Put on your adventuring pants Matron!

Would you like to help me on a quest?

A vision quest if you will, like the bloke off of ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ used to do every time there was an episode about him. (Did you know, that Robert Beltran, the guy who played the enigmatic Native American character Chakotay in the program was in fact, half Mexican? Which just goes to show that if an ‘ethnic’ character is needed, any minority will do at a pinch.)

Anyway, back to my vision quest. Don’t worry if you’re in two minds about the use of mind expanding herbs and the ceaseless native rhythms, I’m not going to ask you to listen to Radio 1 or anything unnatural like that. I’d just like some of you to read a couple of my Blog posts.

It’s not hugely important, I’m being selfish and mercenary and I’m just trying to cheer myself up about because things have all gone a bit crappy today and it’s taking a few more muscles to smile than it does normally (Even if I am wearing a brand-new Jeff Banks shirt that makes me look a bit like a Vicar.)

The thing is, I am just 23 page-views short of hitting my completely made up and arbitrary target of 44,000 by the end of the week.

I’m not suggesting that you just go to my Blog and start reading random stuff, for that way madness lies – And most of you are borderline mental now.

So, I thought I’d give you some suggestions of a few of my favourite post that you can take a look at to cheer yourself up – They’re not my most popular ones by any means, they’re just ones I particularly like.

1. We’ll start with ‘Pandas, the Eastern Scourge’ – where I question the very nature of our ailuropodean planet-mates and try to discover if they’re just ‘Pulling a fast one.’
2. Then there’s ‘T-wit - who?’ – This describes the particular shortcomings of having a real, live, owl as a pet.  These are many and hugely unpleasant (Does contain a picture of the MiniDandy as a small child.)
3. Many of you know that I love ASDA, It’s mainly because of the people you can run into there, but I also performed the only recorded Melonicide in UK History (Also contains a small ladies chest reference, no, actually, it’s a small reference to a ladies chest) – ‘Boobs, Melons and Jumper Lumps’
4. In ‘Maybe they explained it badly?’ – I expose my complete lack of technical understanding to a waiting world… Mainly of how huge, metal aeroplanes can glide through the aether with an alacrity that would easily wound an armoured badger.
5. POWER! – It’s something we all yearn for, but do any of actually understand what it is? – I know I don’t, but I did have a go at explaining it to myself.  It didn’t go particularly well.  But judge for yourself in ‘Any way the wind blows’
6. I’m quite proud of the mixture of Terrorism and Time-Travel that I managed to ram into ‘We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity’ – Many people reposted this, but it’s not in the top-ten anymore.
7. Now, I’m cheating here, this one is actually in the Top-Ten, but it got favourited and re-tweeted by real famous people on Twitter. ‘Pogonophilia is for everyone, even the young.’ Contains my child-like wonder about why ‘a certain kind of lady’ finds Men with Manly beards very Manly. (Warning, contains a topless, Anne Geddes style photo of me)
8. I’m a great believer that you should wear clothes that make you happy… Wearing a kilt makes me happy (and freshens up my nethers like a man possessed) in ‘Let loose The Kraken Th'Noo’ I perform in what could be construed as a slightly racist fashion, purely so that I don’t have to wear any pants.
9. Some of you might know that on very rare occasions, I ride custom motorcycles. The thing about doing this is that you attract the attention of other people who do the same thing.  These people tend to have lives that are just as colourful as mine, here’s a few stories about my, now sadly demised, friend Jock, ‘No, chopper as in motorcycle - And Greeks.’
10. And the last post I’m going to recommend today also has a slightly Scots flavour.  Well, I could really do a list without including at least one ‘Scots Mick’ story, could I? ‘Then SMick said that Chap was a bad word’ talks about my first trip to the wonderful riverside town of Dumfries, where I nearly got my arms torn off and single-handedly chatted up a xenophobic bouncers girlfriend… Well, I say single-handedly…

Hope you enjoy this quick look at some of my favourite posts, there are a lot more if you’re interested.  Feel free to repost them, or spam links to people you think might be interested.

In fact, I think I’d quite like that.

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.

Your starter for ten...

I watched the end of University Challenge last night (Stop laughing at the back, I sometimes answer as many as half a dozen questions... Sometimes - And I say 'Oh, of course it was,' many times, after the question has been answered) and whilst I was not exactly 'upset' about forgetting it was on, I certainly wished that I'd Sky+'d it because it would have provided a pretty endless stream of material for the Blog.

For those of you of a foreign disposition, University Challenge is a quiz program that pits two teams of  four university students against each other in an action-packed trial by combat / Fight to the death.  Bizarrely, one team sits directly over the other, (Sort of Hollywood Squares style for our American readers) and this leads to a plethora of bodily fluid related shenanigans. Where the 'top' team tries to put off the 'bottom' team by trying to convince them that it's raining.

As you can see in the still from the final episode of the original 1987 series, the northern universities (In this case Scumbag College, from the University of Sunderland) were often given the top row to handicap their southern opponents and obvious intellectual masters, (In this case, Footlights College, from Cambridge University) a nod to political correctness, empowerment and the provision of effective affordable education for all.  You'll notice however that there are no racial minorities represented, as this was the BBC and racial minorities were only allowed in comedy programming at the time.

Anywho, back to the episode in question. if I remember correctly, last night's show was between two Cambridge Colleges, I forget which ones, and it really doesn't matter if I'm being honest.  But there was this one chap, sat in the top-left hand corner, all alone and unloved, like the last brace of over-hung partridge in a recently repossessed butcher's shop during the Easter Holidays.  He had everything going for him that a modern male university student could wish for.  His head was, as Mike Myers once opined, 'Like an orange on a toothpick', his ears could, completely unaided, pick up Danish pornography from a badly positioned satellite floating over the opposite hemisphere of the planet and you could tell that, every time the announcer said his name, expecting him to answer a question, he copiously soiled himself.  He was that over-educated that when he purposely mis-pronounced things with such faltering confidence, It made me question whether I had been saying these things wrong for all these years.

And I remember thinking, 'That boy has never, and probably will never see, never mind put his over-sucked thumb on, a real, live naked member of his chosen distaff sex... Not without a truly staggering sum of money changing hands first at least.

So I got to thinking, because I'm notorious for thinking about things that other people, quite rightly, choose not to. 'I wonder what he does to release his tension? How does he let loose his undergraduate tadpoles? What possible thing could he think about whilst polishing his barking trombone?'

Obviously, as one does, my mind turned to paraphilia. which, as you probably know, is the word for getting aroused by things that are... How should I put it?... atypical, unusual, and downright odd - (But who am I to judge, right? To this day I'm not allowed to buy toilet brushes without being accompanied by a responsible adult) It seems that this is such a common condition, that there are different names for the different ways that these people like to get their freak on, as Missy Elliot might say.  They include, but are not limited to:

Agalmatophilia - Having an attraction to things like statues and shop mannequins, sufferers of this tend to steer clear of sculpture gardens during busy periods and cannot walk past John Lewis' at Christmas without their eyes rolling back into their heads.

Autagonistophilia - To derive carnal pleasure by appearing on stage or camera, often called 'Chronic Ant & Dec Syndrome'

Autoandrophilia - A heterosexual person of the female gender enjoying her special alone time by imagining that she is male.  So presumably claiming that the referee is blind, urinating all over the toilet floor, breaking wind from both ends simultaneously and giving herself a round of applause after the event is successfully concluded.

Autogynephilia - The polar opposite of the above, which often consists of a lorry driver called Brian from Wigan, holding a delicate glass of Chardonnay in one hand, desperately trying not to spill it on the new carpet whilst he reads the good bits of a Jilly Cooper novel and has a good, hard, think about some firemen.  Then cutting it depressingly short when he realises that he has to pick the kids up from school in ten minutes.

Autoplushophilia - Imagining ones-self as an animal, or a plush, or stuffed toy.  It seems that we finally know what the Fox says... In this case, 'Yes... Yes... Oh God... Yes... Oh, I'm so sorry, that's never happened before.'

Frotteurism - To rub yourself against a stranger... So, pretty much every tube journey I have ever taken, ever. And the reason I am on first name terms with a number of members of the British Transport Police.

Macrophilia - Having thoughts about inappropriate relationships with Giants.  Which is the main cause of men in gaberdine overcoats getting thrown out of the Fairy Tales section of bookshops, it renders any imprint of the famous British Folktale 'Jack and the Beanstalk' virtually unreadable, especially if it's printed on those thick cardboard pages... Very absorbent, thick cardboard pages are you know.

Mechanophilia - Now this is the one that tends to make its way into the gutter press with some regularity.  Popularised by a Roger Taylor track on the 1975 Queen album 'A Night at the Opera.' It's about people who are in physical love with their cars.  Well, honestly, who can blame them, a warm, welcoming exhaust pipe and all that - Who amongst us can say that they've never been tempted by that? Not at all helped by the 2003 Renault Megan advert.

Oculolinctus - Pleasuring yourself whilst thinking about, or actually, licking someone's eyeballs... And that's quite enough about that thank you very much.

Toxophilia - Arousal from, or during, the act of archery.  Well, presumably it gives you something to lean your arrows against, should you be of the male gender.

And finally (Yes, I know it's strictly out of alphabetical order, but I wanted to finish on this one, so ner!)

Pogonophilia - The completely reasonable sexual attraction towards men with beards Every woman has this, some of them just don't know it yet...


Stay classy my Chimping Dandyites,  remember, if you are touched by any of the issues raised in this Blog, please feel free to contact me at the normal address, especially if you have photographic or video evidence

(Unless it's about Oculolinctus... Then, Just... No...)

You like it when I do what?

Well, it's that time again.

When I tell you what's going on in the the world of The Chimping Dandy, where reality is flexible and the Pangolins are all orange, with strangely attractive eyelashes.

Before we get to the current top-ten, which is where you all knew that this was going, I thought I'd throw a few ideas out there.

Hopefully, you will have read yesterday's post about fish... This was sparked from a real request, from a real reader of the Blog.  This is something I wholeheartedly condone, I'll admit that there are some very infrequent times when I find it difficult to think of new stuff to bore you with.  Your suggestions would be most welcome - I'll chatter on for hours about any old stuff most of the time, I don't see why I shouldn't occasionally make it something that someone actually finds interesting.  I can't guarantee how accurate any information that I present will be, but I will try to make it entertaining and possibly blasphemous.  You never know, we might all learn something.

My other idea was that maybe you'd like to contribute in other ways... I mean, obviously money and cake would be my personal favourites, but I don't see why I should have all the fun, perhaps instead of suggesting a theme, you could supply a whole entry yourselves.  We're currently on the cusp of 20,000 pageviews... Why not make it one of your ideas that tips us all collectively over the edge?

-oOo-

I couldn't really do any kind of State of the Dandy Nation entry without mentioning (and by mentioning I mean ruthlessly pimping, obviously) the new book.

If you have a Kindle, or the Kindle app for your smartphone or tablet or PC then you can, for £2.07, $3.15, 2.60 Euros, 311 Yen or, for some bizarre reason, $40.93 Mexican Dollars, depending where you are in this sad old world of ours, buy a copy of the book.

Buy me from Amazon you buggers!

You can go straight to the Amazon entry by clicking on the link just below the picture, should you wish to.  It's 407 pages long, and would keep you company on even the longest journey, unless you're driving of course, then it will keep you company straight to the grave.

I'm still deciding whether to actually make it into a real book, with paper and ink that goes all over your fingers - Let me know if you have an opinion one way or the other - Obviously, the price would be higher, but if you buy a copy and send it to me, I'll sign it and write something personally prurient or pejorative in it for you as a special treat.

-oOo-

So, to the charts, and it's all topsy-turvey today, there've been 'developments'

The number 10 spot is now inhabited by: Barnaby Wilde (Pt. 1) - The first of my motorcycling memoirs. It contains the story of the first time I rode a trike, the first time I got painfully electrocuted by a trike and the first time I did a Jayne Torville impression... On a trike.

At number 9 is a serious post: One more rusty nail - My thoughts on the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby and how the words 'Muslim' or 'Organised Terrorism' don't mean the same as the word 'Mental'

Number 8 sees perennial favourite: Thermodynamics, it's the law! - Slowly slipping out of the charts and falling into obscurity.  It's a shame really, this is one of my personal favourites.  It's about a pigeon, and my Father, and a tortured soul that stalks the netherworld like a wilted stick of celery at the bottom of a forgotten refridgerator.

Another one of my family is laid open to the world at number 7: It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen - This time it's my Brother's turn, this was a story from the time before he lived in a hollowed out volcano in the Mediterranean, before he had even left our family seat in fact.

Number 6 is a new entry: If you don't like, what you're seeing, get the funk out... -  This is sort of a review I suppose, of the BSH Extreme Motorcycle Show.  There are many pictures of customised motorcycles, and woeful cries about the ungratefulness of youth. 

Moving down a few places to number 5 is: Priorities - Another serious post, about a serious subject.  It describes the feelings that I experienced when my Father finally told me that he had inoperable cancer.

Now we're into what I like to call the MegaPosts, I consider anything that's had more than 400 views a success, although that's small-fry for a lot of bloggers, I'm still quite impressed that more than 400 people in the world would want to listen to me.

Number 4 is another new entry: Learn to govern yourself, be gentle and patient - Is about a huge number of things.  It's about BBC Radio 4, a virtual museum, a transvestite comedian, Neil Gaiman's wife, The London Necropolis Railway and the Steampunk band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing - It's a good read, there are pictures, including one of a Dalek - And if you try hard enough, you might just learn some history.

Another old favourite sits like a brass Buddah at number 3: Pogonophillia is for everyone, even the young - This post explains my deeply held belief (And it's not just me, huge numbers of people have agreed, even some famous ones) that men who wear beards are the Zenith of human evolution.

Probably one of the saddest posts that I've ever written at number 2, certainly if you take into account the number of readers that it personally effected: Sabian, The Token Yank - Is a celebration of the life of an old friend of mine, taken from the world too soon, and the friends and family that he left behind.  It was an honour to be able to write it.

And finally, I still have absolutely no idea why this particular post still sits proudly at number 1 like a chrome-plated gorilla on a pile of champagne barrels: No, it is not a 'Slow News Day' is a post exactly like this one, it's a Top-Ten from the beginning of September and I cannot for the life of me think why it's so popular, especially with my Russian readers - Please let me know, it can't just be that it has a metatag that reads 'Penis-pump' surely? - Or is it that I accuse Tim Berners-Lee of being a pathological masturbator?

-oOo-

Well, that's the top-ten for another month.

Think about what I said, buy the book then review it, pimp it to your friends, send me a question, a suggestion for a subject or a fully fledged Blog post or whatever.

Let me know your thoughts on where you want The Chimping Dandy to go.  I can't promise anything other than I'll consider it - the odder the better.

Take care gentle readers.

See you soon (especially if you go to bed and leave your back door unlocked)