Top of the Blog Parade

Well, time for my first (and last) Friday post for this week.

I've noticed over the past few weeks that I've been getting hits on the 'older' pages of the Blog, some of the stuff that I originally posted on Facebook last year. Gave me a warm, glowy feeling in, what I like to call, my nethers.

I like some of my older stuff to have new life breathed into it, that's why I put all the hyperlinks in the new stuff (You see, you thought I was just a needy, self referential gitbag, whose only empty joy was pretending that people thought what he wrote was worth reading? - Oh! the irony!)

So I include below, the top ten most popular posts, starting at number 10, in a Smashy and Nicey stylee, as picked by you, the readers - There are no real suprises, but if you're bored and find yourself with a few spare minutes, these are the posts that you guys think are funniest, or most interesting, or... Oh, I don't know why you like 'em. You're the ones following a bald fat bloke with questionable personal hygiene and an over-willingness to share, you're obviously all deranged.

-oOo-

In at number 10 is a little story I like to call HAVE YOU TRIED TURNING IT OFF, THEN LEAVING IT This is actually a set of three stories about my first job in IT (In 1985 believe it or not) detailing some of the wonderful, completely not mad as a badger calls people still get on IT helpdesks all over this wonderful Kingdom of ours.

Number 9 is the only work of fiction in the whole top ten. A dramatic depiction of two gods, sat in a kebab shop, on a Friday night, discussing the creation of the Duck-Billed Platypus (and Chicken Tikka) - Put your Atheism together for WAITING FOR GOD-OH!

For all you fans of mechanical mayhem, Number 8 shows us how the restoration of vintage vehicles can sometimes lead to personal injury, and a small amount of light vandalism. BUT WILL IT FLY SMICK? proves that it's really not possible to make a silk purse out of a rusty Ford Transit Van. - The only SMick story in the top ten! - What's wrong with you people?

Number 7 is the closest thing I have to required reading. You can't appreciate the Chimping Dandy as a being until you know how he was created. AS THE SUPERHERO SAID TO THE STRIPPER is a blow-by-blow account of the creation of your friendly, neighbourhood, Superhero - Before I realised I was actually a Supervillain of course.

Number 6 is our first trip through the looking-glass into my childhood. AN EYE FOR AN EYE tells of my Dear Mother's constant need to fill my formative years with fear (Warning, contains mild psychological terror and scenes of a surgical nature).

Starting our journey into the top five is SECOND CONTACT CLOSING FAST, BEARING 076! Where I warn Ford Galaxy owners about a possible fault with their cars, and almost bring the M40 to a halt by explosively showering it with smouldering wreckage.

Number 4 is a love poem (well, prose really) to my favourite grocery supplier. In BOOBS, MELONS AND JUMPER LUMPS I relate another three tales about why I love ASDA (Walmart) so much - However, only one of the stories is actually about the female mammary area, just so you don't get over-excited.

A fairly new entry at Number 3 is the 'Chock full o' shocks' story of my attempt at becoming a fetish model - AND THEN I POSED, AND HE TOOK MY PICTURE A comedic, but still totally true description of the pre-show party for the Skin-Two Magazine's Rubber Ball in (I think) about 1998. And the chain of events that led to me being a household name in Germany.

The second podium place goes to BARNABY WILDE (PT. 1) A set of three cautionary tales about the trials and tribulations to be had when your motorcycle has three wheels and you're a bit gormless. There's personal injury, electrocution and dancing on ice. What more could you ask for?

But the winner, the piece de resistance, your most loved post by quite a margin, is not actually about me. It doesn't mention me, it happened before I was born. But even so, it is bloody funny. THERMODYNAMICS, IT'S THE LAW! is the story of how my Father used the corpse of a fragile, beautiful animal to condemn a young girl to an eternity of torment, reliving her horror over and over again until the end of time itself. Probably.

-oOo-

The Blog gets a lot of hits Internationally. I can identify who some of them are, I know who the German, Cypriot and Irish contingent are. I also know the identities of a large proportion of the UK and USA readers. The couple of hits from Isreal were, I firmly believe, Jason Bradbury from The Gadget Show and some from Canada, I think, were the director Kevin Smith. But many others find The Chimping Dandy through the Random Blog feature of Blogger itself, and still more find us through a Google search.

So, what would you have to type into Google to find this happy community? The top ten Google searches, where people found us and clicked through, as I believe the youngsters call it are:

10: Kipper the Stripper

9: It was a bright, cold day in april and the clock was striking thirteen

8: I shot myself 2013

7: I shoot myself dandy

6: dandy ishotmyself

5: boobs melons show in car

4: boob melons photos blogspots (I guess whoever searched for this was severely disappointed)

3: what do you call Dandy with tattoo

2: dandy boobs

1: swing away merrill

I think that this little sampling tells you all you need to know about the populace of the Internet. It's pretty much full of people looking for breasts and shooting themselves.

And they say the Internet's not like real life!

But my personal favourite, the one that mostly twists my melon, but unfortunately only got used once and hence doesn't appear in the top ten is 'Tandoori Wombat' - Not only will you find this Blog by typing this in, we're the first result!

I'm so proud.

An eye for an eye

Yesterday, I spoke of the awesome bird mutilation skills of my Father. It seems only fair that I now tell you tales of the occular disassociational episodes that my Mother peppered my younger days with.

If you're a regular reader, you'll be au-fait with my Mother's sense of humour - She definately mellowed after she died, but whilst she was still alive - Seriously, she'd do stuff even that I'd think twice about - And I can throw fruit at myself.

In the mid 70's, she lost her right eye - I mean, she didn't come home from the shops one afternoon and say 'Oh Bugger! - I must have left it on the bus', there was some serious medical reason for it. I have vague memories of visiting her in hospital and stuff - In fact, one story that she used to tell (she really spun this one out, it could take her hours to tell if someone else was providing tea and/or biscuits) - But it boils down to my Dad redecorating the kitchen, then accidentally setting fire to it, and me running down the ward screeching 'Dad's set the kitchen on fire! Dad's set the kitchen on fire!'

Anywho, after a time of walking around with an eyepatch on, she was fitted with a 'Glass Eye'. For those of you whose total experience of false eyes is Mr Ragetti from Pirates of the Caribbean - I'll let you in on a secret, They're not spherical, they're kind of, well... scutiform (If nothing else happens today, you've learned a new word, it means 'Shield-shaped').

If I go into too much medical detail in the next paragraph, please feel free to skip It - But I feel that it gives some important background info.

For the first few months after the patch came off, she was fitted with a 'training' eye - Much like the oversized bar that they put in when you first have your tongue pierced, only the other way around, in that it's smaller than standard, to make up for the swelling etc. It seems that the way you can tell when you're ready for your 'real' false eye is when your training eye starts to fall out. I poop you not, (Remember this was the '70's, there are probably all kinds of clever scientific ways that they do it now - Anyone with impending eye surgery probably shouldn't worry... Well, not about this... I mean, you should probably still worry, it's your eye, and they'll be poking at it with sharp things... Like, totally, Ewww!)

The first time this happened, I think it was February / March - It was definately Shrove Tuesday, because we were all sat around eating pancakes. All I heard was a quiet *Tink* noise and my Mother said,

'Oh!'

There, resting on her plate, was her eye... Staring back at her. The rest of us sat there in stunned silence as she calmly picked it up, brushed the sugar off, and put it back in.

Young Dandy Trauma Level: 2.3

The second time I remember was when she called me into the kitchen and asked her to take stuff out of the washing bowl and pass it to her to dry - You know where this is going, right? I think that I'd given her a few cups, the odd plate and a knife, when I felt something at the bottom of the bowl. I thought it was a piece of broken mug or something as my Mum was famous for washing the crockery overarm - We got through a tea service at least every few weeks - But it wasn't, imagine being a five year old boy holding, what for all intents and purposed was a real, human eye. I just stood there going 'Eye... Eye... Eye... Eye...' Whilst she wept uncontrollable tears of mirth (out of one eye)

Young Dandy Trauma Level: 5.1

The third and final time, apart from when it came out into a package of butter as she was getting out of the 'fridge, was when she dropped it into the old upright washing machine and we had to go through all the pockets of the clothes that were being washed before we found it. That's an experience that brings a family together, I can tell you.

After she had been fitted for her new eye, you'd have thought that she'd have grown up a bit, but no... they let her keep her old eye (old false one that is, not old real one) which meant she had a spare. Over the next couple of years, I cannot count how many times this 'spare' ended up in my school lunchbox, on friends plates when they came over after school for tea and on the fireplace when she left the room - She would palm it and then pretend to take her eye out, close her eyelid and say something like,

'I'm watching you two,' As she left the room.

When I was maybe eight, I plucked up the courage to ask her what it actually looked like when she took it out... There was no 'Are you sure' or 'No, I don't think you'll like it', she just flipped it out, I was transfixed... If she had held her false eye to her forehead, she would have been the living embodiment of Davros.

Young Dandy Trauma Level: 9.4

She had another couple made over the years, in fact, I seem to remember that her consultant, Mr Farquhar, even made her a 'bloodshot' one as a Christmas present. This just increased the level of tricks she could play on people. One of her favourties wes secreting one in her mouth and then slowly opening her eyes and her mouth at the same time - It was like living on the set of The Reanimator at times - Although, in fairness, I did use them in the occasional modelling clay project for school.

I have one at home now, in a little box - I always toyed with the idea of having it made into a signet ring - I think that would probably go with my Super-Villain persona pretty well.

　

As the Superhero said to the Stripper

I must stop using the phrase Super-Hero, as we established a few weeks ago, my made-up superpower - The ability to stop time - can only be used for evil, at least, as far as I can think of things to do with it.

Technically, I'm a Super-Villain, and as my Daughter reminded me, Villains get the best clothes.

So the time is here, pull up a bat-winged chair, that one over there upholstered in the suspiciously beige leather with the faint tattoos on it should still be warm, top up your skull shaped goblet with 'Claret' and I'll tell you the story of the origin of The Chimping Dandy.

Our story begins in the small West-Midlands hamlet of Birmingham, in a bar - as all the best stories do, I mean, I've yet to be enthralled by a story that begins 'The best thing about where we were was that there was free beetroot'. There were a number of us, and we were approaching that stage of drunken-ness just before the 'Hold my beer and watch this' casualty-fest.

It was a stag night, so it wasn't going to end well, we had no illusions about that - In fact, one of the guests was the bride to be's ex-husband - And was, after a number of drinks 'Loaded for bear'. The sensible thing to have done at this point would have been to go somewhere and get a meal, so that we could sit down for a while, get our breath back, sober up slightly, and line our stomachs with unfeasibly spicey food. What we actually did was to find another bar, and have another drink. We repeated this downwards spiral a number of times up (and then back down) Broad Street.

Then someone uttered the magic question 'is it Naked Lady Time?' In fairness, this had always been a planned part of the evening, to the point where the groom to be, had been stitched up like a kipper by his fiancee in that she had pre-arranged for him to be man-handled (well, woman-handled) by a selection of young(ish) ladies on the stage, on a throne, with shaving cream.

After a final beer, we adjourned to either The Rocket Club, or Legs Eleven - I forget which, and for the purposes of this story, it matters not - Both of them are establishments where semi-pulchritudinous ladies will remove 95% of their clothes for a small monetary consideration. For those who have never been to one of these establishments (or those that have told their partners this at least) I will describe the scene. The main area was a large, darkened room, decorated in early 'Poundshop Transvestite Christmas'. There was a central stage area, populated by a single chair, complete with handcuffs. This in turn was surrounded by a selection of booths with banquette seating for ten or so people each.

There were three types of people in the room:

Punters - Men (almost exclusively) who had come to prove their superiority over women by remaining clothed whilst the women got naked.

Strippers - Girls who had come to prove their superiority over men, by charging them £10 to watch them get slowly undressed over a three minute period.

Security - Huge (and I can't state that enough) gentlemen, usually of afro-carribean descent, who's aim in life was simply to enforce the rule that the punters and the strippers never got closer than 2" away from each other.

Like so many of my stories, some description of the clothing worn by the group may assist in your suspension of disbelief. The brief had been 'Smart to smart-casual' mainly to enable us to enter any of the myriad drinking establishments with a minimum of fuss. I had bought a new suit for the occasion, and it was silver - Now, I don't mean that it was shiney silk, at the time I was neither that rich, nor mental enough to believe a silk suit would survive the evening, no - it was made of finest rayon/polyester mix, jaquard printed to look like the sort of pattern you see under a leaky car on a rainy day. Yes, it was about 300% more vulgar than you're currently thinking that it was.

Anyway, the evening progressed much as you would expect, every few minutes a young lady would wander into our booth and say 'Dance?' Now, nine times out of ten, one of the other guys would say 'Yes' and gyrating would ensue. I am not saying that I didn't say yes myself because I was some kind of saint, or that I felt guilty to be looking at another naked lady whilst I had a wife waiting for me at home, it was purely because watching the guy next to me get a dance was free.

Now, this seemingly hadn't gone un-noticed by some members of staff and I was approached by what I can only assume, was one of the 'senior' girls - I'd seen a couple of the other girls talking to her and pointing at our group and she had seemed to have been offering advice to them.

"Hello," she said and sat down next to me.

"Hey!" I replied, in what I hoped was an off-hand, but inoffensive way.

"Don't we have anyone you like the look of?"

"Ah!, no, I see, Maybe later, I'm still making notes."

"Notes?"

I looked around furtively, hushed my voice and said, "Look, don't tell anyone, but we're doing research for a new show on Bravo" (For those unaware, Bravo was a channel that produced 'lads' programming - it's now mutated into Dave, which just shows Top Gear repeats)

"A new show? What's it about?"

"Well, we're going to visit various strip clubs around the country, but we're going to be filming an anchor segment from one place, like a base, every week, we're still trying to decide where to use"

"Oh, I did wonder." She replied, looking me up and down.

"What did you wonder?"

"Well, we don't get many people in here dressed like that - We figured that you were 'somebody', but none of the girls recognised you. Would you be filming the girls too?"

"Well, that would be up to the management, obviously, but I was wanting to include a couple in the title sequence, we'd have to see how it went. We'd have to audition obviously"

The young lady then stood up, and without monetary assistance, proceeded to audition, for two songs. She then sat down, waved at one of the security staff and mouthed the words 'On my break' to him. He nodded with the slow surety of a Norwegian glacier and continued scanning the room for distance infractions - A drink appeared on the table in front of her, and seeing my rasied eyebrows she said;

"Don't worry, it's already paid for. You must have seen some stuff"

"Sorry?"

"Doing programs like that, is it all the same kind of 'adult' shows?"

"Yeah, mainly... Swinging, Dogging, Chimping, that kind of thing."

"Chimping? I've never heard of that. Do I want to know?"

I leaned in close, keeping the regulation 2" distance of course, and explained it to her. The look of revulsion on her face started a change in me at the subatomic level, I could feel my time-bending abilities throbbing into life, I felt empowered, and I knew that things would never be the same again.

By proving to a jaded stripper, that there were still things in this world that could disgust even her, I had become...

The Chimping Dandy!

Excelsior!

As has already been mentioned, I am a Superhero... At least to small children who don't know any better. And as Stan Lee once said (or FDR, or Jesus, depending on who you believe) "With great power comes great responsibility" This is of course totally true, and now I am greatly empowered by the Internet, I will try to become responsible for at least some of your entertainment.

Isn't it strange that (arguably) the two 'coolest' Superheros - Batman & Iron Man, have no superpowers whatsover, no unassisted flight, no transmogrification, telepathy or ability to smell things from a profoundly long distance. What they do have is cash, and plenty of it - Want to fly, see in the dark or have weaponry extruded from your own orifices? Well, cold hard cash is your friend - According to Forbes, approximately $10,000,000,000 will see you be able to set yourself up as either of the cool crusaders.

If I'm honest, I don't have that kind of money... So, what do you do if you can't buy Superhero-dom, you're not from another dimension/planet and you don't fancy being bitten by anything (radioactive or otherwise).

Well obviously, you make it up... But then that opens another can of deep fried, crispy, Winston Hobbes'. What superpowers do you arbitrarily give yourself? You can discount the whole flying thing straight away, I mean, you can't pretend to fly... Well, I mean you can, but usually only the once, and onlookers would probably describe it more as falling, especially to the reporter from the local paper, just before they said 'He was a nice man, he kept himself to himself'. You could probably, just about, give yourself super(ish)-strength - Given enough time, discipline and motivation I suppose... Which are, of course, the three main reasons that I'll never have that. (See also: Mad acrobatic / Ninja skills, swordplay, accuracy whilst throwing stuff or even being able to play 'Smoke on the Water on the Electric Guitar)

So, we need to think outside of the box, really get the grey-matter jiggling about - Go to the esoteric end of the scale - I have thought about, and rapidly discounted:

• Being able to make things taste slightly different
• Lengthening the shelf life of cut flowers
• Instantly doubling the number of bubbles in a standard bottle of carbonated drink

But only because of their lack of crime fighting applications and the fact that they are a bit pants. Then I found it, the perfect pretend super-power...

Wait for it...

I can stop time! - for as long as I like!... You don't believe me?

OK, I'll do it now. 3... 2... 1... *Bamff* Ha! you didn't notice did you? That's because I actually stopped time, you were frozen in an actual bubble... of time! My only problem is, I stopped too which is a bit of an issue where using it for anything even remotely heroic is concerned - I'm working on it, honest.

Just think though, if you could actually do that, with a thought, or pressing a button on an old watch you found in an antique shop that had magically disappeared when you tried to take it back because it never told the right time. With a *click* or *Bamff* or *Boop* everyone around you freezes and you are free to do whatever you like... Think of the possibilities... Erm... Ah... Now try to think of possibilities that don't involve changing rooms, stealing money or anything involving the words sneaking, inappropriate or without being caught.

Oh my Gods... I'm a SuperVillain!