Carry me back, baby, where I come from.

Well yes, as Messers Page & Plant might say, 'It's been a long time' (See what I did there?)

But what's been a long time?

It's been a long time (been a long time, been a long, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time) since we've had a 'State of the Dandy Nation' speech.

So, what's happened in the last... Erm... four months maybe?

I'll start with the top ten posts ever. There are a few changes, certainly, but the most noticable thing is that there's a joint number one - Two posts have had exactly the same number of views as each other - Which is so unlikely that it's prompted me to have a go on the lottery this weekend.  (I'm not going to be giving it the whole Smashie & Nicey 'And straight in at number 10' business because I haven't been keeping track of the movement - Yes, this is bad, and I feel bad.)

-oOo-

10 - Our least best post, if that makes sense, is: And then I killed Bobby Davro - The story of a trip I took to one of our great country's theme parks.  Where there was screaming, rending, and the enforced fighting (probably to the death) between two innocent wild animals.

9 - A NSFW Tweet about a time in my life when I used to see live bands on a regular basis, this particular live band were pretty much all naked, and performed repeated coitus with a member of the crowd - \m/ Rockbitch are so NSFW that it's not even funny \m/

8 - Now, this one's deeply personal to me, which I why I shared it with a thousand people who I don't know on The Internet.  It's the story of my Father's death from Cancer.  It doesn't contain many belly laughs, but I've received a few messages to say it's helped people in similar situations, which is nice - Today, my Dad died

7 - You leave me bent and broken by the roadside - The story of the final days of the MK I Dandymobile. And it's repeated, abortive, trips to the car spares shop.

6 - This post is my finest moment, it is because of this that I realised that I'd become one of the true Twitterati, a God amongst men, a harvestman scything my way through a field, reeling in the sheaves of my devoted followers (Oh, and it also got re-tweeted by Rufus Hound and favourited by Al Murray, so I win the Internet, Ner!) - Pogonophilia is for everyone, even the young

5 - Oh blimey, more Death... I guess I'm just of that age where people I know are shuffling off this mortal coil with increasing regularity. - Sabian, the Token Yank - Describes my relationship with one of the nicest colonials anyone could ever possibly hope to meet, except you can't... Because, you know, he's no longer with us.  Holds the record for the most comments from people I don't strictly know, including his family.

4 - Learn to govern yourself, be gentle and patient - Is a 'Steampunked' description, of the workings of the very real Brookwood Cemetery, and British Funerary custom in the 19th Century (The title is a lyric from the glorious The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing's song 'Etiquette' - Which you should all rush off and listen to immediately.)

3 - I still don't get this one, - No, it is not a 'Slow News Day' - This particular post is very similar to this particular post... No, hang on, I mean that it's just the same as the post you're reading now.  It's a 'State of the Dandy Nation post' from September 2013.  You guys are seriously weird.

=1- The first of out two top posts, with more than a hundred more views than any other (Except the one below, obvs) is - You get me closer to God - Which is a no-holds-barred, blow-by-blow account of the events leading up to, and including, then entry of my Son, The MicroDandy, into the Kingdom of God via the medium of Baptism - If you're hugely fundamentalist, you might not want to read this, it does poke a little bit of fun at Mother Church, and the people who only go there once a year.

=1- The second of our first place entries is about Facebook, especially the people who blindly share sob-stories without checking their facts.  You know, those people who send you things with pictures of fly-covered children who will get a life-saving operation if the post gets 100,000 likes - There's one born every minute - Got a comment on this one from an irate, but anonymous American, which is worth a read on its own - He was very angry, I think he needs to eat less protein.

So, if you want a quick introduction to the sort of piffle I write, you could do worse than taking a look at those (Bear in mind that those are the best as voted for by you, the public, and you're notoriously fickle.)

-oOo-

We now come to the ever-popular 'What have people Googled to find the blog?' section... Depressingly, not as much as usual - I'm putting this down to more of my adoring fans bookmarking me, but popular search terms in the last quarter have included:

Dzit Dit Gaii - Which managed to find my post about Denver International Airport

Tiswas David McKellar - This pointed the seacher towards my review of the 40th anniversary party for TISWAS in Birmingham which I was honoured enough to attend.

-oOo-

As far as hits on the blog goes, in the previous quarter, we had 6,066, bringing our total up to 40,331 at the last count.

Which, as I'm not pretty, don't get my boobs out, don't advertise, don't provide a cogent service of any kind and am just really a fat, bald, bloke who's only just on the right side of 50, isn't that bad.

Nope, not bad at all.

So, Gay Marriage… What’s that all about?

I’ve talked about people who enjoy the close company of other people of the same or similar gender before.  I remember discussing their traditional love of musical theatre, their almost superhuman ability to match superfluous, but to the untrained eye wildly different, sofa cushions, and also their general flamboyance.  Which is something I wholeheartedly agree with, if you’re gonna do something, you may as well do it fabulously!

But these tropes are only usually applied to gay people who have ‘outie’ reproductive organs.  What about those with ‘innies’?

Well, I’ll be the first person to admit that I have more experience with gay men than I have with gay women or [Whisper] Lesbians [/Whisper] as some like to be called. (I’ll tell you what, let’s get the jokes out of the way first, OK?)

Haha! I bet you have!

I can lend you a DVD if you like!

Experience? With gay men? Woooo! – you complete bender!

And so on…

But this is odd when you stop to think about it, because my niece is ‘one of them’ and in a few days she will be getting married to her female life partner (or they might be being ‘civil partnered’ I don’t know I’m not au fait with all the ins and outs of the process – All I know is that I’m probably going to have to dress up and not drink anywhere near enough at the reception because: driving, just like I would at anyone else’s wedding)

And that’s the thing you see – the thing that gets me, is that when you think about it there’s no real difference between ‘Same-sex marriage and Different-sex marriage… Apart from the details of what happens on the wedding night that is, possibly.  Again, no first-hand experience, so I’m not qualified to judge.  Keen readers will have noticed that I didn’t say Normal marriage either, because, like, I used to own an owl, so my idea of ‘normal’ is different from most people’s.

What I’m trying to say, in an ugly and, on-the-surface completely uninformed way, is that in my opinion, the union of two people who care deeply about each other is a marriage.  It shouldn’t confer any more or any less rights and responsibilities on anyone depending on the race, creed, gender, level of disability or even species of all the spouses.

Yes, you heard me right… As long as the haddock loves you and you love the haddock, they why not? (My more vanilla readers might wonder how the haddock can give its consent to such a union, but when a haddock really loves you, you just ‘know’ OK? It’s in the eyes…) It makes no difference to me, or you, or that guy behind you trying to read over your shoulder (He’s gone now, don’t worry, although he did look a bit shifty and I couldn’t really see what he was doing with his hands.)

There’s a quote you see sometimes on the Internet, often attributed to the Writer and Comedian Liz Feldman (as it is in the example below – I’ve asked her if she ever actually said it, and if she replies, I’ll let you know)

In case you have a smartphone with a tiny screen, it says, “It’s very dear to me, the issue of Gay Marriage. Or, as I like to call it: ‘Marriage.’  You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not Gay Lunch. I parked my car; I didn’t Gay Park it.”

And that sums it all up pretty well actually, there are people out there who’ve done the almost impossible, they’ve found the one someone out of just over seven billion, that they want to (initially at least, at this specific point in time) spend the rest of their life with in some kind of fulfilling relationship.   What business is it of yours or mine?  When it gets down to it – What difference will them letting the world how much they love each other make to you, or me?

Let me give you a hint… The answer’s none, despite what googly-eyed maddists will say it won’t bring down some random God’s wrath, it won’t cause floods or hurricanes, or confuse children, or infect the heterosexual majority and lead to record-shops selling out of KD Lang and Liza Minnelli.  It won’t lead to a global outbreak of sexually transmitted diseases, we won’t all get AIDS (Remember AIDS? It was like ‘terrorists’, but in the 90’s)

I’m incredibly proud of my niece and her partner; To be completely honest, I’m slightly more proud of them than I would be if my nephew was getting married to a female partner, because they’re doing something, out of choice, that’s difficult.

Something that really, really shouldn’t be.

-oOo-

P.S. My pride in them has nothing to do with the fact that I find it hugely funny that my father-in-law’s religion requires him to be staunchly anti-homosexual . He’s not homophobic, he doesn’t fear them in the slightest, he just treats them as Godless abominations… And he has no idea why, other than some guy, writing a book of rules to keep the populace in their place some time ago said that that’s how he should think.

Well, maybe just a little bit.

-oOo-

P.P.S. UPDATE!

OK, so, remember how I said that I'd asked Liz Feldman if she'd actually ever said that quote? - Well, she didn't answer the question, but she did do this....

I can live with that I guess...

Just to prove that I do actually, write a Blog

OK, some of you will know that I'm currently in the process of writing a book.

It's an extension of the Edward Teach stories that I occasionally regale you with - But don't let that put you off.

I've found that it's a scary old thing, writing a book... Along with the standard 'Can I actually write a book?' and 'Will I get bored and give up and hate myself until I drink myself to death in an old bathtub on that bit of waste ground down by the gasworks?' questions that you constantly beat yourself up with, you release a second level of torture on yourself, and that goes 'But what if I can't get an agent?' and 'What if I get an agent, but no-one likes it?'

You can literally (See what I did there?) worry yourself into a premature Bisto.  It's best to just shout 'Buggrit' and let the literature flow when it will (Now do you get what I did?).

It might be rubbish, it might be twaddle, it might be the sort of high-camp space opera that would have EE 'Doc' Smith running for the air-raid shelter with a cuttlefish in both ears - But I still think we should all have a go, including myself.

So, in my constant endeavours to improve the quality of service I give to you people (my adoring readership) I decided to join a real Writers Group.

Now, before we go any further, I'd just like to assure any members of the Group that may happen to be reading this, I am not going to make the group itself, or the members that I have so far met, the subject of a full Blog post... I don't 'Do' current affairs - I'm going to wait until I can give a more in-depth view once I've been to a few more meetings.

So, why did I mention it if I wasn't going to Blog about it?

Good question... Good, good, question.  As part of my introduction to the group I said,

'Hello, I'm the Dandy and I write a daily humour Blog'

And then realised that I hadn't written a Blog today, and that struck me as rude.  So, as I'm a bit strapped for ideas (Don't judge me I've written some Flash Fiction today AND I'm going to be chunking away at the book in a sec), I thought I'd fling together a quick Top 10 Most popular Blog posts ever, as voted for by you guys, list.

Enjoy!

-oOo-

Dropping three places, at Number 10 is - Waiting for God-Oh! - A fictitious treatment of a drunken, Kebab-shop conversation between two Gods about the initial construction of the Duck Billed Platypus - Caution, one of your number actually tweeted The Pope about this post (No, really, someone did... They asked for my immediate excommunication).

Straight in at Number 9 is - This is why I'm smiling, how about you? - This is quite an earnest post about making small changes in your life that have large consequences, your own, personal Butterfly Effect. (Not that bloody awful Ashton Kutcher thing - The Edward Lorenz thing)

Another new entry at Number 8 is a DogBlog - It was like the Somme, only with more protein - Four (IIRC) stories of how one of my lovable pets managed to sequester food from various sources, without the prior knowledge of it's previous owners, and all the hilarity that ensues.

Our previous Number 6, drops a place to Number 7 - An eye for an eye - Describes, in haunting detail about how my Mother (Before she died) tried to turn me into a gibbering wreck via the medium of the false eye... It is a wonder that I'm so well adjusted.

The Current Number 6 (or, more correctly, Equal Number 5) - Second contact closing fast, bearing 076 - Is a story of inclement weather, explosively defecating truck drivers, and the possible closure of the M40

Our other Equal Number 5 - A discussion of pornography, do not read - Is just that, a diatribe that explores the difference between erotica, pornography, page 3 girls, firemen and dusty old harridans.

The highest new entry, straight in at Number 4 is - Then I posed, and he took my picture - Where I 'accidentally' have a photoset published in a German Gay-porn / fetish magazine... Yes, you heard me right...

At Number 3 - Boobs, Melons and Jumper-Lumps - Tales of my Hi-Jinks in Asda, including the internationally acclaimed 'Running down the aisle throwing a watermelon to myself' story.

The penultimate plethora of poorly phrased pulchritude is - Barnably Wilde (Pt. 1) - My first collection of my slapstick motorcycling memories.  A collection of reasons why I should never be allowed to ride a motorcycle, or be allowed out on my own, ever.

You all know what's at Number 1 right? It's been stuck there since the beginning of February and it's lead is fairly unassailable - Thermodynamics, it's the law! - The story of my Father and the descent of a young secretary into permanent mental distress, and a bird - Don't forget the bird.

Normal service should be resumed tomorrow... Yeah, everything should be back to normal by then... I should think... Probably

My Interview with iBazinga Magazine

A few weeks ago, I was approached by absolutely nobody, and asked if, as I was a rising star of the Internet, who regularly attracts double-figure numbers of page hits on his Blog, quite literally, almost every day, I would like to do an interview for a completely ficticious Technology Magazine called iBazinga.

At first I refused, partly because I am, by nature, a very private soul and do not like to talk about myself, but mostly it's because the magazine doesn't exist and it was just the voices in my head making me the offer, which is better than the normal 'Burn this, the duct-tape will quiet her filty noise' style advice I normally get from them.

So, on a rainy Wednesday, in the past, I didn't find myself in a suite on the 30th floor of the Park Lane Hilton, in London, talking to a made-up journalist about myself.

-oOo-

So, Mr Dandy, thank you for agreeing to this interview, I'm sure a lot of our readers would like to know a little bit about the man behind the T-Shirt with the amusing Pangolin motif.

Well, thank you Brian, may I call you Brian?

 
My name's actually Tracy...

Righty-ho, so, Brian, I'm glad that you asked me that, it's nice for me to finally get to set the record straight. I mean, there are people out there who think I'm just a megalomaniac with a God complex who somehow thinks that his opinions are more important than anyone else's.

 
I'm sure nobody thinks that, all of our readers who bothered to send questions in were generally very complimentary about your writing style, and didn't find it to be syrupy self-aggrandizement at all.

Ah, good, you say that people sent in questions? For me? How very lovely.

 
Yes indeed, we have one here from Michael Stibberly in Kuwait. 'Do you have a big family?'

Big? No, not really big as such, There's the Wife, Mrs Dandy, my Daughter, the MiniDandy - who has her own Blog, my Son, who has asked for his name to be witheld because it might impact his scrap metal and drive tarmacing business, my pigeon shattering Father and very occasionally the Ghost of my Dead Mother, who may, or may not, be scared of the Hoover. We've also got family who live on a little island in the Med and still more, just around the corner. Actually I guess it is a fairly sizeable brood.

 
Miss Sybil Von Daniken of Poole in Dorset writes 'You speak of GodS all the time, rather than God, the Saviour, The Father, The One True God... Did you know that you are going to Hell and will spend eternity in torment, pursued by Satan's imps with their constantly stabbing pitchforks?'

Nope, I think I'll be fine. I'm all about the whole Supreme Being idea, but whether that Being is the Judeo-Christian God, a Bowl of Spaghetti & Meatballs or a bunch of guys with oversized heads wearing a lovely tinfoil ensemble designed by some 'Space' Vivienne Westwood then that's OK with me. I mean, imagine the feeling when you get up to Heaven and there are as many Gods as there are people, and we've all got one each.

 
Marion D'la Plume D'ma Tante asks, 'We all know that you are something of an IT Guru, but have you ever done anything else?'

Funny you should ask that, I was talking to one of my ex customers only a few months back, I have spent time as a licensed Door Supervisor, a Fetish Model and a card-carrying Superhero - I'll leave it to your imagination as to exactly which one the person was a customer of. And I've recently also become a published Author.

 
A quick one from Simon Whatstandwell all the way from Rutherford, New Joisey. 'Do you really think that Pandas are the next big worry, greater than global warming, greater than Earth being hit by a comet, meterorite or alien spacecraft full of marauding, Oh, I don't know, flesh eating... Ermm.. Cats with spiky helmets?' - I'm sorry, I think that that question might have gotten away from the asker there a little bit!

That's fine Brian, it happens to me all the time! - Yes, I seriously believe that Pandas are the furry mammal equivalent of the Communist sleeper cell. At a pre-arranged time, they will rise up, take control, and subjugate mankind under their little part-formed thumbs. It'll be quick, bloody, and the cupcake shops with probably fall first. And just for completeness, I believe that all cats have spiky helmets.

 
Yes... Quite... Only a couple more questions, and then we can let you go. We received this one, written in crayon, which is very odd when you consider that it was sent by email, it is signed, but the signature is sadly illegible. Going by the address of the sender, it comes from Frankie.D'Souza@HouseOfLords.gov.uk and reads 'When you is growing up and stuff, who is it you wanna be, like, innit?'


Ah, little Frankie, I remember her well, Beautiful plumage... In recent times I have come to realise that the person I want to be when I grow up is me, but with a lot more cash, and some pet killer whales. But when I was but a young slip of a Dandy, and Chimping was the furthest thing from my mind, I wanted to be Martin Shaw off of Judge John Deed.

 
And finally, Cyril, Haha! Francoise Goebbels from the lovely province of Alberta in Canadiashire has asked the question that is on the tip of everyone's tongue, 'Dandy, how did you, mild mannered IT professional by day, pay as you go doppelganger and haddock worrier by night, become the Chimping Dandy.'

Brian, Brain, Brian... It's a well known fact that secret identities are secret for a reason, they protect the families and loved ones of the... erm... person who has decided to have a secret identity, for which I'm sure there is a proper noun. So, I have changed the names, crossed the 'I's and dotted the 'T's to make sure that the story is as safe as I can possibly make it. I can't be held responsible, well, for anything really, as I'm a bit infantile, but mostly I can't be held responsible for any personal harm that may befall you if you read.... The Origin of The Chimping Dandy.

 
Well, that was informative, thank you very much Mr Dandy, we'll be sure to let you know when the interview is published. The readers of iBazinga magazine thank you and hope you a long and happy Blogging experience.

-oOo-

And that's where the interview ended, I looked around and realised that I wasn't actually in a suite, on a non-existant floor of the tallest hotel in London, I was lying on the carpet, in the lounge, with a trickle of Irn Bru coming out of my nose and a very puzzled looking cat breathing its fishy breath into my mouth and licking my teeth.

Another normal day at Dandy Towers, I'm sure you'll agree. Enjoy your weekend, and if you do something exciting, don't forget to tell me about it - It could make you famous.


Yes, I realise you've seen all this stuff before, think of it as the Mid-Season Clip Show - If it's good enough for NBC then it's good enough for you lot.