The spider threw itself down the plughole

I realise that this looks like a staggeringly unproductive month, even by my low standards, but, honestly, I've got three entries half written that I'm fully intending to return to and another three on a list of things I really must write about and some other stuff floating about in my pretty (not pretty) little (not little) head (definitely a head). I just haven't had... well, not time as such, and obviously there's a certain amount of inspiration because I've come up with the ideas in the first place. It's just been a stupid few weeks. Stupid stupid stupid. Not that this week should be any less stupid, but at some point the stupidity will ease and I'll have all kinds of time to write about stuff. Yes.

It's a crate full of cardboard, of course it's a fire hazard

ok so i had this dream and normally if i do remember a dream it's not usually worth mentioning but this was strange so what it was was that i was sat at a tube station with my dad and brother in law i think it was euston square but i can't say for sure and anyway we were talking about dagenham signing stuart thurgood and then there was a commotion on the opposite platform and we were trying to work out what was going on and then someone told us that germaine greer had got into an argument with everton's third choice goalkeeper and that they'd both been chucked off the train and then germaine greer was on our platform and because everton's third choice goalkeeper had been dismissed this meant that they had to bring on their fourth choice goalkeeper and we saw their fourth choice goalkeeper walking along the other platform and i said that he looked like a girl and this proves that everton are really feminists and germaine greer laughed and then i woke up and had some toast the end.

I had to find my camera cable for this

One of my absolute favourite topics of discussion is Frijj milkshakes. Not that I particularly like Frijj milkshakes - they're quite nice, but not quite nice enough for me to buy unless there's some sort of special offer on them - but I seize upon any opportunity to discuss them with a slightly unpleasant zeal. Unfortunately, the world being fundamentally unfair, there have only been two occasions where the subject has arisen in conversations I've been involved in. This is because everyone else is a bastard.

My particular conversational gambit involves the Chief Wiggum flavour milkshake, made from real pieces of Chief Wiggum (lie). It's always seemed to me a slightly odd promotional tie-in; not that Chief Wiggum is an inappropriate character to have on your chocolate brownie milkshake bottle, but it does suggest that the manufacturers' promotional budget didn't stretch as far as licensing Homer. And also, why only the one flavour with a promotional tie-in? Why didn't the sadly shortlived orange and chocolate flavour come with a suitable Milhouse motif? Why did the vanilla flavour have some business with trees instead of Lenny and Carl? It all seemed like a slightly disjointed marketing campaign that would lead in ultimate failure.

(Annoyingly for my excellent observations, it seems that there was a previous limited edition Simpsons Frijj milkshake that I was unaware of until I was trying to find an image of the bottle of the Wiggum flavour. Dratted research.)

And I had this line of conversation ready to drop at a moment's notice, until a recent trip to the supermarket whereupon I noticed that the Chief Wiggum tie-in been replaced with an all-new Homer-featuring Cookie Dough flavour. Fortunately, an even more recent trip to another supermarket which had a special offer on Frijj milkshakes saw me buy some, and here are my important findings.


Note the stuff for taking out and recycling left nonchalantly on the window ledge. Also, I really must clean the window frames.

Now, let's get the unimportant stuff out of the way. The cookie dough flavour is quite good, but really doesn't taste of cookie dough. It tastes of... well, sugar mostly; you can hear teeth rotting away with every gulp, except that ep of QI said that this doesn't happen so what's that noise I'm hearing then? Anyway, the point is, cookie dough probably isn't a good flavour for a milkshake, and hopefully this doesn't mean that they've abandoned the vanilla, but it might be worth a try if you like cookie dough ice cream and have always wondered what it might taste like in milkshake form. Thus ends the milkshake review part of the post.

The real point of interest is the post-Wiggum Chocolate Brownie bottle. Instead of the second-tier cartoon character saying "suspiciously fudgey", we have a cartoon picture of some chocolate brownies. But what's this at the bottom of the bottle?


Now, I realise that serving suggestions have been done to death by those far wittier than me, and then dug up and done to undeath by plenty of others, but I feel this needs to be pointed out. It's a picture of some cartoon brownies on a milkshake bottle. How, precisely, can this be a 'serving suggestion'? Particularly when the bottle also admits that...


... it doesn't contain real brownies, which, to be honest, is something you would imagine that most purchasers would be able to grasp without being told. But still: serving suggestion. Doesn't contain brownies. Serving suggestion. Doesn't contain brownies. This stuff could easily confuse a stupid person, you know. What do you mean, this is another post where I haven't come to any sort of conclusion? Tcha.

The chips you buy in Mile End are the chips of despair

All right. I think it's safe. I think I can say something about it now. I realise that in such matters the notion of tempting fate or somesuch rubbish is as ridiculous as wearing lucky underpants to your team's important fixture, but my health has been such a mess over the last few months that superstition has taken over from rational thought in a manner that would make Richard Dawkins' beard twirl in annoyance, if only he had one. (Go on R Dawkins, grow one: it'd really excite all the cretins who write articles saying "atheism is the new religion!!!" or similar nonsense.)

So, what happened was this. I woke up one morning and, the thing was, not to put too fine a point on it, avoiding all notions of beating around the bush, the thing was, what was happening was that, er, my balls were hurting. Well, the right one was hurting. The left one was fine at first, but as the day progressed that one began to hurt as well, which did at least stop me thinking that I might have somehow slept catastrophically awkwardly on them.

Walking was a problem. You can probably imagine.

When they still ached the next morning, it became clear that a visit to the doctor was in order. This passed remarkably well, despite the whole bollock-handling nature of the visit; odd how the sort of embarrassment that you're supposed to feel about such matters isn't an issue when your balls are hurting.

The doctor diagnosed epididymitis, and wrote it down on a post-it type note presumably guessing that I would look it up on Wikipedia the moment I got home. Interestingly, the Wiki description suggests that the most common causes are chlamydia, gonorrhea and e-coli; I am fairly sure, what with one thing and another, that mine wasn't down to either of the first two, although I did learn a few things about the latter to think that it might be the cause. But it also mentions viruses, and goodness knows they've caused me enough bother over the last few months so I may as well blame it on that as well.

(This led to me to wonder: why do adverts warning The Kids to, y'know, take care, never raise the whole 'balls hurting' thing. Not that I'm passing off myself as an expert in these matters on the back of one nasty infection, what with having carefully avoided STDs by successfully managing to fail to cop off with nearly everyone and thus not being sure of the symptoms, but I'm sure all of the coy stuff about 'respect' isn't as effective as someone saying "hey, boys, catch this and your balls are going to really hurt. I mean, really hurt. As in, walking's going to be difficult" would be. Or maybe they tried it and it didn't work but I never noticed because my chances of being in a position to catch anything were too remote.)

For the next two weeks I could only sit with my legs splayed open, in the manner of obnoxious men on tube trains who are presumably attempting to give the impression of being extremely well hung but actually give the impression of being an unbelievably inconsiderate bell-end (appropriately enough), because the alternative was too painful to bear. And I followed the doctor's advice about not fiddling. (He'd said this in relation to my pointing out that I'd been checking for any swelling, but I took it to mean that fiddling of any kind was out.)

I completed the course of antibiotics. Initially this, combined with the lack of fiddling, seemed to have done the trick, but after a couple of days a certain amount of ache had returned. Another trip to the doctor had me reassured that some swelling was perfectly normal and would soon ease. And after a couple of weeks it seems, fingers crossed, wood touched, in the sense of my sturdy desk rather than anything else that you might be thinking of, no fiddling remember, to have done so.

At this point there should be some sort of pithy conclusion, but I haven't really come up with one. Apart from 'try not to get any viruses', but then that's rather difficult. And that writing about your scrotum is surprisingly easy, and maybe I should have tried to score some cheap notoriety by doing it sooner.