It's Not What You Know

Shoot me. It's been far too long since my last update, I know, but time has escaped me and I've only just managed to track the little bastard down. Don't worry though, he's locked up safe and sound in my airing cupboard with Keeley Hawes and Basil Brush.

What I wanted to talk at your about today is a new scheme to expand the audience of this charming little website on the big, scary interwebnets. I have been in contact with several other British (and possibly Irish, I'm all about political correctness, me) website owners in order to create a spread of affiliates, including the lovely chaps over at A Sitting Duck. I must say the interest has been phenomenal, and I have been literally inundated with a reply, and who knows, when the big difficult switchover occurs I might make more internet 'friends' and make the whole world a more popular place for everyone. That's right, I'm not just a blogger anymore, I'm a revolutionary.

So what does this mean for you lucky, lucky readers? Why of course it means that not only will I be updating more often, but you'll be able to make lots of new friends in the comments boxes (provided they load correctly, I really need to look into that). If you could possibly want more, you're a spoiled nobody who has never known anyone to truly love you who will die alone and unwanted upside-down in a wheelie bin desperately trying to cover your shame as mobs of those you thought were your friends laugh at you and make vulgar statements that question your sexuality.

If any of you are interested in affiliating with Surface of the Sun (or know someone who might be), please don't hesitate to drop me a quick email. Top stuff.


*404: Snippet not found

Poetry in Motion

The modern poet. To proclaim as one is to commit certain social suicide, as poetry seem to be restricted to depressed inadequates who walk around wearing black and listening to Dirt Pram or SlipperyRope or whatever it is they listen to. Tis is a real shame, because as a nation, poetry is our national art form. The French have their paintings, the Belgians have their chocolate and the Americans have their ignorance, but we English (sorry Scotland, Ireland and Wales, I'm sure your sonnets are lovely) can safely say we hold more prestige in the poetry world than any others. Unfortunately, it seems to many that poetry is a dying art. I mean, the are bags of poetry competitions about, but poets don't get the same recognition they would have a century ago.

Or do they?

It depends what you class as a 'poet', but if you follow my view, you can't help but agree that one medium has made poetry more popular than ever, and young people literally worshipping the most renowned. After all what is poetry? It is a verse with a deeper meaning, or sometimes not even that! A good example is The Little Vagabond by William Blake. It means what it says, that churches should be more like pubs, and if you can read some deeply ironic meaning throughout the whole piece, let me know by posting a comment, because I sure as Hell didn't see it.

No, poetry has taken on a new guise for modern times, and there are an extremely select few who don't know of it. You may know it simply as 'music'.

Think about it, if someone were to show you the lyrics to a song you'd never heard (providing it didn't talk about "bros n der hoes"), you could be forgiven for thinking it might be a poem. Don't believe me? Try this 'stanza' on for size:

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi's and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.

And now let's look at a modern poem:

I begged you to hear me
there's more than flesh and bones,
Let the dead bury their dead.
They will come out in droves,
But take the spade from my hands, and
fill in the holes you've made.

Not a huge difference really is there? That's because they both have rhythm, both of these examples have enjambement (where a line ends without punctuation) and end-stops (where a line ends abruptly on a full stop), and they both hide a deeper meaning. I'd analyse them for you now, but I'll leave you to do that if you so desire.

It'll never be accepted by the poets society, but when bands like Mumford and Sons can write more meaningful words than William McGonagall, those in charge can do what they like, it's not going to make Mumford run away crying. Bear in mind though, there is a lot of modern music I wouldn't call poetry because they hold no meaning or real soul, and this is true for a lot more of the 'popular' music. Let's be honest though, N-Dubzzy Snoopy Dogg are more popular than Great Lake Swimmers, and Carol Ann Duffy is more popular than Simon Armitage. You can work the maths out for yourself.


*Super special bonus points for anyone who noticed that the example poem stanza and song verse were in fact the wrong way around. I really am a cheeky devil at times, aren't I?
'It Ain't What You Do it's What it Does to You' belongs to Simon Armitage
'Thistle and Weeds' belongs to Mumford and Sons

Be a Man, Man

These days with feminism on the rise, it seems that men are expected to prove just how manly they are, but still remain sensitive, caring, and most of all it seems, domesticated.

That's right lads, you've got to learn how to cook. But don't worry, there's nothing saying what or how you have to cook, so here's my how-to on making a manly meal for men who, like men, like women. Man.

It's simple really, you just have to remember the five steps of MANLY cooking:

Meaty
And
Nutritionally
Lacking
YEAH

Follow these guidelines to the letter, and soon you too will be a man of the kitchen. That's right, A MAN!

Still stuck? Not to worry, here are a few traditional recipes with a manly nipple twist to them to give you some inspiration.

-

Chicken Chow Man
Cover chicken in batter
Deep-fry chicken
Head butt pan of water repeatedly to bring it to the boil
Spit rice in boiling water
Mix chicken & rice
Add gravel
Cover in salt & HP Sauce
Serve on corrugated iron

Muscle Stew
Boil own arm year-old chip fat for 30 minutes
Serve in cupped hands

Mansagne
Basic lasagne recipe with the following changes:
Replace mince with steak
Replace roux sauce with chilli sauce & Branston pickle
Replace pasta with photos of loved ones*
Serve

Leather Jacket Potatoes
Pick out the three largest, fluffiest and most delicate potatoes you can find
Galvanise potatoes
Cover in best-before 1981 olive oil and light
Build bonfire around potatoes and leave for thirty seconds
Climb into fire and retrieve potatoes
Serve with bark

Steel and Kidney Pie
Attack frozen steak and kidney pie with steel girders until sufficiently heated through
Serve

-

Got your own recipe idea? Post a comment below or email me, and maybe (just maybe) I'll give it a go and post a review on a future update.

UPDATE: These lads have the right idea


*Of course (being a man), these will all be self-portraits

Counter-Sausage Measures

Chatroulette. We all know it, and a lot of us loathe it. If it's not sweaty fifty year olds trying it on, it's a laughably sized phallus staring you in the face. Of course, we've all heard the legends of the man on the piano, and people with something genuinely interesting to say or an amusing hand puppet, but do we ever see these elusive figures? Of course we don't. How to make Chatroulette worthwhile then? Well it's quite simple if you're not a completely useless bastard: take the initiative to be one of the interesting people. Easy enough, you may think, but it'll require some enthusiasm and a lack of shame. Here's a few ideas to get the old creativity flowing...

Place a sheet over your face and pretend to be a ghost

Place the webcam in your mouth*

Read passages from the Bible and claim to wreak God's wrath upon your chat partner

Treat men as women and women as men

Selotape your face into obscure positions

Throw rice at the webcam and laugh manically

Draw a Hitler moustache on your screen at random and wait for that beautiful, fleeting moment when it lands on someone's top lip

Lower the lighting to disguise your face, and make sexual advances to people whilst keeping the subject of your gender ambiguous

Dress as Paul McCartney and convert people to vegetarianism

Attempt to baffle your chat partner with card tricks

Cover the webcam lens with jam and cream, and lick it off without using your hands to hold it

Pretend to have an epileptic fit


*Best with a throat infection

A Matter of Time

It had to happen. That's right, it's quintessential audience interaction day! Or to put it another way, it's time for a re-think.

What with me branching out into the vlogosphere, I'm getting my thinking cap on in the direction of a complete design overhaul. That's right, Surface of the Sun is going to be re-designed with a brand new layout for the modern man and/or woman. Georgia's out, and that'll probably mean Helvetica is in, but enough of this talk of fonts, I'm looking to create a more visually appealing and functional site for you lot to have a lovely little browse on.

The thing is, I can't get started until I've had some input from you lot. What parts of the site do you like best, and what other features would you like to see? A homepage for example? An immediate link to my latest blog entry/video?

The fate of the site rests in your keyboard, so get cracking!*

Better still, if you know anyone with experience in this sort of thing, get them to drop me a line: alexolney@surfaceofthesun.co.uk


*Don't actually crack your keyboard, tithead

5000 Views

Five thousand hits. My blog has received five thousand hits? I'd scarcely believe it myself if I hadn't been monitoring the progress since I made it, but nevertheless, it's arrived. A real milestone in my eyes. The fact that there have been five thousand occasions where someone has clicked on a link that I made staggers me, and I couldn't have done it without you lot. At least, not without an auto-refreshing script and no consideration for my pride.

In honour of this, I'm pleased to announce a new direction for Surface of the Sun in the form of vlogging (that's video blogging, oh I'm so witty). Don't worry, a majority of the updates will still be your good old fashioned text form, but every so often I'll treat you all to a lovely poor-quality vid.

You lucky sorts you.

Anyway, here's the first of what could be many videos I'll be making for this. Enjoy.




*Third 'S' not available in any countries

Celebrate Good Times

It's that time of year. Every couple are exchanging romantic presents (read: a teddy bear holding a heart) and expressing just how they feel about one another. Nice, isn't it? Even as a single man I do enjoy how this one days brings people together, despite all of the commercialisation of it. I can understand why people get angry over how tacky most celebrations seem to have become, but no-one is forcing you to buy any of this tat, you buy it on your own accord. What's stopping you, say, making a handmade card? Unless you don't have hands, in which case you can make them a footmade card. Now that's dedication. There are so many different ways you can express your love to someone* (or something), so be a little bit different.

To celebrate the death of St. Valentine (that's right, he died on this day), I've rooted through records and peeked under rugs for all of the events that have fallen out of tradition in modern society, so we can start reliving the good old celebrations of yore. Aren't I lovely?

Harrington Sunday (2nd Sunday of July)
Named after sir Harrington Harrington, Harrington Sunday is the one day of the year which is dedicated to the recycling of all organic and synthetic mucus. For one day a year, the descendants of sir Harrington collect the nation's mucus, and turn it into a delicious and nutritious broth, to be served to anyone who wishes for it. The ceremony was sadly dropped after NHS reports deemed the practice 'unhygienic'.

Postman's Day (26th January)
In years gone by, it was customary on this date for the people of Wales to be conscripted into the role of postmen and postladies, and to deliver small gifts to their leader, Lord Cardiff. Cardiff has of course passed on since this tradition was exercised, and so did the celebrations. The Welsh are now free to do as they please on this day.

Dilworthering (3rd October)
On this merry day, it was (and still is in certain parts of Lancashire) traditional to approach young and attractive strangers in the street and engage in sexual congress in the traditional Dilworthian way (on a tandem). Memories of this day ring clearly in the minds of famous persons such as the Duke of Wellington, Frank Sinatra, and of course Anubis, god of the afterlife.

Blarmalade Blunday (5th Monday of November)
Almost unheard of these days, Blarmalade Blunday is the anniversary of one of the greatest scientific discoveries of last generation, the invention of fruit preserves. Founded by Sgt. Armbrad of Basingstoke, Blarmalade Blunday gets it's unusual name from a speech impediment that caused him to be completely unable to pronounce the letter 'm' at the start of a word. Armbrad discovered the art of preserving fruit after an enormous radioactive blast caused a pulverised nectarine and a bag of sugar to somehow combine on a molecular level. These days the same method is used, which is why jam making is such a dangerous profession, and should never be attempted at home.

Opposite Day (CLASSIFIED)
That's right, Opposite Day isn't just a ruse your friends and family member used to pull on you. Allocated with the mysterious Tlentifiti calendar (which has long been forgotten), only a handful of officials and whippets know when this actually occurs. In my efforts of discovering this day, I also uncovered the date of this event, but for the sake of my own safety I cannot repeat it to you. If you should find me acting suspiciously on a particular day of the year, you'll know why.


*The missionary is so last winter