Repeat ad infinitum

Unemployment is shit. We all know that. No matter how firmly you advocate living a life where getting up at 11am is considered a ‘good effort’ or where trousers are deemed an optional extra, the truth of the matter is that being out of work is fucking rubbish. Unless, of course, you’re of independent means and can afford to spend your days playing golf in your own private castle with the testicles of the poor, or whatever it is that the upper classes do with their time.

As much as we all like to bitch and moan about our jobs, they provide us with the means to enjoy such luxuries as food and walls – things you definitely start to appreciate when the security of your job-funded paycheck is pulled from underneath you without warning. I should know, as exactly that same thing happened to me earlier this year, along with countless thousands of others who have fallen foul of the cataclysmic economic rimshafting our country currently finds itself on the receiving end of.

The hardest thing about being unemployed is keeping up a routine (and no, tea > facebook > wank > shower > Jeremy Kyle does not qualify as a routine). Without routine, days lose all meaning and killing time becomes a pastime in itself. A lie-in becomes nothing more special than a source of relief that X number of hours have passed without you having to spend money or engage the increasingly decrepit cogs of your brain, and pretty soon you’re contemplating just how much of each day it is acceptable to spend picking your nose and flicking it at the vacuous faces of game show contestants on television.

You don’t need me to tell you that succumbing to that level of apathy – while fascinating in a morbidly voyeuristic sense – is not a healthy way to live. In fact, it’s about as healthy as a £50-a-day heroin habit, and only marginally less likely to ruin your whole life. My advice? Get a routine and stick to it every day, even if that routine consists of little more than forcing yourself to get up at a time that can still reasonably be termed breakfast. You might end up just writing the same old bullshit job applications over and over again for weeks, but you’d be amazed how a bit of structure can keep you going when all other forms of motivation have long since left you for dead. Keep going, and eventually you will accomplish something.

Don’t believe me? Well then you can go and pick your nose and shoot as much heroin as you like…

OK, as promised, here’s your little present for having sat through all of that. Ladies and gentlebredrin, I give you EroticFalconry

BearGwills

The Start of A Beautiful Friendship

I know it’s been something approaching forever since my last blog post (actually, it’s been three weeks, but these days anything longer than about four days can effectively be written off without having to quantify it). However, anyone who is unfortunate enough to know me in real life – away from the anonymous cocoon of the internetz – knows that the past three weeks have been a bit of busy time for me.

For those that don’t, let me fill you in. After three months of ‘freelancing’ (the journalist’s conversational euphemism for ‘unemployment’) I recently started a new job in London, requiring me to pack up my entire life in Bristol and move cities in just five days. If anyone ever asks you to do this, I don’t recommend it. It was pretty stressful. Since that point I have been practicing the Charlie Sheen school of living, oscillating between perpetual states of adrenaline-fuelled GO and total physical exhaustion. As you might imagine, neither offers much scope for finding pictures of Cake.

Nevertheless, in amongst this period of frenzied activity you have never been far from my mind, and as each day slipped away in a mess of blog-free stress and confusion I began to wonder more and more how I might return to you. Then someone suggested I document the events of the past few months in my life for others to read about, given their somewhat topical nature. It seemed suitably narcissistic.

So, over the coming – err, I want to say days, but I’m not quite sure I’m ready to commit myself to that level of posting just yet – I’ll be writing up some of the experiences I’ve been through recently, in the hope that it might actually have some relevance to those of you faced with similar situations. If that all sounds a bit fucking boring and serious, don’t worry. I promise I’ll take every opportunity to ridicule myself, vainly attempt humour and poke fun at Kanye West where possible.

I’ll also break up the posts with other far more interesting stuff, like this:

Look at him. He really fucking loves leaves.

We can still be friends, yeah?

BearGwills

P.s. I give you my word that Cake Day will return this Friday.

Fresh New Development

By far the most exciting news niblet to dribble its way out of the internet and into my face this morning is the announcement that the greatest sitcom ever made (possibly the greatest program ever to grace television) is to be resurrected, five years after it was so unfairly killed off by the ratings-chasing know-nothing executives at Fox.

Yes, Ladies and Gentlehomies, Arrested Development is back. And not just any kind of back. Back for a new season AND a full feature film. We all dreamed this day would one day come, but as the years slipped away the chances of it happening seemed ever-more distant. Like a candle slowly melting away to a gnarled stump of disappointment and loathing. It’s OK. Go ahead, you can cry.

While fans of the series attempt to scrape themselves up from the pool of raw, liquid emotion they surely now find themselves in, let me take this moment to address those of you who have no idea what we’re on about. Firstly, shame on you. If you have never seen Arrested Development then you have wasted your life and everything you have achieved is arguably null and void. This can be rectified, however, if you go out and buy all three seasons on DVD and watch them back to back NOW. And it has to be on DVD, because 90% of Arrested Development’s appeal is derived from the way it rewards those who have kept up with it since the start. Jokes that were first imagined in the opening few episodes find themselves re-lived in the second or even third seasons – like an in-joke among friends – and each character’s personality traits become so familiar you begin to feel as if they were, in fact, part of your own family.

In short, it will make all other sitcoms you have ever seen look like an evening of stand-up with Lembit Opik.

So paint your whole body blue, stick on The Final Countdown and get ready to make a huge mistake all over again, as shooting on the new season starts next summer.

Read the full story, courtesy of that bastion of on-the-button news coverage Radio 1 Newsbeat, here.

BearGwills

Are You Cakeing The Piece Out Of Me?

This Friday’s Cake Day is brought to you by unseasonable sunshine, marzipan and full-time employment…

Yup, when I said I was busy doing important life stuff, I wasn’t only talking about finishing my ‘Biscuithenge’ project or learning how to play the Saved By The Bell theme tune on the recorder (although that was time well spent). No, it turns out someone out there actually wants to pay me to do Facebook for a living. Which is absolutely fine by me. I do that quite a lot already, so I guess you could call it playing to my strengths.

The fact that there actually exists a job that consists largely of doing Facebook shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when you appreciate that we live in a world where this is deemed an appropriate birthday cake:

Is there really any other image that so fully expresses the joy and excitement of a birthday than the Facebook welcome page?

I guess I should say ‘Like’, or something…

BearGwills

P.s. If I ever get to the stage where a Facebook birthday cake is deemed appropriate, it had better come with a buttercream and cyanide filling.

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Stranger

I know what you’re thinking. It’s been three days without a post, something must be wrong. He must be ill – dead maybe. Or, still worse. He must be off gallivanting with another, younger, sprightlier blog. One whose links are still all in the right places and who doesn’t Tweet about it when he leaves the seat up. They’ll be off somewhere, skipping through long fields of internet while he whispers sweet witticisms in her ear and they both laugh over content that’s funnier than anything you’ve ever seen. They might even stop for a romantic meal at that cookery website you’ve always dreamed about.

Well put those paranoid thoughts out of your mind and take the car exhaust pipe out of your mouth. I’m not dead. I’m not cheating on you. I’ve just been very busy with important life stuff. But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten you or that I’ve become jaded with our relationship. I’m still putting fingers to keyboard to keep you entertained. I’m still out there trying to find interesting things for you to waste your precious time looking at. I’m still thinking up fresh and interesting ways to make fun of Kanye West. All for you guys. Because I love you.

In the future it’ll be different, you’ll see. We’ll go to that fancy cookery website, we’ll sit by the homepage and you can order anything you like. Then maybe we’ll stroll over to YouTube and catch a show, before checking in for a night at HolidayInn.com (not too expensive, but nicer than a Travelodge). Everything will be fine, and we can go back to how it was – each of us toiling away at the  grindstone of our everyday existence, slowly working ourselves towards death, one post at a time…

As a present to you for my recent neglect, I’ve brought you the incredible work of graphic artist Tim McDonagh:

Check out all of his work here, then go and read an interview with him over at Dear Damn Diary here.

BearGwills

Stickin’ It To The Man

First off, I make absolutely no apologies for stealing this off the wall of a Facebook acquaintance. The world is full of thieves. I stole this hat I’m wearing from a dog who was asleep. It’s OK. He doesn’t need it. Dogs don’t get to have hats. Just dog food and rabies. I’m sure he’ll get over it.

Anyhow, another thing the world is full of is quirky, flash-based timewasting devices. Well, here’s another one, only this one I actually thought was pretty cool. Cleverly titled DrawAStickMan.com, it lets you draw a stick man and then watch as he comes to life and becomes embroiled in an increasingly hilarious tale of happiness and woe, with all manner of thrills and spills along the way in what is already being made into a series of Hollywood blockbuster movies starring Ryan Reynolds and the fat girl from Glee (I’m presuming there is a fat girl in Glee?). Fun for all the family.

FYI, I drew a penis every time. Obviously.

Create your own stick-drama here.

Cake A Chance, Cake A Chance

I wonder how long I can keep finding  material for Cake-related puns each week? Don’t worry, I think I’ve got a few more in me before it starts to get really tenuous. Then the fun starts.

I’m going to keep this Friday’s Cake Day post brief, because I’m a busy man (lies) and I’ve got important stuff to do today (more lies) and Cake isn’t the central thing in my universe (so many lies).

Don’t worry, I’ll be back to post something more meaningful before the day is out.

In the meantime, enjoy this:

And this:

 

Then go eat Cake.

BearGwills