Complements

In my continual, and increasingly desperate, search for my soul mate on Match.com – a search that can be both fun and soul destroying at the same time – along with messages I’ve received from various ladies, I’ve started to receive a different kind of response to my own messages.

Oddly enough, those messages openly offer a compliment on my well worded, amusing and interesting profile. But, rather unfortunately, that’s where the compliment ends as the ladies are usually responding with a short but sweet "thanks, but no thanks". I’ve also had a few unprompted messages from a Match.com lady or two – but alas they weren’t my cup of tea. I’m not being shallow here, but we all have to admit that there needs to be an initial spark from a profile and/or picture.

So, now armed with an apparently interesting profile, yet again, it looks like the old mug shots are letting me down. Trouble is, there’s only so much a bloke can do to his looks and perhaps I may just have to face up that I’m not as attractive as I thought (or hoped). Maybe, just maybe, I’ll just have to accept that I’m not dating material.

We're All Doomed

In case you needed further proof that the human race is doomed through stupidity, here are some actual instructions on consumer goods:

1. On Sears hairdryer: Do not use while sleeping
2. On a bag of Fritos: You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside
3. On a bar of Dial soap: Directions: Use like regular soap
4. On some Swanson frozen dinners: Serving suggestion: Defrost
5. On a hotel provided shower cap in a box: Fits one head
6. On Tesco's Tiramisu dessert : (printed on bottom of the box) Do not turn upside down
7. On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding: Product will be hot after heating
8. On packaging for a Rowenta iron: Do not iron clothes on body
9. On Boot's Children's cough medicine: Do not drive car or operate machinery
10. On Nytol sleep aid: Warning: may cause drowsiness
11. On a Korean kitchen knife: Warning keep out of children
12. On a string of Chinese-made Christmas lights: For indoor or outdoor use only
13. On a Japanese food processor: Not to be used for the other use
14. On Sainsbury's peanuts: Warning: contains nuts
15. On an American Airlines packet of nuts: Instructions: open packet, eat nuts
16. On a Swedish chainsaw: Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals
17. On a childs superman costume: Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly

Fruits of Pure Evil

After eating a grapefruit, and pulling numerous faces and enduring endless shivers down my spine whilst consuming said fruit, it has become blatantly clear to me that not all of the fruits in the garden of Eden are as joyous to eat as others.

As a result I’ve compiled my top five most hated fruit:

1. The Durian Fruit Quite how this fruit is a renounced delicacy in Asia is beyond me. With an odour on par with a rotting corpse and flesh a texture somewhere between custard and chewing gum, quite how this fruit can be classed as the "king of fruits" in the likes of Malaysia and Thailand baffles me to this day. The stench is quite overpowering – even before the fruit is opened – and it is quite common for it to be banned in taxis, trains and even hotels. Eat a piece and the back taste remains for hours, plus your breath becomes so rancid that halitosis would be welcomed with opened arms.

2. The Pomegranate Yes, the flesh is extremely sticky and juicy, and some would say healthily refreshing so, but it’s the palaver of a job getting there that makes this fruit so annoying. Accidentally eat some of the extremely bitter husk and you pull a face like a baby filling its nappy, whilst if you can’t be bothered picking out every one of the millions of pips from the sweet red flesh, you end up crapping seeds for a week.

3. The Grapefruit Why-oh-why this evil fruit become a favourite starter course in Britain remains a mystery to this date. Simply stick a glazed cherry and a sprinkling of sugar on top and it becomes an instant dining delight for nearly a decade. Still, this was in the 1970s, whilst today it’s become a "health fruit". And by that, I assume they mean that you get to exercise your face by producing various contortions whilst trying to swallow the bitter fruit. Things are made even worse when you encounter a pip, leaving you struggling to remove it from your mouth which is still contorted from the bitter after taste of the previous piece of fruit.

4. The Mango I love mango, but it’s the mess I hate the most. In order to eat the blighter you first have to remove the skin and then try to extract the stone – which takes up the best part of 90% of the fruit. Naturally, you pay by the weight so you end up throwing away the majority of what you’ve just paid for. What’s left is slurpingly delicious, but by simply diving into the sweet beast you simply end up covered head to toe in sticky mango juice. Oh, and let’s not forget those hundreds of stringy bits stuck between your teeth for days.

5. The Apple These forbidden fruit aren’t anywhere near as bad as the fruits listed above but are more of a problem with taste, or more appropriately - the total lack of it. Over the years, many varieties of apples have been inter-bred - although not for the taste. Those lovely juicy and tasty apples of old have been replaced by varieties that simply last longer and look good on the shelf of the local supermarket conglomerate. All we’re now left with is a tasteless capsule of water surrounded by a pesticide coated skin.

A Secret American Love Affair

America. Ah, the land we love to hate and a place that we have so many stereotypical views on. First off, they are all too fat, have teeth that are far too perfect to be natural, the habit of interfering in countries they shouldn’t and being totally hopeless at designing cars.

Never mind bellies that have more folds of fat than a piece of origami, teeth so bright that they would dazzle a blind person and aircraft carriers loitering around the gulf like a group of angry teenagers, it’s those awful cars that we should be really complaining to Washington and the United Nations about.

For America appears to be the only nation on earth that can, and seems to on a rather regular basis, design such awful looking cars with growling 600 horse power V8 engines that do 7 miles to the gallon, only for them be out accelerated at the traffic lights by an asthmatic on a push bike. Still, I guess an ugly car that is about as aerodynamic as a brick towing a parachute is hardly going to help matters. Someone should really give them a lesson on British and Italian car designs.

But hang on there just a moment... call off the hounds as, by golly, haven’t those cheeky American car manufacturers done some extra homework and come up with something that is so desirable that I want to own one more than any other fancy European or Japanese car.

For, behold, the Chrysler 300C, is a car that oozes so much class and head turning road presence that the executives from the likes of BMW and Bentley should really be shaking in their over expensive leather boots as Chrysler have finally come up with a car to beat them at their own game.

I don’t even care that the 300C is totally unsuitable for the heavily fuel taxed UK with its 3.5 V6 engine that does (a suprisngly good) 25 miles to the gallon and takes up more space on the road than a small lorry, because it’s the best looking American car I’ve seen – ever. Period.

Unfortunately, unless Chrysler can come up with a new lease-lend agreement with the UK government, I’ll have to keep buying my weekly lotto ticket in the vain hope of being able to buy and run one. After all, like this Internet dating lark, you have to be in it to win it...

Wake Up and Smell the... Tea

There’s a crisis brewing (or should that be percolating) in coffee land, and it’s nothing to do with those fancy packets of Fair Trade coffee that the trendy set buy. You know, those little green packets that sell at a massive mark up in supermarkets where the Ethiopian coffee grower gets given a goat, the middle man gets a new holiday home in Hawaii and the supermarket makes an extra few million in profits.

Nope, it’s far worse than that – and Starbucks and Costa Coffee will surely be quaking in their chocolate muffin filled boots.

Scientists (yeap, it’s those friendly egg-heads again) at Bristol University are suggesting that the benefits of caffeine could have been exaggerated and that the caffeine found in tea and coffee may not actually boost your early morning alertness or even stave off that bought of sleepiness. Hmmm. Me thinks that there was a jar of coffee, a stop watch and a number of giggling students on a dare going on here.

Anyway, our boffins think that, just like cigarettes, people become dependant on the caffeine which, without an overnight dose of caffeine, results in mild withdrawal symptoms. The effect of that first cup of coffee is actually your body’s cravings being satisfied and if you’ve not drunk coffee for a few days (such as over the weekend) you do actually get a bit of a buzz from it.

And it gets worse too, as people suffering from high blood pressure (so that would be most of us then) should steer well clear of the tea and coffee. But as with all health revelations these days there’s always an opposite argument because tea and coffee also contain a wealth of health-boosting compounds and antioxidants. Still, you’re allowed the decaffeinated variants – but they just don’t feel or taste the same.

So, you’d better make mine a large cappuccino then.