Blogging temporarily suspended due to delirium

Just a quick post to let everyone know that I might be blogging light over the next few days due to my impending flight back to America for the Holidays. It is now 6:07 am here in London, and I haven't even bothered to go to sleep tonight. I had two finals today, and because my last final conflicted with my flight out on Wednesday, my professor allowed me to type up two papers instead. I have just finished the second one a few minutes ago, and now I have to shower and finish packing before taking care of some last minute business at 8 am. And at 9 am I have to leave the residence to make my way to Gatwick airport. If everything goes well, I will be home about 24 hours after I set foot out the door.

Anyway, yeah, I am really loopy after not sleeping at all, so I am probably not going to post until I catch up on some sleep over the next few days. And to everyone in Pocatello, I'll see you all over the next few days.

R.I.P Tony Danza's Career

Yeah, I know Tony Danza's career has been over for some time, but I didn't realize how badly he had faded from the public mind until last week. At our Christmas party, I lamented to my friend that I couldn't get to the table with the mincemeat pies because everyone was standing in front of the table. She, being very small, offered to sneak through the tangled mess of revelers and retrieve a pie for me. I declined, and said with the kind of courage and conviction that only comes after four drinks, "Nah, I'm about to be like Tony Danza and go over there and show them who's the boss."

Her reaction? Nothing. Now, I've dropped some duds when it comes to jokes in my time, but it is rare to see a complete blank from someone. If a joke is crap, I at least expect to get a grimace or a thumbs down from someone. But her...nothing.

Turns out she had never heard of Tony Danza or Who's the Boss. Damn, what a waste of a perfectly good Tony Danza reference!

The Rambo Spoon

Rambo Spoon: First Blood

The other night I went out with some friends to see a musical, and on the way there we decided to stop at Burger King because my friend Conny wanted to get a burger. I saw that they had shakes for 99 pence, and sidled up to counter and ordered a Strawberry Cheesecake shake. The guy who took my order promptly went back and put in the vanilla ice cream, but when it came time to mix in the flavor, he just sort of stood there and fiddled around with some stuff for a few moments.

Now, before going too far with this story, I should not that I was not at all surprised to see some odd behaviour at this particular location. It is in the middle of Leicester Square, which is enormously busy with people at all hours of the day and night. Furthermore, London fast food chains don't what we in the USA like to refer to as "menus" on display. They just have really big pictures of a few sandwhiches on big plastic signs, and very few have any sort of pricing attached. That is it. There are no price listings for fries, drinks, or sides. Most of the burgers aren't listed at all anywhere. I have no idea how much a cheeseburger and fries would cost without asking one of the pimple-faced teenagers at the counter. So yeah, the London burger joints are a bit kooky to begin with.

Anyway, the last time I was at this particular Burger King we saw the master of mops in action. If there is a Burger King out there somewhere, this guy is certainly the Mop Prince. A guy dropped his small soda, so about ten ounces of pop and a few ice cubes hit the floor. Without hesitation, the Mop Prince sprung into action. He started out by mopping the immediate vicinity, which made sense. But here is the thing: he never stopped. He decided to mop down the entire damn place. This guy was like the Terminator with that mop. I swear he was sent back from the future just to show spilled sodas who is in charge. This guy had ambition man...I bet by next week he'll be in charge of cleaning out the grease traps in the fryers. God speed to you, you Mop Magician.

Back to my shake. After futzing around for a few seconds, he turns to me and says that they ran out of Strawberry Cheesecake flavoring, and wondered if I would settle for Cookies and Cream. I quickly agreed to his proposal. Satisfied with my purchase, I left and happily ate my ice cream as I walked down the street. But something was wrong, and I didn't realize it at this time. The spoon they give you has a very deep indentation on it, which means that when you purse your lips to try and get all the ice cream off the spoon, the sides of the spoon are really pressed up against you mouth. At one point I glanced down and saw a red streak in my ice cream, and initially thought it was some rogue Strawberry flavoring that the guy put in before it ran out. Quickly though, I realized that the sharp side of the spoon had managed to slice open the inside of my lip and I was bleeding into my ice cream.

First Blood: Part II

I was cut. I was cut and bleeding into my 99 pence shake. It was a surprise attack, the Pearl Harbor of the ice cream world, and my Burger King value item had drawn first blood. I was reeling, and needed a cutman, a good cutman. Too bad Angelo Dundee wasn't around. Things threatened to get a little blurry due to loss of blood, but I knew that if I didn't finish this shake, he was going to finish me. It was a duel to the death, and the only wise thing was to eat the shit out of that sneaky bastard of a shake. Round 1 went to the shake for splitting my lip. Round 2 went to me by coming back strong and digging into the shake with renewed fervor. Round 3 was going to decide the winner.

Rambo Spoon Part III

The clock was running, and the round was almost over. We were getting closer and closer to the theatre, so I knew I had to go for the knockout blow on this backstabbing Burger King Dessert. I reeled the shake by ripping off the see-thru plastic dome to get better access to his creamy innards. Mouthful after mouthful went down, despite my lip pain, and I finished the shake off just before getting to the theatre. I was vindicated. My next order of business was to go back to Burger King and warn them that this fight was over, and they had better not have vengeance on their mind. To drive the point home, I used this classic quote from Rambo himself:

I could have killed 'em all, I could kill you. In town you're the law, out here
it's me. Don't push it. Don't push it or I'll give you a war you won't believe.
Let it go. Let it go.

To their credit, they have let it go. But ever since that night, I've been sleeping with one eye open.

How I almost got demolished by four guys...

So last night we had our Christmas party at the University, and the free wine was flowing, which of course means that Andy has to do something very embarassing to himself. After a few hours and a few drinks at the party, we decided to take go to a club and enjoy some dancing. After an hour or so there I started to get pretty sleepy, since it was getting to be pretty late, so I decided to take a short walk around town and then head home. I walked down to Trafalgar Square and sat on the steps for a few minutes, where I actually almost fell asleep. Figuring that it would be unwise to fall asleep out on the street, I started my walk back home.

On my way back from Trafalgar Square, I often have to walk up Charing Cross Road, which is a pretty busy street, packed with people out walking at all hours of the night as it runs through an area packed with clubs, theatres, and cinemas. As I'm walking drunkenly home, this guy and I end up bumping into each other. Not a big deal, since this is a busy street and it can happen pretty easily. Like I said, no big deal, right?

Well, apparently this was a big deal, because this guy who was involved in the bumping says to me, "Watch where you're going n*&%a!" Huh? Did that guy just drop the N-bomb on me? Anyone who knows me knows that I don't take too kindly to bigotry and things of that nature at all. At all. So I wasn't happy in the least just because that word got used. So I stop and just stare at this guy and his three friends as they walk away. One of them keeps glancing back at me, and I'm just giving them the full-on evil eye. I'm actually pretty lucky that they decided not to come back, because I am far from the toughest guy in the world, and I'm sure I would have gotten one hell of a kicking if I ended up fighting four guys at once, especially given how ridiculously hammered I was. Yikes, that was a close one.

Oh, and the most absurd part about this whole situation? The guy who dropped the N-bomb on me was black, and his three friends looked like they were fairly white to me. Now I am obviously about the whitest guy on earth, but none of this really clicked for me until later on. So I just think that was a bizarre situation all the way around, and one that I'm glad didn't get out of hand, for my sake.

Parcel Force! F yeah!

So I'm waiting on a package out here, and I just got an email that it was dispatched. I wanted to see where it was sent from in the UK, so I followed the link to where I was could track my package. I went to the link, and saw that the website was a place called Parcel Force. Holy shit. You have to check out their website, because this business, especially their logo, looks incredibly badass. Oh, and apparently they are sending my package via "Securicor Omega Express." Jesus, are they delivering uranium to me? Am I getting a shipment of gold bars or something? "Securicor Omega Express"? I feel so hard-core getting a package from these guys. I fully expect a full squadron of armed guards to tactically deploy on my residence hall. You know the drill, they are going to pop in some flash-bang grenades, bust through the windows of our common room and scare the living bejesus out of all of us. I know they are going to start barking out orders:

Down down down down down!!!! You!! Don't move!! Give me you hand!! Sign for the package now!! Move move move move move move move move!!!!

I so want to work for this company now, because you know you aren't just an employee, you are a tactical officer. And you don't just drive a delivery van, you drive a Securicor Omega Device. And when you have someone sign for something, you don't give them your pen, you give them your ink rapid deployment system.

I think it is time for Parcel Force to broaden their business scope and take on some more tasks beyond just delivery packages. First step it to get into international peacekeeping. Honestly, if you had a choice between having UN Peacekeepers come to your country, or mothertrucking PARCEL FORCE, who would you rather avoid? I think the question to that one is obvious.

Cough syrup? Yeah, that's hot...

So I've been living the rock and roll lifestyle over the past week, and its effects are really starting to take its toll on me. In the past week, I've had nights where I have gotten 3, 4, and 2 hours of sleep. This is mainly because I've written almost 45 pages of essays for three classes: two papers were a little over ten pages, and one was about 23 pages long.

Wow, I'm really busy, huh? Well, if you count drinking a bunch of booze as busy, then yes, I have been busy. That, after the lack of sleep, is the second main factor of my rock and roll lifestyle. When I'm not working on papers, I've had a few night of boozing with the people at my building. I don't want to overstate the case, because I actually have had more quiet nights, like going to see Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (see it now!!) and the latest Harry Potter, but I have had a few long nights around Byng Place over the past week and a half.

On top of this, I've picked up the Byng Place Plague of Death, which has stricken almost everybody in the building. We've had at least two people have to go to the hospital so far, and the whole building feels more like a hospital ward than a residence hall. Everyone is constantly coughing and shuffling about slowly. Sucks.

So last night, after another late night paper writing session, I tried to go to sleep about 4:15 in the morning. Alas, after 30 minutes spent coughing, I found I couldn't catch one wink while hacking away. Frustrated, I threw on a pair of pants and a sweater that (after two minutes outside) I realized was much too thin to be walking around in winter in, I headed down to the local Tesco store to find some cough remedy. I looked at the syrups first, and I have to say, these products were a little too racy for my taste. I eventually settled on the cough drops, but I can't get these cough syrups out of my head. The thing I can't get over is that they all advertise themselves as being for chesty coughs. Am I the only one who thinks that name for an illness is kind of sexy? Chesty cough. It almost sounds like a stripper, or a porn star:

"Chesty Cough stars in Bad Throat! It started out as just a little tickle in her throat, but before she knew it, she developed a full-on hard case of Chesty Cough! Can she cough it out in time? Or will that man-size tickle have it's own brand of cough syrup for her?"

I want to start my own brand of cough syrup and advertise it as being the remedy for Busty Bronchitis. Or maybe I can make something for that cures Ta-tas tuberculosis? Anybody out there looking to invest?

Awards update...

Okay, so I've gotten a bit of grief from people who were not named in my first annual awards. I would just like to point out that the award was specificially for Excellence in commenting on my blog. And since Mandy and Brian are the only two who actually leave comments, I thought it fitting that they got some special recognition.

So, now that they have been given their special status, I should also say thanks to everyone else who reads the blog but doesn't leave comments. You know who you are, you lazy micks!

First Annual Awards for Oustanding Achievement in the Field of Exceptional Excellence in Commenting

With just eight days until I fly back to Idaho for the holiday season, I wanted to get a jump on things and wish everyone Happy Holidays! And since the year is fast drawing to a close, I wanted to issue my first annual award to those who have been faithful readers of my blog. Yes, it is time to thank my loyal fanbase. Both of you.

So, kudos to you Mandy! And excelsior to you, Brian! You have both proven yourselves to be the best fans of my blog, and quite possibly, the only fans!

See you both soon, and I owe each of you a drink for being my fans.

Harrod's redux

So, in an earlier post I wrote about how bizarre I thought it was that Harrod's department store had an entire catalogue of hampers for sale. Little did I know at the time that hampers out here in Brit land actually means gift boxes. So, looks like I owe the fine people at Harrod's an apology for making fun of their otherwise excellent hampers.

However, when I went there last night, I did find that the Harrod's food department had produced a product with a label that reached new lows of redundancy. It was for a jar of quail eggs. Yes, that's right, it was a jar filled with nothing for clear liquid and speckled quail eggs. I was curious if there was something special in the brine, so I looked at the ingredients label on the back. It was there that I saw this message clearly imprinted:

THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS EGG

Whew! That clears that confusion up!