The Kestrel has landed

I've been pondering, the last few days, on the similarities in lifestyle between offshore workers and the unemployed, particularly the young unemployed of the eighties which was when I had a long period of unemployment and was young.

It wasn't like it is now for young unemployed people in the eighties, for one thing, you just had to turn up once a fortnight and sign on then a giro cheque came two days later that you cashed at the post office and walked out with cash money and nothing to do but wait twelve days until you could do it again.

This also coincided with a lot of other cultural phenomena that have disappeared - young people still hitch-hiked all over the place, thus putting a reduced strain on your giro money. Seriously, people actually stopped their 1980s cars and let young men  they didn't know get in for however much of the motorway journey they were undetaking coincided with the young person's travel plans for the day. I frequently travelled from Manchester to Cornwall, in a single day, for nothing. It's not easy to travel from Manchester to Cornwall in a single day if you buy a rail ticket nowadays.

I used to love this feeling of whimsical travel, having a nearly adequate amount of cash in my pocket and no demands on my time is something it is hard to replicate in later life. Unless you do a job that pays enough to have two weeks off in every month and still cover the bills. Of course, working offshore is a trade off in that for the two weeks you work you are working 12+ hour shifts, can't go home and have to share a tiny cabin on a very dangerous factory with someone whom you have not chosen for the purpose.

Most of the time, I come home and I enjoy my home life, pottering about the house, taking photos, working on my awful car and generally living a life of small demand but I feel lately that I'm not making enough of this opportunity and I fancy taking the time to do a little travel around Europe, mainly to those places my other half would not choose for a relaxing holiday. She works very hard in a 9 to 5 type job and wants little more than to relax when she gets time off, this doesn't involve, in an ideal world, traipsing around foreign cities taking pictures of grotty corners or schlepping in and out of engineering museums, marveling at models of bridges.

So, I will be endeavouring to take myself off on two or three day trips to foreign cities on very cheap airlines and having a bit of a mooch around. To this end I have bought a new carry-on bag, the Tatonka Flight Case. I was looking hard at the Cabin Max bag, as excellently reviewed on the Polishing Peanuts blog but the Tatonka just had a few features that I wanted enough to pay the extra.

I will, of course be leaving sticks with terrible jokes on them in coffee shops and cafés throughout Ryanland, it would be nice if I could come up with actual jokes in the language of the countries I visit but I doubt I'm up to it so I'll aim for jokes about the country or themed on them, whichever is most likely to cause bafflement and upset.

So, in tribute to the nostalgia for the eighties that prompted this idea, and in one of the smoothest segues you can expect from me, here's the joke.

Today I wrote my stick of tortured humour in Rocksalt & Snails again but this time I actually left it behind.

The joke is one kindly provided by my friend Trixx though I rewrote the setup as it wasn't convoluted, obscure or laboured enough. He's been saving this punchline up for decades in the hope of a good feed line and, hopefully one will come along before he dies.

If you really want to know, here's the text:

Why did Andy McCluskey not finish moving his falcons until well past bedtime?

Because he started his kestrel manoeuvres in the dark.

Now, before I apologise and let you get back to whatever it was that you were doing before, that joke may need one or two points of explanation, particularly if you are young or indeed old.

Andy McCluskey is a singer who was one of the founder members of a band called Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark.

Kestrel sounds a bit like Orchestral.

There are other elements of punning wordplay in there too.

That's it.

Sorry.

El Salvador!

So, today I left a couple of jokes on a variation in the Tinderbox cafe in the Union Square mall. It's actually a very decent coffee place and you get to watch people coming and going from the train station and around the mall from the tables on the balcony. It's a really good position and the coffee is good. If you ever arrive at Aberdeen station and want a coffee I urge you to bypass the Lemon Tree Cafe, Peckham's, pass the Costa and head up the escalator to Tinderbox. There are at least three other coffee shops in there but no bookshop. Tragic, isn't it?

I just had a search for a Tinderbox website and came across The Coffee Story blog about Aberdeen coffee places. I'm so glad, this is going to make finding coffee places a little bit easier and I see Stephanie agrees with me about Tinderbox.

So, on to today's joke(s):

Did you hear about the illiterate pimp?

What a terrible indictment of a failing society.

This is a joke in tribute to John Thomson's character Bernard Righton.

For young readers Thomson's act may not seem particularly brilliant or cutting edge in light of the availability of great comedy today but at the time the memory of the TV show The Comedians was still very fresh, comedy did not tend to look inwards and relied on a hackneyed routine of telling the same jokes as one another about the same one dimensional stereotypes.

The coming of alternative comedy brought with it the spectre of poe-faced, earnest removal of comedy as some people appointed themselves arbiters of taste and political ideal. What Thomson did was to mock both sides with a brilliantly observed caricature of a politically re-educated club comedian. Something later done by Al Murray though I worry that many of Murray's current audience may not spot the irony.

More Thomson:

And now, for those of you traditional minded readers, here's the 'jokey' version of the joke:

Did you hear (again) about the illiterate pimp?

He had a warehouse full of hoes.

I can see you rolling your eyes, you know.

I really ought to not put this stuff in with proper comedy.

I left both sticks together on the table and hadn't gone ten feet before someone sat down and I could tell at a glance that I had utterly wasted those two sticks, there is no chance whatsoever that they were a) going to enjoy those jokes and b) ever going to read a blog like this.

Ah, well.

I picked up a new pen up at the University yesterday so today's joke was written with a Mitsubishi Uni Pin 0.05 pen, it coped fairly well but was thrown a little by the grain if I didn't have a very firm grip on the stick.

Pop!

Had to go and pick up a parcel today so I thought I might as well have a wander up to the University and have a coffee in the refectory.

This is something I rather like about working offshore in the oil industry, you get the lifestyle of an unemployed person for half the year and you also get paid. I spend half my time acting as though I have no job because, for half the time, I do have no job. I get to mooch about all day or play computer games. If I want to head off for a day out in Glasgow or somewhere I can do that too or I can play in the garage all day at making sparks and mess.

Today I went for a coffee at the Uni and marvelled at how much it has changed since I went there, the refectory/cafe that used to be a dingy kind of room full of rows of tables, steam and depression is now a lively looking 'Hub' with a Tiki coffee thing in the middle of a random spread of tables and chairs that look like Ikea and Barbapapa had a pile of unwanted babies. The outside of the room is now lined with shops and computers and depression. Some things never change.

After I had a decent enough coffee I went to the beach to check on the surf for my mate Chris who is offshore and thus unable to surf, I went to take pictures for him so he could work on his resentment and yearning. It's stormy but horribly messy so he hasn't missed much. Nice and showy though.

Waves: Splashy.

I was also really pleased today to see that I've had a massive 200+ page views on the blog and for that, thanks to all fans of terrible jokes on sticks everywhere. Secondly, I noticed that there had been a hit from Chile where someone had done a Google search on the string "an american werewolf in london's knock knock joke comic" and decided to have a click on the blog. Well, I can only apologise to that person for what must have been a crushing disappointment but also to thank them for giving me a taste of the exotic in my morning. I did the same search and noted that I am 11th in Chilean Google for that search term, not bad and, with a bit of luck this post will break through into the top ten for me.

Today I decided to go out on a structural limb and leave a triplicate of jokes around the coffee place. There is a theme and they are as bad as you've come to expect.

So, from the top we have:

What do you get if you half fill a can of Campbell's soup with lemonade?

Shandy Warhol

Then:

What do you call a man who makes silk screen repeats of jelly babies?

Candy Warhol

And finally, if you've managed to struggle this far:

What do you call a man who makes post modern images of grit?

Sandy Warhol.

There you go, a triumvirate of Andy Warhol puns written on coffee stirrers, proof if proof were needed that any shite you can imagine can be found on the internet.

I'm actually a little bit proud of the first one, I know I have no reason to be but I am so there.

And now Nick does what Nick does best...

 Today I felt that I'd been favouring the large chains a bit so I went into one of the best independent coffee shops in Aberdeen, Kilau Coffee. They make a really good cup of coffee there and I even used a photo of one of their latte's as the background for this blog.

Leaving a coffee stirrer with a joke on in this place presented me with a small problem, namely that they don't have wooden coffee stirrers. Easily solved by me popping into the Costa in what used to be Ottakars on Union Bridge on my way there and pinching a few of their excellent stirrers.

This is something I've noticed, coffee stirrer sticks all look much the same but I've found, by writing on them, that they vary quite a lot. This may be the secret to the massive success of the chains like Caffe Nero and Starbuck's, they have much smaller sticks and the savings they must make in using maybe 5% less stick per stir may be all the competitive edge they need over smaller independents and Costa, who make their profits larger by using brown gravel instead of coffee beans.

I was reminded of a great source of amusement from my past this morning so went in to Asylum comics in the Adelphi and bought a Groo book. I started reading Sergio Aragones work in the margins of Mad magazine when I was maybe ten years old and was delighted when I came across a whole comic book by him in the old Forbidden Planet comic shop in Hanging Ditch, Manchester. Now, thirty years later I was also delighted to have a copy of the Fanboy trade paperback foisted on me by the very nice owner, Mike.

Before the joke, I was in a slight quandary over the rules regarding leaving sticks in places that don't use sticks. Turns out it was fine, I checked in the giant book of rules and it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Phew.

Now, one of the things you may have noticed is that the setup is ridiculously long. I was a bit concerned that I wouldn't fit everything on there and am very glad I went into Costa to get some of their frivolously expansive sticks, I'd have still been trying to fit all that on a Caffe Nero stick.

The joke:

What did Arnold Schwarzenegger say when he announced the classical music themed fancy dress party?

"I'll be Bach".

That was worth it, right?

No, didn't think so.

Until next time.

Kitson and coffee.

Today's venue was the Caffe Nero on the corner of Rose St and Union St.

I walked into town, initially to post something and also as it was a really nice, cold bright day and I was listening to Daniel Kitson's podcasts and I wanted to carry on listening as I walked, it's a great way to listen to comedy as it makes you look really rather psychotic, especially if you have a hat, some unobtrusive earphones and a beard to hide the wires.

People give a lot of room to large men bustling through town laughing to themselves and that makes walking in any town a much more pleasant experience. That I also had some great comedy to listen to was the icing on an already icing filled cake. Essentially a cupcake cup full of icing.

I also went into Waterstone's to have a look at a copy of 'Just My Type' by Simon Garfield which I bought for my Kindle the other day and I now, having seen how well done it is in the paper copy, I sort of wish I'd bought as a real book. The typefaces all get to make little cameos as he mentions them and this doesn't render properly on a Kindle as it has a limited number of fonts and uses whichever one you've set as the default for almost all of them. This makes it a slightly less satisfying book as, though I am thoroughly enjoying it, I have to imagine most of the fonts.

Yet more complaining from me. I had a great walk, nice cup of coffee and listened to some great work and I find the time to complain about something. This doesn't reflect my mood, I was very happy all day. I even fixed the indicator lenses on my car where I'd smashed them off a few weeks ago.

So that brings us to today's joke:

What trousers should you wear to drink coffee?

CappuChinos.

Don't for one second think that I am unaware of the irony of talking about Daniel Kitson in a blog and then presenting that joke. You are now reading that joke at some remove, I was actually listening to Mr Kitson's act as I wrote it on the stick, I felt like a man daubing stick figures on the wall of the Louvre with his own shit. The things I go through to bring this drivel to you.

I seem to have settled on a Pilot 0.1mm Drawing Pen, it works well and I had one handy.

Back to Basics

Today's joke was left in the Starbucks just across the road from Marischal College which is handy for having a look at the development of the new and obviously much needed council offices. Much better use of my council tax than, for instance, picking up the rubbish or fixing the roads a bit.

This branch of Starbucks is also nice and handy for the Vue cinema on Shiprow where I was going to watch Burke and Hare with Clare. An enjoyable enough film but more an exercise in cameo spotting (Bill Bailey + razor = a completely unrecogniseable man). That it wasn't a genius film is something I should not be disappointed about, this kind of career droop is fairly excusable in John Landis, he'd have to make some pretty terrible films in order to eclipse my affection for An American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers and Trading Places.

Another director/writer who has almost reached the end of the plank as far as I'm concerned is Kevin Smith, I adored his films from Clerks which I saw subtitled in Paris and made me happier than I can tell you about the possibility of making films for nothing, with your friends and a smart script (not that I have done that but I'm happy that the possibility exists) right through to Jersey Girl which I still thought was a decent film, especially in light of the sort of rewrites that must have been necessary to boot his best mate's ex-girlfriend out of the flick without seeming too hasty.

Then came Miri and Whatsisname Make an Abysmal 'Comedy' and some awful Bruce Willis film. The twin graphs of Kevin's film career where cost and quality are plotted against time looks like a fish's tail, draw it out and see for yourself. Complaining aside, I've got six films, two live Q&As and a great interview with Stan Lee to watch and bask in the light of a great talent and a funny, funny man. He still writes great stuff too, it's only the films that have lost their soul.

I'm yet another fanboy bitching and not making anything better, I suppose.

So, in the spirit of classic and simple callbacks to a happier time, here's today's joke:

Pretty ironic to be criticising John Landis and Kevin Smith in the same blog post as I take credit for leaving that in a public place, eh?

Again, for the photographically challenged, here's the text:

What is brown and sticky?

A stick.

Awesome, I love the childishness of that joke with its fascination with pooh and wordplay. I can't take credit for it, obviously, and I've known it for so long I don't know who could but if you know that someone definitely originated that joke then please do let me know.

This is the first joke I've left in a coffee place and I hope someone picks it up and looks here to see what the hell someone is doing leaving stupid jokes around the place.

First post, and the agenda

Hello folks and welcome to this blog. I came up with the idea as I was sat in a coffee shop, desperate to write something in order to have a proper coffee shop pose to hide behind and show that I am a cool guy.

What I did instead was to have a flick through a magazine then think back to a bit on the Collings and Herrin podcast I listened to earlier and rewrite a hippopotamus joke that they told. In order to fit in with the mania my generation have developed for nostalgia and ironic joke telling I took a coffee stirrer and rewrote the joke (for rewrote you can substitute stole and then changed a bit) on the coffee stirrer stick.

For those people who are either too young, too old, have memory loss about their childhood or come from a country where this reference means nothing to you, I'm talking about the lolly sticks that Wall's used to have in the seventies, when I was a child, which had a joke with the feed line on the exposed portion of the stick and the punch line on the portion of the stick which was buried inside the lolly so you had to eat the lolly to gratify your desire to read completion of the joke.

For those of you that don't get the nostalgic reference due to foreignness, I appreciate that the word lolly may also be causing some confusion. It's a popsicle.

Here, then is my first effort:

For those who can't see or can't read my writing, the joke runs:

Where do brainy hippopotamuses hang out?

The hippocampus.

Now, think of that joke what you may, I propose to carry on doing this regardless so I have set myself something of a set of boundaries or rules for the continued wastage of these precious sticks.

First of all, the joke must follow the binary pattern of feed line - punchline. A joke in the child's archetype of what a joke should be. No knock-knock jokes, for instance and very little whimsical observational stand-up.

Secondly, the joke must be legible on the stick. This is going to force me to up my game on the handwriting front and find something that writes well on a very cheap bit of pine. The Pelikan fountain pen I used here wasn't great, too inclined to streak. It's also going to force me to keep the jokes short.

Thirdly, I have no problems with stealing jokes off cleverer people but I'll always endeavour to credit the originator of the joke on the blog. I welcome any corrections to my attribution, if the person I stole it from stole it from someone earlier than me then please do let me know.

Fourthly, I will leave the joke in the coffee shop from now on (I brought this one home with me) and photograph it in situ.

That's more than enough rules about writing bad jokes on sticks but I will try to give a mention to the place where I left the joke. This one was in a place pretty local to me, Rocksalt and Snails They don't seem to have a website but it's a nice place. Go there, if you are in the west end of Aberdeen, it's very friendly and they make nice stuff.

That's it for the moment, I need to go out and have more coffee soon. If you fancy having a go yourself, please send me pics of your jokes and I'll stick them up in the blog and plug your favourite coffee shop.