Porn Free

There's not much happening chez me at the moment, so I've forgone the usual format today and have decided to list some punning porn star names. I know it's trivial. I'm not a comprehensive twat, you know.

Okay, here goes...

Dr Evadne Minge

Fuckinem Alice (I may have overstepped the mark here)

John Vein

King Conkers

Shafter Askey (one for the kids, there)

Fellatio Hornblower

Suck Norris

Dolly Partem

Screw Edwards

Princess Michael of C*nt

Wank Hilliams

Jizz Taylor

Toss Hogg

Wristo Stoychkov

Forrest Hump

The Vapours

I suffered a migraine yesterday. All right, I over-egging the situation somewhat. I was on the foot-slopes of migraine. The initial symptoms didn't make it to maturity. I dodged a bullet there, I you tell.

For those who've never been afflicted, it's a nightmare - absolutely debilitating. For me, it begins with an inability to see properly. I can see. My brain just can't make sense of the picture. Firstly, I'm unable to read, and quickly thereafter I lose depth and finally I develop a kind of tunnel vision. The next stage is paisley visual hallucinations. By now, I need to get home because stage three is photo-phobia - a hugely popular and now slightly passé migraine symptom. The final iteration involves a stupefying headache, right down the centre of the noggin. This is sometimes accompanied by nausea.

I used to get migraines regularly in my late teens, and then, as suddenly as they'd entered my life, they withdrew. I haven't had a sniff of a problem for nigh-on twenty years. The keen amateur mathematicians among you will be a able age me from the above facts. Yesterday really put the wind up me, I'm unafraid to admit. What surprised about the whole episode was how phlegmatic I was as a youngster about the whole thing.

I remember getting my first one. I quickly and accurately assessed my own symptoms as they unfolded. And then I just sat it out. Had yesterday's been my first migraine, I'd have been convinced I was dying. Absolutely convinced.

It's not unlike a trip, the migraine. I mean a trip in the "wow, man" sense - not four hours in Whitstable. Luckily, no-one's felt moved to record a psychedelic album rendering the experience. If they had, it would sound like someone feeding a chalk goat through a slate mincer.

Cobb(L)ers

We're in the midst of an Ashes series here in England (let's not pretend the Celtic fringe are in the least bit interested in cricket because thems am not). For any foreigners reading this, the Ashes is a series of cricket matches played between England & Australia. Doesn't sound like much, does it? It's HUGE. It means so much to the respective countries that it's hard to quantify its impact on the collective psyche.

England have today beaten Australia in the second test (match), which enabled anyone with access to an Aussie male to let him have it le big style.

English and Australian men have a sibling mentality toward one another, particularly when it comes to sport. The Australians in particular won't thank me for pointing this out, but they and the English are essentially the same race, which is why they squabble so much. I am able to distance myself somewhat from "Englishness" by dint of my Irish lineage, but even I find it difficult not to gloat when England have the upper hand.

Australia are breath-takingly better than England at most sports you care to mention. The reason for this is that they take sport seriously, in a way that the English cannot bring themselves to do. To take sport that seriously is taken to be very gauche. So when the English lord it over the Aussies on the back to a rare victory, it's taken to be a bit of good natured ribbing. To the Aussies, however, it's no laughing matter.

It's this dichotomy that causes such problems between the two nations. The English can't believe the Aussies really take sport as seriously as they appear to. And the Aussies can't believe the English don't. It reminds one slightly of when an American starts up about God, thanking Him for a successful business meeting or a bountiful lunch table. It's toe-curlingly embarrassing for the English, this - really excruciating. The same is true, to a lesser extent, with Aussie sport fetishisation. Come on, mate, let it go. It's just a game.

I'll Just Feel That Again...

There's a wonderful, thoughtful piece on the BBC web site today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8144793.stm) regarding porn for blind people.

Possibly the worst thing the able-bodied do to the disabled is to reduce them all to the category of the "brave". This is also useful because removes the requirement for them to have sex lives. If the disabled are battling so hard just to keep going from day to wretched day, then the last thing on their collective mind is knocking one out or getting their legs over.

Disabled people aren't all brave. There, I've said it. Some are. Others are cowards. Some are fat, some thin. Some are shits and some are entertaining. We all know this, but no-one wants to admit it for some reason. I suppose it allows us able-bodied types to rationalise the whole situation. Why him, and not me? Well, he's brave. I couldn't possibly cope. It must have been fate. Thanks, God.

If they're not all brave, moral paragons then, it follows that they're probably subject to the same disgusting desires that drive the rest of us. It's sex, food and booze in that order, isn't it.

I'm very much taken with the idea of blind porn. It's bound to be better thought out than most of the pneumatic anodyne rutting that litters the Internet currently. Unless of course it's just blind women with impossibly sexy voices pretending to have sex with plumbers.

In case you haven't already guessed, I'm fairly able-bodied. I am, however, colour-blind. I'm working on a film script in which Audrey Tatou fails the ishihara test and then has athletic sex with the strapping male test adjudicator. Who wouldn't like to see that?

Snort. Who said that??

In spite of my previous, apparent, insouciance regarding swine flu, I've been given cause to revise my opinion of its threat potential and start quivering like a nervous jelly. (I was about to type "the proverbial nervous jelly". I don't know any such proverb, but it's about time there was one, let's face it.) The reason I'm backtracking shamelessly is that someone I sit close to at work is clearly infected. He's spent all day hacking and spluttering like Billy O(cean). I have no hard evidence to suppose he's contracted H1N1, but the hysterical, circumstantial case is starting to look compelling. His wife works in a hospital (the pork ward), and he has kids, those renowned harbingers of viruses.

I'm already feeling under the weather. What's the incubation period for pig sniffles? If my fears are correct, it can't be much more than two hundred minutes. I felt okay before lunch. We're doomed. Still the weather's nice. I think I'll have a pint tonight. Might as well go out in a blaze of self-harm. I appreciate it's not exactly Iggy Pop.

Eye Tea

I'm on the cust of developing a tumour in my anguish and frustration at the IT in my new job. The main thrust of my role (if I might dignify my labours with that term) is to analyse sales data for a national newspaper. To do this, it's traditional to mine huge gobs of data (stop me if I'm getting too technical for you), and spin it into an array of bewildering, scarcely plausible graphs. Unfortunately, the reporting system I've been tasked with operating cannot spit out more that two lines of sales data at any one time. I am literally spending my days sitting in front of a computer twiddling my thumbs. Is it any wonder I go home and drink? What would you do, dear reader?

If it gets any facking slower, I'm going to be forced to bring four cans of Guinness to work each day and drink them at my desk. I *refuse* to spend what's left of my wretched tenure on this planet being defied by a laptop. I simply won't have it.

Next to Godliness

I'll be honest with you - I cycle to work. That usually requires that I have a shower when I get to the office. I'm lucky in my current job; the facilities for the sweaty cyclists are vee good. We have a bank of power showers at our disposal. I was scrubbing the mire off the other morning when I spotted a plug had been placed in each cubicle. What's the thinking behind that?

The base of the shower cubicle is a little, recessed trough about four inches deep. It is possible then to fill this space with warm, soapy water if so desired. The plug was in the plughole when I arrived this morning. I shudder to think what the previous occupant had been up to, but whatever it was, he's more flexible than yours truely. I suppose one could squat down like a sumo wrestler and park the spuds in the water, but it's gilding the lily really.