almost witty

Thanks to work, I got a rather nice invite to the Association of Online Publishers Awards 2007 ceremony at the London Hilton. Only one snag - the dress code demanded black tie.

Being a short-sleeved and chinos kind of chap, I had no real idea what a black tie dinner suit entailed, so I ran to the nearest dress hire shop and slapped down £50 for a black-tie dinner suit. Which seemed to consist of … a black jacket, black trousers, white shirt and a bow tie. Oh sure, the jacket and trousers had some slightly extra-fancy stitching with some kind of satin strip, and the white shirt was an especially smart shirt, but I imagine I could have just worn a black jacket and black trousers, and perhaps gotten away with it.

Still, it was quite nice striding across the London Hilton with the Bond theme mentally running through my head into a cocktail reception - an illusion alas rudely shattered when my boss took one look at me and adjusted my black tie.

The awards came and went quite quickly, with Frankie Boyle dishing out awards and telling everyone to stop booing the Telegraph. Then it was time for the disco.

One particular ginger gentleman similarly donned in a black tie came up to us, definitely the worse for wear, going on and on about how great his video website company was. Later on, he tried to chat up my boss, so we tried distracting him by chatting to him, whereupon he threatened to do my face in. Charming fellow, but I think it’s safe to say I won’t be dealing with videojug.com any time soon.

So Skarlett sends me a link to a commercial with the enigmatic title: “Cadbury Gorilla”.

And my half-tired brain runs off into a half-formed rant about stupid marketeers and how in a desperation for anything to hit the muddled brains of the consumer masses, they’ve probably resorted to the Alan Partridge method of filming anything and somehow hoping it sticks.

My brain continues to rant in my head as I watch the video, which is taking on a weird fascination with the gorilla’s eyes, hair, nose and mouth. Then comes the money moment, and I smile, ashamed as I am sucked into yet another amusing televisual moment…

Ripped off from the latest newsletter from Manchester Confidential:

1. Vaginal Tightening straight from a Manchester surgery. Illustrated by a smiling woman - because obviously an operation like this is bound to be pain-free.
2. A bold headline stating that size matters. When it comes to apartment hunting of course.

I’m not too sure why on earth, but look at what you can buy in grocery stores in Hong Kong, at least according to B3ta:

It’d be fair to say that I am no Adonis. I’m not a handsome man. So I’m not sure why the last two times I’ve seen a specialist doctor in a hospital, they’ve always wanted me to strip off.

The first time was to see a sleeping specialist. When I went in, he asked me to strip off to my pants, and lie on the bed. A bit of an odd request, I’d have thought, but I complied anyway. He made some basic pulse measurements, asked if I’d been hallucinating anything - then grandly concluded that there was nothing wrong with me and that I’d been wasting his time. Charming fellow.

This time around, it was to do with high blood pressure and my nose’s ability to erupt like a geyser spewing out lavafuls of blood at the most inopportune moments. Before I met the specialist, I’d spent 20 minutes with the nurse having my blood pressure measured in a variety of positions (”could you please stand on one leg and try to reach for that coffee cup on the shelf while I take your blood pressure, please?”) and being weighed. A somewhat pleasant surprise to find that I haven’t gained weight this year. Not so surprisingly, I haven’t lost any either.

So I walked into the specialist’s office, and was surprised to see a man and a woman there. The man asked me if I minded if the junior doctor observed, and I took this to mean the woman. I nodded my assent, which was possibly a fatal move since he then asked me to strip off. A tad confused, I asked him where I should strip off, to which I was told that I could do it behind the curtain.

So I stood there in my socks and pants behind the plastic curtain, before I plaintively asked the doctor what to do now. He asked me to come out from behind the curtain, and to take a seat. So I did - and was sat there for 15 minutes on a leather chair in my smalls while I tried to answer various questions about my lifestyle and avoid making eye contact with the junior doctor. I think it was when I confessed to my years of heroin abuse that the doctor twigged that I was a tad uncomfortable in this situation, and actually decided to make use of my nakedness.

By prodding my ankles. Which is apparently a sure sign of high blood pressure - but why I needed to be stripped naked for this for twenty minutes, heaven knows. He also took more heart measurements, although why I needed to be virtually naked for this I don’t know. He then decided to do some rather vigorous prodding in my groinal area, but this could easily have been done behind the plastic curtain, surely?

Blissfully, he told me to put my clothes on. And then sent me off for a battery of blood and heart tests, and a chest X-Ray. Which involved (again!) more stripping off with only a flimsy Homer-esque plastic gown and a lead panel pressed against my buttocks to save me from a radiation dose. Sometime in the next few weeks, I shall have to spend 24 hours peeing into a plastic bottle which contains some kind of acid, and take that to my doctor.

I bet at the end of all this, they’ll tell me that I just need to lose some weight to bring down my blood pressure. Strange, I’d suggest not being stripped in a doctors’ office and told to pee into a plastic bottle which stinks of vinegar.