Wow, fuckadoodledoo. That was a weird little year wasn’t it.

I want to write a big retrospective of all the things that have made it as such, but I’d end up pissing people off or revealing way too much about myself. Also, it’d be boring and introspective. So I’ll gloss over the rubbishy bits and concentrate more on the good/funny/embarrassing parts.

Last new years eve, pretty much exactly a year ago, was a big let down. I spent it in the capital wasteland, notching up even more hours in the monolithic time-chewer that was Fallout 3. As the clock struck and those 12 special chimes rung out (somewhere) I was taking down a handful of super mutants with an automatic machine gun. Fun, right? The plans to organise a last-minute party fell through and everyone abandoned me. Well, everyone except Mick, but he doesn’t count because he’s small and looks like Pee-Wee Herman (not really).

Anyway, I have higher hopes for this years dawning of a new year. I might even be sociable or something.

2009 was also the year I started writing things on this website, which currently attracts around 2 people A DAY (!!). Plus some very odd Russian commenters who I’ve decided to block on the basis they’re not playing fair with the choice of language and they’re probably spam-spreaders anyway. Bloody Communists.

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Top of the list of year-moments is the story of Viz. I’m putting it in print now, thereby securing the rights to make it into a film one day, because it really is that fucking funny. All I can do is hope that none of the boy’s workmates or family ever read this (which is, sadly, very unlikely to happen). Maybe I should have changed the names of the people involved, but it’s too late now. I’ve already typed his name and editing is for schmucks.

After an incredibly messy night of drinking, shots and the effect of being around Helen Maguire (i.e. – more shots), coupled with the lack of sleep on a week night, Viz was awoken by a phone call from his boss around an hour after he was supposed to be in work. Which he answered, still festering in a drunken haze. Now, he didn’t tell us immediately what had happened or why he was suddenly okay to stay off work for a few days. He just moped about a little bit with a distracted, almost ‘ashamed’ look spread across his face. It was only at a BBQ a few days later, with a handful of beers and burgs down him, that he broke the news.

He had told his boss that his mum had died in the night. This is why he was currently absent from work.

I know, funny.

I imagine the call went something like this:

“Matthew! Why are you not in work? It’s almost 10:30!”

“Errr…………Mum’s dead. Night!”

“Oh….Oh I’m so sorry…just…okay…er…”

“Zzzzzzzzzzzz”

On the face of it, it’s the perfect excuse. No employer on this Earth (not counting 3rd-world) is so heartless as to question it, and they certainly would forgive you for not having the presence of mind to call-in in a timely manner. The only real response they can give is “Oh” followed by rushed condolences as they scrabble to get off the phone as quickly as possible, acutely aware that saying the wrong thing could culminate in a massive PR disaster and a weeping Viz on the other end of the phone.

It’s only when you stop to think about it, does the excuse really fall apart. Clearly, his mother wasn’t really dead, but he would now have to present a front whilst in work that suggested she was, in fact, deceased, and definitely not alive and healthy. Not an easy task for a man who meets his mother every week for lunch.

We all had a good laugh, naturally at his expense, and suggestions of what he could do started to fly around. He’d left it too long at this point to come clean, and any attempt at telling the truth would result either in dismissal or a slap from previously concerned workmates. So that wasn’t an option. The most popular choice seemed to be to actually kill his mum, so his grief would be accurate and believable. The main problem with this, regardless of laws and morals, was that he isn’t really sure what she fictionally died of, so he would be unable to enact it.

It was only really a matter of time before someone voiced a suspicion. There was no way he’d really said that. There had to be another reason why he was off work. Had to be. Telling your boss that a parent had snuffed it was just too big a disgusting fuck up, even for Viz. Doubts were forming.

Except there was a card. Signed by everyone in the office, offering condolences and best wishes in his time of need. Apparently, the secretary had cried when she heard the news. “Poor Viz!” she probably wailed “How will he ever manage?!”. The card was signed with genuine empathy; which made it all the more brilliant.

Probably the best bit about this whole story is telling it to others. It doesn’t work so well in written form, I’ll admit, but it’s an excellent campfire story. Like an urban legend that just so happens to be perfectly true. It’s also made better by a slip of the brain from Mr Stephen Bum-Lar, who, because Viz’s first name is Matthew, jumped to the conclusion that his mother must be Mrs Matthews. Because he is an idiot. Anyway, that spawned a song by Marc which I’ll put up when I find it.

edit:

It also led to some imaginative Halloween house décor.

Hopefully, the retrospective I write at the end of 2010 will be taken up with the time Viz let slip to his workmates that his mum was alive.

Little Mick and his frequent habit of drinking himself silly brought about a big laugh too. A night out in Manchester, with hotels all booked and a group of people all drinking more than they probably should, Mick over-does it and ends up a whole bottle of Vodka heavier before 7:30. By 7:45, he’s throwing up, and by 8:00 he’s disappeared only to be found a short while later curled up in his bed, convinced he’d already been on a night out and it was early morning. So much so, that he shouted at Marty, his room-mate, to go back to bed when he ventured in to grab his wallet. Needless to say, he woke up with a chair on his bed the next day.

That’s that, really. All I can be bothered documenting of the year. There is loads worth mentioning, but it’s either too damning of me, or far too personal for me to really want to share. I had a great time with The Hulk ride in Florida, followed by a terrible few months, followed by some less terrible months. Many nights out occurred over the course of the year, very few of which were any good, and Marc coined atleast 3 new catchphrases. “That’s what she said” is now obligatory after almost every sentence, and similarly you can expect to hear “Hardly knew her!” uttered after every word that ends in an ‘er’ sound. For example: “Computer? Hardly knew her!”. Lots of new people were met to make up for the amount of people who stopped talking to me, and this new lot seem slightly more amiable than the last bunch, whilst still finding topics such as rape and cancer funny. Win/Win.

There were other great bits but they’re either too niche or you’d need to know the people involved. I’ve stuck to the more populist stories, in the vain hope that a stranger will stumble on the site and find the heart-warming story of Viz’s dead mother. As I write this, a morbidly obese woman is fighting with a computer chair next to me, adjusting the settings to get the height just right. If I’m lucky, she’ll crash right through the floor next time she tugs on the lever and plummets downwards like the Tower Of Terror.

Feel free to comment with other good bits.