Black Wednesday and Orange Thursday

Warming Ups

8072/21003

Bethany Black, the person responsible for me finding out that I had aphantasia, and thus my mortal enemy, came over today to fix my computer. It was a six hour round trip for her, to fix a computer that she had assembled and which I (presumably) had smashed, so maybe I should downgrade her to just a regular enemy. Maybe even friend.

I had been so careful moving this computer from the old house to the new house - having carefully packed everything in original boxes, even putting things back in the polystyrene that is my actual mortal enemy (and there's nothing it can do to get downgraded). And that was polystyrene at its worse: tightly around heavy equipment, being squeezed into a cardboard box, shrieking its evil shriek that no sane human can abide, turning me into an angry punching machine... I really hate that sound. Once the esteemed broadcaster Tracey Macleod hid behind a car so she could leap out and run polystyrene against polystyrene to surprise me. Apparently this act of aggression was a "joke" and that would probably have stood up in a court of law had I punched her. Luckily she was laughing so much at her jape that she failed to make a sound and thus escaped certain death. I am not in control of my response when that noise is made.

Anyway, I had packed the computer, stored it in a cupboard and then transported it to the new house very safely. When I tried to assemble it all, it did not work and when Chris Evans, not that one, turned up to set up the snooker cameras he couldn't get it to work either and when he brushed against the glass panel on the outside of the computer box (I believe that's a technical term for the thing which has all the motherboards and CPUs and flashing lights int it), the panel shattered into a thousand pieces. Clearly at some point the computer had been banged, but I could not for the life of me think or remember when. I started to question myself. I'd even made a point of telling Chris how careful I'd been with it before all this happened, just like someone who had actually smashed at the thing with a hammer would have done.

I started to question whether I had actually dropped the thing at some point and then somehow wiped the trauma from my mind. I was really the only person who had touched this thing so it seemed more than likely that it was me. Unless it was a final goodbye from the ghosts that haunted our old house.

Bethany, having driven from the environs of Manchester, suspected that she'd find out that I just hadn't turned the computer on or that a loose screw might have fallen somewhere where it shouldn't be. She found some coffee inside the box which might have had something to do with it, but again I was struggling to work out how that was possible as I kept the thing on the desk and kept drinks away from it, but I vaguely remember spilling a coffee in the new location and the computer was underneath the desk, so that one was explainable (but also hadn't caused the malfunction). It turned out not to have got in anywhere too important.

After a bit of impressing deconstruction and moving things around Bethany discovered that the issue was that the CPU had become detached. I don't really know what a CPU is, but I know it's important because in the Terminator Pinball Machine, Arnold tells you to "Get the CPU" and you get lots of points if you do.

Bethany was surprised by this development because (and I won't get this entirely right) but the CPU has 1800 little sproggets that all fit into 1800 little holes and are then clamped in place, so it would take some extreme force to knock them out and if you did you would expect them all to break and also for most of the computer to be smashed. Yet aside from the smashed glass, everything else was fine and unbelievably the CPU itself didn't seem to be damaged. She was hopeful that she could reconnect it all and the computer would work. And she was right, it did.

Which really makes the case for the damage having been done by a supernatural force beyond our understanding - maybe the Birthday Donkey did it in the hope it would stop Twitch of Fun.

Is one of these men the true computer breaker? (No, it’s me)

I know that this is all somehow my fault and thus it's more worrying that I have no memory of doing anything extreme enough to have caused this damage. It's possible Chris Evans (not that one) or one of his cohorts kicked the thing when they were setting up the system, but it's not likely. He's many things, but he is not a (convincing) liar, but also the computer hadn't worked before they turned up. I am the only human who has touched it. Which puts me in the top 5 suspects for this crime. And the other suspects are ghosts and puppets, neither of which have ever been successfully convicted by the UK legal system.

The good news though is that the super-efficient and brilliant system that Bethany made for us is now up and running and I seem to have connected everything to it properly, if messily and so live streams can now continue in a more reliable fashion.

RHLSTP with Ruth Husko (from back when I had stained teeth) is now up here

Here's a clip

We're also started putting up full RHLSTP videos that haven't yet been on Youtube, starting with Stevie Martin and Tessa Coates from August 2021. Watch here

You can watch all the videos right NOW by becoming a monthly badger from just £3 a month (and you get lots of other bonus stuff too). All that money goes to making even more podcasts!

If you like all this free stuff then why not come and see me live. There are 5 RHLSTPs coming up in London and Leicester.

And more testicle based stand up from the end of January. Come and say hello after the gig! If you’re not sure whether you’d like me telling jokes rather than doing this serious blog every day, then check out my last tour show FOR FREE

8073/21004

Thanks to @samoff on Twitter who has drawn my attention to this - Orange Burst Soleros. Is this real? Is this some kind of awful joke? Is this a product from the 1970s that someone has rediscovered? Or has someone asked AI to come up with the most unlikely product there could ever be? An Orange Solero? Now I've seen everything.

For non-Solero aficionados (I despise you, but will indulge you) you might think there is already an Orange Solero. You fucking idiot. The flavour you're thinking of is Exotic Solero, which is made of (I presume) the freshest possible peach, passion fruit, mango and pineapple.

I consider myself an expert of Soleros (not how they are made or who invented them, but on eating them) and long-term readers will know, except in the direst of circumstances I eat one (AND ONLY ONE) Exotic Solero a day. It's the perfect dessert: delicious, satisfying and only 98 calories and most importantly ONE IS ENOUGH. If I eat a piece of chocolate I have to eat all the chocolate in the house, but a Solero leaves me sated in every respect. It is the most delicious food on earth,

"Oh," someone who doesn't know me might now say, "Do you ever mix it up and have a Red Berries Solero?"

To which I say "Fuck you and anyone unlucky enough to know you, you moron. NO I DO NOT!"

Red Berries Soleros are the most disgusting food product on earth. They are like pig swill that has been run through a sewer. That the same company can make the world's most delicious and most disgusting food stuff makes no sense, until you realise that they must have released Red Berries Soleros, not to make money (who would buy more than one?), but to make a philosophical and artistic comment about the opposing forces of good and evil in this world. Think about it - a Red Berries Solero could not have been created and marketed by accident. Someone at Walls must have tasted them. They know they are bad. They put it out so we would consider the dual nature of morality and also so that we'd really, really appreciate the proper Solero when we have them.

I love Soleros. I have done more to promote them than the company that makes them and also buy at leat 365 a year (my kids also eat them, much as I don't want them to) which must swell their coffers. You'd think they'd give me money for doing such a good job of letting people know about them, but for some reason they just ignore me. Maybe it's because of me repeatedly saying I'd rather rim Anne Widdecombe than eat a Red Berries Solero. I give the proper Soleros such great reviews, but like any artist Ian Walls is sensitive to criticism and doesn't like it when I say he has created something that I keep a supply of dog shit on hand, just in case I accidentally eat a Red Berries Solero, so that I have something to get the dire taste out of my mouth.

I am though, astonished that I had to hear about Orange Burst Soleros from a total stranger on Twitter. Did Walls not want to run them past me first? Just to check I thought it was a good idea. Or at least just let me know so I'd be prepared for this seismic shock. After all the money I have given them (around £304 a year). After all the reviews. After all the nerds I have persuaded to eat Soleros, not because Soleros were paying me, but because I thought they deserved the plaudits and I would feel strange taking money from them for telling the truth which I am happy to give freely.

They could also try and explain what they are attempting to do here artistically. They already have the best and worst food stuff covered, what do they hope to gain by introducing a third flavour? Do they think they can make something better than Exotic Fruit? Good luck with that - you might as well ring up God and tell him you've created an even better Heaven. Do they think they can make something taste more like excreta than Red Berries? Satan, there's someone on the phone who thinks they've come up with a way to make Hell a bit hotter and pitchforks a bit more pointy.

Or are they trying to make the most average foodstuff possible. Something that sits right in the middle, something that no one will actively like, but no on will actively hate. It's a middle ground already occupied by Twix (as I explained at length in one of my stand up shows - NO I DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE. WATCH THEM ALL). So even that would take a bold artist to attempt to defeat. I want to make something that will satisfy no one, but also disappoint no one. Like the comedy of Richard Herring. If it didn't disappoint loads of people.

I don't know what is going on. If I was going to bring in a new Solero (which I never would) I think I would have done one that wasn't also Orange coloured. Whilst it's good to make sure that Red Berries can never be bought by mistake, so to give it an unnatural purple colour that no one would eat and which also mocks the idea of them being called Red Berries, if you're making a third Solero then maybe go for green or even yellow. Blue would even be OK. Or a rainbow coloured Solero. Why bring a second orange coloured Solero on to the market?

Wait, what the heck is this?

Do you know how often supermarkets substitute in Red Berries Soleros in their deliveries when they have no Exotic ones? This is just going to confuse them more.

I now have to go out and find some Orange Soleros, because despite all the free publicity the cunts at Walls aren't giving me anything. What have those pricks got against me? And it's a no win situation for me. Like them or hate them or neither like or hate them, it unbalances the Solero Universe and everything that I have come to believe as true.

I'd say we should boycott Soleros until this Orange Solero is withdrawn and also all the Red Berries one thrown into a pit and pooed on, but Walls know I won't hold out for half a day. If I could stop eating Soleros I'd cut out 3000 calories a month. You see that belly? It's a Solero belly.

Have you lost your mind, Ian Walls?

Anyone else on Substack writing about Soleros? No there fucking isn't. It's all sex crime and fascism and how to do well on Substack. You know what the answer to all those problems is? Soleros, that's what. Give everyone Soleros. Not the Red Berries ones. Red Berries Soleros is the thing that probably causes all those problems.

And if we'd got people worked up over Soleros rather than Brexit or Woke v anti-woke, then I think we'd all be a lot more united. It's probably what Ian Walls was doing. Unity isn't about building walls, it's about all eating Walls. And having to choose between two things where everyone will agree that one is by far the best.

You may call me a dreamer. And I may be the only one in this precise case.