...... hello?......

...... is there somebo.. oh hi there! You haven’t been hanging around this whole time waiting for me to get back to you with news of what beard I’m gonna grow, have you? God, I’m really sorry. I’ve hardly been home recently and in about an hour’s time I’m off again, driving down south (to England, NOT Bathgate) to visit family. Obviously, I’ve re-mortgaged the house to buy the necessary diesel for the 800-mile round trip so here’s hoping that’ll be enough to get me back next week.

How are you anyway? Enjoying this pleasant summer weather? Pottering about in the gard… oh… you’d rather I stopped faffing about and just got on with it since there are literally tens of people waiting with bated breath for the outcome of the beard survey? Fair enough.

Well… it’s been a tough decision and I’ve valued all the suggestions that were put forward, especially those that showed a creative mix-and-match flair (Tommy, DC) but in the end I called up my cousin who has experience in these matters. Strangely, he didn’t seem to know who I was and mumbled something like “get off this f#cking line ‘cause I’m right in the middle of the longest goddam day of my life” and then there was some kind of explosion in the background and he just hung up. Rather rude I thought.

But no matter, time is short so here's my cousin modelling the look I’m now grooming for the rest of 2008… “ALL FOR ONE, etc...”

Market Research Consumer Survey-Type Thing 3

Long term readers of this website may recall that on occasion (here and here for example) I like to garner your valued opinion about certain things so that I can alter my lifestyle accordingly to be more fulfilled / interesting / like you. Some may speculate that this is just a less-than-subtle way of finding out if anyone actually still reads this stuff and also to compensate for my severe shortcomings in areas such as ‘hit counters’, ‘pings’, ‘twitters’, RSS feeds, cookies and all that other mind-boggling interweb stuff. To those people I say simply, “let them eat cake”. (Or should that just be “eat cake” since I appear to be addressing them directly without the assistance of a third party intermediary?)

Anyway, here’s your chance to…

a) tell me that you’re still out there AND

b) play a crucial and influential role in how my life will unfold and shape up for the rest of 2008. And by “unfold and shape up”, I mean, of course, “score big with the ladies”.

Your task is this. For a while now (13 or so years) I’ve sported longish hair (and yes, as you can see from the photo at the top of the page, it has sometimes wavered on the edge of mulletdom... what of it? Eh? EH?) together with a trim but increasingly greying goatee beard.

However, this summer after careful consideration (i.e. I got drunk one night and agreed with a work colleague who suggested “it might be a good idea”) I’ve had my hair cut to its shortest length since 1974 and I’ve shaved off my beard. But I’m really, REALLY missing my facial hair and I’m THIS CLOSE to growing it back again and I might go for something different so I’d like your help in choosing the look that will “score big etc. etc.”

Now don’t scroll down too quickly because all you have to do is peruse the five options below - WHOA THERE… I said DON’T scroll down yet! - and leave a little comment as to which you think might net the desired results. To minimise the amount of effort required on your part, they’re all numbered so you can simply leave the requisite number as a comment. As always, any additional feedback you care to offer will be very gratefully received. And then probably ignored... NO, just kidding!

I’m going to be busy next week so won’t be posting anything else here for ten days or so (who said ‘what’s new’?) to give you time to make a considered choice. The option with most votes will obviously win and if that happens to agree with my current favourite, then a prize may be forthcoming.

Right then…

Are you ready…???

Sure…???

Okay, scroll away…

Something For The Weekend 42

Dave,

I know you’re heading off with your “fiancé” on your holibags tomorrow (or is it today?) so here’s just a brief(ish) summary of three things I’ve been up to culture-wise recently in case you get a bit bored talking about wedding preparations or china patterns or the whole valance-versus-voile debate and want to come home and go out drinking and bullsh#ting with me.

Sports
Some people would say that “sports” is nothing to do with culture. To those people I’d smile smugly, dive into my extensive vocabulary, summon up my best debating club posture and say, “…well I think you’re really stupid too, so there…” and then we’d agree that I was right and move on with our lives. As you well know Dave, this weekend sees the 19th annual running of the Training Centre Golf Outing (sponsored by Tacky Productions Inc. – a subsidiary of Tacky Worldwide Inc.) and as a former winner you must be devastated at missing out because instead, you’ve chosen a fortnight of “you WILL wear a pink cravat on the day David” and “we can’t have her sitting next to him” and “NO, I won’t do it THAT way just because we’re getting married.”

You’ll be sadly missed by all the boys, although to be honest, your recent Red Bull-fuelled, club-throwing tantrums were getting to be a bit wearing and exposing your extra nipple every five minutes was leaving some of the lads feeling sadly inadequate. I’m sure wherever you go on holiday though you'll be logging on to THE GREATEST WEBSITE IN THE WORLD to get all the latest news about who won, who threw it away and who went back to Inverkeithing with some trollop from the pub. If there were more readers here than just you and me Dave, (I think I might do a wee test next week to find out) they too could get involved by reading all the “hilarious” stories from past years, viewing dodgy photographs of ridiculous haircuts and red cardigans (WTF?) and even placing on-line bets on all their favourite golfers. An interweb experience like no other.

Television
In celebration of Independence Day across the Atlantic in the colonies, I’ll tell you that my current favourite American television outputage is ‘The Daily Show’ on More 4 and ‘The Colbert Report’ on FX. Funny, clever, smart, informed and insightful are just some of the adjectives I use to describe myself for watching these programmes and, if you ever manage to regain command of the remote control – a long shot I know - you should definitely check them out.

Literature
I’ve just started reading another novel by Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre (thank you Russell) called “One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night” which appealed to me instantly because of the synopsis on the back…

“…the touching story of what unfolds when the former pupils of an ordinary Glasgow high school are reunited after fifteen long years; reminiscence, reconciliation, old secrets, rekindled passions, joy, laughter, hijackers, murder, vengeance, machine guns, rocket-launchers… that sort of thing.”

I’m not saying it’s exactly the same as the high school reunion I attended back in 2002 (we had grenades instead of rocket-launchers) but it was enough to hook me from the word go. In truth, I’ve only reached page 70 so am still getting introduced to all the characters but one section in particular made me sit up and shout out “Holy Sh#t, that’s ME!” when I read it the other night.

One of the former pupils, a wise-cracking smart arse when he was in school, is now enjoying a healthy relationship with a girl he idolised fifteen years previously, the two of them having “found each other” after leading very separate post-school lives. He’s recently discovered that she’s pregnant and this passage describes the surprisingly positive things that went through his brain when he first found out. Ladies, expect this if I ever knock you up…

“Responsibility suddenly sounded like a fourteen- rather than four-letter word. Parenthood sounded like a great adventure rather than a waste of Steve Martin. And growing up sounded plausibly achievable. Once his whizzing brain had calmed down a wee bit and he discovered that such ludicrous thoughts were actually there to stay, he appreciated that he shouldn’t have been so amazed at the strength with which his paternal instincts had suddenly kicked in. It was hundreds of thousands of years of genetic programming against a brief decade or so of late twentieth-century pseudo-individualism. Besides, bottle feeding a wean at three in the morning would provide a unique opportunity to revisit the Moonlighting back-catalogue.”

YYYYYES! Four seasons of David Addison, Maddie Hayes, Bruce Willis, Cybill Shepherd, ying, yang, yadda, yadda, will they, won’t they… best late-80s television ever. Along with ‘Thirty Something’. And ‘Cheers’ of course. And especially ‘Northern Exposure’.

Have a great holiday Dave, get some Factor 30 on that extra nipple and hope to catch up soon when you return.

Cheers, Edge