Ramblings and Family Visit! (Blog 437)

Today, my brother’s family will be visiting me and my dad! Will it be blog worthy? I don’t know. If I say no, I will be offending my relatives, if I say yes and I use them for material, I will be exploiting them. Well in a way, anyway. It’s not like I will be forcing them to make art for me and me selling it. I’m just saying that as the Christmas card my niece made on computer was pretty professional! I could steal it and call it ‘Simon’s Art for Children’, I would seem like a sweet and innocent entrepreneur, but of course in reality it would be much, much darker. After my blog, I want to get my short story of the month out of the way. I say ‘out of the way’, as I’ve just spotted some inconsistencies with previous short stories and later ones and sorting the errors out will be a pain. However, I think I’ve come up with a solution. Whilst me saying ‘it was all a dream’ in my upcoming tale is too much of a cliche, and whilst a character saying ‘oh no, I’ve gone mad and made something up’ is a cliche too (for me), the latter was the only solution I was satisfied with. Maybe I should do some more pondering. Also as I’m typing, I’m waiting to find out how much money I’ve made from my book as I’ve received a very vague email saying I will be paid royalties! How much money? I’m guessing around £3, but you never know, maybe double it. Any more than that, and things would just be too good to be true. The problem is I’ve advertised where to get my book for free right on my home page which is needless to say a terrible idea for making money.

Earlier on in the day and as usual, I treated myself to some chocolates, in this case European ones. Here’s the ranking of snacks from best to worst: You get ones from Belgium, Germany, etc.; then in 2nd place you get perfectly reasonable UK chocolate brands such as Galaxy; then in 3rd place you get America’s Hershey’s which is fairly hit and miss (although I do like cookies and cream); then in very last place you get an idiot scientist who is probably looking for attention who suggests we should all eat insects. No, no, no, no, no! And what if people tried to sell mosquitos? The flies often drink human blood, so if people ate them, THEY’D eat human blood. And when that finally becomes normal, where do people go from there?? I’ll tell you, we’ll end up drinking blood from those hospital bags. Then when that’s normal, we won’t even have to go to hospitals to get them, they’d be in shops. What kind of sick society is that? Oh that’s too far? But it’s fine if we drink human blood as long as it’s in flies? Oh that’s logical. And what about the taste? If you’ve ever cut your lip (or if you’re really sick and you’ve cut someone else’s lip and licked it) you will know that blood has a very metallic taste. Does that mean in the future we will all be licking on bits of metal? Mm, metal and mosquitos. I don’t know about you, but that’s hard for me to take.

Now let’s talk about the visit! After everyone enjoyed the shared chocolates (as always, I by far ate the most and as always I got my dad to pay for them), my dad showed off his new shed door! He said it cost him £1,000, the difference being you can now open the thing by pressing a button, whereas before, you had to open the thing by hand. I’m just saying, was it really worth the money? You kneel down, grab the door and lift, that’s it. Do that a hundred or so times, and you’ve actually got yourself a fairly decent workout. Many people would pay around £2 for that in my local gym. My dad more wisely had a window fitted which is a handy way of getting a dose of vitamin D. However, he’d have to stay in one spot constantly and the sun would have to be shining through the window in just the right place if he were to get the full effects of the sun. But I’m no health expert. I mean the modifications are cool in a way, but for the money, why not buy a year’s supply of pizza and a gym membership to burn the calories off if you really hate the idea of lifting doors so much? Obviously that’s what I would do, also I don’t hate lifting doors as I accept that’s a part of life. That really was all the visit consisted of, it was a quick one, or rather short and sweet. Sweet because of the chocolate! :D Having said that, my dad really was proud of his door, so the visit wasn’t that short at all. And…. bye!