Gus Mears

I'm not going to bother with Top Gear again. Chris Evans is a saccharin, over-peppy, gimp and needs to stop trying to pop the audience every three seconds like he's playing Widow Twanky down the local panto. Twat.

Question for the guys who've been to uni. I'm just finishing first year of a BA and my first two assignments have scored a B2 and a B3. Now, it might just be the way they write it but the feedback seems really harsh to me and I was disappointed with the grades. But speaking to others on the course it looks like I'm amongst the better grades. Also Googled a bit and apparently Glasgow has a very tough grading system so I feel a bit better after that but just wondered if anyone else was plagued with self doubt when getting graded/feedback?

 

 

I would go and ask for further feedback and clarification if you don't feel the grades and comments you got were appropriate. Not sure what subject you are doing, but if it's humanities/social science/arts it's highly subjective and a good piece of work for one person can easily be deemed shit by another.

 

It took me two years to pluck up enough courage to go to lecturers and ask for additional comments and feedback and my grade improved significantly when I did. If nothing else, you should get some extra information on what they specifically are looking for and a fair amount of the battle is catering to what individual lecturers like (if you're doing an essay based subject anyhow).

 

Ultimately, you're the one paying for the course and you have every right to challenge things if you don't think they are right. One other thing is to do the unit feedback things at the end of each semester (if you have them). I have a few friends who are academics and they all genuinely pay close attention to what they get back.

Well done Shy Dad and good luck on getting the 2:1. As a fellow Bath grad (the other Uni) looking at doing a masters in 2017 your offer fills me with hope.

The association with BJS doesn't help matters for sure. Bloke is a total fanny.

 

Saunder's complete inability to sell a rematch with Eubank was hilarious the other month though: "Chris Eubank is a shit fighter, doesn't know what he's doing" and the like. Why were you taken to a close decision with him last year if he's so shit then you complete helmet?!

Despite feeling very sorry for him, it doesn't stop the fact that I think Blackwell is a bit of a tosser. It doesn't surprise me he's had this Damascan transformation into thinking that the Eubank's were out of order.

 

A couple of friends of mine work the doors in Trowbridge (the town Blackwell is from) and have said he was regularly a scrappy jeb-end on a Friday/Saturday night.

Thank you for this, going to give it a go this evening. Feels like I'm joining the Freemasons a bit though.

Alan Sugar looks more like a bollock than any other person I have seen. Face like an octogenarians package.

 

I attempted to read one of his books that someone had bought me as a Secret Santa while on the train. Rancid. It was in the bin by Temple Meads.

Cheers to both of you. I'll give it a bash this evening and see how I get on.

 

Edit: managed to work it fine, so thank you. Plus found a site that does academic articles, which is wonderful.

Some friends introduced me to the delicious world of Bunny-Chow.

 

A large tiger bread baton with the top lopped off. Punch the piss out of it so I gets hollowed out. Then fill it with delicious curry until it's leaking out the top. John Torode would call it a "wonderful thing".

Canelo vs Khan went about how everyone expected. I thought Khan looked good the first few rounds but you could just sense it was a matter of time until Alvarez uncorked something nasty and Khan was never going to weather it. As soon as that left hook landed in the sixth and Khan backed up I thought the writing was on the wall, and sure enough an absolute sledgehammer of an overhand right wasn't far behind. There was no getting up from that shit.

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Was pretty much coming in to post what you did Wand. Caught the fight this morning and it was depressingly predictable. Khan is such great entertainment, but half of that I because you're constantly expecting his chin to go.

I finally got a Kindle after about 4 years of umming and arring. Is there any tips for getting decent prices on books, as I think I'm being a bit thick operating it. I pretty much exclusively read history/politics/philosophy if that's any help.

Saturday Kitchen is now ruined thanks to arch bellend Jamie Oliver making an appearance. The Bono of cooking.

 

It took him all of 3 minutes to refer to himself in the third person like a doughy and painfully white version of The Rock.

Is there any benefit to be gained from boiling chicken rather than grilling it?

 

It's healthy, but you lose a lot of flavour and it easily can end up as dry as a Communion wafer. Personally I would just use a minimal amount of rape seed/olive oil and do it in a pan. Plus this had the added advantage of herbs and spices staying on.

 

If you want to boil it and retain flavour, you'll need to cook for a relatively long time and with a decent amount of stock/wine/flavouring. By which point, it's not as healthy.

I saw that yesterday — it's so fucking miserable looking. I actually carried a few things around from one pantry to another when I was at uni — there was a can of peas and sausages, a can of pease pudding, and there was an entire canned partridge. I wish I'd eaten it.

Not #EATCLEAN due to its Frenchness (and thus quality), but I was often given obscure tins of cassolet by my Dad while at Uni. Duck legs, sausage and beans in a truly gargantuan can. Consistency of Polyfilla and made your arse erupt like Krakatoa.

Strange complaint,

 

I've developed a weak chin over the last few months. Need to adjust my posture at my desk.

 

Is there anything at the gym that could help ?

 

 

Also, I've a neck like a stack of dimes.

 

 

I swim a bit so my shoulders are developed but not my neck.

 

Anything I can do to improve it ??

I've found that regular weight training makes your neck muscles stronger/larger without having to resort to anything specific. I do a fair amount of work on my traps, so that might be something to look at?

Sauerkraut contains dangerous levels of vegetables.

 

I will eat most things, but can't abide by sauerkraut, coleslaw, kim chi etc. They just taste like cabbage doused in a variety of gopping sauces to me.

My doctor prescribed me kebab meat once, true story.

 

Wait? How does that work? I'm no Mark Sloan, but I can't think of many medical conditions that are remedied by copious amounts of poor quality sheep arse.

I'm thoroughly enjoying Tyson Fury's impending retirement. More sportspeople should retire because they want to eat pies as far as I'm concerned.

I've been offered a temp office job for four months which sounds quite cool. Does anyone have any experience of temp office jobs? Like does it generally lead onto potential long term jobs if any positions open up? Or is it a risk doing this for four months and then being back on the job market looking for more jobs?

 

I did a few temp office roles after I graduated and know quite a few people who did get full time positions out of it. Just don't hang your hat completely on it though.

 

Best bet is to take it and just play the field in terms of applications anyway. My manager's in my last few temp roles have been pretty accommodating if I needed to go to an interview.

 

Good luck with it!

I can't imagine how exhausting it would be to be in your group of mates, Gus. I'm glad you're having fun with it and I'm sure you've all got similar sense of humour and it's all just a laugh but it would do my fucking head in.

 

 

We usually manage to keep it just on the right side of kicking the shit into each other, but have had a couple of occasions where I've been (deservedly) lamped. Though nothing quite as bad as Malbranque's knacker kicking experience.

 

First time was when I organised a Jehova's Witness meeting at one of my friends houses without him knowing. He'd got back after a 12 hour work day, heard the door ring and was then inundated by jumpin' Jehova's saying how marvellous it was that he'd found the true word of Christ. I'd completely forgotten I'd organised this and got sent a text saying "fucking witnesses at my door" and a completely fair twat in the nose next time I saw the victim.

 

Second was at halls of residence. A few of us had taken to putting a traffic cone outside a mates dorm room every night for about a two months. I'd occasionally do this while singing "traffics coming cone" to the tune of "footballs coming home" because I'm a berk.

 

It got to the stage where his room was full of cones because he couldn't take them down in the day without building management seeing. The hall outside of his room had removable ceiling panels, so a (taller) friend removed one and we managed to wedge a traffic cone in the space which went down directly in front of his door completely blocking the route out. He had to get building management out to remove it and they then found a fuck off pile of traffic cones in his room that he got bollocked for.

 

The finale came on the night that Chelsea beat Bayern in the Champion's League Final, which also effectively knocked Spurs out of the following years Champion's League. Bloke with the cones in his room was a huge Spurs fan. I was out revelling in out glorious victory and thought it would be a great idea to drop a cone off round my mates house which I'd very cleverly written 'Spurs R shite' on or something.

 

As I'm dragging this cone upstairs the intended victim opens his door, takes one look at me bent over in my Chelsea shirt like a deranged, wanking goblin while dragging a cone up the stairs, and completely snapped. Lamped me straight in the jaw causing me to wilt like a eunuch's cock. I never put a cone outside of his room again.

Chilli, any chance you can send me a link to the civil rights documentary you were on about earlier in the page? I'm probably being a massive wally, but I couldn't find it.

 

Would really recommend reading Taylor Branch's 3 part history of the civil rights movement if you get the chance. Fascinating period of time and it still boggles my mind how recently it was.

Spite is more than fine if it results in things like the IRA phone call. That's superb.

While attempting to not work very hard at my job, I spend much of my time thinking of how to irritate friends.

 

A long time target of mine regularly receives shit I buy off Ebay/Amazon and then have delivered to his house. Some of my personal highlights include 40kg of bird seed, an industrial sized number of spring onions and nine copies of 'Opening Up' by Geoffrey Boycott. I can't think of anything better than recieiving a nigh on dozen of this fine tome:

 

 

 

My favourites however were the following business cards that we got 1000 printed of, before distributing liberally across the country.

 

 

 

 

These were a great success and actually made it to three different continents. They also spawned several revenge and copy cat business cards being made.

 

This led to the pièce de résistance which I sent to the same friends house and which still adorns the wall on the khazi. It's absolutely fucking enormous.

 

 

 

 

 

My current target is one of my closest friends who also happens to work at the same Council authority that I do, albeit in a different location. We spend most of the day discussing cricket and seafood recipes on the Council IM service.

 

Last Friday he sent me a message saying that he had been incorrectly called on his work number by someone asking for a “Mrs Mundy” and this set the gears off in my head. So, I spent most of the morning Googling 'Pay day loan callback number', 'estate agent callback number' and 'Sell my jewellery callback number' and lodging various email requests saying: “I NEED A PAYDAY LOAN!! MY NAME IS MRS MUNDY! CALL ME BACK!” and then putting his work number as the designated one to call back on.

 

Sure enough, half an hour after this had started I got a further IM message from my mate expressing his surprise that he had received a further 5 calls from various people asking for Mrs Mundy. This continued throughout the day with hourly updates as to how many phonecalls he had received, his consternation that he couldn't switch his phone off in-case he missed an important teleconference and his general confusion as to why West London estate agents were calling up number that has a South West area code.

 

The day was capped off with my mate giving up on work, logging off 2 hours early and me receiving a final message saying “Whoever this Mrs Mundy is, she's a cunt. I hope she doesn't manage to sell her house and that it falls down with her inside it”.

 

I'm planning on continuing with 1-2 callbacks a day, eventually leading to a final frantic orgy of pointless phonecalls some time in May. Another friend of mine has agreed to voice the role of Mrs Mundy and phone up my mate's work phone at the end asking why he's stolen her number.

 

Does anyone else have form in this regard and any entertaining stories? I have a few more, but can't be arsed to type them up at present.

Chilli, what is that documentary on? I need a good documentary to get my teeth into and I don't know as much as I should about the Cold War.

 

 

Might want to try this Punkstep. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22KIQ1QNnhE&list=PL3H6z037pboGWTxs3xGP7HRGrQ5dOQdGc

 

25 parter on the Cold War which I remember being very good. Not sure if it's the same one that Chilli is watching but it's worth a bash if you're looking for a decent overview of a wonderfully interesting period.

A 24 part documentary about The Cold War is my current viewing. It's great stuff, but I'm a boring history freak.

Is that the one narrated by Kenneth Branagh? It's about as close to the outstanding World at War as you're likely to get.