Beasts of myth and fable: the first in an occasional series

The Kikidee
The kikidee had the head of a lion and the body of the Swedish Prime Minister. The kikidee was entirely self-assembly and remains the only mythical beast available from IKEA, although, in 2004, the Liverpool store will feature a neon-lit, winged-horse, onyx coffee table. According to Norse legend, the kikidee used a specially adapted Chris Tarrant mask to render its human victims immobile, but this is unproven, as the unlucky kikidee predated the Allen key by several centuries, and remained flat-packed in its box.
- posted by Nigel @ Tuesday, September 30, 2003

 
Wise advice

Always replace the broken light fitting in your en-suite bathroom before the dark autumnal mornings set in. Failure to do so will result in you showering with a traumatised kitten named Harry.

Positive outlook
There’s no way of knowing for sure whether you’re way, way too bloody tired, and living in a sort of hideous netherworld of paralysing exhaustion, but a fair indication is when you start to view death as an excellent opportunity to get some serious rest.
- posted by Nigel @ Monday, September 29, 2003

 
The tennis racket

When you have bid for two new tennis rackets on e-bay USA, then some wise guy spots your bid and offers you two other, identical rackets at a good price, and you accept, but then find that you won the other two you bid on anyway, so you have now successfully bid on four Prince More Precisions – offering traditional player's racket features in a slightly more manoeuverable package, best suited for advanced players with fast swings, seeking a unique mix of control, stability and comfort in a traditional-length, midplus racket – then, the night before you go on holiday, you e-mail one of the sellers to explain that you’re off to France for two weeks, but you won the bid and here’s your credit card number, but he doesn’t reply, so you e-mail him back on your return, and he mistakenly sends you yet another racket, to go with the one that turns up the following day, so you end up with five identical rackets, then you sell your old rackets on ebay UK, but find that you can’t shift the three new rackets that you have absolutely no need for, and you’re constantly paying seller’s fees, but then you play a guy called Kevin in the Autumn League who uses your old rackets and you cry pitifully and remember how good they were and, at his knees, you make him an offer he can’t refuse, because you’ve realised that your new ones are overpriced, unresponsive bollox and that you are now faced with trying to sell all five, your long-suffering wife will hit you hard, full in the face, seven times.
- posted by Nigel @ Sunday, September 28, 2003

 
Small ads

Roof slates, drainpipes, plus 250-foot of glittering bought in error due to horrendous typo, £2

Little-known children’s toys, Bob the Builder’s Merchant, with special VAT haggling feature, Beyblades by Gillette, Careless Bears, will injure your child, hence £1.70

Retirement is that much nearer
With only 20 links to go, retirement is this close. Crazyboy Nuggins of Didslife is my 80th blogroller.
- posted by Nigel @ Friday, September 26, 2003

 
Audi Man in dramatic public appeal

Someone has pinched Audi Man’s magic boots this week. Something to do with having to live life, rather than write about it in a nonsensical way. So here’s the idea: you propose the theme, and, if I like it, I’ll give you 250 words within 24 hours.

Loose small ad
Garage sale, this Saturday, 33-ft home cinema, horsebox, tunnelling equipment, human remains, a grenadier, wolf cubs, kids’ nuclear-fission game, 34 tons of pomegranates, all must go, owing to extended hospital stay.

Links vanish into air
New blogrollers have been thicker on the ground than inspiration this week. Number 78 is Nooty Buggle of Dearie Me, while Robin Parent of Speaking as a Preene is number 79.
- posted by Nigel @ Thursday, September 25, 2003

 
Running from the truth

Marmoset Bunions
Classifieds Editor
Snowsuit Gazette
Limerick

Dear Bunny

Well, Paula Radcliffe finally won the Great North Run again, no less than a whole year since the last time. Ha! If I were the World Joggling Foundation, which I am, I would ensure that Radcliffe’s name is never uttered in the same breath as Nurmi, Ovett and Handel, until she has crawled the course over burning plasma, with an overweight opera singer chained to her buttock. While being taunted by an army of dissatisfied corporate-tax accountants.

Yours etc.

Excessive linkage continues
Stelios Endemetriosis, author of Big Birds Circling, is the 77th blogger to link this bloody stupid blog.
- posted by Nigel @ Monday, September 22, 2003

 
Careering out of control

Wife: You're planning what? Freelance copywriting? According to 1998 Government statistics, you were officially the world's third-worst freelance copywriter that year.
Me: What about that Royal Navy recruitment slogan I wrote?
Wife: Oh yes, what was it? Ah, I remember... 'Blue, wet and fighty', that was it.
Me: Well, Navy recruitment was up that year. By three.
Wife: Yes. Three rodents.
Me: Well, the client loved it.
Wife: The client also loved Hitler's foreign policy, if you remember.
Me: I must admit, I did feel a bit of a tit at the Turkey Copy Awards.
Wife: If it's any consolation, if I'd have written garbage like that, I'd have felt like a tit, too.
- posted by Nigel @ Sunday, September 21, 2003

 
News snippet

An Audiville pensioner is up in arms following controversial plans to house a new shopping mall in his bedroom. Grafton Services, 72, who has lost the use of his mind, claims the 400-hectare site will interfere with his habits, which, he says, he is unable to control or medicate without medication. Council ideas supremo Jermaine Segment yesterday took time out from planning an air-based gardening initiative and a 24-hour arthropod martial arts school, to deny the allegations.

Is it me?
Tiny Mentions of Or is it me? is merely the 76th blogger to blogroll me. Or is he?
- posted by Nigel @ Friday, September 19, 2003

 
Things it's best not to do

When the builder has finished, and you replug your PC and switch it on, don't expect everything to be fine. What will actually happen is there will be a sound like the space shuttle re-crossing the heat shield, and US-drag-car-style flames will shoot from the rear. Consequently, Audi Olympics is closed until Saturday. Or possibly forever. Thanks for the loan of the PC, Ruth.
- posted by Nigel @ Wednesday, September 17, 2003

 
Doghouse

Me: You smell like a French farmer’s backside.
Wife: Eh?
Me: Your breath would stun a shire horse.
Wife: Pardon?
Me: You wear your mother’s dirty knickers. On your head. When you go to the shops.
Wife: Ah... I get it.
Me: You have a face like a rusty power tool.
Wife: Nigel, it won’t work. You have absolutely no chance of sleeping in the garden tonight.
Me: Oh, go on. I’ll do that thing where I…
Wife: No chance, Sunshine. Look what happened the last time you did that. Now clean Tim’s bottom. Immediately.
- posted by Nigel @ Tuesday, September 16, 2003

 
A new kid in town

Thank you, thank you, thank you to my, er, truly international, band of fans. With a 75-60 win in Zebedee's Best-Blogger poll, we've struck a blow for the new-born-baby-zzzzz-list. The world has moved one or two degrees on its axis, and there's a new kid on the blog. Thanks to Zebedee for allowing us to prove it.

Now, sleep, gimme sleep...
- posted by Nigel @ Monday, September 15, 2003

 
Bean queue

Today, I am mainly doing stuff around the family home; specifically, I am painting three bedrooms at once. I am doing this, rather than sitting here writing surreal and pointless nonsense, because I find that a frozen salmon, when pushed hard into an eye socket, hurts like hell.
- posted by Nigel @ Friday, September 12, 2003

 
Midwife crisis

There is no look like the look on the face of the midwife who has just delivered your baby, when she says, 'Ooh, he is a cutey, isn't he? Do you have a name for him yet?' and you reply, 'Yes. Victim Flymo Saracen Graber'.

Things it's best not to do
Buy a 7-ft tall, 'Libido', CD rack (in birch) from Ikea and feed it through the hatch of your small car, so that it rests on the dash. What then tends to happen is that, while overtaking a Vauxhall Astra on the M6 at 72mph, your passenger-side airbag fully deploys, leaving you in charge of an out-of-control, 1000-cc bouncy castle.

Pop chart
The pop-chart blogroll this week acknowledges the irreverent genius of Estella. Sarah kills herself over the 'bacon hat'. The third-funniest thing on the Web. Give this girl the fame she deserves.
- posted by Nigel @ Thursday, September 11, 2003

 
Please vote for me

Please vote for me at Zebedee's house. If you're new here, please turn to page 36 for the Odd Humour Warning. Here's a flavour of it (entry from March 2003):

Naughty legislation pushed through?

A Tony Blair, 58, lookalike last night denied that far-reaching and disturbing new laws had been sneaked through under cover of the war in Iraq. Speaking on the new annual Dress Your Pet as a Rabbi Day, Pav Lovsdogs, 74, sporting a French translation of the lyrics to Agadoo on his buttocks, called for Blair’s detractors to be boiled in Tippex.

They have pointed to the new Dwarf Slavery Act, The Westminster Happy Whoring and Gaming Act, The Ugly Sisters of Buxton (Marion and Jean, This Means You) Ducking Stool Act, and the I’ll Sort Out that Horizontal Husband-Filching Whore From Number 36 and Piss on Her Grave Regulations (Amended) 2003, as evidence that the put-upon PM, 62, may be feeling the strain of conflict. Lovsdogs was confident that besieged Blair, 64, would also deny the allegations, once his Navy had liberated Cardiff from the invisible snow-otter and rushed through the first recorded knighthood of a dead swan.

AABBA
After the birth of my first child, this limerick kind of occurred:

There was a young lady called Hannah,
Who grew very lazy in manner,
All the way up the stairs,
People carried her wares,
While she raced up and down on a Stannah.

Anybody else made one? Wanna share it?
- posted by Nigel @ Wednesday, September 10, 2003

 
Stray small ad

Lilies by Slazenger, ill-advised cross-branding project, also Adidas-bred wolfhounds, no reasonable offer refused, or swap for Pepsi car.

Inevitable cliches
After wine, e-mailing pictures of your new child to most of the developed world, including two ex-girlfriends and your former wife, will produce this response: "Nigel, I don't give a toss about your scraggy baby. I've moved on with my life, to the point where the physical scarring from the auto-car-wash labrador incident is faint. Now please piss off." OK, Mum, sorry.

Tim goes global
There is no look like the look the nurses give you when you explain with huge enthusiasm to your one-day-old child that he is featured on My Boyfriend is a Twat. Thanks, Zebedee.

75% retired
Link number 75 is Helena Garnier-Suppositor from Fudge It.
- posted by Nigel @ Tuesday, September 09, 2003

 
The bun

The bun may be done.

Later
The bun was done. At 7am, could it have been a father's intuition, could it have been ambient, airborne signals, or could it have been the fact that Sarah was screaming like an epileptic horse and eating my arm? Whatever it was, it happened damn quick after that.

Timothy William Morton Graber. Born 10.04am today. Five pounds 5 ozs (that's 2.42 cms). Only disappointment is the lack of obvious verbal or reasoning skills, or hand-eye co-ordination yet... I guess we'll have to fast-track him. Love is sometimes a small and inadequate word.
- posted by Nigel @ Monday, September 08, 2003

 
Small ads

Lay-Zee-Boy car, pulls over abruptly and opens a beer when it thinks it’s done enough, lethal, hence bargain £2

Half a peanut for sale, owing to allergy, also full wardrobe of men’s clothes, car, house, golf clubs, other personal items, will swap for bungalow with pretty garden, £1.20

Flaming crucifix, voodoo dolls, souls of burning demons, eternal lies in serpents’ eyes, call before 9, or preferably at zenith of full moon, reasonable pact can be agreed, also child’s bike, ashes

Self-igniting cufflinks, hassle-free style with only half the effort, wave goodbye to costly Bic lighters, matches etc., £4

Monopoly game, Twaddington-Penge edition, ideal for coffee breaks, idle moments, people with short attention spans, £12

Orthopaedic piano, unique instrument, gently supports you physically and emotionally while you play, a boon for the physically suboptimal musician, £11

Rowing machine, will start a row in a graveyard, fierce debater, strong views on kipper liberty - raw, mechanised anger for only £3.62

26 to go
Tavistock ‘Buttons’ McDickling is the latest nail in the 100-link coffin. Tavistock is Very, very bored. And Seditious Limitz, with his mysterious blog, is link number 74 for Audi Olympics.
- posted by Nigel @ Friday, September 05, 2003

 
Things it’s best not to do*

Most people would probably consider the very instant a smartly dressed, kindly old lady passes by your car on her bike at the traffic lights to be an inopportune moment to eject the 150ml or so of Smile mouthwash you have been swilling around your mouth for the last 12 minutes.

Use the phrase, "I fear one of us could be Elvis, Madame, and it's not me," during your grievance hearing.

Let your guard down, and refer to the Chief Executive as 'Dixieboy Chuffles' in an e-mail to HR.

*©Audi Olympics, 2002
- posted by Nigel @ Thursday, September 04, 2003

 
I don't like Mondays

As anyone who knows me will tell you (except my family, friends and colleagues, with whom I've never discussed it), I don't like Mondays. And I've just discovered that next March contains no fewer than five Mondays. Hell's teeth!

72nd link catches the mood
In the spirit of Audi Man’s current difficulties at work, about which more when we’re at a safe distance, Tamsin Muttocks from Call Centre Confidential is the 72nd weblog to blogroll the Olympics.
- posted by Nigel @ Tuesday, September 02, 2003