I’ve had a yearning for a while. I want a tattoo.

Tattoos tell stories - of mispent (or wellspent) youth, of lovers, of travels, of beliefs. They inspire, they provoke discussion. Their art allows us to express ourselves in a way that our words may not. Designed well, they speak volumes.

So here’s the thing. I want a tattoo, I want something that makes a statement about what has happened in my life, what I believe, what I live for (my coursemate’s entire back is a humpback whale - I don’t quite want that), but I don’t know exactly what I want. I have a site - my inner arm -  but no actual idea how it should look.

I want it to be small (I don’t exactly have the biggest biceps), monotone, provocative, Christian, yet not cliched (so no generic Celtic crosses). Being much more of a scientist than an artist, I have none of the creative flair necessary to design anything myself that might actually look any good, so here’s where you guys come in.

I’d like to commission you to design me a tattoo. Being an unemployed scientist, I can’t offer financial compensation, merely the sentimental satisfaction that I will have your artwork imprinted on my arm, provoking conversations, for the rest of my life.

So if you’re interested, or know someone who might be, send me an email to the addy in the top corner.

I can make this statement secure in the knowledge that my posting was never regular enough to get your hopes up too much with the idea of ‘normal service’.

The last few months, as you may have picked up, have been a tad busy, however, now projects have been handed in, birthdays have been and gone and ‘work’ has been reduced to the quiet hum of background noise. 

As I’m apparently unemployable for now, I have the luxury of being able to do largely what I want. This isn’t the easiest thing when you’re homeless, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless. Incidentally, I have to be careful not to get myself into any media-worthy scrapes in the near future, lest they report stories including lines such as ‘man, 26, unemployed and of no fixed abode, is seen rescuing Flipper from the local aquarium’.

So, with the luxury of time, I plan on reading lots, sleeping lots, and likely coming up with a whole new raft of contraverisial opinions and conjecture. 

I do hope you enjoy. Now it’s time for a tea break.

Real writing is suspended until I’ve finished my real real writing of my research project. I’m running out of time.

So as I aim to keep a toe in your RSS feeds, here’s a picture that’s still on my desktop over a year after I was sent it. It originally came from PostSecret.

In the absence of time to write properly, be wowed by a jumping shark.

From here.

Continuing my occasional series where I prove what a miserable git I am and whine about things on airlines.

Todays target is USAirways. Whilst on our flight from Charlotte to London, the stewardess tried to tempt us into spending our last dollars on something from their duty free trolley. ‘They make wonderful gifts for a loved on’, she purred across the tannoy, interrupting the nightmare that watching 10,000BC was turning out to be, ‘because, as you know, Christmas is just around the corner.’

WHAT??

‘As I know’, it’s July 12 and Christmas is fully 165 days away. Put in more understandable terms, we still have another 45%  of the year to go! I don’t know how big the corners are where she’s from, but I imagine they spend most of their time going round in circles.

Bah humbug.

Apologies for those who have missed the blog’s blend of gentle wit and controversial opinion. I have been away for the last week or so in Miami and Fort Lauderdale for the purposes of ‘work’, attending the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS). So far, several things which are blog-worthy, but unlikely to ever see the light of day, have happened:

 

• The 4th of July lock-in, where we lost the key for the room we stayed in and spent 5 hours looking for it in the apartment and ended up trapped.

• Beautiful art deco houses in Miami Beach

 

 

 

• The slowest drive in the world to reach the southern most point in America in Key West

• Flesh-eating mosquitoes and a lack of manatees in the Everglades.

• Scary married women wanting to buy me a drink

• Almost breaking the car whilst failing to pull off a U-turn.

• Being homeless and having to sleep on the floor of a posh hotel room with only curtains for warmth.

• A personal encounter with an alligator.

The conference is still going on, and I’m learning a ton. If I get the chance, I’ll try and relay the important stuff (i.e. coral reefs can still be saved), when I get back.

Inquisitor is a handy little plugin for the Mac browser Safari that lets you type in your search and starts guessing what your searching for as you type, giving you the top 3 options from google in a drop down bar. It’s very handy, as by some magic it almost always knows what you’re looking for, saving you valuable clicking time.

Earlier this week, I was applying for a job, and wanted to check the formatting for my cover letter, so decided to search for ‘how to write a letter of application’. However, I got as far as writing ‘how to’, before it guessed what my third word would be, and this appeared:

Now I’m not entirely sure how google rankings work, but I imagine it’s something to do with the number of hits they get. So there must be a lot of people looking for kissing tips, and by the same logic, the top sites must offer some good advice! So naturally, always looking to improve my technique, I enquired. 

First off, for anyone looking to follow a similar journalistic path, don’t look at the one with pictures whilst eating, or for that matter, unless you want to see a video of a Thom Yorke lookalike teaching you step by step kissing techniques, the third one, ever. And if you don’t want anyone finding such sites in your search history, I’ve saved you the bother and recorded some of the best nuggets of advice right here:

• Be kissable. Use lip balm, especially if your lips tend to get dry and chapped. Soft lips are simply more inviting. Most importantly, nobody wants to kiss someone with a stinky mouth
  
• Test the waters 
  • Offer a mint, only after you’ve just had one. This can let the other person know what’s on your mind, unless you offer them mints all the time.
  • Glance at his or her lips. Don’t stare, and don’t do this when they’re talking about something that’s important to them.
  • Kiss her hand. How does she respond? If you’re a girl, you can kiss a guy’s hand, but it tends to have a submissive connotation, where as when a guy does it to a girl, it seems sweet.

   

• Mix it up. Kisses are like snowflakes: no two are exactly the same.
   
• Make sure your hair is out of your face.
   
• Close your eyes. It can be a bit of a turnoff to be kissing and going cross-eyed.
   
• Breathe. If you’re kissing for an extended period, it’s easy to forget to breathe
   
• Try not to bite the other persons tongue.
   
• Remember, a regular kiss is okay too, if your partner is not up for la francais.
   

Advanced kissers may find related articles on How To Get Kissable Lips (apply a sugar paste nightly), How to Give Someone a Hickey (make sure you have a good seal between the mouth and skin so that your suction is most powerful) and How to Deal With A Bad Kisser (ranging from 1. Make up a reason to get away, to 8. Break up.)

On Saturday I was making my Aussie Rules debut for the Newcastle Centurions. Unfortunately, the other team didn’t turn up, so we got an automatic 150-point win, but without the satisfaction of getting to run into other people, hard. Pleasingly, the second game of the afternoon found Middlesborough needing extra players, so a few of us jumped at the chance and went about our task with relish. Unfortunately I did it with too much relish and tackled someone I didn’t really need to tackle, and as he tried to play the ball, his elbow came back and smashed me straight in the face, breaking my nose. It was a bit unfortunate for the guy - it was his first ever game.

Seeing me collapse, the umpire checked to see if I was still conscious, called over to the bench that I’d need substituting and watched as the game carried on and I spouted blood. Which is precisely why I enjoy playing this game more than football. 

Anyway, assuming the nose would make for interesting observation, I took some pictures over the last couple of days. Fortunately, it’s not nearly as bad as could have been, and the photos aren’t so impressive. However, if I believed in Karma, I’d still think the incident was a result of my commentary here.

From the BBC

If anyone knows how you can get prints from the BBC, let me know. I’m REALLY loving this photo.

Over the weekend, much in the same way as this incident, I was accosted by a man in the street. Well, I was frantically waved over by a man in a car. It’s almost the same thing.

Sat with a huge spread of KFC over his lap, he was offering me a bag of chips.

 

“Alright pal? Do you want some chips?”

Um, not really, I’ve just had me tea.

Oh go on, I haven’t touched them I swear. I chose you especially because i liked you

You did?

Yeah, I like skater kids like you. I used to be one of them and wore tshirts that colour but then I sold out and started working for the man

-as it is, he’s sitting in a very sharp suit. Also, by this point, it has become clear that he’s quite trolleyed. Fortunately he has a girlfriend sat in the drivers seat.

Oh? Mate, how old are you?

Twenty Four

Really? Well, in a month I’ll be 26, I’m not exactly a kid anymore.

 

As his mouth fell open, trying to comprehend how some with such rugged boyish good looks could be both older than him and not in a suit, I grabbed the chips and ran.