I like shopping. I’m pretty good at it. I mean proper shopping, actually going to a shop with something in mind and buying it. It’s exciting. Until the credit card statement arrives.

The best shopping is supermarket shopping, cos it’s like having loads of shops in one place. In the olden days, the supermarket only had one aisle of books, magazines and stuff. Now my local Tesco has an entire upstairs (upstairs!) with escalators designed for trolleys and everything. Upstairs is the magical, exciting bit with all HDTVs and big aisles full of videogames that I don’t need, but I’ll buy and they can sit on the shelf until I get sick of looking at them and trade them in for a pound at Game.

Actual shopping is exciting though, from choosing the trolley – if I get a big one, I’ll throw more unnecessary stuff in, a basket might be weighed down by bottles of Coke, and I’ll look silly if my mini-trolley only has four things in it – to navigating as efficiently as possible through the aisles.

Some people, for whatever reason, work their way up and down every aisle, regardless of use: They don’t own a dog, stay outta the petfood aisle, you fool. And there’s no need to leave your trolley in the middle of the bloody aisle while you dig through ever piece of chicken to find one that looks about the right size. Get to one side, or you’re getting your trolley gently barged out of the way. And a bit of beef dropped in the end, to cause an argument when you get to the checkout.

Shopping in the supermarket can be done in 15 minutes. Easily. Straight in, straight round and straight out. Especially when you’re cooking for yourself, there’s no obligation to buy healthy crap, and you can head straight for the pizzas.

Everything you buy can be categorised into two piles; One; stuff that you’ll eat as soon as humanly possible. This includes the impulse bought snacks because you’re hungry, a bag of doughnuts, a chocolate eclair and a multipack of ham. Two; stuff that’ll get thrown in the cupboard or freezer and eaten begrudgingly, eventually, when you’re trying to eke another day out of your food without shopping again. Like the trout that’s been in my freezer for six months, because I haven’t got a fucking clue what to do with it.

The only pitfall, the only problem that I have, is when it comes to the checkout. They always ask “do you need any help with your packing?” and don’t find it amusing when I look at the five items I’ve bought and say “I think I’ll be alright, thanks.” But that’s not true. I won’t be alright. I do need help with my packing, like a little old lady trying to use her crippled, arthritic fingers to load up cat-food, bought lovingly for a cat that she doesn’t realise is dead.

The truth is this: I can’t open the fucking carrier bags. My fingers slip and slide all over them, rubbing the bits of polythene together in a vague attempt to get inside. The shopping is piling up around me, I barely have time to organise it so that the freezer stuff goes together and fridge stuff together. I’m loading the bags as fast as I can, pathetically trying to catch up with the cashier’s super-speedy swiping technique. Then it gets to the end, she’s swiped everything through and told me how much it costs. I’m fiddling with my credit card, and still trying to fill the bags. It’s impossible. I give up, and throw everything into the basket and take that home with me, sobbing into the evening. FUCK YOU, TESCO. OKAY?

50 things I can’t do.

There aren’t 50.

1) Growing up

• Poo in a public toilet
• Grow a proper grown-up beard
• Resist drawing cocks on blank paper. Big spunking cocks with all balls and pubes
• Go to bed at a sensible time, even if I have to get up early
• Work the washing machine (why does it have more than one setting, really?)
• Understand the inner workings of a car
• Leave spots alone
• Dress up smartly
• Wake up on the first alarm and get up
• Save money

2) Other people

• Chat up women
• Subtly check out cleavage
• Leave a coherent voicemail message
• Enjoy being in a crowd
• Feel comfortable haggling in a shop
• Pee at a urinal next to someone really tall

3) Games & Entertainment

• Give a computer game character a sensible name (“Hello, my name is Spunky”)
• Play board games fairly
• Play computer games online
• Simplify tactics on Rock-Paper-Scissors
• Dance without looking like I’m mocking people with cerebral palsy
• Sing in tune
• Maintain any sense of rhythm
• Listen to Metallica’s “Sad But True” without air-drumming along to the intro, like a twat
• Down a pint
• Sit still for the entire duration of a film

4) Health and safety

• Enjoy the meat in sausage rolls now I’ve started thinking about what it actually is
• Eat crisps quietly
• Drink one, and only one, beer
• Last a whole year without some sort of disorder that causes excess snot
• Know when to stop texting / e-mailling / instant messaging after drinking alcohol
• Drive within the speed limit
• Cook a complicated meal
• Play football (1 x destroyed ankle, 1 x ball-saved-with-face)

5) Day to day

• Take recycling seriously
• Go into a supermarket and buy everything on my list. And nothing else.
• Take a menu-selection risk when ordering a takeaway
• Walk past a stone and not kick it
• Speak foreign, despite 10+ years of learning, and somehow a qualification in German.
• Moderately swear
• Make small talk with a stranger

6) The Rest

• 8 times table quickly
• Be photographed and look even a bit normal. Oh good, I’m blinking again.
• Show a suitable amount of decorum through the National Anthem, without looking like I’m taking the piss
• Watch an entire episode of Question Time in one sitting
• Really genuinely understand the history and politics of places like Israel
• Get excited by film hype
• Enjoy porn, um, afterwards
• Talk on the phone without doing anything else
• Write legibly, after years of computer based doing everything

Merry Christmas, probably.

If 90s dance act “Haddaway” had really thought about their song “What is Love?” then they’d realise that it’s a fleeting emotion and stuff. What they should really have been bothered about is the far more pressing question: “What is Soup?”

Specifically, what is the act of consuming soup called? Do you eat it, or drink it?

There’s strong arguments for both sides, which have been debated at great lengths by myself and unwilling friends. On the one hand, you can consume soup through a straw, therefore it is a drink. But, it could be argued, given a large enough straw and powerful enough suction device, even steak could be consumed through a straw. Probably. And thick milkshake is a drink, and that’s a pain in the balls to drink.

Soup is a meal, albeit a shit one, which by definition makes it a food. Especially if it’s got bits in it, for example, chicken. Clearly the chicken will be eaten, but just the act of placing food into a drink doesn’t render the drink a food. You can’t throw a Pepperami into a can of Irn Bru and claim the Irn Bru is now food.

In addition, the issue of the vessel of consumption has also been raised. If you have soup in a bowl, it’s a food – soup in a cup is a drink. This must be rejected as silly, as clearly Coke can be consumed, inconveniently, from a plate, and that doesn’t change what it is.

As you can tell, this has been occupying WAY too much of my time, so I e-mailled off to the professionals, to find out what they had to say.

Good Afternoon

Thank you for your email.

I’m happy to confirm that you are both technically correct:

A chunky soup is EATEN
A thinner broth type soup is DRUNK

Hope this helps to resolve your dispute.

Kind Regards

Debbie Bonnington
Customer Relations
New Covent Garden Food Company

Debbie has fallen into the trap of claiming that the content of the soup can change the nature of the soup itself. REJECTED.

There is no set way to consumer our soup, some people prefer to drink it from a mug and some to eat it from a dish.

Heinz called me “Ms”, which is a disappointment after years of being blokey. But does explain the tits. They also tell us nothing, only that people enjoy soup in different ways. The consumption vessel argument has also been REJECTED.

This is an important question indeed, well raised.

In a fully conclusive survey of one person (me), we can categorically say that, well, we don’t know.

In fact, the mere act of trying to work out which it is has exhausted us.

I wish I could be of more help, but I think I need to lie down.

Good luck on your quest – please, if you find out the answer, do let me know.

All the best,

Joe

Joe from Innocent is my fucking hero, and tells us what we wanted to hear: Even the professionals don’t know. They don’t know what they’re making. This should shock you to the core, at least for 0.00001 of a second. Did you feel that? Was it like a sneeze only better?

Next week: What is yoghurt? And are soggy cornflakes technically a drink?

Does anyone actually know what soup is?

I don’t even like soup that much.

NOTE – The wonderful Hayley has pointed out that it should really be “What is Soup? (Baby don’t slurp me, no more)”. I’m not changing it though, as that’d be an admission that she’s funnier than me.

As very few of you have noticed, and even less of you cared, blogging has been a little light lately.
This is because I’ve been embarking on a ridiculous literary adventure, under the umbrella of National Novel Writing Month (which is shortened to NaNoWriMo by those not smart enough to shorten it all the way to NaNo.)

The idea is simple, to sit down and write a 50,000 word novel in November. Thirty days, 50,000 words. That’s 1,667 words a day, a figure that I saw many, many times as I fired up Windows calculator to figure out what sort of ridiculous, relentless pace I’d have to keep up for the month. “If I give up now for today, how many extra will I need to do this week…”

Holding down a full-time job means that midweek writing goes tough, coming back exhausted and being met with a barrage of words that need to be completed that evening, it’s tough. Weekends are, surprisingly, worse, normally a time to get some rest and recover, but NaNo meant trying to get a bit ahead so the following week wouldn’t be so rubbish.

The sheer pace of writing is intentional – I’ve tried to write a novel before, and ended up redrafting the same sentence repeatedly, getting hung up over a description of a tree, without moving on and getting into the story. With NaNo, you don’t read it back, you don’t edit, you just write. Of course, the more sleep deprived days lead to absolute crap being written, like:

I lifted the saw, I think it was a hacksaw, but only because that’s the only type of saw I know. I placed it on top of his left leg and began to cut. The fabric from his jeans started to rip and tear as the saw went through easily. Then a slight resistance as it hit flesh. I grimaced and tried not to think about what I was doing. I continued to cut, until an even harder resistance: bone. I shuddered at the thought, and continued to cut round it, stopping at the horrible noise every single grind made.

Hmm.

Saturday night, I finished the novel, wrote those two awesome words: The End, and closed Word down. Okay, it was only the first draft (the “Ben Elton Final Draft” as it’s wonderfully known) and I’d have to – shudder – read it and edit it at some point, but I’d done it. I’ve written a bloody novel.

In a way, that makes me like Jesus, because he wrote a made up story too.

Drinking is great. Drinking is really great. It’s relaxing, chills you out, gives you confidence. It does for me, anyway. Evenings with people I don’t really know are improved after a few drinks when pretence disappears and we’re all laughing and can finally have a good time. Talking shit, pretending we know more than Gordon Brown and telling knob jokes. Social lubricant, someone’s probably called it.

With depression, life is like a shit hungover Sunday morning where it’s raining outside and there’s only the Hollyoaks omnibus on the telly. You don’t want to do anything, get up, move about or be bothered. All the time.

Alcohol eases that. Your mood doesn’t improve – if anything, you become a massive bolshy wanker – but the difference is that you don’t care. You’re relaxed. The second beer is easier to open than the first, because it keeps making you feel better.

At a bowling alley, there’s generally an offer to get you to play three games. The first game is the start of the evening – you’re sober, nervous perhaps, and have a rubbish game. The second is a bit drunk, more confidence and everything works – a good game. By the third game, you’re pissed and don’t give a toss about the bowling any more, just cocking about, bowling between your legs, backwards, two balls at a time. Destructively.

See where I was going with that last paragraph? The beers got easier to open, but my behaviour was more destructive. Argumentative, watching TV – or even live shows – too pissed to really follow them, cocking up computer games and shouting at the control pad like a fucking idiot. It didn’t help that the supermarket did great deals on bulk buys, so if there were 4 cans in, I’d drink 4. 8 cans, they’d all go too. Maybe an emergency run to the late Spar. 11pm on Sunday, the perfect time to get more beer.

The last time I drank, I popped out at lunchtime for a bite to eat with a friend, and ended up drinking until 4am the next day. Neat rum. I hate rum. Don’t remember much after 8pm. Probably talked bollocks, masked a bit by the others catching up to me at some point. Pointless drinking.

I don’t drink any more. Just stopped. They don’t mix well with my pills. Worse than mixing them with general cuntyness. I’m not a militant anti-drinker or anything like that. Loads of people can drink responsibly (as all those bloody adverts say), but I don’t think I can. So I don’t.

There’s two reactions when I say that I don’t drink – the first is to try and get me to have one, as though I can’t have fun unless I’m a bit pissed. I can, but that first pint will inevitably lead to me not recalling the weekend and waking up on a building site in Wrexham.

The second is “well, I won’t drink either”, like a big principled stand against the evils of alcohol. Stop it! Drink, if you want to. I’d eat steak in front of a veggie. Actually, I’d fucking love to. Smug bastards.

Saturday night was my first big night out with friends, being the only one sober. It was fun for the most part, watching the people dancing and acting like massive fannies in a way they wouldn’t normally was surprising. Normally I’d have been amongst them, looking an equally big prick.

For some reason, a tat shop called Planet Bong (logo: a pot leaf) was open until late o’clock. Two people serving through a grille. For all your late night rizla and Che Guevara t-shirt needs. They sell body studs and rings, too.

My friend, G, asked for a ring. Because he has his cock pierced. Not through the end, through a dangly bit of skin under his cock, next to his balls. I don’t know why. The man in the shop was impressed, though, and asked to see it. He got to see it. In the street. I didn’t know what to do, so I talked to the other assistant. And got my ear re-pierced. To avoid seeing a cock.

I wish I had alcohol to blame for it.

Hey! You! Shouting at Cows wasn’t around when blockbusting film The Lord of the Rings came out, but if it had been, then we’d probably have been a bit sarcastic about it and then fallen over and died when we found out just how popular it was.

But where is it now? £18 on Play. At £2 an hour to sit through everyone’s favourite goblin-bashing extravaganza, you’d be hard pushed to find better value than sitting and giggling at how badly the CGI has aged. Apart from the 17 disk set of the Best of Russell Howard, which sees the bozz-eyed monkey staring gormlessly at you in real-time over the course of a day.

If you’ve not seen the Lord of the Rings yet, or, for some reason, have actually sat through 9 hours of it and still want to see it again, then this is your lucky day! We’re giving away copies of all three films, in slightly battered boxes. These are the full extended editions, so you can fully appreciate the effects of deep vein thrombosis and require an amputation or however they cure DVT.

There’s lots of ways you can enter, and I’ve listed some of them on the lines below this one.

Tell us a funny story. Go on, you must have done something funny. Or had something funny happen. Make us laugh.

Cut off a limb. The bigger the limb, the more impressive. An arm will win out over a toe every time.

Gratuitous nudity. We reserve the right to delete your email without reading it if your name is Colin or Norman, though.

Anything else at all. A begging letter, blackmail, threats of anthrax or a thesis detailling why the Terminator trilogy is clearly miles better. Even T3, which was a bit silly, but had some cool CGI.

e-mail us: blog@shoutingatco.ws and some lucky sod will have their DVDs winged almost literally to them. Assuming the postman can be bothered to deliver it.

We might post your entries if we like them, but if you really don’t want us to, then say.