Man-Boy vs. Logic: Vol 3 or The Unlabelled Suspect White Powder in my Suitcase

So this was in my Suitcase

After being in Ireland for 8 days I was joined by Husband last Friday. Conversation below is from Monday when we were packing our suitcase to head back to Zurich.

Husband picks up the offending article above.

Husband: 'Eh hun, what's this about?'

GBM: 'It's my protein shake powder'

Silly Husband, I told him I've started taking protein shakes for training. It must be his forgetums acting up again.

Husband: 'No I know what it is, I mean what part of you thought this was a good idea?'

GBM: 'Granted I didn't use as much as I envisaged but my intentions were in the right place.'

Husband looks at me and shakes his head.

Husband: 'No hun, what part of you thought that having an unlabelled suspect white powder in your suitcase was a good idea?'

I stare at him, mouth opened with an 'I didn't think of that' look on my face.

GBM: 'Eh...er.....em'

Husband: 'Sweetie?'

GBM: The part of me that is obsessed with Disney movies and My Little Pony* didn't think about this, the part of me that thinks everyone is good and that of course a lunch box of white powder is clearly protein shake mixture and not drugs! Shit, what if I get stopped by customs?'

Husband: 'It will be fine, they will just test the substance but it's a lot of unwanted hassle'

I bang my head against the wall.

Husband: 'In future though just no, in fact I'm packing your suitcase next time'

I didn't get stopped in the end and all was good in the enchanted world of my innocent view point but you live and you learn.

Husband Logic 3 : Man-boy 0

*I'm talking about the 2010 reboot 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic' and before you make fun, I dare you to watch a few episodes and not love. Bronies forever!

GBM

Man-Boy no more?

Is that another wrinkle? Who cares!

Next month is my birthday and I will be entering what is known as my late twenties. To be honest I quite relish getting older, you grow up, tend to make less of an ass of yourself and men tend to get better looking with age. So I've that to look forward to.

Although lately I've been thinking with the entering of this age milestone how long more can I continue with my Man-Boy ways before it just becomes sad? Is it time for throw out my Converse? Should I bin my Superhero t-shirts? Is it time to hang up my Nerf gun (but I only just got it and have yet to have a 'Spaced' inspired shootout)?

How long before it's creepy that I am first in line to a Pixar film yet have no child of my own? So far I've managed to get by all these years of my twenties with my child like demeanor coming off as cute. For how much longer? When will someone turn to me and tell me to grow the hell up. I've been finding myself getting worse rather than better. I crave more and more of the things that make me happy and they are ultimately juvenile. Is this wrong? Should I change? I've noticed some gray hairs (someone once, years ago told me Gingers don't go gray and I believed them, so this was a bit of a shock to me), should I take these as a sign, a sign to finally grow up and stop regressing. Even with music, I've been listening more and more to the albums that made me happy when I was but a teeny booper, I scream along to Jimmy Eat Worlds 'Bleed American' and reminisce of teenage puppy love and smelling freshly cut grass on a summers evening listening to this album when I should have studying for my Leaving Certificate exams.

Is it time to give away my Xbox 360 and Wii consoles (ha, over Husbands dead body)? To finally stop watching cartoons (but the Legend of Korra is amazing)?

Not yet, I can't do it. Not just yet.

GBM

A Man-Boy and his Box

So Husband and I were awoken in the early hours with the arrival of a package (seriously Swiss postal service do you know what is a respectable time to call to someone's door?).

Giant Box

It was the ultra cool and stylish stools we had ordered for our breakfast bar, they had arrived. Husband was so giddy with excitement.

Plush, yes?

Husband then left for work, he was actually away with work outside of Zurich for the day so I knew I was pretty much alone until about seven o clock today. Once I had my usual chores done and probably because I knew I was unlikely to be disturbed, this happened: 

Wouldn't you?

Which lead to this:

Captain, raise the mizzen mast! 

Became this::

I'm a 1920's Gangster, see.

Evolved to this:

I'm The Doctor and this is my TARDIS, it's bigger on the inside.

And finally:

No way, she never? (might have run out of ideas for play by this stage).

Oh dear, well after a day like today it's become abundantly clear that I probably need to get out more and start making some friends here in Zurich.

Fun though.

GBM

Man-Boy vs. Logic Vol. 2

As described previously there are times when my singular minded focus to achieve something in particular, can push my brain tunnel to a place that completely defies logical and rational thought. I must get this thing done in this exact way because I've over thought the process now and if it's not completed soon I won't be able to relax and restless leg syndrome will take over.

Well it happened to me again and do you know what, in hindsight this is probably one of my more idiotic cognitions. It may come as a surprise to you but not all of my photos taken for this Blog are natural. I know right, shock horror.  Moving on, I had been prepping my post called The Football Fakery and had gotten it into my head that I wanted a shot of myself about to stab a football with a knife. My brain went into overdrive with how to accomplish said task.  As I did not own a football my thought process went something along the lines of this:

=>Purchase Football?
=> No job, can't afford, waste of what little money I have, will only use for one picture
=> Internet
=> Looking at videos of talking animals, ha ha, I lol
=> Snapped out of it, focus
=> ! Idea bring knife to sports shop that sells footballs, ninja photo op, get shot real quick like
=> Success

It was simple, I was a genius (insert absolute sarcasm here), so I put my plan in motion, would not tell Husband of plan till last minute so he could not talk me out of it. One random day Husband and I are preparing to head out for they day, take in the city and hit a few shops I decide to put my plan into motion. Of course I'm as subtle as a whale and Husband manages to catch me reaching into the cutlery drawer.

Husband: 'What are you doing?'


Stung, caught rotten, I decided to fess up as I'm an awful liar.


GBM: 'Eh, I just wanted to grab a knife for a photo shot I have in my head'


I would go into further detail, explain to Husband I had it all planned out and it would be a quick in and out mission when he utters the immortal line.

Husband: 'You can't have a knife on you in Switzerland! You'll get kicked out of the country if you're caught'


At that very moment I completely snap out of my lunacy and am drenched in a wave of complete rationality.  What the hell was I thinking? Dear God I am a fool. I begin to wonder how I managed before I met Husband, did I constantly get myself into trouble? Oh Husband thank you for saving me from myself. You are an amazing wonder.

I went back to the drawing board. I still wanted the shot and decided to try to get it using Photoshop (actually I used a free software program I found online called Gimp, who doesn't love free but they might want to rethink the name). So after a lot of messing about I managed to make:

This

This

               

                     +

This

            =










Not too shabby, every cloud and all that. Thank you so much Husband because of you I can now Photoshop (and many other things, too much to go into here). You know what they always say, behind every good Ginger Blog Man there must be a good man, who is actually capable of rational thought, all the time.

Husband Logic 2: Man-Boy 0


GBM

The Spell Chequer and Eye

Ahhhh spelling, you elusive whore, where to begin, my Achilles heel, my Waterloo, my Zumba class. I've never been a good speller. There, it's out, you know now. I sometimes fare no better with punctuation but spelling will always be my nemesis (the bollox!). So what possessed me to suddenly start writing? Why, sure doesn't everything have 'Spell Check' nowadays. No I mean, I know it's my problem and eventually I might take up a class or something to correct this wrong (it would be more imperative for me to learn German at the moment however).

For now I will have to make do with the humble 'Spell Check' to set me on my path to righteous wordings. It also doesn't help matters that I spent the years after I left college, bastardising the English language, my wordplay became one of (and still is), double entendres, merging of words to create new ones, repetitious ramblings, numerous new words for poo and melding popular entertainment quotations into everyday situations. Nerds!
An example of which would be when a friend of mine began to refer to her the top of her boyfriends butt-crack as his ‘Poot’, a word I decided to take on with relish as it was incredibly fun to say. To my detriment, as eventually I managed to work the word into my day to day (don’t ask me how) with people who weren’t in the know. Suddenly I would be presented with two paths to take and a bemused looking face. Take the blue pill, continue down the rabbit hole and try to explain the meaning of ‘Poot’ to my conversee or take the red pill, stay in Kansas and brush it off like it never happened.

GBM: 'No I said I want you to rub my Boot, feel the quality of the leather' (nice save)

Another thing I occasionally do is begin using words or popular slang in an ‘ironic’ way for laughs only for the words I intended to mock or belittle to become my norm.

I once decided, wouldn’t it be indeed incredibly ‘ironic’ if I started using the word ‘tubular’ constantly to denote when I thought some thing, one or a situation was great. The irony being that it was 2008 and the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ had not been popular for over 10 years. I was bringing it back, con sarn it. It was ‘most amazing’ in 2006 (who was I Bill S. Preston, Esq) but my current ironic foible is possibly one most horrid. I am currently having an ironic love affair with the semi-word, ‘totes’, short for totally for anyone not under 16 years of age. I know, I know it’s so awful but what’s worse is I am genuinely beginning to fall for this irksome put. I mean the face alone Husband makes when I use the word in public is priceless to my twisted sense of humor (a kind of, nose squish of disgust) and then on special occasions if I really want to get a kick from his reaction I unleash the one-two sucker-punch of ‘totes amazballs’ (his eyes once rolled so hard they actually almost popped out of their sockets).

The point being is that because of this bad linguistic behavior, my spelling appears to have gone to pot. To reiterate I’ve had to develop a trusting simpatico with the ‘Spell Check’ of most computer miscellany but he can’t always save me from myself.

So yo check this (again being ironic, don’t actually speak street at all), new job, customer facing role, business to business and one where I usually would send almost a hundred emails a day to important business clients. I kicked ass at this job, excelled and I managed to work on and nip this spelling malarkey in the butt....................................................................... or so I thought.

Two years in, I’m shooting the shit in the staff canteen with my Closest Work Colleague and she decides to drop the mother of all bombshells.

GBM: 'My spelling is atrocious but I think I am managing'

CWC: 'Oh yeah I’ve seen some of your emails, ha ha I’ve always found the way you spell morning hilarious.'

GBM: 'What ever do you mean?'

CWC: 'Eh you spell it with a U, as in ‘MOURNING’, as in grieving some ones death.'

GBM: 'Fuck off.' (Irishism, non-aggressive use, similar to Americanism ‘Shut up’ or Get out’)

CWC: 'No seriously you do.'

Every email I’ve ever sent containing the offending article suddenly darted across my mind like a conveyor belt of shame.

• ‘Good Mourning Sir’
• ‘I will have those reports over to you first thing in the mourning’
• ‘Apologies for the delay on this, I’ve been up to my eyes all mourning’
• Worst of all I once left out the ‘the’ from one of my sentences and sent this sacrilege ‘I’m very sorry I cannot answer your query, our systems are down and in mourning’ (the rest of the sentence did go ‘they might be back online’ so the context may not have been lost but Jesus God man)

GBM: 'Oh my God two years, two years, why are you only telling me this now?'

CWC: 'I guess it only now just clicked into place to mention it to you.'

At this point I let out a mighty loud gasp of desperation and fetaled into mortification.

At what point in my life did I begin to add this extra u? I bet that all of the clients I dealt with on daily basis have an image of me as a depressed nutcase who always dresses in black, forever grieving a lover lost out at sea.

I’ve learned from this mistake and do spell morning correctly but I now live in a sort of fear that I may never be spared from future embarrassment until the day a ‘Contextual Spell Checker’ is invented. One that knows that a ‘mourning’ cannot be in fact ‘good’ for this is a contradiction in terms, unless you are a member of ‘The Adams Family’. The day it is ready for release I will be first in line.

Utter shame meltdown.

GBM

Man-boy vs. Logic Vol. 1

So I had been given a simple task to do by Husband. We decided to invest in a printer for our apartment, so we can print photos and the like. My mission was researched based, I had to navigate the perils and pitfalls of modern printer living to come up with the absolute best fit for our busy urban existence. No easy task I tell you as the Internet Explorer on my work computer had yet to be updated past version 6, which seemed to give Google narcolepsy. I mustered on however, I had to, this was my area of expertise and Husband was depending on me. New fangled technical doodads were always my stick. It was my duty to find us the most excellent printer the world has ever produced. Google don’t fail me now:

“best printer on the market”
“best reviewed printer”
“best printer for under €200 euro”
“best all in one printer”
“gay friendly printer” (I may have been overreaching with this one)

It seemed to be unanimous, the clear winner was the 'insert printer name here' (I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the the thing to be honest, maybe a HP; what I do remember was it was 4 in 1, printer, scanner, fax and photocopier, it could probably do the dishes and walk your dog too if you would let it, for clarity it will be from here on referred to as “Incredaprinter”).

I was beaming with pride, thinking Husband would be so happy with my success. We met in the city after work for the purchase of ‘Incredaprinter”. There were a couple of places we could go but each one we visited did not give me what my heart desired. Husband would show me alternatives but I couldn’t even entertain the idea. I needed “Incredaprinter” like the way a recently outed gay Dubliner needs to speak with a lisp. My focus had narrowed to that of a darkened tunnel with the light at the end showing “Incredaprinter” illuminated in all its glory.
Only once we reached shop number 5 had Husband realised exactly what was going on because as usual I was light on details due to my single minded focus, that’s just the way my brain works. He grabs me by my shoulders, looks me in the eyes and tries to reason with my madness

Husband: “Why do we need to get this particular printer, hun?”

I laugh at this ridiculous question in my head.

GingerBlogMan: “Because we need it, its the best on the market, it does every thing, it was the best reviewed one on the internet.”

Ha, that showed him.

H: “What does it do exactly?”

Silly husband, he’s wasn’t to know, he wasn’t the one who spent the whole day researching “Incredaprinter”.

GBM: “Well its a 4 in 1, printer, fax, scanner and photocopier, it’s even got a tray to feed paper into when you want to copy multiple documents, wifi connect-ability and onscreen display that can be removed like a tiny tablet computer”

That showed Husband, how dare he speak ill of “Incredaprinter”, no wait it looks like he wasn’t convinced.

H: “Yes, but do we really need all that from our printer”

GBM: “Of course we do, it’s an awesome printer, best one on the market”

H: “Yes but do we really need a printer that has a fax machine”

What is Husband saying, no! Suddenly my singular focus begins to expand, I start to see a couple of different printers beside “Incredaprinter” on my brain-shelf.

GBM: “But the internet told me to get this one, Husband”

Not my best defense I must say.

H: “I’m sure it did, and I’m sure it is a great printer, I’m just not sure it’s the one for us. Who do we even know that actually has a fax machine?”

Noooooooooooo, damn you and your logical thought process Husband, of course you are right.

GBM: “But why would the internet lie to me”

Probably shouldn’t of said this out-loud. Husband looks at me an laughs

So in the end after talked me round we went for a cheaper printer, a printer that yes unfortunately was not able to give you a brazilian wax but was exactly what we needed. That said I couldn’t shake the feeling I had wasted half a day (I had).

Husband Logic 1 : Man-boy 0

You may have one this battle Husband Logic but this not the end,mark my word we shall meet again in the sequel and you shall rue the day you ever messed with my brain tunnel.

Mwah ha ha ha ha ha.

GBM