Why you will never be cooler than a Knight.

First order of business today dear reader is to release a hearty ‘woop’ to celebrate Matthew Tyler’s birthday. Yes this day forty years in the future the cyber entity Skynet in a desperate bid created a terminator like no other. This terminator after terminating Skynet and the rest of the human population travelled back in time on a quest to learn what it truly is to be human. It drank lots, partied more and developed quite the funny bone. Forgetting all about its quarrel with mankind it decided that it rather enjoyed our company, if only for the moment.

So today we celebrate the metaphorical (and in some cases physical) bullet we all dodged when the terminator decided not to kill us, thank you Matt Tyler for your mercy. I wish I could say he allowed us to survive from the hopes that mankind will one day be a pure and happy race, but that would be a lie. He’s just allowing us to breathe a little longer so we can create Avengers 2, and the other phenomenal movies coming out in a cinema near you.

So onto the meat of the matter, your lack of armor and sword! That’s right; there is a reason why we all love A Knight’s Tale! King Arthur! Merlin! And any other medieval movie or even game, that reason simply put? We all just want a sword.

In whose mind was it ever a practical or good idea to stop wearing these steel extensions of the human ego on daily jaunts out to get goods and services.

You’re walking in a clothes store, you catch a glimpse of yourself in a reflection, you seem hunched to one side and slightly down-trodden by society.

Now picture this, you catch a glimpse of yourself, your cape is billowing, your sword sits sheathed at your side evening your posture and your shoulders are squared with defiance. Nothing can change your mood, nothing can change your mind, you really are amazing.

That could be you! If you had a sword!

No more would people be able to bite their thumb at thee!

No more would they be able to quarrel!

Thumb biting and quarreling can be quite difficult with a short-sword wedged between your shoulders.

You could say what you want and do what you want and if anybody disagreed, then meet them on one of the fairest and most just battlegrounds we ever created, the dual.

Not only do you get to wear the sword, you can use it too! It’s a special two for one offer!

Surely this sounds like a fantastic idea right? No? Really? You don’t like this idea? It’s too rash and dangerous?

Yes, I suppose your right, arming the criminals of the world would surely just cause more havoc.

What’s that? The criminals are already armed? Well surely we shouldn’t arm the innocents as well, they might hurt someone.

All I ask of you dear reader is to think about it, think long and hard as you will slowly realise that yes, I am right, your life would be better with a sword.

Tis The Season To Get Blogging, Tralalalala La La La La.

Oh hello, I didn't see you there amongst my “Things To Do, But Never Get Around To Actually Doing” List.

This dear old blog, what is it actually here for? Well I'll tell you, it’s for the average person to read on a rainy day, or when there’s no fuel in the car to go down to the shops to buy those emergency tissues from when that rude peasant sneezed on you at work, granting you an unpleasant ticket to cold town…
It’s days like that, that this somewhat temperamental “Pondering Oblong” will hopefully come in handy. I admit, we are doing quite an appalling job at keeping it fresh and up to-date, you can blame me for that. (I’ll let you decide who the ‘me’ is).

To be honest, I can’t think of a god damn thing to write about. I mean I've had my moments of inspiration while I go about my lazy life, but nothing that I can say “Wow! That’s worth writing about!”, as the moments mainly consist of me eating a banana, or elegantly stubbing my toe on the end of my bed and creating a new form of swear words, such as “Shi-utka!” or “Fuu-shadada”.

Anyway moving on to some sort of meaning to this post… >___>

I wrote this next little story a while ago, but I thought it was a bit bland and pointless, but you never know, you might get a small sense of relation to it...

AHEM!
We've all experienced that horrid moment when you've just got yourself nice and comfortable in your bed; you’ve had such a busy day and you're really just looking forward to a grand old sleep, when suddenly a high pitched buzzing breaks the peaceful air of your room. At first you're too tired to worry about such a thing and roll over to try the other side (as they say, the grass is always greener!) 

Silence, thank god.

Bzzz.....zzzz...................Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.............Bzzzz....... 

It's like you're in the stalls of a bloody racetrack!

Let's try the ol' swipe everywhere around you in the dark trick (there's no need for lights when you're a ninja right?). Maybe you'll hit it with your thumb and knock it out onto the floor for you to tread on in the morning. After about 5 or so longish minutes of banging the walls with your palms and a load of violent night swiping, you think that's probably enough stupidity, so you lay your head down on that gloriously soft pillow and close your eyes. 

Bzzzzzzzz……zzzzzzzzzz.

Right, that’s it! Time for some light on the matter!  


….. 

(..I couldn’t resist)

After your eyes have adjusted to the extreme brightness of the once dark room; THERE! Sitting on the wall, is your beloved (soon to have its guts imprinted on your palm) mosquito friend. Steady now…Don’t let it see you…THUMP!

With its bloody remains of your blood (and possibly others) on your wall, you leave it there as a trophy for the morning. With such a joyous smile, you turn out the light, roll over and enjoy the peace and quite of the night

...Until about an hour later when you awake with an itch behind your ear, and to your great misfortune, the song of the mosquito's has returned once more.

The Demon Escape Plan

By Matthew Tyler

It has come. The inevitable end of all we know. The slow scrape of lifeless limbs scratching closer and closer to your door. The low, guttural moan of a body driven by one basic, carnal desire. The zombie apocalypse or ‘Zombocalypse’ has arrived. We all knew it was going to happen. Romero wasn’t just making a shocking piece of film in 1978 with ‘Dawn of the Dead’. He was making a documentary, only… he just didn’t know it.

The pounding on the front door finally reaches its crescendo and the living dead run riot throughout the house… only it’s empty. A dull spark fires in a long-since-dead neuron in a zombie’s head as he sniffs and thinks

                Gosh, that smells remarkably like gas. I won’t ponder that too long, because brains.

Fucking boom.

The house was a goddamn booby trap and you have successfully taken out a sizable chunk of the army trying to taste what your idea factory. Yeah, the zombocalypse happened, what of it? You were READY. You had planned for this. You made sure the house was airtight, jerry-rigged a fuse and left the gas on. Meanwhile, you hear a dull thud in the distance as you take a swill from a well-earned victory mojito from the safety of your impenetrable fortress. Everybody has their zombie escape plan. If you were smart, you made yours around the time they decided to take out that Usain Bolt character during the ’28 Days Later’ period. Zombies + Cardio = You having a BAD time. You basically have no-one to blame but yourself if you’re caught with your pants down when a brain-hungry drone bashes down your door. But enough about Mormons (ZZZZZZZING!). But seriously, there is a website that has done all the hard work of mapping out the fucking WORLD for zombie danger zones, supply caches and whatnot.

But all of a sudden, the victory mojito is slapped out of your hand by a powerful, unseen force. Your hardened attack hounds have been reduced to whimpering cowards, hiding under their paws. Objects start flying around the room and it becomes inherently clear that this shit ain’t normal. It’s only when you start hearing echoing clip-clops, Gregorian chanting and the sky begins to rain fire that you realize you’ve been ‘demon-d’.

Like I said, EVERYONE has a zombocalypse plan. Even if people won’t admit it, they’re secretly plotting which of their friends they’d save and which family member they’re going to sacrifice to save themselves. PLOT SPOILER: it’s the fat one. It’s ALWAYS the fat one. But seriously, if your house becomes inhabited by an irritable demon with a penchant for banging doors late at night, which of your closest family members/ friends is going to believe you? At least with a zombie you have proof. 

If we have learnt anything from demon movies, it’s that demon attacks almost always happen when the victim is alone, terrified and will almost NEVER be caught on film. At least not in a believable way. There will always be a way to deny what the victim is showing you.

‘BUT I WAS FUCKING FLOATING! YOU CAN SEE IT RIGHT THERE ON THE VIDEO! RIGHT FREAKING THERE!!!’

‘Maybe you ate a lot of helium that day. Did you ever think of THAT?’

So what do you do? I have put a lot of thought into this. The first thing I would do in this situation is tell someone. Hell, I would tell EVERYONE. But like I’ve already said, who’s going to believe you? Well, this is where the first stage of my plan comes into effect: planning.

PLANNING

You need to get this in early. I’m talking get started RIGHT NOW. You tell your friends, you tell your family something along the lines of:

‘Look. There is a good chance that one day in the future, I will be harassed by a demon with a grudge. I’m gonna need you to believe me when this happens, just so you don’t think I’m insane.’

Obviously – and logically – the person you’re talking to will probably stare you straight in the eye while you say this and lie blatantly to give you that sense of security. They’ll agree with what you say, of course they’ll believe you! But you’re not stupid. In their position, you’d be straight on the phone to some friends to take the victim away on a ‘nice vacation’.

So you need a ‘safe word’. A word that when used in conjunction with your confession that Casper visited last night and now you need new crockery, means that the person listening to the story must ABSOLUTELY, without a skerrick of a doubt believe your babbling incoherentness. So if you’re screaming about how you were given a new perspective of your apartment when the demon mounted you to the ceiling for the better part of an hour last night, remember to drop in that pre-programmed safe word so your friend takes you seriously. This is important. No-one gets through this shit on their own. 

RE-ENFORCEMENTS

You need to get to a priest, STAT. I mean, these guys devote their lives to the idea that there is an ultimate good and an ultimate evil in everything we live through, why would they NOT believe you?! RIGHT?! All logical ‘mental-health’ reasons aside, you get to this priest as fast as your nibbled-by-hell-goat legs will take you for some information. You need allies or this demon shit is going to get out of hand faster than you can say ‘Beezlebub’. So now you’ve got holy water, symbology and the freaking HAND OF GOD at your disposal! You’re set, right?!

The thick, wooden doors burst open and the pews start splintering right in front of your very eyes. Your priest does his very best at spouting the right lines, but stops when it becomes painfully obvious that the horrible droning you’re hearing is just the demon singing along. Turns out, the demon skipped school the day they were teaching how he should be afraid of God. The priest turns to you and with a bashful blush, shrugs before he legs it. I think now would be a great time to initiate part three of the plan.

ROAD TRIP

Think of this part as a pub crawl of everything holy. You hop in your car and you troll every church, mosque, prayer rug, holy hill, voodoo doll or ghostbuster until you find the right fit for your demon problem. I mean, have you ever seen a demon attack anyone in a car? NO! Think of your car as your home away from home for now. Get out and see all the sights you’ve never seen before! Just don’t ever stop moving.

So by now, you’ve either found the right religious deity to ward off whatever ails you… or you’re in terrible… terrible trouble. Hey, I mean, it’s a reality that you MIGHT face. Even in your zombie plan, there’s the POSSIBILITY that one of the sneaky suckers will work his way through the razor wire, endure the brunt of the claymores you’ve set up and play a game of ‘chew the carotid’ with you. You know what they say about the best laid plans. There might be one last thing you can do though…

BARRICADE

Final quarter. Last minute of the game. Hunker down, the best defence is… well basically a really fucking good defence. That’s just common sense. Ever watched Supernatural? What’s the one thing the boys use when the time to knuckle down and get their slay on? Salt. Sodium freaking chloride. So first, get your hands on as much of that stuff as possible. They say an unbroken ring of salt is impossible for demons to cross. So get creative! Try different shapes and sizes. You might be a prisoner within the ring, but don’t let that smother your creativity. Heck, develop a healthy dose of agoraphobia and extend the ring around the house! Just be sure the ring remains intact. A strong gust of wind and you’re up the River Styx without a paddle. There are NUMEROUS other materials used to ward off grumpy ghouls, so if all else fails try some of these!*

*Or all. Try ALL of these. We’re beyond conservative treatment at this point.

- Frankincense

- myrrh

- sage

- sandalwood

- charcoal

- pine smoke

- anything really smelly. (Apparently, demons are quite picky about the way their victims smell. 

Goodbye ‘Joop’, hello Odour Au Naturale!)

If all this fails… you have done something terrible. This demon guy wants you and you deserve to get got. Hope this helps kids!