a bit like ER but with uglier actors in order to trick innocent commuters into guarding their as-yet-unexploded incendiary devices?

I briefly consider checking his bags for explosives.  On the plus side, I could be declared a hero for not falling for Al Qaeda’s latest campaign, and saving many, many lives.  On the downside, I could be charged with attempted theft and make it to somewhere around page seven in next week’s Heat magazine.  “Top Blogger attempts to steal from the guy who plays that nurse in that thing in the hospital on the BBC that is a bit like ER but with uglier actors.” would make a headline I would never live down.

I decide to wait it out.

After fourteen minutes I pack up my things and put on my jacket as I prepare to leave for my train.  The guy who plays that nurse in that thing in the hospital on BBC that is a bit like ER but with uglier actors has not returned.  I feel he is taking our entertainment-industry camaraderie a little too far.  It is possible that by leaving his bags unattended I could inadvertently cause a security alert, but technically that would be his fault and I much prefer the sound of a Heat headline reading, “The guy who plays that nurse in that thing in the hospital on BBC that is a bit like ER but with uglier actors causes security alert by leaving bags unattended.”

My mind is made up, I will leave the bags.  As I take my first step towards the exit he returns.  He thanks me politely and I make my way to my train, at which point I remember that he plays the character Charlie in Casualty.

One of the best things about being a bloke is having the ability to take a leak standing up. Yes, I know women now have the she-wee, but it is not the same, I have tried it.

The ingenuity of man has taken this basic physical ability and used it to develop the most space saving urinals imaginable.  I am talking of course about those urinals that are essentially long silver walls with a drip tray below waist height.  There is no personal space in such an area, you can literally be touching the people on either side of you whilst trying to take a whizz.  I do not suffer from stage fright, but if I did, that would be hell.

Of course, this means that the queue for the gents is generally smaller than for the ladies, which is nice, but we do still have to queue.  At least until a gap appears, which we then fight our way into.

The gap that opened up for me was pretty central, and I took position trying not to knock the guys either side of me and throw them off their aim.

I was pissing almost straight down the drain whilst the piss from three men to my left, and three men to my right sloshed it’s way to the drain right in front of me.

That’s when I noticed it.  A bright orange stream of piss from the right, slowly diluted before gushing down the drain.  Now, there are certain places on earth where starting a conversation is frowned upon, you might be sat upon a jury, at 11am on 11th November, or during a Best Man’s speech.  But none is worse than whilst taking a piss next to a stranger.  Which is why I look back with regret about what happened next.

“Someone’s got a New Year’s resolution to take Berocca then?” I offered.

There was a chuckle. Then another.

“Thank fuck, I thought my girlfriend was trying to poison me!” was the response from the end of the line.

There was further chuckling.  A voice then chirped up from the other end of the urinal.

“I don’t believe in all that shit.  They just want your money. It’s all bollocks.”

The silence resumed, but with a few extra notches of awkwardness as no-one wanted to debate the relative merits of branded vitamin supplements with the potentially mentally unstable gentleman at the other end of our line.

I finished, shook, zipped up and washed my hands leaving the toilet without making eye contact with anyone.  I vowed never to start a conversation at the urinal ever again.

Once a year I look at this website and think, “Jesus it’s looking tired, perhaps I can jazz it up a bit?”

I then spend a few hours teaching myself basic CSS code, testing a few things, fucking it up royally, before finally admitting that I am never going to be a website designer. So I look at other ways to spice things up in my relationship with I Am Livid dot com.  I could try role playing, I could do that thing it only let’s me do on my birthday, or even have a bit of an open relationship for a while, but that doesn’t appeal, as I am the jealous type.

So instead I tinker with a few things in the background to give myself the impression that I am a proper “hands-on” kind of web publisher.

So tinker I have.  This really doesn’t make much difference to you if you are reading this post through a browser with the website up in front of you.  Little will change for you, until I can find a decent widget-friendly Wordpress theme I can steal borrow.

However, if you are one of the majority of people who now reads this through the RSS feed (the number of you varies around 350-400 depending on how boring I have been recently) then there are going to be a few minor changes.  Firstly, all of my feeds (posts, podcasts, and comments) are all now burned through Google.  Everything has been redirected so you don’t need to change ANYTHING, the posts will still be there in your RSS reader of choice until the day you unsubscribe because, “he’s gone all shit”.

What you might notice is that every few days an RSS feed item from here will have some Google adverts at the bottom of it.  This is not an attempt to extort money from you, but merely a way to try and make this website pay for itself.  Last year the Google Ads I carry above the comments section paid for my hosting and about five pints at Christmas (thanks for that).  However, with extra costs from hosting the podcast, I am now losing a few quid every month.  It’s not a lot, but it would be nice if this little corner of cyberspace at least paid for itself.  It is bad enough admitting to people that I am a blogger, without admitting I am a loss-making one at that.

I have never been one for those virtual tip jars, Paypal donations or Amazon wishlists, as I don’t expect you to fork out actual cash money for this drivel.  You’re not stupid.  Plus, it is slowly dawning on me that all publishers are blind and a book deal is pretty much out of the question.

So, should an advert catch your eye, and you are interested in looking at it a bit further, I would certainly be grateful if you did so.

And finally, everything I write on here is now available via email!  You no longer even need to go on the Internet to read my generally pointless witterings.  There will be an email subscription box on the homepage, or if you are interested, you could just fill it in here:

So that’s about it. All will be back to normal tomorrow, or maybe the next day, as I am in London all day today until late this evening (unless some arsey cockney has annoyed me enough to give me sufficient motivation to find a web cafe).

That is all.

I am a big fan of that there Facebook.  I am on it, this website is on it, the podcast is on it.  Even my own little group to stop all DEATH is on it.

I am particularly impressed when I see people shunning the requests to become a Vampire, grow a plant or populate an aquarium, and instead look to use it in an attempt to effect social change.  So I was intrigued to notice that one of my school friends had joined a group called, “What [removed] Needs”.  Of course, the [removed] is the name of my home town, but I am not giving you that, because of, well, the stigma.

This group claimed to have been set up as a forum for ideas to give to the local council, in the hope of making the town a bearable place to live.  This was a good thing as far as I could tell.

Then I read the comments from the concerned locals who were hoping to make their environment better for themselves, their children, and their children’s children.

“How about a music shop or summat?  We need an hmv!”

“I’d love to see us have our own KFC.”

“A cinema, but not one of those shit local ones.  A big multiplex, at least ten screens.”

I particularly like the last one, a cinema with ten screens would obviously thrive in a town which only recently saw celebrations in the street when its first supermarket agreed to stay open past 6pm.

The comments also show a distinct lack of understanding of the role of Local Government.  I have yet to hear of a local council meeting where the minutes were full of debate over which fast food chain would best serve the community at large.  Or why access to cut-price DVDs and box sets is so limited.

And still they wonder why I left.

And so the Podcast reaches it’s difficult teenage years with episode 13.  It is a bit of a milestone, in that Cliff and I BOTH did a bit of research before sitting down to ‘chat for a bit’, not that I think you will be able to tell the difference.  Listen in to find out why Oscar Wilde made so many trips to America, why Al Fayed wants to sign Christiano Ronaldo, and listen to our new featurette, “On this day in history”.

As always, you can listen to it below.  You can also get the podcast feed here, find us on iTunes here, or join our Facebook group here.  We also now have the ability to record phone calls, so if you’re interested in being involved in a future episode, drop us an email at podcastREMOVE_THIS_BIT@iamlivid.com.

(I have inadvertantly put a ten second piece of dead air in the recording at about 3 minutes in.  Ignore it, it is just me being shit with Garagband.  It could also be seen as prescient considering one of Cliff’s later topics for discussion.)

 

 I have nothing to declare, butt [30:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download