Shower time

 Winter is here, it’s cold now, winter is always hard and expensive at our house. We’ve not got central heating or gas of any sort meaning we’ve got to use electric radiators. When I was very young we had a fire place and the house was much warmer, but now that’s not safe to use. They said it would explode, or something, but at least the explosion would keep me warm. The electric heaters don’t seem to work either and they all cost a lot of money, which we don’t really have to spend.

To make matters worse certain rooms of our house have no heating whatsoever. The hall, the kitchen, the washing room, the stupid waste of money glass room, and the bathroom. This brings me to the point of the post, winter showers. Yeah, those things.

Because of how cold it is I have to wait for my need to shower to outweigh my aversion to showering, I get stinky quickly though, and when I get too stinky I get nagged. I do like showering, but not when it’s this cold. I try and shower in the morning before school, because that way I’m all clean for my day of sleeping during class. So I get up in the morning, I am in my PJ’s, it’s cold, my feet are cold. I look for a pair of socks, I grab my dressing gown and I go downstairs. The hall is cold. I go into the bathroom, it’s cold. I turn on the shower, the water is cold, but at least it is there and hasn’t frozen in the pipes.

At this point I go into the kitchen and sleepishly look for breakfast. I like a hot breakfast this time of year so normally it’s cheap waffles nuked in the microwave and nutella, or cheap cereal and hot milk, or hot chocolate because Andi says in France that’s a normal thing and I’m okay to do that. I eat my food and then I linger back to the cold prison known as the bathroom.

By this point the water is warm. Well, to fucking hot! My house likes to reinvent the laws of physics on a regular basis, I now have water that is scalding hot and is like lava. In order to get to the dial to tweak the temperature I have to shove my arm in lava water. Normally because I’m trying to get my arm out so quickly I get a blast of liquid ice. It’s around this point that I wake up. After another five or ten minutes fiddling with the dial, and undressing I’m ready to get into the shower.

The warm water surrounds me restoring life into my frozen corpse. (Twilight anyone?) Then I look over to the sink, I forgot to grab my toothbrush on the way in. Shit. I open the door to the shower and instantly regret it. I try and stretch because I don’t want to go out all the way into the cold, I can’t reach. I get out of the shower, I grab the toothbrush, and my toothpaste and I dive back in. I slip a little, but it’s okay because this time I didn’t fall. I’m sure one day they’ll find me dead in the shower with a broken neck or melted from lava water.

Anyway, I brush my teeth, in the shower, in an attempt to keep warm and save time. Don’t judge me. I then grab my soap, squeeze it onto the sponge and wash my stinky body. You don’t have to try and visualise this you pervert, and remember, I’m fat. I get to washing my hair and I realise my shampoo ran out three days back. Bollocks. So I just use my liquid body soap and make a quickly forgotten mental note to buy some of that two in one body soap shampoo stuff when I go to Tesco next.

 “George?! You need to hurry up, you’ve got 30 minutes to get ready.”  Yells my mum as she’s banging on the door. I startle because of the noise and get soap/shampoo in my eyes/mouth/both. Shit. Shit. Shit. I stumble and flail around like a distressed helicopter, trying to get my eyes to stop burning or my mouth to stop tasting soapy. I’ve never thought about how much time I waste while doing this, but it probably takes another five minutes, then when it’s all finished I realise how I don’t want to leave the warmth of the shower.

I look around through the steamed up glass for my dressing gown. I brought it downstairs because it seemed warmer than just a towel. It’s on the side of the bath and I can’t reach it without leaving my shower. I make the most of basking in the warm water, then I turn the shower off. My day is ruined. I get out and due to the freezing cold air stabs frantically at every piece of exposed skin and my penis and nipples instantly invert themselves in self-defence. I’m hurrying to get into my dressing gown before I cacth pneumonia, and then I open the door.

Yes the bathroom is cold, but my showering has increased the temperature by a megre 2-3 degrees, now I’m out in the hall and it is so cold. I have no socks and my feet are freezing on the floor, they’re also not entirely dry meaning if I run upstairs to my retreat of warmth I might slip. So I walk as quickly as I can with my two left and wet feet. I get up the stairs without drying from hypothermia, which is a positive.

I go into my room and close the door behind me to dry off properly and get dressed. It’s not warm enough to be naked, but it’s not bitterly cold. I now have to find a cleanish shirt and look on the floor for which pair of trousers I’m going to wear today. Undies and socks never have this problem, they’re in a drawer, my mum puts those away for me. Once I’m dressed I have to look for my shoes and tie, my shoes are somewhere, and my tie is on holiday. I give my hair another quick towel drying and a brush through to make it look super sexy, I grab my bag and off we go.

Usually it's so cold outside the water in my hair freezes.

Game Review (in progress) - Real Life

This is a work in progress, I have the dreaded writers block.

Release Date: Unknown
Price: Unknown, but very expensive.
Age Rating: All (0+)
Developer: Unknown.
Programmers: Unknown, however some people use the name God, and others use names such as Allah, and Zeus.

Graphics - 10/10
Sound - 10/10
Game play - 2/10
Story - 1/10

Background: This is a massive MMORPG style game that has literally taken over the world. I have been playing for years and I seem to be addicted as I just can't stop. You play as one character, and interact with literately everyone and everything, it's a very slow paced game, with many rules but few limits, most things are possible, but equally one mistake can block most storylines.

Character selection: This is a failure, it's a major flaw of the game as you're dependant on another player or two, bringing you into the world and you don't get to choose when or where. You're assigned a random race, based on the players who made you, and you come into the world at a random time, in a random place. All your attributes and personality are pre-decided as is your appearance. Changing your character appearance and attributes is hard later one, appearance can be changed slightly. Personality is shaped at birth and moulded by other players, attributes are similar however some are capped.

Now dying here can be quite easy, this is when you're in what's called the infant class which I will fully explain later. You are fragile and stupid, however there are perks as this woman who cares for you may show your her breasts frequently when you cry, she will also almost obsivelly get you naked. You' can't do anything for yourself, but you grow into a small child and gradually become independent. Sometimes there is a man who either helps, or solely cares for you, this is called 'dad' the woman one is called 'mum' they teach you everything for the first four years. Toilet skills, talking, walking, simple tasks really but you're born to stupid to know this. Again a major flaw.

School

The story is long, and due to the lack of interface is it easy to miss vast chunks, and when you are born it is down to mum and/or dad to explain the back story to you, however they may choose not to. This is where school starts to come in, but this also depends on region and can depend on gender in certain areas, and the things they teach vary widely in other countries. The rest of your life will depend on this section which really seems to drag on, you enter in the child class and leave when you are in the teenage class.

Currency

The currency system is highly flawed, there are many currencies depending on your region, and in one area called Europe they tired a single currency and it didn't work either. Money isn't really relevant until the end of  child class as up until that point mum and/or dad buy and earn everything. Finding money is hard, you need to do this thing called work, and then you have to spend money, sometimes lots to avoid dying. It is easy to overspend or under earn, either can be fatal.

World

The map is too big, there are too many regions, too many races and too many languages. The processer for this game must be amazing. Which region you are born in or live in can mean the difference between life and death, and the world changes massively in each small area, you can also travel but the travel systems are flawed and slow.

Death

Cacti

So, as I've said before my sister is weird. Weird doesn't even begin to cover it, but until the English language gets a word for "absolutely bat shit insane to the extent I'm scared to be within 50km of her, she scares me. I know she's vegetarian but I'm worried she might eat me" we'll go for weird.

She used to have loads of cacti when she was living with us, she used to choose them making sure they were the ones with the biggest, hardest spikes. I'm not even joking, we went to Homebase to get some paint, she stops at the flower section, finds a nice little orchid and says "that's nice, but it needs more SHARP!" she then went and had a proper look and (to my absolute horror) found a small section of neglected cacti. "Oh, the poor babies, they're almost drowned!" was what she said. In the end she picked out a massive one with spikes that made little stars and affectionately named it Miguel. All of them have names, all of them sound Spanish or Mexican. Anyway, while she was choosing Miguel she passed over several other cacti, including a cute little one that had soft spikes, they kind of armour plated it, I said "Get this one, it couldn't hurt anyone." I begged, I pleaded, she said no.

There was Juan too. This one was the first, it was named on the joke of "How many cacti does Andi have? Juan. Heh... ha." The spikes on the top stick straight up and they're about 5cm long.

The thing is, since Andi has been banished to France (I feel sorry for the poor French people but at least she seems to keep the Germans away) the cacti have become much less dangerous. When she was still here they used to appear, in biscuit tins, on chairs, places where I'd get pricked, now? Well, they stay put, and I'm actually starting to appreciate them since they've stopped hurting me.

I don't think I'll ever love them.. All I'm saying is they're pretty, ish, dangerous mind.

Dear Puberty

Okay, so puberty, for a start,may I ask why I, of all people, have breasts? Seriously, I know a lot of people do, but the majority of them are women. Which in case you somehow haven't noticed, I am not. All they do is add insult to injury; I know I'm fat, but you don't need to show it off. Especially not by giving me oversized man-tits, damnit.

And why is my voice not gruff and deep and sexy like it's supposed to be? All it seems to do is squeak when I don't want and especially don't need it to - which makes me sound like a mouse on helium, or sometimes a drunken squirrel. Which isn't exactly helpful, as I really could do without being all squeaky when doing a presentation in front of the entire class, or chatting up the women, for example.

What did I ever do to you, anyway? Do you have some bizarre grudge against humanity? Or is it just men? Is it fat people you don't like? And another thing, why do you make people - such as myself - grow hair in strange places, like, well, you know where. What is the actual point of that? It does nothing but get in the way! And it obscures my penis. Every time I need a piss, I spend at least a minute searching for my penis in a massive tuft of hair. I think I'm turning into a wolf and it gets worse when the moon is full.

Turning into a squeaky, fat hairball is the least I need right now, alright? As in, my uselessness does not need to embody itself in the form of man boobs! I don't need a squeaking voice, and I don't want any of this bullshit. It's irritating to say the least that I have to put up with this from you, puberty.

When I was just a little boy, or girl if my sister had her way, I was clean shaven, my skin was soft and hair free. Now my arms are coated in a thick layer of fur, and my legs rival a bears. I don't want to shave them because that's just weird, but I'm starting to consider it as a viable option.

Puberty, are you a woman? I'm really suspicious here.

Sincerely, a pissed-off George.

Why I hate babies.

Sorry I've not posted anything for a while. I'm doing all my GCSE coursework/homework and that doesn't really leave time for anything else, finding an hour to sit down and write can be very hard sometimes.

Anyway, here is a complaint about something I hate. Babies. I hate babies, why do people constantly pop them out? They are annoying, squishy, moving things and they seem to want to get themselves dropped, but never drop them because the overly hormonal mother will kill you. They are just annoying.

Crying.

This is literally the most annoying noise I can think of (other than the voices of certain people). It's a high pitched wail and it doesn't stop no matter what I do. In fact, everything I do seems to anger the thing more making its song get worse. And when it cries, it moves, and if I drop it because of how it is moving it will cry more, and I'll get the blame.

 They are ugly. 

 

 Need I say more? Newborns have a cone head, and they spend most of the time with heads too big for their bodies and way too much fat to be cute.

They leak fluid everywhere.

 

They dribble everywhere and get spit on everything, it's disgusting. It's not cute, it's horrible, I don't want saliva all over my phone, my shirt, whatever. They can't even control their bowels, or their bladders. Without nappies these things would get grosser, but this brings me to the question of how are they comfortable pissing and shitting in their sleeping space?
And why would a parent be okay with running around after all of that?
And the vomit? Just no...

They are messy.

 

The same things I've mentioned above, and worse. Once they are capable of crawling, not only do they try to commit suicide with the electrical sockets, they all trap everything and shove it into their mouths. When we visit Andi, I'm not allowed to leave anything I care about on the ground, if I leave something there it will be covered in dribble and food and I don't want to know what else. I'm dreading when it starts walking, she says it can pull itself into a standing position and can pull things down from tables. My 3DS is probably going to get eaten. They also insist on poking or grabbing everything, and I mean everything they can get their hands on - hair, eyes, you name it, they'll grab it. My eyes are not toys, I need those!

They can't even feed themselves.

 

Once again moving into the messy category, when these stupid things are born they're so useless, they can't even hold their heads up, how stupid are they? They spend most of the first year being feed from another source where they put in little to no effort, and actively try and get out of eating turning their heads way from spoons etcetera. Not exactly a good survival technique.

I'm a little bit jealous.

 

Babies get everything, they get tits, they don't have to put in any effort, people put them in cute outfits. They can even spend all day in pyjamas, if I do that it's called lazy. They don't need to work, they don't worry about money.
They get away with so many things that I can't, if I dribble everywhere because, I don't know, why would I even do that? Whatever, I'd get in trouble, if Alexandros does it, who gives a shit, he's a baby and it's cute.
Another thing! Alexandros pukes down his shirt, he spends the afternoon in just his nappy and jeans and everyone is okay with that. I get ice cream down my shirt, but I have to keep it on because I'm seen as a fat bastard (which is admittedly quite an accurate view) and it's not acceptable to walk around shirtless. Unfair much!


I guess at the end of the day, it's not their fault they are unattractive, annoying, and unable to control their bowels and I should blame biology for that.

Civ 5 DLC

So, having already gotten Gods & Kings, the first expansion pack for Civilization V, I've recently gotten its DLC (downloadable content) pack! The DLC includes new civilizations (like the Inca) and some map packs, and so far has been really quite interesting. The pack was actually released quite a while ago, mostly before Gods & Kings came out back in 2012,  but it adds a lot to the game. The civs added are the Inca, Denmark, Polynesia, Korea, and Babylon. The expansion pack called Brave New World (which I don't yet have) adds a lot of other civs and mechanics, but I won't go into it here. The DLC pack also includes some of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, like the Temple of Artemis and the Statue of Zeus, which change gameplay in that they give useful benefits early on. This is all I'm going to post for now, so I'm sorry if it bores you. I'll try and be less boring in future.

This guy is Pachacuti, the leader of the Inca. He speaks funny.

Walking around Paris

The Metro's actually alright. Most of the time.

The dreaded day when Andi spent all the money we walked around central Paris for a bit. She's weird, she likes walking and we just drifted around Notre Dame, the flower market, and then up to Forum Des Halles. We stopped in a McDonald's too, the weather was nice so it was okay, and Sandy slept the whole time so he wasn't too screamy.

So to start the day I had to get the Metro to Cité and that was pretty cool; the thing is I've been to Paris so many times the last year that it's almost normal. The metro is alright, but I don't like it when it's busy. Cité has loads of steps too and because we missed the lift Andi decided we needed the exercise, she's used to it, she was living in a third floor flat at one point with no lift. My mum and I? Not a change, we're overweight, lazy slobs, we we're almost dying by the end of all those steps.

Like a Sir.

When we emerged from the Metro we were in the flower market, we didn't buy anything, but Andi and Mum wanted to look around, as usual she found a cactus, but decided it would probably die on the journey home so didn't buy it. We then ended up walking around for a little while looking for Notre Dame, most of the buildings on that little island are stone and it looks very dramatic, but there was building works going on with something and that ruined it a bit. I hadn't been to Notre Dame since November though so it was nice to see it again, but I regret going during tourist season because of the queue. In the end we didn't go in. They'd added this big walk way thing to it so you could walk up and see it from a platform, there were names printed on it and Andi found the name of the woman that flirted with her printed and then said it was creepy because some god was trying to set them up and blah blah blah. Sometimes I wish she'd shut up.

*Relevant caption*

We went looking for the bookshop Andi had read about afterwards and it was amazing. We got lost and ended up walking around for a while, then we went to a little park with a war memorial to all the Jewish kids they sent to die and an old stone building. There was the ramains of a stone wall and a well and some homeless people sleeping too. Then we found the bookshop, it was called Shakespeare and Co. There were some boxes outside with second hand books and a big sign saying no photos, which is why there's no photos of it in this post. The building was small and had so much life in it. It was very crowded and hard to move through. It was a mixture of too many books, too little space and too many people but it made it an amazing shop to vist. Upstairs, which was a very narrow staircase only fitting one person at a time, was a little libary and people could just sit there and read. And there was a kids section and a wall with messages.

After chilling in there for a while and buying one book for Sandy we then went walking looking for the big shopping mall Andi goes to when she wants wifi or clothing. And when it's the sales; she loves those.

Oooh, fancy.

This was fun because we saw one of those bridges where people who are shagging put padlocks on them. This is meant to be a sign that they're strong together and not going to break up. So it's basically a promise of "I'm not leaving them for a younger better woman who has nicer tits". Seems like a load of piss to me. Wait a minute! Doesn't this lead to one of those "A lock opened by many keys is a shitty lock and a key that opens many locks is a master key" things that is used to explain why men can shag anything that moves but women can't? Hmm... I see more meaning to this now.

Rue Nicolas Flamel! This is the very sign.

And, at one point Andi started saying "GEORGE!! Look! Isn't that fucking awesome?! I didn't know he was a real person!" I say saying but it was more like minor excited shouting like when we let her have too much coffee.
I thought it must have been serious from the amount of times she swore. It turns out she was overly amused by the fact there is a Rue Nicolas Flamel, who I'd heard of but couldn't think where. Turns out he's from the first Harry Potter book, he created the Philosopher's Stone. And Andi is overly obsessed with Harry Potter.

Thus concludes the first part. (I apologise for the late post - I'm still new to this whole blog-y thing, and I'll hopefully learn from this mistake.)

This is the sign, from further away this time.

This is an old well, apparently. Well, well, well, what do we have here? What, I'm not allowed to use puns?