Lunching, munching and averted (?) punching

Lunching, munching and averted (?) punching

‘As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices – take it, or leave it’
Buddy Hackett

Something I don’t understand just lately is why, as customers, we are being treated so poorly when we part with our hard earned money.

The concept of ‘The Customer is King’ is all but dead, and it seems as consumers we are not voting with our feet, but simply are noting defeat. We are being directionalised all too often, and seemingly without noticing, or complaining. I like the idea of the customer being king, but not Stephen King. However, I seem to slip into re-enactments of Stephen King’s less normal characters on a seemingly all too often basis… Even the simplest of things that you try and attain as a consumer seems to be all but impossible. I get the impression that I am being ‘boxed’, categorised, effectively told what I want and as an extension of that, I am told what I can have. Isn’t this just a little arrogant, to say the least?

Usually the persons responsible for my categorisation are unknown to me, and I am singularly unknown to them. This is folly. I recall all too well having my parents tell me what I could have and couldn’t have, from birth to way past adolescence. I vividly recall taking exception to this, still do, so why is it that it is thought I am prepared to have perfect strangers tell me what I can, and cannot, have, or do?

Fast food joints are prime examples of this. The main chains of fast food joints these days don’t even have a menu. They do have a plethora of meals and combinations that ‘research’ tells them consumers want. This approach angers me and it treats their customers in the way they see them… like sheep. Everyone isn’t the same. People have differences and differing preferences. But if your preference doesn’t match the masses, you are shit out of luck. This was especially true in the Philippines, but now seems virtually ‘de rigeur’ most anywhere.

Take the good ole Colonel’s chicken for example. You could buy two piece meals with rice or bread, one piece meals with rice or bread, or a bucket of chicken with six pieces, and all manner of other meal ‘packages’. But I didn’t want rice. I didn’t want bread either. And I did want three pieces of chicken with fries and a small soft drink. Could I get that? NO. Could you take the cost of six pieces and halve it? NO. Is there anyway to get this choice of food? Why of course there is.

All I had to do was buy a two piece chicken meal, a one piece chicken meal, and additional fries. Then give away two servings of rice, two servings of coleslaw or gravy and one small soft drink that I have had to buy, but didn’t want. Then I was left with three pieces of chicken, fries and a small coke. Perfect. All this cost more than half a six piece bucket, fries and small coke… way more, in fact.

As the consumer I am forced to develop a strategy for getting the meal I actually want, and thereafter how to deploy the mechanics to become a satisfied (?) customer. Hmm. Isn’t satisfying me someone else’s job? However, the deployment aspect is always pure entertainment, because invariably a human interaction is necessary. A standardised series of boxed meal offerings is simple enough, because permutations are decidedly limited. This means that employees can function cognitively at automaton levels, until someone like me wants something different… then all hell breaks loose. The person serving you becomes totally unhinged the minute any meal option isn’t selected, resulting in the search for managerial prowess.

Enter the managerial prowess, and it is clear that this person was once at the level of the person to whom you were originally speaking, in creative terms. And by once, I mean still is.
Inevitably the manager takes great pride and effort to explain why all meals are presented in the way they are, because the consumer wants it that way, (according to their research). It would appear that because I didn’t take part in their research, which undoubtedly was my fault, naturally, I thus am representative of nothing. The manager will then take equal time to inform you that your request “just isn’t possible”… apparently, it isn’t possible to sell me three pieces of chicken.

Nowadays I just ask for stupid things whenever I order from fast food joints, even if they do have what I want. I enjoy asking for a regular sized coke in an upsized cup, or just a little ice, or extra salt for fries, or whatever. Anything basically to just retain some sense of actual choice where a permutation hasn’t been pre-selected for me.

I often wonder if customers of fast food joints are intellectually challenged and whether they typically struggle with a menu list. Perhaps choosing a meal item, a carbohydrate accompaniment and a drink is a bit of a stretch, given the plethora of choice. When you think about it, the number of permutations possible in ordering a fast food meal is pretty staggering – I know I often find myself pondering for hours over the sheer choice of offerings and the culinary anticipation that ensues. Regularly I arrive at a decision only to find that my lunch choice is now, in fact, dinner, and to boot my shirt now needs to be changed from the veritable monsoon of gustatory stimulated saliva that has escaped my lips in anticipation, during the process.

The concept of a fast food joint is relatively simple in standard operating procedural terms. There are rigid processes for everything to attain consistency. These procedures are followed to the letter by all employees who have been subjected to the fast food chain’s rote and little-explained learning. This is an ISO 900(n) certifiers dream environment. Unfortunately, I am not in the business of certifying businesses for ISO accreditation. I just want a bloody meal, a meal with three pieces of chicken, and whether these outlets are certified or not, I feel the way these food joints operate is certifiable. Why do service companies operate on the basis that customers have to fit their needs? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

Another thing that makes me smile in all these fast food places is the availability of ‘diet’ drinks. Why on earth would you provide diet drinks (and more lately, nutritionally balanced healthy meals) in a fast food joint? Surely people aren’t choosing ‘diet’ drinks because it tastes better, are they? Of all the places you could buy food for the health conscious, would this group of people choose a fast food joint? Isn’t this a tad odd?

I have to smile when I see a single someone order fast food fit for more than one person, yet then order low calorie drinks. This beats the hell out of me. You know the kind of person I am talking about… typically a large person, nay massively obese person, (usually a one man traffic jam), of proportions that confuse time tested ratios between human height and breadth. The kind of person who is always worried that the floor loading restrictions under their feet may be compromised by their very singular presence at any moment.
“I’d like a large size 17 kilo stuffed pizza with extra carbs and cholesterol please, thick crust, garlic bread, and a diet coke.”
Am I missing something here? What’s with the diet drinks?

If you join Fitness First, I don’t believe their inducement campaigns offer you a deep fat fryer upon membership. Athletic wear on promotion in malls don’t offer “buy this and get a free tub of lard”. The latest and greatest sports shoes may well have sensors to monitor heart rate and all, yet so far they haven’t offered a packet of Marlboro as a point of sale inducement, anymore than a Lamborghini Diablo comes with a years supply of motion sickness pills and cabin interior matched child seats... So what’s with the diet drink? It surely is equally nonsensical.

Elsewhere, fast food takes on totally befuddling proportions…

Pizza joints in Hong Kong are a misnomer, or at the very least a surreptitious operation. They aren’t pizza joints at all if they have a salad bar… they can’t be. I believe that most any pizza joint with a salad bar, in Hong Kong, is actually not in the business of selling food at all. It is a training ground for civil engineers and architects.

The scenario in many of these pizza joints is that you can buy a side salad, visit the salad cart once for your purchase price, with one bowl, and fill that bowl with whatever salad you choose. The bowl is an ordinary bowl – not a basin, (the type of bowl I use to eat cereal [pigeon droppings] with dried fruit and half a litre of milk).

However, Hong Kong residents bring feats of engineering prowess to the filling of this bowl that make the construction of any building seen at skyscrapercity.com look decidedly unadventurous and vapid. Just sit and watch someone at the salad bar in a pizza joint in Hong Kong, and you become abundantly aware of just how creativity and tenacity is alive and well there, if not flourishing.

Each type of salad item is systematically chosen and placed to provide for structural support… structural support for the rest of the salad to be accommodated in this one bowl. The bowl is but a mere three inches high and with a six inch diameter. However, this is purely if you limit your thinking and perception to the bowl itself. The civil salad engineers have freed themselves of such limitations, and are committed to accommodating salad items within this bowl that requires mechanical assistance to lift and can easily feed a grown up family of 6 with all their relatives in tow… this gives new meaning to the management terminology “inverted pyramid” structures.

The sheer tenacity in managing to remove so much food, in such a small bowl, to feed so many people, is magnificent. However, when one has created the vegetative structural equivalent of Singapore’s entire Integrated Resort project, (including much spillage at the salad bar and the surrounding area, with ensuing requisite reclamation), it baffles me how one could actually enjoy a salad like this. How do you eat it?

A mere disturbance of the air is sufficient to invoke Richter scale food redistribution from the engineering feat, and notwithstanding this, the elements of the superstructure have been strategically placed to provide support for each layer. How do you get to choose what you actually want to eat? It isn’t possible to do this without bring down the whole salad superstructure.

A further major gripe of mine is when accompaniments are not in tow… (We are talking in the culinary sense here, as opposed to mere accessorising, or partners).

You know the story. It’s around the time when that feeling stimulates a thought that is more than plain hunger. One begins to have gustatory flights of fancy and from the depths of memory a certain type of food seemingly just appears in your consciousness and this is thereafter the ‘faire of choice’. Usually this food type appears unwittingly, and oft with recollections of past experiences, people, places where it was once enjoyed… the desire builds and the need for this particular food has unstoppable momentum now that it has been fully emotionalised in multi-sensory terms.

This is no longer a whim, a take it or leave it munch or passing snack. This is the Food of the Gods to all intents and purposes and could be anything from a packet of Walker’s salt ‘n’ vinegar crisps, to fish and chips, to gravlax, sushi, or a fillet mignon. Whichever it is, it’s a must seek, must find food and essentially you are Elwood Blues on a ‘mission from God’ to find it.

Usually, when making choices of this nature, it is common that the choice requires an accompaniment of some kind to complete the culinary feast. If it’s fish and chips, then as a true Brit salt and vinegar has to be available. It doesn’t matter if the fish and chips are to die for… without salt and vinegar, it doubtless becomes papier-mâchè and fries. Lamb is inedible without mint sauce / jelly, and a decent piece of beef just becomes indecent without mustard (and that’s English Mustard, Dijon at the worst, and NOT American hotdog mustard), plus of course, horseradish sauce.

These are well known accompaniments, yet how often do we arrive at an eatery, order the very thing that our sensory system is thoroughly captivated with, only then to find upon arrival of the food that the accompaniment isn’t available. This seems to happen to me quite regularly, and is thoroughly disappointing. To make matters worse, the accompaniment-less server offers totally unsuitable alternatives, unless the eatery is a purveyor of fine faire. Fish and chips requires malt vinegar… not balsamic / white / cane / red wine / white wine / apple cider et al vinegar, but MALT. End of discussion.

Why is this so hard to get right? People in the restaurant are abundantly aware of what customers typically ask for as accompaniments, so if they run out of these staples, then why is the main item still on the menu? At the very least it should be pointed out that whilst a menu item remains, certain potential accompaniments are not available.

I regularly send food back if the accompaniment I want isn’t available, and proceed to then choose something I probably don’t want, given that my sensory needs remain unsatisfied. Yet the act of sending the food back is greeted with dismay, as opposed to regret. Your culinary flight of fancy becomes a plight that’s a tad chancy… especially when you find the original item still on the bill. I find this weird. Why do restaurants assume that the accompaniments are not an integral part of the meal? Of course they are.

Half of the employees in most restaurants these days are of alien extraction, of that much I am sure. They seem to be able to purposefully function in time space planes known only to non human species. Their ability to display total detachment, lack of forethought, and complete obliviousness to their immediate place of operation is comparable in human terms only to the time when George W Bush actually waved back at Stevie Wonder at a benefit gig. The lights are on, but no one’s home, and the intellect brought to bear in their chosen working environment is indicative of a person who has not enough coupons for the percolator and matching set of cups.

Recently my good lady and I decided to partake in a fried food extravaganza, at a typical American joint resplendent with a fried menu and faux stained glass lampshades. Upon entry we asked for something that upon reflection was pretty damned unreasonable, to be honest. We requested a table with some space. By this we meant a table that could accommodate a svelte Singaporean lady, and a Caucasian whose frame whilst swimming in the sea attracts Japanese with telephoto lenses expecting to have a whale of a time. By space we meant room… we were not expecting a table with zero gravity.

We were shown to a table that was up against a wall and would have challenged a dwarf with anorexia issues. I literally could not use my left hand to eat as my elbow had been rendered paralysed by the seating arrangement. This was the smallest eating surface in the whole restaurant, and the largest guy was placed there, having requested a little more space. Hmm.

The manager was summoned and she offered to be extremely accommodating. We could vacate our seats, and then take our place at the back of the queue outside the restaurant, where we had already queued once, and then be seated again. How nice. How accommodating. Am I missing something here? At times like this I revert to childhood memories. This isn’t because I become petulant, but is linked to ornithology. My voice when angry becomes a fabulous tonal re-enactment of a mating bittern, with matched intensity, and a melee usually ensues for my personal satisfaction and the amusement of nearby bystanders within a 12km radius.

We eventually chose to eat elsewhere, after our rational argumentation had initially failed, and after I then had subtly reminded the manager that colonoscopies are best done by medical practitioners, so to have her head up her own backside is largely a pointless exercise.

Isn’t this all kind of baffling, and spectacularly unnecessary in the main? After all, apart from paying the salaries and delivering profits to these establishments, as the customer, who the hell am I anyway?

Nonetheless, I suppose it is certainly food for thought.

Pins, Balls and Pinball Sex?

Pins, Balls and Pinball Sex?

"There are a number of mechanical devices that increase sexual arousal for both sexes. In women,

chief amongst these is the Mercedes Benz 380l convertible"

PJ O'Rourke

Why in god’s name would you want to have your navel pierced? What is the point? If PJ O’Rourke’s quote has validity, then perhaps navel piercing can be explained? After all, how many people can get into a Mercedes convertible anyway? Perhaps the friends of the owner can be pulled behind the car on skateboards and the navel ring is a bejewelled tow bar? A la Michael J Fox, perhaps, in “Back to the Future”? I can’t see that working too well though. It would most probably become “Back to the Suture”, wouldn’t it?”

And if you think the navel piercing is ridiculous enough… what about the other nonsense people are doing, all this pricking and sticking, mainly to enhance licking, flicking and dicking.
Turn on the TV most any time of day, and a quick flick through the channels will reveal just how prevalent breast enhancement has become. The good ole’ Boob Job is seemingly so popular it is virtually unbelievable how often women are having this procedure undertaken. But for the life of me, I really cannot understand why anyone would consider it… its all a bit baffling.

Sexual appendages have long been a cause of exasperation for men and women. Most people are well aware of the procedures that women are doing, especially breast augmentation. But what about guys? Guys are reportedly often worried about the size of their manhood – is it too long (?), is it too short, is it wide enough? I really can’t understand why men get so hung up on how well they are hung. What’s the point? Either you are compatible with your partner sexually or you are not, and if you are not, go find someone else. We come in all shapes and sizes don’t we? There are no rights or wrongs in this area as far as I can tell, and when rights or wrongs are espoused, aren’t they pretty much personal preferences anyway?

But, apparently, men are now undertaking a procedure called phalloplasty… cosmetic penis lengthening or broadening. It seems, according to a leading North American cosmetic surgeon’s website at least, that this procedure was first undertaken in the early 1980’s. A man who, as a boy, had unfortunately had a dog bite off much of his penis, reached the point where he wanted to marry, and thus had the need for a full sized piece of equipment. If this story is true, then it must have been a nightmare for the kid, and even the dog must have had therapy.
I’d love to know how one gets oneself into a position where a dog can actually do that to you? I mean, what must he have been doing? Watching TV Perhaps? A rerun of Lassie and the kid’s dog got so pissed off seeing the exploitation of pets that he decided to bite off the kid’s dick? Maybe not… perhaps that’s just the tale wagging the dog, I guess.

Anyway, it seems that now you can achieve lengthening of up to two inches (cool – I could amass four inches after this), by effectively having your penis severed from its suspensionary ligaments and then local tissue is used to close the gap. And all this is under local anaesthetic, to boot. Apparently a post operative erection often causes the penis to be erect at a different angle. NO shit, Sherlock!

I can’t imagine having the will to having this procedure done to be honest. I can’t imagine having my dog be in a position to cause me to need to do this either, not under any circumstances… I can imagine kicking the living daylights out of the dog though. Surely this is madness to ordinarily undertake such augmentation?

But women? Well, it seems they are getting into breast augmentation in a big way. It is apparently a relatively common procedure these days, and I guess it’s to satisfy the self esteem of protagonists and improve their desirability to the opposite (or same) sex.

I imagine I am like most men, in as much as I love breasts, or whatever you want to call them. But to me at least, the size doesn’t really matter all that much. There are preferences, sure, for size, firmness, et al. But is the size, shape and all a deal breaker in a relationship? Not a chance. I am more interested in the person they belong to and I would imagine many men feel the same way. Sure it may be an enhanced experience if things were a little different, perhaps. But then again, if your aunt was a man she’d be your uncle wouldn’t she? So what?
Why then, do so many women have this breast augmentation performed? I think that perhaps there is a communication problem here.

We regularly hear guys utter derogatory (?) comments about women’s breasts
“Wow – look at the headlights on that!”

But girls, no woman’s breasts actually look like headlights… not even the old fashioned perfectly round headlights with the part in the middle that might appear to look like a nipple. Breasts are not round to such a degree of perfection. You know this is true, so why do you get boobjobs that are perfectly round? It doesn’t look natural anyway, does it?

Whenever you see a girl with a boobjob lying topless, it is singularly artificial looking. It stands out a mile if you ask me. If you are lying down topless, girls, breasts are not supposed to look like perfectly rounded and mounded half melons. Of course these are silicon and saline implants, but I wonder as well as looking unnatural much of the time, how they respond during day to day occurrences or activities.

For example, you are a tad the worse for alcohol, on holiday in a warmer clime, you meet some really nice guy and he suggests that you both go skinny dipping. What happens to the implants? If you swim naked, do they move? Worse still do they travel? I can picture a super hot babe coming out of the sea with, literally, her hands full. Is there any need to mitigate this? What do you do… swim part of the time freestyle and then part of the time backstroke in order to relocate your implants?

What if you can’t do backstroke? Do you end up breastless and with really bad hernias?
What about if you cant swim freestyle, and favour backstroke? That would give you more than a lump in the throat, wouldn’t it? And you can forget butterfly – you’d knock your own teeth out.
What happens if you are topless and you reach over? What is supporting the implants, particularly if they are really large? Do they take on the motion of a bungee? Do you have to hold them? Is the skin stretched over time if you keep bending? Do you have to avoid any jobs where a lot of bending is required, or use sports bras to support you? The challenges must be considerable. In fact, the challenges must be considerable for a naturally larger breasted woman, I would imagine. Naturally there are circumstances where women may benefit from this procedure… mastectomy patients would be one, for sure. But out of sheer vanity?

Government websites in the US provide much information regarding breast enhancement procedures… and the information isn’t entirely positive. It’s not uncommon for these implants to start leaking – often from day one. And if women have the procedure performed through the navel, then the propensity for leaking increases exponentially. Even if the implants are inserted beautifully, their shelf life is pretty much 10 years. That’s all. This whole concept baffles me. Guys don’t understand the biology or physical make up inside a woman’s breasts. They have no clue whether the bulk is musculature or not. But I am sure they will appreciate women’s musculature to some extent – especially when it is the muscle between the ears.
And if that’s not bad enough, other insertions appear to be much more ridiculous if you ask me.

I guess we have to start with the tongue…

We have all heard the stories about how piercing the tongue is a way of enhancing oral sex, with most commonly a stud akin to a ball bearing reportedly providing enhanced stimulation. But humans have inbuilt response mechanisms, learned experientially, as to how we should deal with foreign objects in the mouth, don’t we? Where did spitting come from I wonder? What do you do if you eat a fillet of fish and locate a bone whilst chewing the fish? You eject those foreign objects, right? Yet here we are, with a foreign object in your mouth that must feel slightly smaller than a basketball at first I imagine. And people are choosing this?

It is often said by tongue pierced devotees that the reason for this piercing is decorative, and the sexual stimulation aspect is decidedly secondary. I guess this might be true. In the same way that having copious amounts of KY Jelly in your house is a contingency for running out of WD40, the chains in the closet are memories of past pets and the six pairs of handcuffs stem from a time when you dated a lot of people who were members of the local constabulary.
How can this tongue piercing be decorative? People in developed countries have been spending millions to have their previous amalgam fillings converted to tooth coloured replacements. Gold teeth have been replaced by tooth coloured caps and the like. We have moved away from having chunks of visible metal in the mouth for a variety of reasons, and yet now people are having them put back in with no dental benefit or purpose to speak of.
Metal in your mouth isn’t that attractive, is it? Apparently owners of tongue piercings can now buy ‘daytime substitute piercings’ to maintain the piercing during work time, yet in a colour that’s transparent or ‘tongue coloured’ so that it is less conspicuous and less offensive to others. Frankly I am not surprised by the introduction of such products.

I have never heard anyone make the statement, after teeth shaping scaffolding has been applied, not honestly at least…
“Wow – you look so much more attractive in your new braces”.

As far as I know, the only person who looked cool in braces was Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street... and that emulation fad was short lived, albeit enhanced at the time by wannabes declaring that ‘lunch is for wimps’. I have never heard anyone look at the actor Richard Kiel when he was playing the role of Jaws in what ever Bond movie it was, ‘The Spy who Loved Me’, I believe, and say
“Wow, what a fabulous smile”, or “wow, that was horny”.
Yes, he was trying to bite the neck of a Bond girl, but maybe he had ulterior motives?

As for sexual stimulation?.. Well, I don’t know about you, but as a normal male I have to say that the act of fellatio, performed by a willing and able partner, is already stimulating enough and a most enjoyable sexual experience. I have never heard of a man who doesn’t really enjoy it thoroughly when it is performed with skill and by a human that matches his sexual preferences for gender (wow, how safe a statement was that?).
That being largely a given, what in God’s name do you want to speed up that process for? Are men mad to even THINK of speeding it up? And speeded up with, effectively, ball bearings? It’s to be savoured, surely, isn’t it? It isn’t a race, not even a ball bearing race. And in any event, are ball bearings that pleasurable? Who ever heard of any guy masturbating with a fist full of ball bearings for Christ’s sake?
‘A Fistful of Ball Bearings?’
Cue Ennio Morricone
♫ na na na na naaaaaaaaaah, na na na ♫

Sounds like a present day Clint Eastwood movie where the man with no name is today a car mechanic.

On top of that, assuming your tongue pierced partner is a life partner as well, what impact does a tongue piercing have on other parts of the relationship, I wonder? I find, having personally experienced the effects of braces, dentistry, and a broken jaw, that just about any changes to the oral area in general, and particularly any additions, no matter how well they are matched to the part they are replacing or enhancing, have an effect on the ability to speak for the affected person… you get the keys to Lisp City or break out into involuntary Sylvester Stallone impressions.

Surely you remember what a gobstopper or aniseed ball did to you as a kid? Could you speak properly with it in your mouth? Sure – If you relocated it into the cheeks. It was a bit harder to speak when it was rolling around your mouth or on your tongue. Yet here we are effectively having metal aniseed balls secured to your tongue?

Tongue pierced enthusiasts need to speak all day long, and probably engage in fellatio far less often (only on birthdays according to many men). Some men tell me they have been hypnotised to believe they have birthdays that are always coming up tomorrow… though tomorrow never comes (and neither do they, through fellatio, at least).

I can only imagine that tongue piercing causes tremendously enhanced sexual stimulation at the expense of being able to pronounce words accurately. Perhaps a renowned President of the US has had his tongue pierced? Maybe the benefits of tongue piercing are, Dubya(s)? (That’s dubious George, not multiple Dubai’s, in case you haven’t learned from your past malapropisms). Maybe this lack of ability for pronunciation, post tongue piercing, has some bearing on the origin of the word ‘diction’? Who knows? How the world is changing, huh?

And what about kissing?.. Imagine a ‘frencher’ with someone who is tongue pierced? I haven’t experienced this, but would be somewhat apprehensive for sure.

Firstly there’s the obvious ‘is that ball bearing sanitary?’ question. How is that piercing kept clean? How do you do that? Take it out at night and put it in a glass next to the bed, resplendent with Steradent? (A somewhat regression to the days of false teeth, terribly alluring I don’t think). Do you sterilise it like a baby bottle? Boil the hell out of it? Take it out in the jewellers for ultrasound cleaning? Use home based jewellery cleaning solutions, ‘for that extra sparkle’? Perhaps gargle vigorously with TCP or similar? Get it shot blasted? The possibilities are seemingly endless.

During a well executed French kiss, it’s a very passionate act, isn’t it? Who in their right mind wants to engage in this activity with the same inevitable dental risks as walking into a strange pub and politely telling the largest guy in there that his woman is from a failed Quatermass experiment, that you believe he has the libido of a eunuch, is suffering from erectile dysfunction, and physically couldn’t satisfy a chicken who hadn’t had it in months. I mean, come on. Who wants to have their front teeth assailed by a freaking pissed off huge guy, or, for that matter, a ball bearing?

I don’t want to French kiss some hot babe, only to jump up rapidly mid kiss with blood issuing forth from my mouth, only to see her smile and satisfying utter the word “strike”. Maybe when the bleeding has stopped, you can go for another few frames – perhaps try and get a turkey? That’s probably pointless though – she’s French kissing you with a wrecking ball, and you are engaged in this activity. Maybe she already has a turkey?

It seems people are going to all sorts of lengths to allow for enhanced sexual stimulation, through myriad additions and modifications, piercings, et al. I am sure many of us I have heard of the term, a “Prince Albert”. A Prince Albert (PA) is basically a piercing through the penis, and various types of jewellery may be used to give the desired “effect”.

You can call me traditional, but the idea of having a piece of metal inserted through the head of my penis isn’t too high on my list of ‘things to do’. And whether the metal is precious or not doesn’t really influence my thinking in this regard. Since Lord of the Rings has been further popularised on screen, I do not want the term ‘precious’ associated with my phallus under any circumstances. Here’s a tip for guys…
If you are suffering from an erection when you don’t want one, or approaching ejaculation when you don’t want to yet, just picture Gollum from Lord of the Rings in your mind and imagine your dick is fondly being referred to by him as ‘My Precious’… problem solved.

But back to having a PA being not too high on my ‘to do’ list…

You know what I mean, don’t you… Perhaps you have just witnessed your favourite soccer team get totally trounced, and on the way home from the match your mobile rings and you are told you have just lost your job, your house will be imminently repossessed, and your dog has emigrated to Korea in search of a better life. You arrive home to find your wife being pleasured in bed by an elephant man look-alike, with an erect penis that’s a dead ringer for someone with sexual inadequacy issues. She’s smiling from ear to ear and moaning as if the world’s most successful vibrator had not only been administered with incredible skill, but powered by a 1000kW generator, and all the pictures have fallen off the wall through vibration from her moaning. Basically things could be way better and most likely you generally would have lost the will to live in those circumstances. Even then, would you think to yourself…

“Ah stuff it – things will only get better - I’ll get a Prince Albert”.

What kind of mindset do you have to get into that makes you want to have this procedure done?

Out of sheer curiosity I took a look at websites that both introduced people to the PA procedure, and made judgments as to the pain level this procedure involved. The pain MUST be in a new dimension, mustn’t it? It ranked as between 4 – 6 on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being extremely slight discomfort and 10 being equivalent to ‘excruciation in the nation’, (or a three week all expenses paid trip for you and your family on the surface of the sun, in layman’s terms). If this procedure is 4-6 in pain terms, what would a perfect 10 procedure be, in piercing terms, I wonder? Pierced eyeballs using a Black and Decker drill? Pierced testicles using no anaesthetic and knitting needles, perhaps?

Despite the claims of enhanced sexual stimulation made by PA protagonists, I have a problem with the concept of a bolt through my member. Apparently, depending on how well and in what position the PA is administered, men have to sit down to pee because the urine flow is a little different than before this procedure. Like freaking DUH!

Obviously these men that have this PA may never again go out to pubs, clubs or any places where a public toilet would need to be used. They can’t, can they? Think about it, do you really want to have to sit down at a men’s public loo just to have a pee? How many of these loos are sanitary? You need galoshes just to enter most of them, and chest waders in some. I wouldn’t sit down in most of them, that’s for sure, but to think that urinals are a no go area for fear of covering yourself, (and anyone else in a 3 metre radius), with a deluge of urine, somewhat baffles me. Maybe this is how this Golden Shower urination fetish got started? Men forgetting to sit down after having a PA, and by some strange quirk, their fellow toilet goers inadvertently getting some perverse pleasure bestowed upon them from being showered in hot urine when it is minus 20 below outside.
‘Ooh – they seemed to enjoy that – I’ll try it on the wife’.
Doubtful, huh? You’re right… I was definitely taking the piss.

Having an uncontrollable free flowing omni directional sprinkler system for a penis, further to a PA, just doesn’t seem worthwhile, does it? Maybe there are many men out there that have had this procedure done, yet have kept it reasonably well hidden from fellow males? This would explain why so many men don’t want to urinate in the presence of others and hang around the bathroom wash basins until everyone else has left. It would perhaps also explain why, despite years practicing the aiming of urine at a bowl or a urinal, men can’t seem to develop any degree of accuracy whatsoever, with veritable pools of urine splashes on the floor in most public toilets. It’s the bloody PA that’s to blame. The cubicles were either fully occupied or visually/ malodorously so disgusting to put them beyond approach for the PA wearers, who’s only choice is to venture forth and let loose the newly acquired inbuilt sprinkler system.

We regularly see men fiddling down there, scratching, moving bits around and the like. Perhaps these guys have the PA and it keeps getting caught up in trouser seams, and/or zips, perhaps?

As for the sexual stimulation part, I am a tad confused. Vibrators have been around for ages and it seems their popularity is reasonably strong with women the world over… you see them for sale in High Streets all over the place. However, how come we don’t see any for sale with a detachable bolt through them. I mean, come on, if the effect is that good for the ladies… Mary Shelley came up with the idea for a bolt through the neck eons ago, didn’t she, with the monster of Dr Frankenstein? But we haven’t had Frankendick coined as a PA aficionado phrase yet, have we, despite the concept of a bolt and also the neck?
“Good morning Sir, what can I do for you today… tattooing? Piercing?”
“I’d like a Frankendick please.”
“Certainly sir.”
“Harry – turn on the generator and bring the power tools, ok?”
How does someone give you one of these PA jobs? Is it under general anaesthetic? In a doctor’s clinic or surgery? At a tattooists / piercers’ joint? Where? Do you have to be erect? Limp?

If it’s limp, I guess the initial swelling will have to provide clues as to the right size of bolt, in order to cater for both a flaccid and erect penis. But how can it? The end of your penis is going to become the size of a cricket ball, isn’t it? When the swelling reduces, (by which time you’re pensionable and probably impotent anyway), the bolt will have to be changed for something much, much smaller I suppose. And that has to be so good and self image building for the ‘sexually inadequate even before I did this’ camp, hasn’t it?

But what if you have to be erect for this procedure to be done? You are just about to have a hole put through your old fellow, and an erection might be needed? Surely not? If so, I imagine you can put 25 porno videos on TV’s all over the place, whilst a similarly numbered naked nubile goddess’s play with your rounder sexual bits and you’ll probably start to get a tad aroused. But seeing your Willie on a Black and Decker workbench, and some crazed madman with a power tool or crazed instruments in his hand? Yeah right. Well this had better be a ‘limp’ procedure. In fact the piercer would need the Hubble telescope to find my Willie in this situation, that’s for sure. Instant bodily retraction and shrinkage. Instant Sumo capability, in essence.

Then of course, assuming you actually go and have this bizarre PA procedure done, what happens when you are fed up with it, and you want to permanently take out the bolt, shackle, or whatever pieced of insane engineering you put in there? There will be holes all over the place. Peeing will be even more challenging, won’t it? Assuming that these holes don’t grow over, I suppose that peeing will need extreme dexterity of the fingers to avoid the inbuilt sprinkler system kicking in. Perhaps to allow for this inevitable situation, piercers might want to increase their prices and throw in free recorder lessons, to get pierced customer’s dexterity levels up to scratch.

And when, WHEN, you get into old age and don’t have that dexterity of the fingers anymore, thanks to chronic rheumatism and arthritis, what will you do then? You’ll be rendered incontinent and will wish you were on a different continent, most probably. You won’t feel like a millionaire, and if even if you wanted to be a millionaire, I promise you that the chances of you getting soaked in urine are better than 50/50 and it will be pointless to try and call a friend or ask the audience, whoever they may be.

Of course, women get in on the act too… It wasn’t too far in the distant past when men thought the clitoris may not even exist, let alone be a ‘must attend to’ cornerstone of female sexual arousal. Stand up comics had a field day with men’s inability to find the clitoris, making much comedic extrapolation and juxtapositions about wearing wet suits, snorkels and miners hats / lamps just to go in search of it.

Today, however, most men are a tad more educated about the sensuality and sexuality of women – a tad. Women are at least equally, and probably way more self and sexually aware. When men needed clues as to where the clitoral location was, we were given little or no assistance whatsoever. I know this, as I have worn out many a perfectly good torch and was always running out of KY and surgical gloves.

Now that we DO know where it is, women are having clitoral hood piercings and also full clitoral piercing (pretty much a female Prince Albert, though on a smaller scale). What is that all about? We finally know where the bloody thing is, women were always moaning that we couldn’t find the bloody thing, and only NOW you provide directions that a blind man could follow??? When we know where it is? Why didn’t you have tattoos down there before? An arrow would have sufficed to point it out, we were ok to leave the lights on, we could have found it if you had helped! All we needed was a clue, or a non too subtle hint. We would have responded, honestly!
It wasn’t our fault we thought a Climax was a forklift made in Coventry!
It is kind of spectacularly bad timing if you ask me. Again sexual stimulation is supposed to be enhanced substantially, though there are still countless women who apparently struggle to reach orgasm at all.

I wonder what these women will do with these piercings, if they get them. And if they do get them, how will they know it’s being put in the right place? Let their boyfriend go mad with a stapler beforehand as a research experiment? Perhaps they’ll rely on the piercer to accurately hit the spot? Hope that the directional guidance this device gives will thereafter enable women who are struggling to climax to find the right place to stimulate and thus orgasm? This is all a little perplexing to me.

Any guy who has a reasonable understanding of the female anatomy can find it these days… we know how it works…we can make it erect… we don’t need it to be hyper sensitised… for many women YOU don’t need it to be hyper sensitised either. But getting clitoral piercing? We don’t need this for directions anymore, now do we? And any guy who has ever driven anywhere with a woman holding a map of any sort just knows that all hell is waiting to break loose… and that isn’t ‘earth shattering’ in the way you both would want, now is it?

Lord only knows what’s next… hooking the piercing up to a 12v car battery perhaps. That might well stimulate the desired area girls and get your engine firing on all cylinders. You may well have an electrifying sexual experience, or alternatively it may be so shocking that you won’t know if you are coming or going. Who knows?

Now of course, we have moved away from the clitoris and are in search of the G spot. I think not even piercing or tattoos are going to help us in this regard. Some women have found it, other women have hired Leonard Nimoy to go “In Search Of” the G spot, whilst others believe it is only present in women born within the triangular region that stretches between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. Some sort of homing piercing may be in order?

If this all sounds a tad bizarre, then in some places around the world, these acts are decidedly lame, almost passé by comparison. In Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines in particular, it appears that some sections of society have people in search of sexual pleasure, (through attachments and embellishment), that are perhaps a smidgeon more, how can I say this? Liberal perhaps?

There are countless references to the very real practice of more elaborate penile insertions to, again, enhance sexual stimulation. Having horse’s hair sewn into the foreskin for example? How on earth does that work or help? I have heard the sexual parts of a man’s and woman’s anatomy called all manner of things, but never the art of lovemaking called the Grand National…
“And he’s under starters orders, and he’s off. He’s stretching nicely, three and a half, four, straightening out the bend, five and a half inches, head and neck in front, almost home now…”
Maybe there is something I am missing here. Perhaps this is something to do with why girls want ponies and the Asian’s have worked it out? Hmm… maybe not. These days, horse hair is mainly used to make brushes and in the bows of musical instruments, or so I thought.

I guess the frictional aspect of horse’s hair in your foreskin may well be responsible for some sort of enhanced stimulation, but it seems just a tad extreme if you ask me. I am curious to know how this procedure gets done.
‘Be back in a minute love… just popping down to the barbers to have my love strands fixed”?
How many strands are there and do the hairs discolour over time, in an effort to become a sexual Greek god? Is this where Grecian 2000 got its recognition from? This gives hair restoration completely new themes, doesn’t it? Some type of penile hairdresser perhaps is used? How is this hair maintained and ‘groomed’? Who performs this kind of procedure, and how?

I mean, most boys at some stage get involved in all manner of horseplay, but this is ridiculous. Maybe this is what you have to do to reach the accolade of “You’re the mane man”? And then of course, one has to question what effect this insertion has on not just traditional sex… but particularly fellatio? Where does the hair go? How long is it? How much of it is there? What’s next? Fellatio flossing? Sounds like a recipe for throat infections if you ask me, and if you are not spectacularly careful, it may be enough to make you virtually hoarse.

Additionally, some Asian men apparently also have a procedure performed where ball bearings are inserted either in the shaft of the penis or under the foreskin. This has some implications for oral sex again… So with a tongue pierced felatio performer and a penile ball bearing protagonist, does that mean you get to play marbles, or has everyone lost their marbles?
Again, who performs such a procedure, and where? What happens if there is a need to have these metal balls removed? What do you say to your lover?
“ Honey, we have been lovemaking for several minutes and it isn’t quite as pleasurable as before, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry love. I went to the doctor’s love, and I have Leeson’s Syndrome … sorry”.
“Is it serious? what’s that love?”
“Unfortunately, I have lost my bearings”
As for the effect of having ball bearings in play during fellatio, well no wonder so many people in the hinterlands are toothless and have false teeth in this region… at a very young age too. I can’t imagine anyone’s teeth standing up to rhythmic pinball either.

TILT.

Pins and Needles

Pins & Needles

‘Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvellous' Bill Moyers


The human waist seems to be bringing all manner of issues and challenges to the fore.

Then there’s this apparent need to not only expose the midriff, but thereafter to decorate it with some artwork that in time will surely be viewed differently? What gives? Often these tattoos are on the base of the spine and are displayed in glorious splendour to all who are behind these hapless people. We are walking along, minding our own business, and then SHAZAAM! We are confronted with ultimate butt cleavage, and more often than not some tattoo of sorts.

It took long enough to get used to the idea that just about any contractor that did work at your house in summer, effectively had sweat glands only located between his butt cheeks; Thus the need for low cut jeans was born. Are electricians, carpenters, plasterers et al really oblivious to what happens to their jeans when they bend down?But, back to the tattoos…

The tattoo may as well be a red neon sign flashing “CHECK THIS OUT”. How can you not help but look? It’s a magnet for Christ’s sake. And what is the tattoo most likely to be I hear you wonder?

Well, some weird intertwined plant that looks like it could be symbiotically attached? Maybe that’s barbed wire? (For realism, razor wire would be better in many cases, as perhaps for that authentic look, skip the tattoo and go for the real thing as a cost effective alternative to liposuction).

Maybe a rose, a pair of lips, or some other symbol that unwittingly causes the over 40 years of age viewer to hope that this person isn’t as life challenged, as the tattooed person’s looks are cheap. Skip the artistry girls and just make the statement you are making anyway… just have tattooed, quite simply, “Come and get it”.

And then of course there are the Chinese character symbols… ‘good luck’, or ‘good fortune’, et al. What a joke. Most of these people with these symbols couldn’t find China with an atlas and probably think it is purely a fond way of referring to posh people’s porcelain.

Assuming the tattooed person actually knows the symbol is in fact a Chinese Character, as opposed to a design constituted from strategically placed spaghetti, or an insignia from mass produced dinner plates, it’s likely that the tattooist most likely waxed lyrical about how this symbol means this or that and originated in this dynasty or other, possibly being oblivious to the fact that the symbols actually mean “No Spitting”, “Don’t Fall Down”, or something equally stupid.

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if someone gave tattooists the Chinese symbols for health wealth and happiness, which actually said “slap my butt, squeeze my tits, and then I’ll shag you stupid”.
The numbers of Chinese men entering into the western world’s penal system would triple overnight… though a few would get lucky in the short term and then head home with much expedience when they find out their preconceptions about western women probably don’t hold true… like the rest of the guys in the world and their preconceptions about girls from here or there.

The effect of time on tattoos equally should be born in mind. Tattoos are permanent, that much is true, but over time they perhaps can be viewed as shape shifting. The tattoo is applied to skin tone and musculature of a defined level, but what happens when this tonality changes through losing or gaining weight, and even just old age?

I doubt if the original artistry could be preserved to a great extent, if at all, assuming you see tattoos as artistry to begin with, of course. Text would be totally messed up, over time. People who gained lots of weight would have issues and those who were once obese and tattooed would have all sorts of other issues upon shrinking.
“What’s with having the board game name ‘Ludo’ tattooed on your abdomen?”
“Ah, that was before I went on diets and worked out… it once said my home town, Llandudno”.
The Ludo/ Llandudno tattoo idea could only work if it was tattooed on a man’s penis. It could be a good ‘physical’ chat up line
“So where are you from?”
Sound of unzipping follows…
“Take a look… stroke this gently and you’ll find out… it’s not a bad place – once you start to get a feel for it, it kind of grows on you”.

The human body is a pretty remarkably well designed piece of technology and mankind throughout time has managed to find mates and procreate… is all this adornment necessary, I wonder? Especially as much of it is pretty permanent. This strikes me as strange. The fashion followers of the world must know by now that fashion trends come and go like politicians’ and game show host’s tales of perversion and sex scandals. What in heaven’s name would allow you to suspend judgment long enough to get permanent adornment for, then?

Phases aren’t permanent, are they?

A further appearance enhancer, nay adornment technique, is cosmetic surgery, of course.
Why do people keep trying it? Don’t these people read newspapers, magazines or watch TV? Haven’t they seen recent photos of Michael Jackson? Let’s face it, literally… the procedures can cause somewhat fabulous results, yet at the same time one risks alarming results, if not present day horror stories.

The famous people who have undergone cosmetic surgery deny it in the main, whilst the unsuspecting members of the public who have had cosmetic surgery procedures done badly are vocal about having cosmetic surgery and its downsides. How many people, or celebrities for that matter, actually say they owe their good lucks to a great doctor or surgeon? The only person I have heard openly admit to this is Dolly Parton – and good for her too – it’s good that she’s honest and told us how she has managed to keep abreast of the latest procedures.
So as far as we see and hear, proportionately, the concept doesn’t work, most of the time. Why are people still even thinking about doing these procedures for pure aesthetics? Cosmetic surgery perhaps shouldn’t be toyed with (even if you do want to look like a doll)?

Some people stay on the fringe of plastic surgery and limit themselves to merely subscribing to a veritable salvo of the latest injections to make the wrinkles disappear, the lips fuller, and achieve fine line removal. What’s going on? If you are seeing wrinkles then may it be possible that its part of a since the dawn of time process called aging? And what’s wrong with getting old? That’s what people effectively do.

Alternatively it may be because you chose to get “that perfect tan” whilst repeatedly on holiday or living in sunnier climes and your skin now has all the form and texture of an iguana’s neck when in a death throe from dehydration… but that’s your own fault, isn’t it?

Some of the procedures that are undertaken today to improve the quality of one’s skin are fairly frightening in concept and reality. Seeing a woman after the latest ‘full Monty’ micro abrasion procedures on the skin, or acid peels, surely isn’t that great. Whilst some of these procedures are very mild and can be availed of at home or in a spa, more intense procedures are administered under anaesthetic… general anaesthetic.

Why is this? I would imagine the majority of people undertaking these ‘heavy duty’ procedures are already anaesthetised at least to the world, if not themselves as well, aren’t they?

Husbands and partners must be scared shitless when their better half walks in from the more intense procedures, from days of hospitalisation and looking like they have just spent the last 12 years working for NASA, personally inspecting the ozone layer at 45000 feet. Better to leave the bandages on if you ask me.

“Kids? Mummy’s home.”

This is taking parenthood too far… temporary mummification isn’t the process for being a good mother, now is it? And anyway, if one wants to have ones facial tissue effectively half stripped of its layers, it’s cheaper to go to England in summer. Simply visit any seaside beach, and quietly sit there in the wind. Sand blasting is probably nature’s way of taking care of deep exfoliation.

For a fuller effect of course, we can get started on the lips…

Aren’t lips wonderful? Lips are beautifully engineered things, sensitive, alluring, and whether fat or thin, deeply coloured or more pallid, they can give and provide so much pleasure to themselves and partners during everyday kissing and lovemaking. But it is a truism that on the inside of lips, it doesn’t have an instruction for how many pounds per square inch (p.s.i.) to which the lips should be inflated. Lips aren’t tyres nor are they old fashioned inner tubes.

Cold sores and chapping are probably the most common ailments affecting the lips, even causing the skin to rupture and burst, yet one doesn’t treat these complaints with a bicycle repair kit! Lips were not meant to be inflated.

Often these inflationary lip injections look hideous. Why are women doing this? When the effect is over pronounced, it isn’t a good look, is it? Are there advantages? Using the lips as a method of harnessing oneself whilst cleaning apartment block exterior windows perhaps? What gives?

Then there’s the wrinkling issue. If you are taking drugs, then lines are something to definitely get rid of. If you are a naughty student at school, lines can and should be avoided.
Otherwise, from a facial perspective, lines aren’t all that bad.
Its nature’s way of demonstrating that you are aging, and despite what you might want to think, others to think, and look like, the years are passing.
What’s wrong with that?

People are going mental to get the newest and latest invention that causes your skin to tighten and remove lines. Have these people never had really bad sunburn? Haven’t they ever actually burned themselves to the point where the skin has blistered? Stretched skin doesn’t have a good look, does it? So what’s with trying to get that same stretched skin tone on the face?
Your facial texture isn’t naturally like Clingfilm under pressure.

It seems to me that many people who have had this or that tightening procedure become perhaps photogenically appealing, and maybe much more attractive from a distance. However, in those circumstances you are not interacting with them closely, and perhaps more importantly, they are not really relating with you either. When interaction does take place though, the skin has been tightened and stretched here and there rendering the person pretty much unintelligible, outside of the spoken word, I would have thought. And that’s assuming the stretching still allows the face to move enough to provide for speech.

It’s a well known fact that a great part of communication comes from expression of the body… this is critical and why it’s called body language. We are communicating 24 x 7 even when we are not speaking. We also know that frowning uses way more muscles than smiling, and facially we have a complex interlinked structure of muscles to show what we have come to term ‘expression’.

Will modification of the skin with all these procedures allow full expression, I wonder. Expression is kind of useful, don’t you think?

If you are peering into the eyes of your loved one, uttering a sensual and deeply private “I love you” and yet your face has all the undulation and fluidity of the glaze on a Noritake side plate, your emotion may lose a tad of its intent, don’t you think?

What about when you are in fight or flight mode? Threatened? Endangered? Go to a mirror and imagine yourself in a position of total danger and then scream “HELP!” into the mirror.
I think it’s fair to say that, assuming your mirror works, and assuming that you have completed that little exercise with some realism, your face actually contorts quite a bit while you are screaming for help.

Cosmetic surgery is removing the ability for people in dire need to request help in life threatening situations. A scream has an expression attached to it, doesn’t it? And doesn’t it need one to be convincing? Go to the mirror again and, whilst remaining totally deadpan, shout “HELP” again, whilst doing all possible not to move a muscle. You just became the boy who cried wolf, expression wise, and no one is going to rush to help you. You’ll probably look like someone who really doesn’t need help, someone who did, (but no longer does because they have gotten the situation under control), or maybe just plainly like a distracted mental patient and/or lobotomy candidate.

We need to be able to express ourselves, quite obviously. Have people who have undergone cosmetic surgery and lost expressive capability, also become in capable of laughing? Maybe that’s just as well… they probably don’t have much to laugh about anymore?
(Then again, maybe they do, because the mirrors of the world aren’t working, are they)?

And what’s with all this eyebrow nonsense? The things people do to their eyebrows is, for me at least, something that defies all known logic. Eyebrows serve a purpose; they protect the eyes, effectively, from dust, sweat and the like. Some people have thicker eyebrows than others, and some people have different shaped eyebrows.

This is ok; it forms part of our look, our character. But to sit in front of a mirror plucking and extricating them, one by one, for what seems like an eternity? What’s with that?
And after spending that eternity getting rid of them, women the world over simply recreate them again with a pencil? If you want to draw, surely a sensible thing to do would be to get a sketch pad! Take an art class for Christ’s sake!

Some people have their eyebrows plucked and then arrange tattoos to replace them; with I guess shaving or hair removal cream to keep them removed? Are they mad? Any hair that is removed or repeatedly shaved just grows back thicker and quicker – surely they know that? Tattoos go blue or green over time in many cases, girls, don’t you know that also? Does that look seem like it will be in vogue in years to come? What do you know that I don’t? Go to websites offering eyebrow tattooing procedures and check out the before and after photographs… try, just try and convince yourself that the majority of pictures look human and normal. Some ladies’ eyebrows are going to look, in tattooed form years from now, like they belong on a head in Traitor’s Cloister in Elizabethan times. And that’s the good news.

We have all seen tattoos that change over time… a bit of weight gained here and there effectively stretch the tattoos. Stretching any image does little to improve it, as anyone knows who has stood in front of a circus or funfair mirror, or more lately played around with skew functions on image manipulation software.


Then there’s eyebrow piercing.

How does that work? Eyebrows have functionality, don’t they? They aren’t a design cock up of some kind; otherwise the evolutionary QA department would have already starting phasing them out. How do piercings help with the functionality?

Having lumps of jewellery, (jewellery in its loosest term more often than not I might add), inserted in the eyebrows isn’t that useful is it? If they are ringed can you hang a shopping bag off them? Secure a pen perhaps? Provide a convenient ‘out of the way’ place for your mobile headset cord or iPod headphones?

How do piercings help with dust and sweat protection for the eyes? Why not just have a small dense brush surgically inserted, in that ‘perfect eyebrow shape’ and be done with it?
And what about all the other piercings that many are going in for these days?..

We Wear It Well

We Wear it… well?

The finest clothing made is a person’s skin,
but, of course, society demands something more than this’
Mark Twain

I am sure that most of us can recount with some degree of accuracy the tale of Snow White, resplendent with the dwarves, the wicked queen, and the famed question

“Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

We all have been exposed to that story from a young age, its kiddy fodder, a tale that is pretty much mandatory ingestion for any kid who expects to collect £200 and pass go upon reaching the age of 7 or 8… if you haven't heard or read Snow White, or seen the movie / Video / LD / VCD / or DVD you either haven't left primary school, or haven't entered it yet.

We all know the concept of mirrors; we know that they work, know where to buy them, perhaps even know the physics of how a mirror successfully produces a real yet transposed image of the reflected article. We know these things.

Why is it then, in households the world over, rich and poor, educated and not, that mirrors don't seem to work anymore? They can’t be operative, can they, or people wouldn't go out looking the way they do? The wearing of clothes isn't so difficult a thing to get one’s head around when you think about it. There are, albeit unwritten perhaps, but nonetheless, there are some basic rules that we can just see, with our own two eyes, about what clothes work, on whom, in what circumstances, and coordinated with what.

There are kids’ games where, as a primary school grader, we were given the task of matching the head and hair to the clothed torso and clothed legs and waist. We all managed to get this right unless we decided that a deep sea diver would look much better with the legs of a Parisian Can Can dancer (admit it, we all did those silly transpositions, and we all laughed at them as kids). It is quite unfortunate that we are no longer kids, and that similarly ridiculous getups are still often preferred - except this time it’s other people who are laughing, AT US!

Why oh why do fashion designers keep coming up with clothing ideas and thus fashion trends that are singularly suited, and can look great, on overly svelte people alone? There’s no problem with this of course, provided that men and women with figures that are ill suited to these outfits are prohibited from buying them. There should be laws in this regard.

It could be exploited by fashion houses the world over “buy our crop top if you are licensed to do so” or “our low cut jeans are restricted R unless you have the hips, backside and abs to carry it”.

That would be better, wouldn't it? The fitness fanatics would have something else to strive for, it could become elitist for those brand slaves out there, and none but the more suitably figured men and ladies could be seen out sporting these cuts… way more pleasurable.
Now we know that women are not any more or any less optically challenged than men, don’t we?

Why is it then that many of them choose to wear clothing that is singularly ill suited for that person, and as an extension of their choice, unsuitable for anyone in the near vicinity, anyone who even knows someone in their near vicinity, or indeed the human race at large? Come on girls, it isn't that difficult. It’s the shiny reflective thing where you live, which the wicked queen and Alice talked about when you were a kid… Please, please, oh please stand in front of it and SEE FOR YOURSELF.

And for the love of God don’t ask your male partner for his opinion. I mean, really! What do you think he’s going too say?
“Well honey, it doesn’t look too bad. It kind of reminds me of the first time I ever made love to a girl.”
“You mean it makes you feel sexy? I look sexy?”
“No – I feel very apprehensive, I am afraid of failure and ridicule, and I am wondering if perhaps this isn’t a very good idea after all.”

Wake up girls! Most men aren’t going to tell you the truth about how you look. You don’t want to hear it, anyway… honestly. Plus, the ensuing carnage isn’t worth anticipating or inviting from our perspective, so we say what you want to hear and pray that no one in the universe who has even as much as laid eyes on us in our life time, will be encountered when you go out with us, looking the way you do. Men are going to lie to you, simple as that.

They won’t tell you that in those low cut jeans they can’t hear traffic when you walk because your arse cheeks are being squeezed, abrading repeatedly and kind of rhythmically, and sound like they are effectively applauding at the last night of the Proms. No man will tell you that.
No man will congratulate you in wearing low cut jeans because if his right hand is holding shopping, he has a Cornetto ice cream cone in his left hand, and he needs to get out his car keys, your butt cheeks in low cut jeans have provided the perfect temporary ice cream cone stand, even though you are in an upright position.

No man will view, or dismiss for that matter, fat layers in low cut jeans or crop tops as mere love handles. They may tell you they do, but they definitely won’t. Love handles we can cope with, but industrial strength handles, the size of which George W Bush would need in order for him to get a handle on eloquent speaking, are stretching the threshold girls.

No man is going to look at your crop top and ask you if this type of clothing is, despite being ok on you, designed purely for a different size or shape of person… Persons such as Olympiads, people with eating disorders, or successful post liposuction patients, for example. They aren’t going to ask that question.

A further consideration when looking towards low cut jeans or crop tops is that the shape and appearance they have whilst you’re standing, is materially different from the look they create when you sit down. They are universes apart, in fact. Put a god damned chair in front of the mirror and check it out girls.

Then you will know why we aren’t hungry whilst at lunch with you and don’t want coffee or don’t want to consider even one short, sharp, fast, respite where you being in a seated position is a prerequisite.

It also isn't reasonable for any person with stretch marks to wear low cut jeans or crop tops. It isn't reasonable for any person with post birth or post slimming loose skin to wear crop tops either. You may partially get away with it when you are standing, but when you are seated? Men know what an over ripe Clementine orange’s skin looks like, as we’ve seen them since childhood via the leftovers after Xmas.

This look isn't endearing girls, even on an orange, and you think this is a more enamouring look when your midriff has this loose rippled effect? If men want waves for thrills girls, they will take up surfing.

And if you are a tad challenged in the mass department, if your bathroom scales utter a groan when you have placed just the first foot on, when your ideal weight in pounds is now closer to your weight in Kilos, when you start removing not only clothing but jewellery as well pre weighing, AND you take care of ablutions pre weighing, then don't wear these body hugging cropped and low cut clothes, PLEASE.

Some of us may see you after we have recently eaten - and that just isn't fair.

There should be some sort of BMI (Body Mass Index) indicator on clothing, as it appears we no longer understand what clothes sizes actually mean. It seems we need a new indexing system for clothes of some kind, which allows people to lose all past frames of reference for what clothes size they were (and, for many, apparently still think they are).

What’s with all this nostalgia? We don't get nostalgic about wars, disease et al, do we? So why is it that beyond a certain clothes size, we lose the ability to either count or add upwards? This is very simple mathematics, isn’t it? With clothes sizes, there are no provisions for anything other than whole numbers, and when referencing the equation between body and clothes sizes, the resultant answer should invariably be 1.
It shouldn’t be 0 point something, 1 point something, nor there be any fractions involved.
At the end of the day, a size 10 dress divided by a size 10 body equals 1… and one probably hell of a good look if the cutting is half decent. Size 12 into Size 10 doesn’t go, now does it? Nor do men’s large into medium or 40 inch waist into 36 inches divide with an outcome of ‘1’ either.

Clothes have sizes written on them because clothes come in different sizes… to fit people of different sizes. And people become different sizes, don’t they, for a variety of reasons.
Clothes sizes on labels must be the greatest act of hypnosis since money was invented.

How do we know that a 10 pound note is worth ten pounds? According to whom? It’s just generally accepted, isn’t it?
“Please pay the Bearer the Sum of…”
If the Bank of England is that respected and credible, maybe they can feature on garment labels? Clothes sizes should have some similar statement…

“Please SLAY the WEARER if, upon wearing this garment, you may offend others; you shouldn’t be wearing it and all civil rights and currency will be forfeit upon entering a public place wearing this garment, assuming you survive”.

People buy clothes often in the size that some sadist in their subconscious says is about right for them. What is ‘about right’, anyway? ‘About right’ is more often than not ‘about wrong’ if you ask me. Why is this sadistic advisor oblivious to time and change?
The result is that people are constantly buying and going around in clothes that are singularly sized for a space in their memory, yet that person of memorial reference is unfortunately in a different space / time continuum, is maybe a different person altogether, and in some cases, is maybe even a different species. How can one not notice this? Those mirrors simply can’t be working, can they?

People don’t grow into clothes once you are past adolescence and your older brother / sister has left home. And people don’t shrink into them unless under the most extreme of circumstances, so why are these sizing decisions being made? Who is providing input, to whom, and on what basis when clothes are being ‘fitted’.

Instead of these advisors creating the greatest work of fiction since corporate vision statements began to include the statement ‘People are our greatest asset’, wouldn’t it be great if people actually told the truth?
“Wow, that’s a nice crop top!”
“Thank you… does it look really good?”
“Potentially, yes. I presume there is a history of irreversible eating disorders in your family which usually starts around your current age then?”
A clue, Sherlock!

There are many analogies and truisms that may be useful to reflect upon in this regard….
It’s very difficult to get toothpaste back into a tube, isn’t it? What do you do with the mousse or hair gel when you have squeezed out too much of it? Can you put it back? Moreover, try getting a reasonably inflated balloon, and squeeze it into an hourglass shape. Doesn’t work, does it? The part you squeeze emerges elsewhere and not in the exact proportion you would actually want. And some people believe that girdles actually work? In the main?

Sure women and men can “sculpt their shape” into something that is closer to the shape they want. But meanwhile, whilst wearing a monstrosity like that, all your organs are being compressed and compacted to the rhythm of what ever movement you are engaged in at the time. And that’s just so comfortable, huh? Not.

This is all about our human ability to misunderstand basic physics, I am sure. We know that a gas is a substance that expands indefinitely to fill a space or container. We equally know that elasticity is a measure of how an object under pressure can be stretched and still return to its original dynamics. I guess people perhaps think they will futuristically become gaseous, or their purchased clothes will become infinitely elastic, and so when selecting clothes, they just figure they’ll either expand into them indefinitely or the clothes will do likewise to accommodate them.

But these concepts just do not work. It seems people are unaccustomed with making the distinction between attire, and a tyre (or several). People in clothes that don’t fit are like the toothpaste, mousse or gel… you just can’t get it back into the container, so it is totally out of place, makes a mess generally, there are spare loose substances that really don’t belong anywhere and look pretty awful unless you get rid of them. Buying tighter or ill fitting clothes won’t get rid of them… most of the time clothes of this ilk, either through size, cut or design, are effectively highlighting and accentuating all you want to be hidden. If you want a decent rule of thumb, it’s this…

“Clothes should be comfortable enough so as not to leave reminders where they have fit on your skin, after you gotten undressed. You’re an adult. You don’t need apparel placement cues.”

Men are no better. In fact, men are usually much worse.

Men do not understand the concept of stripes at all. If you are on the ‘chubby’ side, then stripes can work in your favour, or, shape wise at least, render you pretty much naked.
An overweight person wearing horizontal stripes is a formula for looking even wider than you actually are. It is as plain as the nose on your face. Then again, you can’t see the nose on your face, not without a mirror, and the mirrors aren’t working, are they?

Some of the clothing decisions men make totally baffle me. When it comes to business attire, this is exceptionally true. It seems we, literally, get dressed in the dark half the time. It isn’t that difficult to lay a tie on top of a shirt and see if the combination of colours and patterns works. This isn’t hard to do, and your own eyes just tell you if it works or not. It isn’t just about whether a shirt / tie combination works, either. It has to match the jacket too. It is possible to lay the tie on the shirt and put them both inside a suit jacket… this will tell you all you need to know.

This shirt / tie matching is totally lost on many men in business, or so it seems. I think a lot of it has to do with where their shirts and ties come from. Who buys them, and in what way?
Many guys at Xmas are given shirts and ties as gifts, and these gifts are given in good faith, no doubt. When the tie enters the clothing collection, it often must be apparent to them that no shirt they own, have ever owned, or ever will own, matches the tie they have been given. Surely this is true? So why do they end up wearing them then?

And as for suits? It seems guys haven’t picked up on the concept of cutting at all, and this is very important. They probably think cutting is something hacked out of a newspaper or taken from a plant in their garden, which isn’t entirely helpful. Men not only come in different sizes, but shapes as well. There’s all the difference in the world between being straight, pear shaped, ruptured pear shaped, inverted pear shaped, etc.

Suits just don’t accommodate all of those different shapes in one style and cut. How can men not notice this? Half the time men wear suits to the office and it is blatantly obvious that the cut just doesn’t work for them. A jacket that is the wrong fit for a man hides nothing. It sticks out like the dog’s proverbials. The suit either just drapes off them, or is effectively wool Clingfilm, and looks awful… how can you not know? Plus, if one is outside, a strong wind will accentuate all of this poor cutting by a factor of at least 10 times. An ill fitting suit instantly gets transformed by a strong wind into either a shroud, or a hang glider.

Another thing that constantly amuses me is the number of men who think that a suit, once the trousers have worn out, automatically converts into a sports coat or blazer. It doesn’t. So many men end up then continuing to wear a jacket that quite obviously used to belong to a pair of trousers, but the trousers are missing. People are viewing this look thinking

‘I wonder what happened to the trousers? Did they get tired? Are they dead?’

Why do guys not realise that trousers wear out before the jacket in a suit? How can they not know this? Half the time when the suit is sent to the dry cleaners, the jacket doesn’t need cleaning… a tad of touching up, pressing, reshaping perhaps, but not cleaning. Surely it would be sensible to buy extra trousers if you buy a suit???

Quite often in previous corporate roles, I would have the occasion to dress formally at a black tie event of one sort or another. Men are either comfortable in putting together formal dress, or they are not. There appears to be no middle ground. Men who are not used to the formal attire tend to be noticeable.

Weddings are particularly a place where you can easily witness this. Sure the groom is in a tuxedo and looks the part… he bought a new tuxedo and probably was fitted for it. But why are his supporting cast asked to participate in the same style of dressing, when they have no clue, and probably no desire, to wear this type of clothing. A hired tuxedo usually looks like a hired tuxedo.

And if you do hire a tuxedo, you cannot wear ordinary shoes with it. You can’t. If the shoes are not highly polished, the look won’t work and the attendees will spend half the day looking at your feet. Ideally a tuxedo calls for patent leather shoes.

I have seen wedding photographs where black tie outfitted guests are sporting the latest shoe accompaniments, from penny loafers, to Dr Martin’s airwear shoes. How can anyone wear a black tie outfit, hired or not, with Dr Martin’s shoes? What the hell is that about? What is this person thinking? These are industrial shoes (that some people wear as casual as well).
How can this be explained? What role is this person undertaking in this attire? Is he going to formally demolish a building? Formally kick in the heads of opposing soccer club’s fans?

What is it with guys and shoes anyway? They have no problem at all paying top dollar for the latest and greatest sports shoes, but shoes for business? Nah – cheap and cheerful.
This is nuts. Good shoes last. They last for years and years with a bit of effort.

I have Church’s business wingtips that are almost fifteen years old and they still are in perfect condition. Sure you have to look after them, but if you do, they last… they don’t disintegrate to coincide with next seasons fashion collection, that’s for sure. It may be a pain to use lighter fluid and set fire to the shoes to strip off the polish and get down to the bare leather. It then may take effort to replace the polish evenly and restore the shoes to their showroom splendour. But when you have done that, you again have great looking shoes that are worth
hundreds of pounds, again, and again, and again. You get fabulous quality and actually get to keep it – this is very cool. But if you buy cheap shoes, you get cheap looking shoes that last five minutes… where is the sense in that?

Then there are the other suit accompaniments. How come women never seem to be able to leave their house wearing odd coloured stockings (OK – so tights help in this regard)? Yet men seem to regularly be able to wear odd socks. How does this happen? And black shoes go with black belts, brown shoes with brown belts. This isn’t hard to get your head around, yet men manage to regularly mess this up.

Go to a casual environment and many men lose the plot completely. There isn’t a business uniform to hang their hat and coat on anymore, so anything goes potentially, and it seemingly does too. That same shirt / tie matching issue reappears… for the entire clothing worn in casual environments. And if that’s not a problem in itself, various events get labelled as to the kind of attire that should be worn… Morning, Black Tie, Formal, Cocktail, Business, Lounge Suit, Smart Casual, Sports Casual, Casual are but a few of the descriptors used to enlighten people as to what type of attire will be suitable for an event. Women seem to figure this out – they pick up the phone and start asking every single attendee whom they know what they are wearing to the event.

Guys don’t do this… they have preconceived ideas about what these descriptors actually mean…
Morning - Someone died and we have to mourn? – Black
Black tie - tuxedo, or someone else died – check first
Formal - This could be black tie, but a dark suit is safer
Cocktail - Hmm… pretty long legged waitresses, can’t wait
Business - Same day to day crap I normally wear to office
Lounge - Velvet jacket – Liberace like
Smart Cas - Blazer and trousers (Alan Partridge?)
Sports Cas - Alan Partridge… AH HA !
Casual - Nike or Adidas everything


Not all guys have these preconceived ideas, but usually at each event there are a few that have no clue as to the code.

Women are smart in this area. They know that the person who wrote the invitations hasn’t got a clue about the codes either, and so rather than ring that person, and risk embarrassment, they and their friends / associates agree amongst themselves what their code will be – safety in numbers. Women know that even if you are dressed inappropriately at an event, you can get away with it if there are enough people similarly dressed to you.

I attended a New Year ball at the Aberdeen Marina Club in Hong Kong a few years back. The theme was the roaring twenties, and the invitation explicitly said that it was better to theme dress than purely wear formal black tie attire. I figured it would be fun to join that crowd dressed as a Chicago gangster, so sure enough I wore a pinstripe dark suit, very soft paisley silk tie, gangster style trilby hat and spats. I left home and arrived at the venue, and met up with all of our friends.

There were about 600 people there that night. 300 women in cocktail dresses (many of which had those tassels at the bottom, how very ‘Charlestonesque’). There were 299 men in black tie attire. And then there was me.

I had followed the instructions to a tee, and looked like the biggest plonker this side of ‘New York, Paris and Peckham’.

If only I had phoned a friend. But, men don’t make those phone calls, so when you see a man in the room that looks about as good a fit as an American emcee at an Al Qaeda conference, you can surmise he will fit into one of the following categories…


He is beyond help
He is single, lives with parents and further beyond help
He has a wife who hates him and getting divorced
He has a wife who effectively hates him, still enjoys his earnings, but isn’t ready to leave him yet… so his dress sense is future legal ammunition for her

Many men, and I don’t think I am one of them, (ah, the delusion is nurtured further), apparently need a woman’s input as to what the man should wear. This is kind of funny, especially when their mirrors aren’t working half the time.

Women have developed interesting ways in communicating with their partners when it comes to the clothes men wear, or so it seems…
“Ok, very funny, now what are you really going to wear?”
or
“Surely you are not going to wear that, are you?”
These questions have massive implied meanings. And you can’t make a joke out of it either by replying
“Yes I am, and don’t call me Shirley.”

Basically, they aren’t questions at all… they are statements intrinsically connected to whether you get to stay in the relationship or get to go to the event… accompanied by her.
The real message is “I didn’t know you still had those clothes… they were hideous the first time around… was the Salvation Army closed?”

This is not a good message for any guy to receive – assuming they actually receive it. There are two choices of action here… either ask her for advice, or call the Samaritans. If you ask her what she thinks would look good on you, then you are safe in the knowledge that at the event there’s at least one person who has to be on your side… both during and after the event. This may well be advantageous, as having her on your side is a mighty fine thing.

If you phone the Samaritans, well it’s probably pointless. If the event is of any size, then one in three of the other guys attending the event are already speaking to them – the line will be engaged.

It isn’t just during business or more formal events where men are seemingly totally oblivious to how they look.

Golf is a sport that apparently has a uniform attached to it… a bizarre uniform much of the time. Visit any golf club and you’ll recognise that overweight men believe that they can continue to wear the same waste size whilst their belts take on the goal of becoming a piece of high tensile suspension apparatus. If your stomach gets bigger guys, so does your waist. That means your trousers or shorts need to be bigger.
Creating a new cut of pants by having the backside covered suitably and then having the front waistband in a low slung position to support a virtual abdominal basketball just above knee level isn’t a particularly good look guys.

You just look massively herniated at best. Plus your golf swing looks like a camel having a drink, at least from a postural perspective.

I can only imagine your golf game will suffer… what a waist.

Foreward

Foreword

Well readers, it is often said that “there’s nowt as queer as folk”, to the point that this Northern English quaint saying is virtually a cliché.
The thing about clichés is that they’re a cliché usually because there is so much truth in the sentiment… those statements usually hold true, and oft across cultures, creeds et al.
I don't know what type of things cause your mind to wander in tangents of disbelief a tad, to explore those moments when you have the thoughts

‘What the heck was that about’? Was that real? Did I get that right? Am I lucid?’

As I get older I find myself drifting into these critiques and analyses of human behaviour more and more, in respect of the things that people say and do, things we read or are exposed to, and possibly even more so with the many bizarre things I say and do as well. Half the time I catch myself behaving as crazily as those I highlight herein, and the other half of the time I am possibly worse.

It has often been reported that as adults today, we receive information into our senses at a rate that is over 600 times that of our parents at the same age. There’s a lot going in, but are we making sense of it? We get older, longer in the tooth, potentially wiser, and yet we seem to have some inbuilt propensity towards continuing to repeat the same things that we realised were unbelievably dumb the first time around.

Why is this? What is it about the human spirit and way of working that prevents us from critiquing in the moment and actually second guessing ourselves BEFORE we enter into the acts of, or the expression of, abject stupidity and lunacy? Can we save ourselves and pre-empt this madness?
Maybe we are receiving information overload and that means we are too swamped to analyse the things we have been previously taught to mitigate? We don’t have that millisecond to access past references because we are consumed with filtering ‘what’s being received?’
Perhaps people with less than developed IQ’s are struggling even more with the information rich world today? Perhaps people with high IQ’s are so swamped so as to render them, at least vis a vis their cognitive potential, partially dysfunctional?

We use equipment more and more, and despite this supposed technology making our lives easier, is it really getting easier? How many more pieces of equipment do you now have to attain mastery of, just to get through a typical day? How many processes and procedures do we now have to remember just to get things to work, even at the most basic of levels?

The world is becoming ever more complex and seemingly beyond the capacity of many. I know I feel that way sometimes. There was a time when if you bought products with a chip in them, they would be returned to the store because they would have been deemed to be damaged. How things have changed. Perhaps the things with chips in them should still be returned, albeit for different reasons?
All I tend to notice is that people in all walks of life seem to be doing things that are beyond comprehension, and worse still they appear oblivious to the fact.

This provides me with much cause for amusement and reflection, and I hope you find these anecdotes, ditties and observations as amusing as I do, though probably just as confusing.

Feel free to chuckle if you have the need… especially if you see yourself or those close to you represented in the following non threatening diatribe – I know I do! ...