We should find the person responsible immediately!

What's wrong with you?

At this particular moment in time - Is there anything wrong? - Anything playing on your mind that you've done? - Are you heavier than you should be after eating two whole packets of chocolate biscuits? - Do you feel guilty for throwing away masses of food that you bought for Christmas that's just past its sell-by date because you put it in a 'hamper' and forgot about it? - Do you have massive debts due to credit card repayments or payday loans?

And whose fault is that?

Because I know my audience, I know that every single one of you just looked at your feet, which were busy shuffling uncomfortably, and thought 'It's my fault.'

Not My Fault... Not The Chimping Dandy's fault, Don't blame me! I mean, 'my' as in 'your' fault... Oh Gods, this is going all kinds of wrong.  What I mean to say is that you all have a passing acquaintance at least, with the notion of responsibility.

Here are a couple of bad things that I know and freely admit about myself:

I am heavy - about 260lbs - This is because I eat things that are bad for me a lot of the time and don't exercise enough, because I am lazy. (Although I am a little over 6', so that offsets it a little, but not much.) And  occasionally, I get out of breath just by thinking too hard about kittens.

I am lazy - This is because I lack motivation, a huge number of the things I like to do can be done sitting down, or lying down, or asleep.

I am broke, pretty much all of the time - This is because I'm an idiot, with the financial good sense of a one-legged gecko wearing a threadbare top-hat and a tarnished monocle and have, in the past, maxed out many a credit card trying to keep up with the latest technology and / or just entertaining myself (whilst sitting down, obviously).

And who do I blame?

Well, I blame me of course, these are all things that I knowingly did to myself over an extended period of time.  I'm an idiot, but I'm not stupid... Contrary to what many of you might secretly think.

But, did you know there are people out there, you might know some of them, that are perfect?  People who never make a mistake? People for who life is one febreze-scented tiptoe through the tulips after another?

We should feel sorry for these people, deeply, deeply sorry, because they are targets.  Every time one of these poor, Perfect People eats anything, or goes in the shower, or buys something, or goes to the shops they are targeted by cartels of mean-spirited corporate shills whose only passion in life is to force terrible things to happen to them over and over again.

I mean, if we go back to my example above, where one (or more *cough*) of us bought way too much food for Christmas and then threw it away because it 'went bad', we might think, because we are thoroughly normal people, that we should probably have bought less, and will try to remember that there are not 200 people in our immediate family next year.

But if you were a Perfect Person, you could think something like 'Look how [Insert vast Supermarket Conglomerate of your choice] have conspired to make me buy too much food by having all this tasty looking stuff for sale just before Christmas, forcing me to spend money I haven't got on things I don't really need or even particularly like. I shall report this to the local News service and see if I can get some guilt-fueled recompense.'

Staying with Christmas, you and I, the normal types with 2.4 children, may well have said, in mid-Deceember, after looking at their childrens' Christmas lists 'Damn, they want the brand-new game of Invasion of the Star-Killerons 7 for their XBox 360, but it costs £60. I can only really afford Invasion of the Star-Killerons 6, which was released six months ago and is now only £40... So they'll have to make do with that.'

But not the Perfect People, they would read that note, and a message would automatically be sent by a special App that had been downloaded onto the Brand New Apple iPhone 5S that they had recently been forced to buy by a man in the street, to the controllers of the daytime TV channel that they were watching.  This triggered an advert for a pay-day loan company to appear during the next break which would show an insanely happy child opening a brand new XBox One, complete with the Invasion of the Star-Killerons 7 Special XBox One Edition, with a limited edition T-Shirt and limited edition hat and limited edition soundtrack CD in a limited edition case that just won't fit on the shelf with all of their other games.  They ring the number, apply for the £600 pound loan and are accepted immediately, then stick their fingers in their ears and go 'La-La-La' whilst the terms and conditions (including the 4,267% APR interest rate) are explained to them, because, despite being Perfect, they think it all sounds a bit scary.

Then when the first repayment is due, they scream and cry and wail at the payday loan company for making it too easy for them to borrow money. 'You should have said no to me!' They will cry, 'I didn't know that it was going to be so expensive.' they will shout through gritted teeth (Which is very difficult, you should give it a try, although only Perfect People can really manage it) and have a picture taken for the local paper showing them with their very sad, very pudgy faces and reddened tear-stained eyes pointing at the four year old child that they borrowed the money to appease playing happily on their new games console, the digitised gore from the 18 rated game splattering the screen of the 60" HD 3D Smart TV that they bought him for his birthday in October.

Do you feel sorry for these people yet?

No?

Imagine the feeling they must have knowing that nothing they do is their own fault, everything that happens to them happens because of evil corporations who have nothing better to do than constantly force them into making decisions that, despite making perfect sense at the time, end up biting them in the rear end?

Poor Perfect People... Why will someone not start a charity to help them, the poor lambs?

Please send your donations to The Chimping Dandy at the usual address, quoting reference 'Wake up and smell the Pangolin, you meat-headed, responsibility-free sacks of offal, what the hells are you teaching your kids?'

First three responders will get a voucher for a free muffin from Greggs and a part-completed application form for a pay-day loan.

Are You Experienced?

What're the two most infuriating words that any parent will hear from their children ever, in their lifetime? I don't mean the really scary ones like 'I'm pregnant' or 'It's broken' or 'On fire'. I mean the ones that you hear every weekend and every school holiday and every advert break during an otherwise immensely exciting program?

Yes, that's right, 'I'm boooooored!'

The little cherub, who you not so long ago bought the entire collection of Moshi Monsters for? Who you queued for at 07:30am a week before release day to make sure she was the first of her friends to own the new One Direction CD that detailed not only their tour dates, but a scratch and sniff sampling of their underwear drawer? Who has demanded, and received, every type, style and colour of Nintendo games system past, present and future?

We must have spent the GNP of Lesotho on toys etc. for the Dandies, both Mini and Micro, over their respective lives. But both of them would much rather sit in front of a PC or Laptop or iPad and watch YouTube videos. If for some reason you temporarily take away this dubious privilege, say they've been zoned out for six hours solid, or you actually need to use the device yourself. You get a selection of sighs that could extinguish an Australian forest fire and the occasional theatrical flounce onto the sofa.

There are cries of 'I'm bored!',

To which my normal reply is, 'No, you're lazy!'

And then I go on to enumerate all the things that they could be doing instead, which in fairness gets more and more ridiculous every time - It'll start off as 'Play on the Wii, or the Playstation, watch a DVD, walk the dog, wash the pots, draw a picture...' and ends up with, 'Shave the cat, iron a herring, translate Harry Potter into Klingon, laminate a duck...' By this time they've usually stopped listening, wandered off or slipped into a narcoleptic coma - All of which, I consider to be a win.

But I realised recently that it's not just kids that do this, maybe it's my particular group of friends, but for evey Facebook update I see on my timeline that says 'Today I got up, felt great, walked the dog, took an artistic photo of a thing, made something tasty for lunch and did stuff with a person until my eyes rolled back in my head when I OD'd on the greatness of it all,' there's twenty seven that say, 'Aren't people rubbish, I'm staying in bed, there's nothing to do, it's raining, everybody stop picking on me, it's everybody else's fault, wah-wah-wah!'

For Gods' (yes, pedants, that apostrophe IS in the right place) sake people DO SOMETHING! If your life is crap, do something about it, find out what's wrong and change it. There's no situation that anyone is in that is insurmountable. Then again, you might counter with any or all of the below;

'But I've got depression!' To which I would reply 'Me too!' diagnosed and prescribed for, but the one thing I took to heart is what my Doctor said just before signing the green slip that I took to the pharmacist, 'Mr Dandy, this isn't a cure, this is just to make life easier for you whilst you figure out what's wrong and sort it out.' - Which is exactly what I did, and I'm proud of myself for doing it. I know it's often easier said than done, and I know that a lot of people's triggers are more difficult to sort out than mine, but you're never going to feel any better unless this happens. (P.S. if they offer you CBT, even if there's a long waiting list - Say 'Yes please' - I've seen this really work well... If you go to your CBT appointment and they ask if you need to borrow a helmet and gloves, don't panic, it just means they've booked you on Compulsory Basic Training, not Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - Just go with it, fewer people who can ride motorcycles are depressed - That's a fact... Probably.)

'But I'm missing a leg!' Life's harder with a disability, I truly appreciate that and I've not experienced it first-hand myself, so I'm not really qualified to judge. (Unless you count an inability to stop correcting people on their pronunciation as a disability - It seems the people who give out the Blue Disabled Parking badges don't... Fascists!) But you hear stories every day of people who have conquered seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve what their doctors said was impossible... Be one of those people. If you need a bit of a lift in this department, Google a guy called Taylor Morris, and then try keep a straight face whilst you tell the Dole Office that you can't make it to the shops because you've got a bit of a dicky ankle.

'But I'm thick!' Well, that's as may be, but you can't let lack of education hinder your dreams, book yourself on a course at your local school. Learn about something you're interested in to start with - just to get you back into it, then try learning something that might help you take the next step towards happiness. You never know, you might be lucky and those two things are one and the same. If you can't do this, due to having to look after your young or similar, become a member of your local library, borrow books and actually read them - There are, quite literally, worlds to discover.

'I'm in the middle of nowhere with no transportation!' Walk, no... seriously... walk. There's nowhere (OK, barring islands etc) on the mainland United Kingdom that isn't accessible by you leaving your house, locking the door behind you and walking in the right direction for long enough - It might take a while, you might need to take a snack and maybe a thermos with you but seriously, you can do it. We've only had the Infernal Combustion Engine for the past hundred and thirty years. What do you think people did before that? It wasn't bitch and moan and lie in their own filth watching repeats of Jeremy Kyle all day I can tell you.

'I'm broke!' Me too, again, sorry. I sit around all the time going, 'I could just eat a raisin and biscuit Yorkie, shame I'm broke!' I normally say this in my living room, surrounded by CDs I don't listen to and DVDs that I'll never watch again. If you can't afford to buy the stuff you need (not want, don't waste your money on things you want, spend it on stuff you need, you know, carrots rather than beer and stuff like that) then sell something that you don't need quite as much.

'But!' - This is, without doubt, the most invidious word in the English language, people usualy use it to explain why they're not going to do something. Examples include 'I'd take the dog for a walk, no problem, BUT I've got some some completely ficticious stuff that I've already arranged to do' and 'Yeah, I realise that this is a very important issue, BUT It doesn't effect me directly, so I don't care.' Do me a favour people, if you feel the need to use this word at all, use it in a positive way, as characterised by the axiomatic T-Shirt slogan 'I'm not a gynaecologist, BUT I'll take a look at it for you.' - Embrace the chance to do things, even if they're new, scary and have a medium to high risk of you getting slapped by a complete stranger. At least you'll be meeting new people.

I know that this has all been very flippant, because that's what I do, this is ostensibly a humour Blog after all. I do try and keep it light even when I rant.

And I understand that there are those people who are housebound due to circumstances beyond their control, for whom there is no available assistance, this was not directed at them in any way.

BUT, The rest of you, seriously, grab your life by the nuts and shake every single, solitary experience you can out of it - I'm fat, lazy, bald, not particularly attractive and don't have a huge circle of friends and even I've had enough experiences that I've thought are interesting enough that people would enjoy hearing about them here. (Rightly or wrongly).

Just imagine what things a svelte, vigourous, hirsute, beautiful person like yourself could get up to! - Don't hold yourself back with insecurity, propel yoursef forward with childishness and a blindness to your own inadequacies.

Just like I do!

If you do do this, feel free to tell me all about it via email and you never know, I might include your success story here, in these very pages.