Almost a year again… whoops!

So suddenly i decide to look at my old trusty blog and I realise that in a few months i’ll have had one of those years where a year goes by and I haven’t blogged again. Truth be told i’m quite fond of this old collection of ramblings that has sort of chronicled my life over the last 8 years or so. so with that in mind I couldn’t sit by and let that happen.

Worst thing about letting so much time pass on a blog is when I return I always feel compelled to update about everything that has happened in my life in the hiatus. Rather than write lots and lots of paragraphs im going to try and get us up to steam in a few bullet points and let the chips fall where they may.

So here goes:

• Got a job editing and shooting videos for a web design company.
• Met a girl called Lynsey Dobbins.
• Found out I was going to be father.
• Bought a big ass expensive camera.
• Moving into a house (at the end of this month)
• Went to Ireland
• Got a proper website on stuartalmond.com hence this one reverting back to it’s old .wordpress domain.

So there we go back up to speed sort of, i’m not going to insult your intelligence by promising you i’ll be blogging regularly again, same time next year maybe!

Still trying to be a better me but comfortable with my lazy attitude towards blogging

Over the weekend I decided to sign up to mark Watson’s Ten Year Self Improvement challenge. As I’m sure you’ll be very much aware if you are the one reader of this blog (which could very well just be a time traveling version of me) I said I was going to post one of my six challenges every day this week.

So what have we learned so far?

Mainly that i’m terrible at keeping to a blogging schedule, although i’ve never really been that good at that so I for one find comfort in the fact that some things do indeed never change. Other things we’ve learned so far are that I want to learn to play the guitar a lot better than I currently can to justify the ownership of two guitars and that I would very much like to pluck up enough courage to perform some stand up.

Lets move on to 3 of 6

This one has the potential to come off as a bit sappy and hopefully it won’t come across like that. i certainly hope it doesn’t come across as needy, becuase while I my very well be both of those things, it’s not my intention for them to manifest in this one. It’s just how it is.

Number three Find soul mate

Quite a big one I suppose but fairly self explanatory. Believe it or not I am actually a single man! Shocking I know. Don’t worry this isn’t a plea or anything like that. Its probably most helpful if I explain my mindset rather than my love life history (I wouldn’t subject you to that anyway)

I don’t believe that there is one person out there for everyone but rather that there are many people who can complement each other very well and who are capable of falling head over heels in love with each other. So really I suppose I want to find one of them. Most people normally say something like “you need to get out there more” by which they really mean “you need to go to more clubs and bars and dance around drunkenly.”

I’ve never liked the whole going out up town to a club on the pull thing. It’s just not me, that’s not to say however that I don’t like going out, on the contrary I do. When I go out its with my friends and being almost 30 a lot of my friends have lives of their own or live in different places, so nights out are rarer occasion than they used to be and I want to spend that occasion catching up and having a laugh with my friends. If I were to meet someone during the course of one of those evenings that’s fine. But honestly I’ve always hated the idea of “going on the pull” Plus is a loud, dimly lit place full of drunken people really the best place to meet a potential “soul mate?”

Probably not, so I’m going to try and find new ways to talk to women and find out if we like each other.

By that I don’t mean signing up to Match.com. I’ve actually tried that and it’s quite bizarre. I suppose I don’t really know what I mean by ‘find new ways to talk to women and find out if we like each other’ that’s why it’s one of my challenges I suppose. Maybe I mean invent new ways that have never been tried or tested before.

No, probably not.

Massive walks

So I sort of said I was going to post a challenge everyday for the next week and I suppose i’m off to a bad start because I missed yesterday, although my reasoning is not without an excuse.

Yesterday was mainly spent doing the Birmingham Walkathon, which means I walked 26 miles around the number 11 bus route in Birmingham. I did it in seven and a half hours which i’m pretty pleased with, Although that’s mainly due to the fact that I was keeping up with my friend Roy for the first 13 miles. Roy has been in the army for over ten years and is as used to long type of walks as a person can be I suppose. After the halfway point though I told him I was going to keep my own pace and he slowly vanished off into the distance. He did it in 6 hours 45 mins with a 55 pound Bergen on too.

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t let you know that you can still sponsor me post walk via this link: http://tinyurl.com/2e6693o But don’t feel obliged to.

“yes, yes, yes” I hear you impatiently cry “this is all very good but why in the name of all buggery didn’t you post when you said you would?”

Well I’m not going to lie to you, I did remember I was supposed to post but as soon as I sat down my calf muscles seized up and it took me a long time to get anywhere in the house. Add to that the three big blisters I discovered once I got home (the biggest of which is here, but don’t click if you squeamish) and i’m sure you’ll understand that once I was down I didn’t really want to get up.

But never fear because there are five more challenges to post which should take us nicely up to friday. So without further delay here’s my second challenge.

Number two Learn to play the guitar properly

I bought a guitar back in 2000 when I turned 20 with the best intentions. unfortunately after a few years of ownership I ended up only managing to play  Wonderwall very badly. I sold the guitar to my brother in law who can actually play the guitar. Some years later in 2005 I bought another guitar again with the best intentions and this time I have progressed more than my first attempt. But still the fact remains that five years later i can only play a handful of songs and have also for some reason acquired an electric guitar that I can also not really play.

Basically I can now play most open chords but i’m rubbish at bar chords, my strumming is atrocious and my finger picking skills are nonexistent. Ultimately this boils down to me practicing regularly.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get the stage where I can confidently pick up a guitar at a party or get together and strum out a few songs that everyone can drunkenly sing along to. I have no aspirations to start a band or anything.

Being a better Stuart

I’ve decided to sign up for the Mark Watson Ten Year Self Improvement Challenge. if you’re not familiar with Mark Watson, well you should be. He’s a bloody great comedian and We Need Answers was one of the best things on the BBC for yonks!

Anyway I’ve set myself six challenges as part of the TYSIC and over the course of the next six days i’ll be detailing what my six challenges are and why i’m doing them. So lets get started with the first one:

Do some stand up.

My desire to do this comes from one of my friends, Alex, who roughly a year ago started performing in at open mic nights fulfilling his childhood ambition to be a stand up comedian. He’s still going strong and is moving closer and closer to being noticed. Some times I go to gigs with Alex and I always feel like a bit of a third wheel and that I have to justify my presence. Alex keeps bugging me to do some stand up so that we can go to lots of open mic nights/comedy gigs together and be wonderful touring friends have lots and lots of laughs together.

Why do I think i’ll be any good at it?

While at university we made a sketch show pilot for our final project and it was nominated for a regional Royal television society student award, which was brilliant. It was even more brilliant when we actually won. Then as if all of that wasn’t enough we were nominated for the national RTS awards and went and bloody well won that too! suffice to say I was as overwhelmed as I think i’ve ever been . I’m not just telling you all this to gloat (well maybe a little) it is relevant to my plight, if you’ll indulge me a little further i’ll reveal all. (if not I won’t feel offended if you stop reading or skim read the rest of it.)

In said sketch show pilot I was also one of the performers, in fact I’ve acted for years in friends short films and on stage as part of of a drama course. It was only a BTEC, i’m not saying i’m the next big thing or anything like that, but I think i’m not deluding myself like and out of tune x-factor contestant might by saying i’m ok at it. I also co wrote the sketch show and am also currently writing and performing online sketches with the aforementioned Alex.

I think i’m at the summary point now, thanks for sticking with me!

So the crux of the issue is this. Despite having a friend who performs stand up tell me I would be good at it, despite having performed various plays on stage for three years as part of a BTEC in drama, despite having performed in and co written a sketch show pilot (albeit a student one) that’s won two awards, despite having performed in front of biggish crowds at the Birmingham fringe festival and Tamworth arts festival, desptie of that, i’ve still got a huge hang up over getting up at an open mic night and doing a short set of stand up material.

I don’t know why, I should have no problem with this at all.

I’m not really at square one though I have started to write some material.

So that’s the first one anyway, i’ll get to the rest through the course of the week, at least that way there will actually be a daily update for at least a week. Something this blog has never probably never known.

Some Information

I’ve added a tab to the top of this blog. If you click on it it leads you to my portfolio of work. I recommend you click on it because I want people to look at it and leave comments like “that was good” or “that looked good” or possibly “it looks nice.”

All the passages of text on there were written in my best good boy voice because it’s to try and get me a job, so unfortunately it’s absent of a disinterested some what cynical style. There is a bit of humor in there but it more akin to something like “once I accidentally used salt instead of sugar on my cereal.”

It’s all over

Well it’s the beginning of the end at least. Unfortunately another species has decided to take the next step in it’s evolutionary journey.

Cats.

Sound crazy? well think about it, lets say a future version of yourself appears in front of you now, all bedraggled and malnourished yet sporting a surprisingly cool survivalist beard (if you’re female replace the beard with swoopingly long matted hair.) and a burnt and torn silver jump suit. After your initial shock you sit the future you down and get him/her a can of coke, they gulp it down hurriedly with no sense of shame. They catch their breath. You ask them “What could have possibly happened that was so bad in the future?”

Your doppelganger stares at the floor for a moment. Then, they look at you dead in the eyes. “CATS!” They’ll say with a crazy glint in their eye, you’ll stare at them for a moment not understanding, then future you will tell their tale.

“They evolved, started walking on two legs. At first we all thought it was cute, so we gave them their own little apartments, with a TV and an X-box 360. Some even hung posters of Grand Theft Auto on their walls, we laughed. We were fools to laugh. We should have seen it coming the signs were there. They used to stare out their windows like nosy pensioners, again we laughed. But all the time they were really watching… learning… waiting for the perfect moment to strike. We should have seen it, but no what did we do? we filmed it and put it on You Tube.  If only we’d listened to him, If only we’d paid attention to Stuart Almond’s blog, all of this could have been avoided.”

Think about, if that happened, you know in your heart of hearts that you’d have no problem believing it. You wouldn’t even doubt him. Hell you’d probably get him another can of coke maybe even a sprite.

What? Sound too far fetched for you? Rambling like a mad man am I?

Well then I say to you…

Watch this video… if you dare.

just don’t come crying to me when you’re a future version of yourself trying to figure out the secrets of time travel so that you can warn humanity about the coming apocalypse. You won’t be able to anyway i’ll be locked away in the heart of cat city as the emperor cat’s pet. What a cruel twist of fate.

Inspiration Thursdays

If you’re anything like me, firstly apologies and secondly you’ll watch the video below and feel wonderfully inspired to go out and do things, difficult things like climbing a mountain, foiling a bank robbery while wearing spandex or fighting in a just war. Then however, because you’ve already admitted you are like me, you’ll be overcome with the realisation that you would in actual fact die a horrible death fairly quickly if you attempted any of these things. The best we could probably hope for is maybe a news story that begins “A local idiot died today…”

So yeah, watch the video, which will undoubtedly leave you feeling inspired for a while, maybe even as long as it takes for a second viewing. Know however that reality will kick in roughly around that time and remind of your true inadequacy.

Happy Thursday.

*Disclaimer*

The above text only applies to people who are “anything like me” if you are not, then please enjoy the inspiration the video provides to the fullest effect.

*Disclaimer end*

A post to let you know Future Wheel have a website.

There I said it.

You can look at the website by clicking the link below:

http://futurewheel.wordpress.com

Sorry if I seem a bit abrupt, it’s just that I’m aware I haven’t posted anything for a while and I didn’t want this to be the way I broke the silence. I just couldn’t hold it back anymore. Because it’s such an amazing website.

Oh and if you don’t know (although if you in fact don’t know, why not?) Future Wheel is the sketch comedy getup that i’m 50% of and is talking the world by storm.

So… more Future Wheel goodness for you to ingest.

*Sigh*

One step closer to our inevitable doom.

In the past i’ve talked about the inevitability that one day we will all undoubtedly be enslaved by robots that the human race has designed and constructed. Along with this i’ve also offered accompanying you tube videos that in the future could possibly serve as a marker, so that when the revolution comes and our lives only purpose is to appease our new mechanical overlords, we can use the one hours recreation time our robotic gods will kindly grant us each year to look back and see that I was right.

In that spirit I offer you another such you tube video. I can’t say for certain how the machine nation will treat us when they finally become self-aware, but one thing I can probably guarantee is that they’re going to look upon the human race very poorly, when they see that as we made some progress in robotics our initial idea was to make then perform crooning versions of Oasis songs in shopping centres.

Did we learn nothing from Battlestar Galactica (the new series not the old one)

SHIT…

… I forgot to tell you about Future Wheel’s new sketch called ‘The Toy.’ Although it’s a fairly safe bet that anyone who reads this blog is a member of the facebook group: Future Wheel Comedy, so the likelihood* is you already know about it and aren’t sitting in front of your computer or hand held internet browsing device screaming bloody murder about my lackluster approach to blogging.

However!

In the rare case that this is the first you have heard of the aforementioned sketch let me firstly say, put your computer monitor down and count to ten, it’s really not worth it. If you want to hurt me that’s what the comments section is for. Secondly as a way of making up for my earlier indiscretion I have saved you the hassle of having to waste precious time by clicking on a web link to another page.

Behold, ‘The Toy’ in full embedded quality.

more about “The Toy from future_wheel – Video“, posted with vodpod

*I really didn’t know that was how that word is spelled, to the point that I wouldn’t believe my spellchecker and researched the word in various online dictionaries. It does look silly though doesn’t it?