Normal Idea: Do It Yourself Too

Here's a niggle. Seeing a tv programme advertised that's clearly the result of fusing two or three random words together and hoping they stick long enough to make sense(celebrities doing a quiz on a rollercoaster might be one). A popular example of the formula used to be (personal tick)+(detective)=detective show. Modern equivelants would be Dexter, Monk, etc. As we all know, however, the real daddy of the genre would be Murder, She Wrote, in which Angela Lansbury would turn up at a dinner party or a reunion or whatever, before someone would murder someone else for something. Angela would then figure out who it was, why it was, when it was, and then go home.

I could never tell, though, if what we were watching was just one of Lansbury's stories (involving herself as herself, in a terrifying murder filled autobiographical fan-fiction), or whether she just wrote off screen, using the legions of murders she witnessed as creative fuel. In which case, did she deliberately seek out murders to write about? Was she so good at it that she could sense when a murder would take place (eschewing many a social engagement on the basis that nothing was popping up on her blood-lust radar)? Or had she simply learned to live with her horrible ability to generate murder in otherwise pleasant social situations by turning it into a revenue stream (life giving you lemons and all that)?

Obviously, Lansbury herself, after 'witnessing' so many murders, would be the prime suspect, so maybe what we're getting in each episode is her jovial, happy-go-lucky alibi. Who knows? You're welcome to watch all 11,716 episodes of MSW to see if I'm right. To be honest, I'm aware all of the above has been said before, but I really just needed to get my head together. So many questions, so many questions...

International Relative Exchange Vol. 12

Please be aware that this isn't a dating service, rather a simple trade-your-relatives-for-strangers getup. I've gathered that the IRE (and similar online trading operations like getoutofmyhouse.com and notanymore.com) are having problems with mormon men in particular, who have been known to suggest trades of entire branches of their families in exchange for excessive wifeage. God love you all. Stop it.

Royalty Free Idea: Everybody Respects Brian

To be honest, people would only watch "Everybody Respects Brian" to see Brian finally lose it and go mental after receiving literally nothing from anyone, despite being so relentlessly, needlessly constructive-chipper 24/7. Of course, gain isn't what being nice to others is about, but, to be fair, that's exactly what it IS all about.

I'm not sure having a cat head would be such a bad thing, really, with the right attitude. I'm sure you could get sponsorship from somewhere. And I'm sure there'd be other cat-headed folk stoating about somewhere. In which case, you could probobly form some kind of gang. You'd always get to make the first move in a rumble, at least if the cat-head community move in the way that football mascots do - large, deliberate movements that are still somehow inscrutable and unknowable, terrifying...

Royalty Free Idea: Last Gasp Generic Whiner Gamble

If you're anything like me, then I apologise. Also, if you're anything like me, you'll doubtless have a folder of drawings from late childhood/early adolescence. On the one hand, it's nice having an actual tangible link to my carefree pencil-toting past. On the other hand, well, it transpires that I was a bit of a whiner. Or rather, I found whiny self-indulgence to be a positive, desirable trait. As such, a great deal of the characters of my creative yore were almost preordained aloof and sarcastic. Either that, or stoic and weathered, silent and "let's just get on with this". My characters were very often robots. Whiny, sarcastic robots with big swords or guns or gun-swords. I was doing my standard grades at the time.

But they were important formative years, and it's not fair on my younger self to cash in the chips of his whiny, stoic progress for cheap irony. Double fairness - whiny whinyness was a bit of a character staple in manga and anime at the time, in which I had a fledgling interest. Thankfully, I've since been able to differentiate between being a fan of manga/anime and being interested in particular, individual titles. I'm very much in the latter camp. At the moment, general anime character staples of note are: being young (and more often than not, female-young), and either being full of cleavage or full of sacharine adorable tweeness. These are, to be fair, almost desperately unfair generalisations, but they typify the most popular titles of the moment, or at least the ones that get the most anime-media attention. Dig deep and there's definately content out there that's worth the time and effort, but it's certainly a dig.

My folder of characters would either be very sarcastic about the whole thing, or just resolved to getting through it, however getting through it may be accomplished. Good for them.

Normal Post: Victory!

Aha! A while back, I apologised to anyone I may have misled over the origins of the Walls Twister ice cream, explaining that I had always maintained that it had been devised by a girl on a Jim'll Fix It jolly. Guess what? I was right! I'm not mental! It was devised by some girl! While I'm obviously happy that my state of mind has been temporarily shored up once again, I can't help but feel sorry for the Twister's (presumably fully grown) creator, who probobly isn't receiving anything for handing Walls the delicious profit laden coding her brain so cruely generated. That she provided an incredible iced-service for mankind can only be of cold (ho!) comfort.

I aware that none of this constitutes having achieved something, by the way.

International Relative Exchange Vol.11

To be fair, we can't entirely validate the authenticity of the 'images' of the relatives for exchange on here, but we pack them off with crayons, so you can do a little modding if you're not completely satisfied.

Royalty Free Idea: Gamble Options on Everything

I've never really been attracted to competitive gambling, like Happy Families and Poker, partly because there's too much ego involved, partly because it's not particularly interesting visually (indoor sunglasses), and thirdly because no-one ever seems to get particularly excited about winning at it. Also, there's not much novelty in the win - you get money, probably ultimately spent on hamburgers or sunglasses or a car. It doesn't even really appear in an interesting way - it doesn't appear from a big metal chute or pouring from a hole in a huge electronic face (what?), it's already packaged up in a case, meekly attempting to channel some rubbish gangster 'transaction'. Woo.

Where are the building sized slot machines and roulette wheels I was promised by the video games of my youth? If everyone were forced to spend a few days a year living almost entirely by decisions made by a roulette wheel (dictating the outcomes of such quandraries as "What will we talk about?" "How much is that?" and "How DOES my wife look?"), it'd not only throw open any number of alternative routes through life not usually considered, but also highlight just how lucky we are to be able to decide things for ourselves. Yes, yes. I know - deeeeeep.

International Relative Exchange Vol.10

Spring is here (or was here, depending on your access to the world outside), and now might be the time to streamline your core social cognative groupings. You could also trade a few relatives. Some may protest, in truth, but that's only likely to make any new experiences they experience all the more mind blowing. So loosely pack a case for them, ignore the short-sighted sobbing, and warmly give them their two-tone megabus printout. They'll look back on it all and smile.