What about a sumo wrestler – anytime you wanted?

Posted: November 16, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

To pre-empt the following; everyone feels down sometimes.

Sometimes, we feel dishonourable to our ancestors.

Fortunately, I’ve been watching television.

And I’ve discovered the Grand Sumo league has free coverage on NHK WORLD-JAPAN.

It’s fantastic, truly.

The slapping, the blessing, the inadvertent headbutts, the little envelopes, the lot – I highly recommend it.

But nothing comes close to the satisfaction of seeing the faces those in the front row change from keen interest, to slow realisation, to horror, to another slow realisation, to joy, as a 300lbs+ man falls on them.

In my front room, watching this, we’d all go “YAY!” and so would the expressions of those in the front row: because clearly their ancestors were smiling upon them.

Whilst officially not encouraged by the league (sumo try not to fall on people), it is genuinely considered a great honour for a sumo to land on you. You see, that means you’re right up close to the action, privileged and cool.

Depression hits everyone – and I believe sumo wrestlers should too.

Imagine, you’re walking home after a crap day at work, missed the bus, no partner waiting at home, dog ran off with the milkman, and its raining.

What you need is a blessing from your ancestors at a very reasonable price.

An uplift in honour – to treat yourself!

Just sign-up to my new app: Sumo On Demand – and a qualified sumo wrestler will come to your location and land on you.

Honour!

Prices vary, but the top price is the ‘Flat Rate’ – due to you being completely flattened by the sumo and honour.

I don’t mean to see obnoxious, but this is a bloody brilliant idea and investors are welcome to get in touch.

Alternatively, I can apply to Dragon’s Den, have one of my dedicated team of highly trained sumo wrestlers land on each of them, and see how that turns out.

I’d be ‘In’.

If you’re interested in being flattened by a sumo wrestler and increasing your personal honour – drop a comment below, I’ll see what I can arrange.

Sam

Everyone needs a zombie apocalypse sometimes

Posted: November 15, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

To begin, I have a lot – A LOT – of tinned food.

Don’t ask why.

It would be a shame to watch it lose its shine due to dust on the shelf.

Don’t get me wrong, I recognised more than most that the beauty of tinned food is its agelessness on the shelf. But they’re also handy in a starvation scenario in which everyone needs more beans.

Nobody wants to see tinned food go to waste, and I’ve got a lot of it – though if you’re my neighbour, please disregard that fact and stay away from my house.

Another point – I’ve a lot of baseball bats.

Slightly more baseball bats than tinned food, actually.

And what a waste it would be – if there was never the occasion to apply a baseball bat to its destiny; not so much baseballs, but the undead.

That eagerness to see nothing go to waste extends to supermarkets, so there’s a good chance for a nice afternoon’s looting too.

The tinned food, the pleasing swish of a swingeing baseball bats, and a trip to the shops. The zombie apocalypse is just something to look forward to.

There’s also the other distinct upsides of the apocalypse:

  • Financial loans no longer require your devotion. Mortgage? Pfft, If you’ve enough baseball bats you can move straight in to Buckingham Palace (though be cautious of infected corgis).
  • That heartbreak you suffered in the bad-old-days has now been pushed out of your mind, either by concern for zombies or a baseball bat rearranging your brains.
  • No more Mondays.

Do you have any idea how little your GCSEs matter at the end of the world? They’re still very important (stay in school. And lock the doors.).

The apocalypse is something people look forward to.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if the world ended”

I suppose definition of “world” is subjective.

For some it’s the planet on which we live, and most people hope remains intact.

For others, the “world” is the society in which they live – demanding their time, money and even enthusiasm, and a lot of people would like to see some change there. Zombies might be the answer.

Lastly, your life is your “world” and you just fancy a change: “It’s a nice day for zombies!”

Maybe, we want to dehumanise the ‘competition’ out there in society or simply start again. Smashing the buggers to pieces without legal ramifications, or be left alone in our bunkers.

Personally, it’s currently a Saturday morning and I do think it’s a nice day for zombies. We’ll see what happens.

Right, must dash – there’s someone moaning and scratching at the door. It’s probably the milkman, who we’ve not seen for 30 years.

And remember, keep your tinned food shiny and your baseball bats plentiful.

Sam

Not all units of measurement are for polite company

Posted: November 12, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Actually, I’m not just talking about genitals.

I’m going to (I’m always going to), but not right now.

Genitals are wonderful things, inspirational even, but there are indeed alternative units of measurements.

One of which is inches.

Then you have ‘feet’ – which are also inspirational, despite being gross.

‘Miles’ is most common, but no-one seems to mind ‘miles’ much at all.

“How many miles to the discotheque?” – we used to ask each other in French at school, and despite the obvious moral issues of speaking French, no one could question the integrity of the unit of measurement.

This measurement, and many others, are always fine.

Some aren’t.

Some units of measurement are simply not for Sunday tea-time.

“One lump or two” when proffered sugar is as vulgar as things should get when we’re talking about spoonful’s of anything.

But there are worse, and Sunday tea-time can become an event with more Effing and Jeffing than fucking Jeffrey.

“How many racial slurs to the vicarage?” we’d ask in the old days, and people would answer – awfully. Racistly (racist slurs are really, really racist!). And most importantly – we’d know how far away the vicarage was.

And things would only deteriorate from there (Sunday tea-time).

Some people prefer feet (perverts, but whatever).

Some, miles.

Most, don’t like units of measurement being racial slurs.

Just ask the vicar.

The vicar, such as he is, prefers to know just “how many knobs to the bank?” and he gets his answer too.

The discotheque, the vicarage and the bank are all within reach, with a variety of units of measurement applied and all manner of folk deeply offended, none the less informed as to the distance that matters to them.

I’ve only one piece of advice now, and it’s not to know your audience (yuk).

My advice is – just say and do something.

Yes it might be deeply offensive, but, well – who needs to be employed really?

More importantly, who really needs to be unoffended?

I don’t.

But I do need to know how far away the bank, discotheque and vicarage are.

Because I’m planning one hell of a a Sunday tea-time.

Sam

(P.S Sunday tea-time might in fact not be that great. But you’re invited!)

Rolling pins: them, me, and the ancient argument as to what constitutes a ‘pin’.

Posted: November 2, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I appreciate there are going to be some alternative definitions from my own, as to what constitutes a ‘pin’. I also know that some of these are going to be ‘factual’.

But what pride themselves on in terms of correctness, they more than let themselves down in accuracy.

A pin is something that you can pin with. If a thing cannot pin, a pin it is not.

Rolling pins – they’re not pins. They’re my ultimate bed fellow of the realm we can all relate to: something you enjoy having around, regardless of its purpose.

I can picture a medieval woman, house-bound, subjugated and bored, being told the local ravishers are on their way to commit their namesake.

Thankfully, she has a rolling pin, which must, simply ‘must’, have been used at least once in human history to defeat the bad guy.

Got yourself a villain? Bop him on the head with a rolling pin.

Got a yourself a villain nearby but just out of reach? Throw a rolling pin at him, the distant git.

Baking?

Baking and interrupted by a villain?

Bop him about the head and neck with a rolling pin, before returning to the esoteric application of a rolling pin outside of villain-bopping and household defence (plus all around justice): somehow flattening dough.

I’ve never really been able to use a rolling pin for anything other than a really good time thrashing it about and some amateur Morris dancing (I haven’t landed a paid Morris-dancing gig yet, but I hear its all about persistence. Keep at it and eventually someone will pay you to leave. They won’t threaten – you’ve got a rolling pin and a fucking hanky.).

When at school I put the rolling pin to dough and nothing really happened – certainly not cakes or bread or whatever it was I was being taught. Least of all flattened dough.

As I got older I treated myself to a basic, this’ll-do, rolling pin, in preparation for the day in which I’d be bopping anti-social behaviour in the face.

I’ve still got it. My wife uses it for cooking every now and again (and bloody again), whilst I prefer to chase my children with it – so the whole family gets good use out of it.

In the event of a fire, or perhaps some near-world-event, if I’ve time to grab something from the house before dashing for the village hall, I’m grabbing my rolling pin. And kids.

And people at the village hall would be pleased, commending me for bringing so jolly-decent a thing as a rolling pin to the end of the world that the whole Parish can find some relief from.

I don’t know if it would necessarily aid in clearing rubble in search of wounded, or be massively handy when it comes to building a new basic infrastructure system once the fallout has cleared, but it wouldn’t half give me confidence in the new world.

Such confidence, that in fact it would aid in clearing rubble, and in developing basic infrastructure. Because we’ve got a rolling pin.

But it’s still not a ‘pin’.

Spur of the moment, I’m going to rename them to “Oods”.

I like that, it works, and I like that and it works.

And even if it doesn’t work, you can’t deny I like that.

Sam

HEY, 1800s USA, get your own huddled masses

Posted: October 5, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Being European – I can assure you we worked jolly hard to have the huddled masses we’ve earned over the millennia, to the point that we’ve begun to enjoy huddling en masse.

We call it ‘a nice get-together’ with everyone ever.

And huddled masses don’t come easy.

You need to prioritise turnips, parsnips and several other bullshit vegetables that are fantastic long-term (shelf-life, if you’ve a shelf to be able to implement such a phrase) but are sadly lacking when it comes to reasons for living.

That’s the formulae for masses and huddling.

And frankly the United States should know better – especially in the century in which it was actually happening. Plus it is simply audacious to covert another continent’s huddled masses – it simply generates traffic for ferries and that is most unbecoming.

And the 1800’s USA isn’t the only historical era of a country that requires a good telling-off.

It’s easy to pick-on 1930s Germany for obvious reasons, but how about the pre-Christ Rome? Can you think of a nation with a greater need to get a grip that the one that decided ‘outwards violently’ was the means to a comfortable life?

Yes, it certainly did lead to a comfortable life for many Romans at the time, but not the ones required to be violent and certainly not for the ones required to have violence visited upon them like some grotesque form of stabby-tourism.

Remember the Franks? No-one does, they became both forgotten and French – and Rome should apologise for the latter.

Then there’s everything China did to the Chinese for a period of time that exceeds the history of the planet.

I believe ancient Chinese politics was interrupted, rudely, by evolution of the original mammals at some point, according to the most excellent of Chinese record keeping (the Tang period suffered an economic disaster as fish became land-dwellers: the fisherman were furious about all the time they’d wasted being on a fucking boat).

And then, of course, Genghis Khan needs a good rebuking too – primarily on the grounds of murder.

But when it comes to the USA sidling up to my – MY – huddled masses and treating them with the lack of contempt they deserve – that’s an overstep that I cannot ignore.

Therefore I wrote a blog, and now really must move on to other things.

All the best to you, huddled or otherwise,

Sam

Magnum Opuses for everyone

Posted: July 30, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I’m confident that AI is having a profound impact already, let alone in terms of being something for people to blog about, but nevermind – let’s talk about magic.

Because we might as well, since that’s the stage we’re at.

I found something profoundly encouraging the other day whilst ChatGPTing.

I’d previously asked it to write a blog in the style of The Lateral Column (you might have heard of it) to see if it could compare. And it fairly much nailed it.

Bit worrying, since I like to think only I can be as inane as me, but this revealed that such irrelevant irreverence as my style of writing could be…commonplace.

And who’d want that?

I don’t want anything to write like I write, and you don’t want anyone to have to suffer reading as you currently are, due entirely to this style of writing.

Damn, damn, damn shame.

However, good news came shortly afterwards.

I asked the AI to repeat the same task, imitate my blog.

And, encouragingly, it turns out that Artificial Intelligence was having an off-day!

I read, and was delighted to be disappointed. It was a lame mimic of my blog, filled with bullet-point lists and jokes revolving around the sort of topics that unamusing people insist as a being humorous. Like cheese (wow, cheese, ‘ha‘ and then ‘ha‘ again).

I really started writing this blog today because I thought of the title and have tried to revolve it around the absurd suggestion of magnum opuses for everyone (like they’re free or mass produced). But I’ve struggled.

Instead, I could cobble together some nice bullet points (everyone likes a list), or an unamusing topic (like irony – what’s that about?).

But perhaps, I keep uploading my style of writing into the AI, en-mass and it gradually considers my blogs to be the example of what a blog should look like, and as hacks (bless ’em) look to imitate writing styles – they can all come to take examples proffered by AI, and thus, therefore and hence….magnum opuses for everyone!

That was lucky.

Sam

Claivoyance: my new side-racket

Posted: July 17, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I am not clairvoyant in regard to any supernatural ability or actual belief in communing with the dead.

But I am prepared to say similar things for money.

Some people need a side-hustle in today’s (and yesterday’s) economy, and other’s – like me – need a side-racket.

Blogging will only take you so far and frankly the criminality just isn’t worth it anymore.

So why not lean into the supernatural, and why not be openly honest about it being both completely nonsensical and something out of which I’m looking to make the most?

For example, right from the get-go:

“Oh it’s your deceased grandmother and she’d like to say hello.”

Possibly (I don’t know – I’m not clairvoyant)…

“Not the living one, the other one. The deceased grandmother that without question died and that we can’t prove isn’t telling me to tell you that everything’s going to be alright and that you should leave a considerable tip.”

And it is at this moment that, with no morbid disrespect meant, I truly do hope you happen to have a dead grandmother.

“By the way, this might not resonate, but your great-great-great-great-great grandfather is exceptionally proud of you. You might not know his name or what he looked like, but he’s pleased as punch as to how you’ve turned out and he’d also recommends a significant tip.”

I can even be vague if you’d like.

“Also, that thing that happened at that particularly non-specifiable time that you might recall…we’ll I’m aware of that.”

I could get a little wooden caravan, or…just a car (perhaps a wooden one)…and could host clairvoyance get-togethers amongst those that are looking for hope from someone distinctly unqualified to provide some, albeit at remarkable value for money.

Bargain hope – you need crystal balls to dish that kind of humanity out.

“Now, let me deal my tarot cards.

“Will it be Death, will it be Love?

“Ah, the Pick Up 5 Uno card. That’s worse than Death and Love, but at least Napoleon, Caeser and Alexander the Great can relate – they’ve had similar bad draws, and they’re all playing it in the corner. They can’t find the Risk box.“

Napoleon would make a tremendous ghost, being of average height in the corner and French – very spooky. Very French. Very average-height for the time.

People might flock to me to hear my relayings from the afterlife, inspired by 100% fiction (maybe 97% fiction, since I believe Napoleon, Caeser and Alexander the Great have all died at some point).

Actually, maybe just one flock, filled with those quite prepared for me to miss-guess their dead cat’s name from 1992 after multiple attempts, or to miss-diagnose your financial worries as gout.

Being honest and open about my lack of belief or particular supernatural powers, might ease their frustrations about the fact people die, including – eventually – them.

They’re just looking for a little bit of hope after all.

And I’m willing to give them that, at any price.

Discount wonder, half-price divinity and “I’ll knock a bit off since it got wet” belief.

Maybe even Bring and Bless in Bulk.

Sam

P.S – I also bend forks. You just grab them and bend them, and then you have that bent fork you really, really needed. Possibly some hope too.

Issues physically, facially, farcically

Posted: June 28, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

So.

So, so, so (as the Cat in the Hat said)…

There’s not enough space on the planet.

There’s not enough space now, because there’s not going to be enough space eventually.

Take holy war (take it, please) out of the equation, plus economic turmoil, climate migration and historic grudges ‘tween nations, and we’re still left with a problem that even bunk-beds can’t solve.

If humanity is to continue as per its namesake, then bunk-beds simply isn’t going to cut it, and nor will anything other than colonisation of the nearest, reddest planet.

Oh look, how convenient. Mars.

Bunk-beds on Mars, that’s practical.

Tolerating neighbours on this planet (and I’m talking about Earth – you’ve probably been there) just isn’t in the community spirit.

I’m talking about elbow-room, and I’m talking about elbow-room in the manner of someone more than ready to do some pretty effing serious elbowing if the neighbours start coming too close.

It’s going to get physical, before it gets celestial.

Physical at my end especially, due to my FFF (Fat Fucking Face).

That’s cause enough for someone to want depart the planet for redder shores, but not without giving said FFF a good elbowing first.

And I’d elbow them back, partly due to the insult, partly due to the frustration of the insult being based in fact (FFFF – Fat Fucking Face Fact), and partly to take their spot in the galactic life boat to Mars.

They’d respond in kind to my unkind response, and we’d proceed to elbow each other until either one of us has departed the planet or until we’ve both realised that this amount of elbows to the face is only making our faces farcically fatter (FFFFF – Farcically Fat Fucking Face Fact).

It’s just water weight. Which is great since I understand Mars needs water.

I hope that makes sense.

Sam

Character flaws: something to stand on.

Posted: June 11, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

When struggling, generally, I turn to writing.

I turn to it, because it is always behind me. Creeping up in prose.

Maybe I should do it more, since it’s inevitable, and I don’t like being crept up on.

Regardless…when I do turn to writing, amidst struggles, I like to focus on my weaknesses.

Humour makes the world go round, and sideways. My blog, and to a lesser extent – my life, is world-like.

Weaknesses, mine in particular, are a wonderful source of humour.

Like learning from my mistakes. I don’t indulge in that sort of thing.

I mentioned ‘turning’ earlier. Well, it’s more like spinning.

I 360 myself and step straight upon the rake that sent me spinning in the first place and ask myself: “can you believe this?”

Stupidity is the essence here, not the identity.

I’m not stupid, I know that much, I’m just struggling with lower level stuff, like progress.

I don’t progress, since I’m still figuring where I am. It’s hard to move forward from nowhere in particular.

You’ll know some people are goal-orientated. I’m not, but what is that ‘not’?

What’s the opposite of goal-orientation?

Procrastinating-manifestation? I do nothing, therefore I don’t?

Ultimately, I’m capable of the same errors I committed 20 years ago.

I’m terrified of my capacity to enjoy doing nothing, being swallowed up by demands upon my time; such as progress and learning.

It’s just not me. These are my essential aspects, the character flaws that make me.

Something to stand on.

Deduct these flaws and I’m still spinning, but the pirouette of my failings gives way to a roundabout with no exits, and other such awful metaphors.

I like not progressing.

I’m just more-me than ever, and I don’t require a goal to justify my existence, continuing or otherwise.

That being said, it does cause issues. Like boredom.

And so, I turn again to writing.

The other issue is that I upload my writing to a blog, this one, and then people like you have it thrust upon yourselves and have to deal with it.

Good luck.

Can’t blame me, I was just spinning.

Sam

I’d like to speak with someone in charge of the New World Order, thank you.

Posted: April 27, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I’m thinking of starting a political blog, but frankly I’m still getting over Liz Truss.

I can’t quite believe that was allowed.

At a certain point in your upbringing, you come to appreciate that there are people in charge who oversee this sort of thing and make for certain that lunatics are only permitted to a moderate level of government – not the big job.

Not the job that affects me.

I’d have honestly hoped there was a cabal of people in dark suits in dark rooms, in which the lighting does’t quite reach their faces, one chap in a fez, another stroking a white and fluffy cat, all the same ilk of casually menacing potency, ready to stop Liz Truss from happening.

I have to say this, I’ve extremely disappointed in the New World Order.

If we’re being kept calm like chattel on the way to slaughter, I’d like to complain about the quality of this slaughterhouse’s economic situation.

We may all be about to die, but does the price of fruit and vegetables really have to take the piss as it currently does?

Can’t you picture the cabals’ shrouded faces, either in the aforementioned darkness or a genuine hood they’d wear, panicking as they rapidly email the senior minion in Puppet Recruitment to urgently rectify this error?

There’d probably be a crow in the room, just for aesthetics perhaps, but even the crow’s beak is hanging open when it’s coming to understand the secret rulers in the global elite have made a big whoopsie.

Everything is more expensive, everything is worse, Truss herself seems to be on a campaign of lunacy elevation in which she constantly ups her craziness whilst being very keen to clarify: “That’s not funny.“

When you can’t trust in the powers-that-secretly-be to keep business running as usual, there’s really little point in tolerating this status as a slave to the future of the oligarchy if things are going to be so rubbish on the way to grave.

I’m actually quite fond of the economy, it’s why I get up in the morning (that and my kids).

Its now been years since Truss, with no remedy in sight, even satire hasn’t worked.

I’m thinking maybe its time to throw off the shackles forged by whomever it is that’s oppressing us lately.

And then….well…then hope that there’s an even higher level of shadowy cabal that can make the route to final slaughter in the meat grinder of global supply chains a little less expensive fruit and veg-wise.

I really do need to find out that Complaints Procedure.

Anyone got a email for Putin so I can begin the process?

Sam

← Older Entries