Being men, and women-men, of good taste there is every chance that you listen to the podcast and/or radio stereograms of Adam & Joe.

The pair cause much mirthment on my voyages to and from work with regular features including Text the Nation, Song Wars, the world famous Joe Completely Fails To Get Behind A Story Which Adam Is Quite Enthusiastic About and the increasingly elaborate introduction, (whereby their names are sung to make up a famous tune).

One curious segment involves listeners of the show identifying each other in public places by yelling “Stephen!” and awaiting the appropriate response of “Just coming!”. Whilst this was all well and good, many listeners, including myself, were slightly curious as to the origin of this odd verbal handshake.

So handily the duo have posted a brief animated video explaining the whole thing on their new blog.

So now we can all lean back, fully info-bloated about this particular topic.

Sometimes in life you want a pizza but don’t have one available. Othertimes they’ll be one in the house but you have it earmarked for use as a frisbee, or a hat. Well fear not readers as Randomlinkage comes to your meal rescue with it’s very own blindingly obvious Easy Pizza For People That Don’t Cook Too Good.

You will need:

• 1 x Large Naan Bread (A Garlic & Coriander one will add a twist)
• Approx 1/4 of a jar of pasta/bolognaise sauce
• Meat(s) for topping
• Other Stuff for topping (Try peppers/mushrooms etc.)
• Cheese
• Worcester or other spicy sauce of your choice
• Contents of 1 x Spice Weasel

What You Will Need To Do:

1. Get drunk, this will make the whole thing even more delicious.
2. Begin frying your selection of meat.
3. Whilst you are doing this, take the Naan bread and grill it a bit on one side, (this will be the bottom of the pizza)
4. Add any other veg-based material to the rapidly-becoming-more-delicious meat.
5. Keep checking the Naan so it doesn’t burn, you want it just crispy. When it’s done on that side flip it over and warm the other. (This might not necessary but it certainly didn’t hurt when I did it.)
6. Remove Naan from grill and place on a baking tray.
7. Spoon on your sauce, covering the whole surface of the Naan. You could add some chopped tomatoes at this point if you like.
8. Sprinkle on the meat, than veg items, ensuring a mathematically accurate distribution throughout.
9. Grate cheese over the top. Add Worcester or other sauce if you like.
10. Place in oven at approx. 180 degrees celcius, (please consult, then immediately disregard, your manufacturers cooking advice).
11. Check after 15 minutes, the cheese should just be starting to darken. If not, close your eyes for two minutes whilst humming the tune to the A-Team. Repeat until ready.
12. Enjoy food, remembering to garnish with contents of spice weasel, bamn!

So yes, it’s come to this, receipe ideas. But think of it this way, it’s a receipe so delicious it will almost certainly hasten your death very slightly, so an aces one then.

Feel free to post any other topping ideas. Contemptful silence will be received as confirmation that my cooking skills are already perfect.

You’re all educated, intelligent folk. You all possess a worldly amount of knowledge and wisdom. That’s why I don’t want to patronise you by spelling out the obvious message of the video below. I wouldn’t do that to you all, you’re above that, the issues and subtext of the video are clear for all to see. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.

I think we’ve all learned something very important there. I know I have.

Be safe readers. Be safe.

I am not planning on moving home in the near future, but if I do, I have found the perfect place to move to. I am basing this potential future house purchase on the name of the street rather than the property itself, which I admit is a bit of a foolish thing to do, but I’m sure you’ll come round to my way of thinking when you hear the name.

Ready? Ok, here it is… I want to buy a property on…

Knightrider Street, Central London 

I genuinely did blink a few times when I saw this. Knightrider Street. Once I’d overcome the emotions of incredulity and amazement I then started to imagine Knightrider Street. Part of me hopes that it’s law for residents of Knightrider Street to have to own a black K.I.T.T. car, wear a leather jacket and have fantastically permed hair, just like everyone’s favourite Michael Knight.

Unfortunately my mind tends to wander and within minutes of this startling discovery I was trying to locate other places that are named after popular TV. I stumbled across the small village of Blackadder in the Scottish Borders, Star Wars Path in Georgia USA and Scully (of X-Files fame) in wildest Canada.

Your classic Superheroes also get a mention. I discovered a place called S uperman in China, a Hulk in Holland and a town called Batman in Turkey.

Granted, Knightrider Street is the best of all the street names, but if you do suddenly find loads of cash down the back of the sofa and fancy a change of home, I hope that you consider one of the places above. A lifetime of comically named post will await you.

Just don’t move here. Just… just don’t.

(Alternative post title: We’re off to Button Moon)

Randomlinkage is here to address the burning issues of the day. Issues that affect all of us, like which biscuits you should have with a cup of tea and which bizarre Japanese gameshow you should watch on YouTube. What follows however is an even more important issue.

This very week, Miss S. observed me putting a shirt on, (fear not readers, for there was no nudity involved. I was merely trying on a new shirt over a t-shirt so I could return it if necessary). Certainly nothing here could spark a heated debate.

THINK AGAIN AND PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MINDS BLOWN.

Naturally as I did up the buttons on the shirt I began at the bottom and worked my way up. Miss S. took issue with this sequence. I was informed I was doing things “backward” and should of course start with the topmost buttons and work my way downward.

I was somewhat taken aback.

It has been some time since I saw another manly-man do up a shirt but I am pretty sure we all do things this way round. I can’t recall ever watching someone on tv or a film start at the top and thinking “hmm, how odd”. Miss S. was adamant, I should begin the buttoning at the top. Naturally, being a woman, she was unable to provide any rational explanation as to why this should be the case. I, being a kind and open-minded gent, offered to open up the topic to you, the millions of readers out there.

The question is simple, at what end do you begin your shirt and/or blouse buttoning but possibly more importantly, are people who do it the other way wrong in the head and should they be sent away for incineration?

Predictive text. Two words that will conjure up either favourable thoughts from the youth of today, angry thoughts from old duffers like me or uncomprehending thoughts from technophobes.

Predictive text is the essential tool for writing a simple text; it tries to guess what word you’re writing. I much prefer the ‘classic’ way of pressing each button a set number of times until the character you want appears, then moving on to the next. It’s a personal preference thing.

However, my new phone uses predictive text as standard and I have become baffled by it’s somewhat ’special’ dictionary. There are times, when either tired, careless or drunk, that you accidentally press a wrong button or two and the word you want doesn’t materialise. Instead you end up with some sort of nonsense word that doesn’t exist. The phone still considers this to be a legitimate word, because it would have thrown up a ‘word not in dictionary message’ otherwise, so I’d love to find out who created the dictionary for my phone. Stevie Wonder possibly, maybe an alien from Mars, or perhaps the National Scrabble With Our Eyes Closed Club.

The following words are, for some inexplicable reason known only to those good folk at Sony Ericsson, in my mobile phone dictionary:

• Lurdenrtinesmhessfiordi
• Slenglscieromn
• Stagensyinprlmuisbr
• Edinsyokeagtututu
• Meditrlcierntueckis

There are more, many, many more. But for what purpose? Why do these words exist? I did consider that they were foreign, maybe Russian or mid-European, but I doubt even they would have such random strings of letters. What a waste of time, effort and data. Think of all the data, all those 0’s and 1’s, that is wasted to store such feeble nonsense.

Give it a go now; get your phone out, write a text and hit some random letters. What appears? Perhaps you can come up with some fantastic new words that you never knew about. Try to drop one into conversation in the next 24 hours. “We’ve missed our targets by 25%, which I think you’ll find is absolutely Lurdenrtinesmhessfiordi.” “I’d like the chicken pasta and a bottle of Edinsyokeagtututu please.” “Slenglscieromn off!”

I find it bizarre that such an incredible piece of kit, which can allow mobile communication around the globe, is afflicted with such a stupid and pointless error. And if you don’t agree you can shove your opinions up your miltadouijcklllllodsyio.

Woe unto us all. Margaret Mountford, the white-haired lady from the popular telly show The Apprentice, has announced that she will not be taking part next year. Apparently she’s studying papyrology or something, which I’m sure is very lovely, but how can it be better than following around a group of numpties ripping their every move to shreds and being critical of them at any opportunity?

I know, it is hard to take in. This papyrology lark must be interesting to lure old Marge away from her position in the limelight. I’ll miss her, you know. I’ll miss her caustic remarks, her withering looks, the rolling of her eyes and her lovely white hair.

Still, with the interwebs, including Aunty Beeb here, getting all excited about her replacement, I thought we should throw a few names into the hat. So here goes, a lovely list… aah lists…

• Me, obviously. I’ve got white hair now, I’m not far behind Margaret.
• Mr Trench. He can look at candidates with a mixture of dispair and confusion, plus he can stroke his beard at them in a menacing way.
• Brian Blessed. ‘Nuff said.
• Grotbags. Yup, surely old greenface herself would be perfectly suited to a role where being critical of people is the primary function.
• Aslan the lion from the Narnia series. Ok, perhaps he wouldn’t blend into the background quite as much as Margaret but he’d be very good at vocalising his opinions. Plus HE’S A LION.
• Margaret Mountford II. Old beardyman Alan Sugar must have a few pennies put by, so why doesn’t he just clone Margaret and create another to sit beside him in the boardroom?
• Arnold Schwarztenegger. He’s scary looking, he can be critical of people, he can blow stuff up with big missiles plus he’s going to have a lot of time spare next year when he surrenders his leadership of California to someone else, so why not give him a try?

But even with those candidates in mind, let us not forget Margaret, who has bought all Apprentice viewers such delight and joy over the years. Thank you Margaret, you will be missed.

You still look like Father Ted though.

Just a quick post to thank the now deceased Shih Kien, not only for being such an awesome villain in Enter the Dragon but also for providing possibly the best photo for a BBC article about someone passing away, ever.

Break out the pointy gaudily coloured hats, the party poppers and those things that make a fun ‘toot!’ noise and unravel themselves when you blow into them, for it’s celebration time here at Randomlinkage Towers. The delightful Mr Trench and I have managed to cobble together 1000 posts, somehow keeping the attention of our five regular readers and also avoiding legal action.

That’s right, this is our 1000th post! One thousand thrilling and interesting textual morsels have been given to you all by our fair hands (mine are infinitely more fair than those of Mr Trench). I wasn’t sure that including this post, which is a post about other posts, should count, but never mind, we’ll live dangerously and include it in our figures.

To commemorate this event of unsurpassed brilliance, we shall take a walk down memory lane and reminisce about Randomlinkage. Some of you might be unaware of the original linkage, which was very much different from the one you’re reading now, so we shall cast our eye over it’s crappy appearance. We’ll see how the current version of linkage was born and what started the comedy ball rolling. At random junctures, Mr Trench may jump into the frame to interject a few observational morsels and then we shall both pop down a few words recounting our thoughts, perhaps chucking in a scattering of links to our favourite posts, or ones we thought were a bit pants, or ones that made no sense at all due to excessive consumption of alcohol/caffeine/special cakes.

So let us commence the dipping of our toes into the green and blue water of Randomlinkage’s history…

Read the rest of ‘Miracle of miracles, it’s post 1000!’

In the globally recognised song to the long-running cartoon series Scooby Doo, you’ll no doubt hear the following words:

Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you? 

It’s an obvious thought, but why don’t the ‘gang’ get Scooby Doo electronically tagged? Then, instead of having to wander about shouting ‘Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you?’ at the top of their voices and making their presence known to the obvious badly disguised villains, they could just use an electronic tracker to find him, thus making their lives a lot easier and their work as impromptu investigators more efficient.

Just a thought.

I’m sure you’ve been asked, or have asked of others, the question “If you had a Superpower, what would it be?” It’s a fairly standard question with thousands of answers. Shows such as Heroes (we won’t mention the second series though, ahem) and films like X-Men all promote the stereotypical Superpowers, such as flight, super strength, invisibility, blah-de-blah.

If, for some fantastical reason, a person did inherit some extreme powers, why would they have to fit to a recognised norm? With this in mind, myself and the childlike Master Davies from work have put the limited, miserable, almost non-existent powers of our minds together to think of some alternative Superpowers, ones that would fit into everyday life far less intrusively than a chap flying through the air at Mach3 or a huge muscly green thing lifting up a bus. So behold… the Superhero stars of the future!

The Consternator

Ever since birth, when his parents were deeply worried that they’d given their child the wrong name, The Consternator has had the amazing ability to give anyone a sudden feeling of consternation. One moment they are fine, the next they could be slightly concerned that they’ve left the gas on, or that they’ve missed someone’s birthday. They could even think that they forgot to put a car parking ticket on their car. A dangerous power indeed.

ClearSight

With a click of his fingers, troublesome contact lenses are transported painlessly and effortlessly into the eyes of the poor-sighted by ClearSight. No more hassle with holding your eyelid back to pop the lenses in, no more dropping lenses onto the floor, no more tears from prodding yourself in the eye, ClearSight simply exerts his power and gives the gift of vision. Plus ClearSight can remove contact lenses from eyeballs too, using his almighty power. If the lenses are disposable ClearSight will also deal with the recycling of the small plastic packets they come in.

Hairo

Hairo is a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman who, after prolonged exposure to hair products, has the power to control the hair growth of other individuals. One minute there could be a bald man, the next a full head of hair. Eyebrow hair, nostril hair, ‘down-there’ hair, no hair is safe. Plus hair can be retracted, to make the most hairy man, yes, even Brian Blessed, become as smooth as silk. Villains should beware Hairo - She’s had time to condition-her power…

The Incredible Park

From any speed, in any vehicle, on any road surface, in any weather, The Incredible Park can take a car, lorry or other vehicle and park it perfectly into a regular parking space in the blink of an eye. No broken wing mirrors, no paint scrapes down the side of the car, no insurance claims, just a perfectly parked motor. Not only that, but he can reverse park it too if required, in times of shopping, or if a pram needs to go into the boot.

OrnamentMan

Ornaments. Bric-a-brac. Shelf fillers. All these things, and lots more of crappy household items, are within the control of OrnamentMan. Using his power OrnamentMan can move, control, levitate, twist, flip and indeed twizzle ornaments and other regular household items as he pleases, plus he’ll dust underneath them and put them right back where he found them.

Dr Socks

After enduring a horrific accident in a Manhattan laundrette, Dr Socks has developed the power to ensure that no sock remains lonesome. If one sock from a pair is lost, Dr Socks uses his power to locate the missing sock and return it to it’s soulmate, re-establishing the bond between socks that only socks and Dr Socks know.

On-Schedule

Always on time, On-Schedule simply knows the arrival and departure time of every single mode of public transport in the world. No bus, train, ferry, plane, coach or hovercraft are out of his timetabling reach. Need to know when the 42 departs from Manchester to Wigan? Or when the pedalo is due to arrive back on shore at Lake Superior? On-Schedule will help you, plus he’ll be able to provide you with information that could get you money off your trip and maybe future journeys as well.

See? Spidey is papping his nylon spider-embroidered pants as he reads this and I hear that Superman has buggered off back to the Krypton Factor with Ben Shephard. In this age of political correctness these appropriate, correct, accessible Superheroes will reach out to the public in a way that Wolverine (too scary), Captain America (too camp) or Daredevil (too crap) shall never be able to. So grasp your new Superheroes, good ordinary folk, embrace them and they shall come to you in times of normal everyday occurrences!

I bet Stan Lee is quaking in his boots. He’s probably a bit cold or something.

The whole concept of ‘Art’ is very subjective. Some people think that ‘Art’ is a beautiful painting, lovingly crafted by one of the great masters of the past, others think that ‘Art’ is a cow sliced in half and popped into some formaldehyde. Two very different viewpoints.

The thing is, I do think that the holders of these viewpoints would come together to frown in consternation at a website with a page title of ‘When data centre cabling becomes art‘. I imagine that their thoughts would mirror mine, which went something along the lines of “That’s not art, that’s just a collection of photographs of neatly organised cables.”

Honestly, if that’s even considered to be ‘Art’ then there’s something very wrong. It’ll only lead on to beautiful art derived from the graphical representation of data being stored on a solid state drive or some debauched images of processors and how big their cores are. Vincent van Gogh would be spinning so fast in his grave that he’d be generating enough electricity to power The Netherlands for a year. He’d probably have enough body mass to provide more power if he hadn’t have chopped his ear off, the selfish bastard.

No, you can’t beat real art. Proper art. Tony Hart. Genius.

Hi-de-hi readers. Apologies for the lack of posts recently. The technical gremlins have been swept away from the computronics laboratory here at Randomlinkage Towers and our normal, fair-to-poor service can resume.

You may recall that whilst in the America-Land, on my wedding day no less, I went on a ride called the Big Shot. The Big Shot sits atop the Stratosphere tower. This alone is 921 feet high. Here it is. That spike you see on top is the Big Shot, which propels you even higher, launching you to a poo-inspiring height of 1,081 feet. In hindsight it was a stupid thing to do, what with my general fear of rides and amusement parks and suchlike, but I was clearly so full of joy that off I trotted, towards terror and discomfort.

I was not alone on the Big Shot. The wonderful Mr Dodd and one of our wedding guests called Stuart somehow ended up alongside me, ready to be fired upwards at stupid speeds before being dropped back down equally as quickly, and all whilst being protected by a red bit of foam and a small metal clasp. Aah, safety.

Needless to say, it was horrible. A sudden feeling of acceleration, then plummetation, whilst almost 1,100 feet off the ground. I mean, 1,100 feet, that’s, what, well, 2 miles or something, perhaps even 7 miles now I think about it, so we were all very, very brave. We thankfully came back down to level ground and staggered away, regretting our foolhardy actions. As is standard fare for rides these days, they offered a photograph of us mid-journey. Mr Dodd purchased two; one for himself and one for me.

It is this image that I would like to share with you today. If ever an image could display three differing emotional states that I think this is it. Click here to view the photograph of Mr Dodd, Stuart and I as we ‘enjoyed’ the ride.

• I am on the left. I look like I’m having a terrible time, probably because I was. A look of horror, fear, nausea and general unhappiness is evident upon my face.
• In the centre of the three is Mr Dodd, whose mind has clearly been so plunged into fear that it’s sent the poor lad delirious. Look at his face, his happy, smiling, insane, gibbering face; this is the face of madness.
• Stuart is on the right. Stuart looks like he’s watching Masterchef on a Tuesday evening and he’s very impressed with the oak smoked salmon and spiced lentils. To be fair, he is a bit of an ‘adrenalin junkie’ (proven by the fact that he did a skydive over Vegas a few days later) but still, he could have had the decency to look a little bit scared. Like I did.

There you have it. Three very different faces on three people who had just endured one uniquely exciting ride. As comically terrified as I look, and as slightly too-happy as Mr Dodd looks, this picture is pure gold because of the Stuart’s expression. Keep in mind that we are being propelled either upwards or downwards at four times the strength of gravity and he looks like he’s choosing paint colours for his hallway. Brilliant.

Still, at least I went on the ride, there are a few folk out there who didn’t even dare to do it. So even though I’ve been photographed whilst bearing the face of a man suffering from extreme constipation, at least I did it, so who’s laughing now eh? Eh?

Me, with my soiled trousers and embarassing photograph! Ha ha, how I’m laughing.

Ha ha.

For all you good folk out there in reader-land, here’s some worthwhile advice that you should heed. It’s free of charge. We are good to you.

The book called Yes Man written by Danny Wallace: An excellent read, full of humour, amusing happenings, poignant thought and at times deep reflection upon the way life takes you. It’s well written, cleverly put together and has some perfectly crafted written comic timing. Buy it and read it, you will enjoy it.

The film called Yes Man starring Jim Carrey: A very poor, unfunny, unwitty and generally forgettable film, not helped by some bad over the top acting (courtesy of Mr Carrey), a wafer-thin plot and characters you don’t give a toss about. Plus the whole moral of the book has been forgotten in favour of another Carey ‘pull a funny face and speak a bit silly’ performance. Well done Hollywood, you’ve ballsed this one up good and proper.

Randomlinkage insists that you read the book and not waste your precious hours watching the awful film. You’ve already spent enough precious hours reading these poorly constructed sentences, please, spend the rest of your day wisely. Thank you.

With very little fanfare and a minor amount of red carpet being rolled out, myself and the new Mrs Penge are back in Blighty, delighted to return home to a place where you don’t have to specifically ask for your tea to be served ‘hot’.

Instead of waffling on about everything in great detail (a treat I’m saving for another day) I thought I’d give you a nice, easy to understand list of statistics about my journey that should hopefully provide a useful summary. I can then elaborate on the more interesting items over the coming weeks.

Statistics from my trip to America-Land

Number of marriages: 1
Number of divorces: 0
Percentage increase of my waistline: 76%
New cholesterol level: High
Level of terror experienced upon driving a car through a red light: Immense
Number of times the sat nav in our car had to ‘recalculate’ our journey because we’d taken a wrong turn: 50 (ish)
Number of times an armed immigration officer threatened me with a gun: 1
Number of naked Hispanic men who taught me how to use a steam room and a sauna: 1
Number of naked Hispanic men who sat with me in a sauna: 1
Number of naked Hispanic men who I made intense eye contact with: 1
Number of immensely fat American people spotted: At least 5
Number of terrifying rides ridden: 1 (the Big Shot atop the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas)
Number of upgrades blagged from being on a Honeymoon: 2 (one hotel room upgrade (hurrah!) and eight free pints (double hurrah!))
Number of times I visited Hooters hotel: 1
Level of disappointment at finding the only bar in the entire Hooters hotel being served by a small man and not large-bosomed ladies: Substantial
Number of times I looked like an idiotic tourist whilst struggling to count out change from my wallet: 2
Number of nearly new fairly expensive digital cameras lost: 1
Number of replacement average “it’ll do the job” digital cameras purchased: 1
Number of ice-hockey games attended: 1
Number of ice-hockey games attended where the rules were understood: 0
Number of times stood up for the American national anthem and sang it with made up words: 1
Level of disappointment at realising that ’snow-cones’ are just crushed ice with a tiny, almost imperceivable amount of flavour: High
Time spent on a boat before I began to feel slightly ill: 30 minutes
Number of women who walked toward us and then suddenly made a strange monstrous sort of gurgling growling noise: 1
Number of McDonald’s ‘restaurants’ visited: 3
Size of a steak eaten at a fancy steakhouse: Vast
Size of bill for steak eaten at a fancy steakhouse: Vaster
Number of massive blue bears seen: 1
Number of small horses on big red chairs seen: 1
Number of enormous dust-pan and brushes seen: 1
Level of debt upon returning: High
Level of reluctance to return to work: Unmeasurable

This list is by no means exhaustive and I’ll have plenty of almost exciting USA-based posts to frantically type for a while yet, but this will do for now, I don’t want to cause haemorrhages in your brains from excessive tales of America and all her wonderous glory.

Nor do I want to bore you to death. We can’t afford the legal expenses a second time.