Yesterday upon returning to my room some bad news awaited me. I had been fraped. Although it was on a large scale, the content was moderate, if effective. This got me thinking. Exactly how do you frape someone enough to create some proper amusement but not enough to lose your friends by informing their close family that they enjoy having male genitals up every orifice.
Firstly, I do not condone cyber bullying because - as many overweight middle-aged women will tell you in special government backed support groups - cyber bullying is a big fat no-no. However, fraping, when conducted on an appropriate scale, is bloody hilarious. If you plan to engage in this activity I recommend following these guidelines:
1) Nothing gross. The most common frapes involve statements like "I love cock" or "oh no I have chlamydia" - usually worse than that but you get the idea. Frankly I've laughed more at stubbing my toe than reading statuses such as these. It makes you appear like an immature fourteen year old and shows no originality or sense of humour.
2) Keep it realistic. The best frapes are ones that could have been written by the person you are targeting but still makes them look like a complete oaf. This works particularly well when it is something very arrogant, e.g. stating the person is top of the class or detailing exam marks. It is guaranteed that this is more embarrassing for the target.
3) Target their fantasies. When I was fraped yesterday the theme they applied was Harry Styles because I never stop going on about how I "know" him. (Side note: I do not fantasise over him, in fact I would like to get some of his chinos and stupid loosely fitting scarves and feed them through a paper shredder). This could involve changing profile pictures, cover photos, signing up for fan pages etc. This doesn't have to be believable I guess but it still makes the target look like a bit of a nutter.
4) Wide audiences. The main target is to get everyone to see the frape. One fantastic idea then is to write on large facebook groups with some kind of stupid request i.e. yesterday's was getting the entire college freshers' group to subscribe to a Harry Styles Appreciation group.
5) Tricks of the trade. Finally, there are some real cracking ideas that you have probably witnessed. Firstly, adding friends with very young girls makes them seem like they should be in jail. Furthermore, liking photos from some reasonably attractive girl that were added years ago also creates the pervert impression.
I have tried to elucidate the key aspects of a frape. They should be realistic, cunning and hilarious. It should not be over-the-top but just enough so that it gives you and even the person you have fraped a good laugh.
Monday, 5 March 2012
Thursday, 25 August 2011
facial hair...a debate
When I went to V music festival this summer I expected a few things to happen. For example, I knew I would end up looking like I'd been run over by a lorry and sloshed in chip fat; I knew there would be several hilarious incidents involving people falling over and I knew I'd hate and love the music in equal measure. What I didn't expect was a new found love for facial hair.
I have not shaved now for almost a week and frankly I'm thoroughly enjoying my new "rugged" look. Previously, I'd shaved every day for four years but now the shackles of shaving have been relinquished and here I am born free so to speak. The advantages of this are numerous: I save money on foam and razors, I save time in the mornings and I open up the opportunity for beard banter.
Beard banter can be had in the pub or on social networking sites and is both riveting and amusing. We've had it all: comparisons with Gandalf, Sikhs and a plethora of questions on what I could design with my new hair. If everyone has a bald face you sometimes just don't know where the next joke is coming from.
However, as with everything there are disadvantages. Within the last 24 hours my face has become just a tad itchy and I fear it could be a terminal itchiness for the beard. And the misery doesn't end there. I fear it's going to become too long and look ridiculous. Unfortunately, people with full on beards just look like they should be transported back to the sixties and given some hard drugs. Very few people can get away with this ambitious approach and therefore I am left with the stubble that must not keep growing. Inevitably the razor will soon be back.
The beard and I have been through some good times and some bad...well actually we've just had a ball. Yet, it seems our romance is doomed. Like a Shakespearian tragedy it seems I must kill my love and wash it down the sink. But for now we're enjoying our final hours together before the storm.
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
I don't like golf and golf certainly doesn't like me
I like sport. Football is a high speed thrill; tennis a showcase of skill and mental aptitude and rugby a mélange of physical strength and speed. Then we get to golf. Golf is a sport full of unwritten etiquette with point number one generally being: you must earn over £50,000 and own a pair of terrible trousers.
The cause of my disgruntlement comes from my attempts to play the sport. I confess I am pretty poor at all sports (other than ironically crazy golf, which should be entitled to its own channel on Sky Sports it's so amazing) however golf really did go one step beyond poor with me. Firstly, I had to get dressed up for the occasion. Out of the window go jeans and polo shirts without a collar and in come ludicrous trousers and very plain collared t-shirts. For some strange reason fashion has run away from golf like a gazelle runs away from a lion. This was not the only problem. I didn't have any golf shoes, I didn't have seven thousand clubs with a minute difference between each one, and I didn't have a lifetime supply of golf balls each with a life expectancy of five minutes. Enter stage left: my Dad. Unfortunately my Dad likes golf like a heroin addict likes heroin. He has everything from a strange ball retrieving contraption to a multitude of strange golf jumpers. Anyway we set off to the pitch and putt course to start me off nice and simple.
We arrived at the golf club where clearly they had banned any cars below the value of £30,000 and trundled off with enough equipment to last us a fortnight at the top of Everest. Even as we walked to the first tee I was puzzled as to why on earth we would need a towel when I certainly wasn't planning to go swimming. That was when something happened that was frankly ridiculous. As we passed (at a very safe and long distance) an old codger on the left who was lining up to hit the ball my Dad stopped me as though I was about to enter Chernobyl. We waited for him in deathly silence to perform some practice strokes before he hit the ball wildly to the left. It turns out that in golf you have to keep absolute silence whenever you are within a kilometre of someone taking a shot. If we'd have moved past him he probably wouldn't have even heard us and for crying out loud it's an amateur Sunday morning activity not the US Open.
Over the next nine painstaking holes I realised I could not hit a ball more than 50 yards, which was problematic when I had to hit the ball 100 yards on the first shot to have a realistic chance of par even on the pitch and putt. I then proceeded to walk here, there and everywhere searching for my ball whilst reflecting we probably should have taken the sun cream rather than the towel. At every step I was forced to analyse a selection of criteria to choose a suitable club, take ten practice swings and then make a complete fool of myself in the execution. Thankfully, my crazy golf skills helped me in the putting respect but the driving part of the game was particularly ropey.
By the seventh hole I'd had it. Stress levels had hit the heights as I was thrashed hole by hole. Tees had been snapped, balls had been lost and a joke that was cracked referring to handicaps and my ability at golf being handicapped was not appreciated. Upon my return to the car I certainly was not in the mood for a drink with Timothy Fairborne-Snob in the Clubhouse and was glad for a quick escape.
I have not since returned to golf. I do not ever intend to return to golf in fact. Instead I laugh politely at my family's golf anecdotes, which are tedious affairs that always involve a quite bad shot or a quite good shot with unexceptional consequences. Snore. Personally, I found golf slow, snobbish and like a dodgy curry it certainly "disagreed" with me.
The cause of my disgruntlement comes from my attempts to play the sport. I confess I am pretty poor at all sports (other than ironically crazy golf, which should be entitled to its own channel on Sky Sports it's so amazing) however golf really did go one step beyond poor with me. Firstly, I had to get dressed up for the occasion. Out of the window go jeans and polo shirts without a collar and in come ludicrous trousers and very plain collared t-shirts. For some strange reason fashion has run away from golf like a gazelle runs away from a lion. This was not the only problem. I didn't have any golf shoes, I didn't have seven thousand clubs with a minute difference between each one, and I didn't have a lifetime supply of golf balls each with a life expectancy of five minutes. Enter stage left: my Dad. Unfortunately my Dad likes golf like a heroin addict likes heroin. He has everything from a strange ball retrieving contraption to a multitude of strange golf jumpers. Anyway we set off to the pitch and putt course to start me off nice and simple.
We arrived at the golf club where clearly they had banned any cars below the value of £30,000 and trundled off with enough equipment to last us a fortnight at the top of Everest. Even as we walked to the first tee I was puzzled as to why on earth we would need a towel when I certainly wasn't planning to go swimming. That was when something happened that was frankly ridiculous. As we passed (at a very safe and long distance) an old codger on the left who was lining up to hit the ball my Dad stopped me as though I was about to enter Chernobyl. We waited for him in deathly silence to perform some practice strokes before he hit the ball wildly to the left. It turns out that in golf you have to keep absolute silence whenever you are within a kilometre of someone taking a shot. If we'd have moved past him he probably wouldn't have even heard us and for crying out loud it's an amateur Sunday morning activity not the US Open.
Over the next nine painstaking holes I realised I could not hit a ball more than 50 yards, which was problematic when I had to hit the ball 100 yards on the first shot to have a realistic chance of par even on the pitch and putt. I then proceeded to walk here, there and everywhere searching for my ball whilst reflecting we probably should have taken the sun cream rather than the towel. At every step I was forced to analyse a selection of criteria to choose a suitable club, take ten practice swings and then make a complete fool of myself in the execution. Thankfully, my crazy golf skills helped me in the putting respect but the driving part of the game was particularly ropey.
By the seventh hole I'd had it. Stress levels had hit the heights as I was thrashed hole by hole. Tees had been snapped, balls had been lost and a joke that was cracked referring to handicaps and my ability at golf being handicapped was not appreciated. Upon my return to the car I certainly was not in the mood for a drink with Timothy Fairborne-Snob in the Clubhouse and was glad for a quick escape.
I have not since returned to golf. I do not ever intend to return to golf in fact. Instead I laugh politely at my family's golf anecdotes, which are tedious affairs that always involve a quite bad shot or a quite good shot with unexceptional consequences. Snore. Personally, I found golf slow, snobbish and like a dodgy curry it certainly "disagreed" with me.
Monday, 20 June 2011
The virtues of doing nothing
This year I was offered the opportunity to complete the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award. I leapt at the chance to pick up a prestigious award when my daily life already meant I fulfilled much of its criteria (volunteering at a youth club and playing the piano). There was however one catch. Namely physical exercise. In the past sport has ended up with me being very sweaty, very humiliated and very angry but I figured that I must return to the steely grasp of the P.E. department to fulfil my aims.
To complete my physical exercise programme I had to visit the gym once per week and measure my improved fitness, which sounds immensely simple - but nothing could be further from the truth.
The gym is an intriguing concept. Apparently for a few hours work per week you can transform yourself from a flabby kitkat slobbering mess into a sleek muscle machine. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different. If anyone knows anything more dull than running towards a wall for half an hour I'd like to hear about it. Aside form the mundane running machine there is the ridiculously elaborate muscle making machines, which work on things I've never heard of, the cross-trainer (used solely by arthritic pensioners) and a couple of large plastic balls that seem to have come along just for the ride. Honestly, who would balance themselves on a large ball in full public glare!
Anyway kitted in ill-fitting gym clobber I made a b-line straight to the gym with the glimmer of hope I might enjoy myself, go regularly and suddenly be some sort of mythical hunk in my year group. Things went badly right from the off. I parked myself on a bicycle machine and started pumping muscles that had only just realised they existed. I did however notice a problem - this was about ten times duller than riding on a bicycle out in the open air. Instead of being accompanied by sweeping greenery and refreshing breezes I was surrounded by a lot of plastic and posers. My boredom became quite explicit when I began cycling so slowly that the machine switched itself off. After five years I turned to look at the clock, which informed me I'd been there for twenty minutes. My prospects were bleak.
I needed to play for time. I spotted the prime opportunity: water. Anyone in the gym needs water so I spent around ten minutes messing around by purchasing the bottle, drinking the contents and then filling it up again slowly. By this time I needed the toilet so that was another couple of minutes well spent. Now I was back in the gym and the running machine beckoned so I obliged. I share the same observation here as I had with the bike machine, which is why run in the world's worst room when you can run outside. After ten minutes I'd had my fill and still had to somehow waste twenty more minutes in the artificial torture chamber. There was no way in hell I was climbing aboard one of those muscle machines so I had some more water and left.
I'm not obese, in fact I'm not even overweight. I occasionally kick a ball around with friends and eat fairly healthily. I certainly do not play sport regularly. Therefore I need the gym like I need an Aston Martin - it would be nice but it's not happening and that doesn't really matter. I shall fully accept my mid-life beer belly and sit alongside similarly chubby ex-gym monkeys knowing I spent my time having a life rather than running to nowhere, cycling to nowhere and rowing to nowhere.
To complete my physical exercise programme I had to visit the gym once per week and measure my improved fitness, which sounds immensely simple - but nothing could be further from the truth.
The gym is an intriguing concept. Apparently for a few hours work per week you can transform yourself from a flabby kitkat slobbering mess into a sleek muscle machine. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different. If anyone knows anything more dull than running towards a wall for half an hour I'd like to hear about it. Aside form the mundane running machine there is the ridiculously elaborate muscle making machines, which work on things I've never heard of, the cross-trainer (used solely by arthritic pensioners) and a couple of large plastic balls that seem to have come along just for the ride. Honestly, who would balance themselves on a large ball in full public glare!
Anyway kitted in ill-fitting gym clobber I made a b-line straight to the gym with the glimmer of hope I might enjoy myself, go regularly and suddenly be some sort of mythical hunk in my year group. Things went badly right from the off. I parked myself on a bicycle machine and started pumping muscles that had only just realised they existed. I did however notice a problem - this was about ten times duller than riding on a bicycle out in the open air. Instead of being accompanied by sweeping greenery and refreshing breezes I was surrounded by a lot of plastic and posers. My boredom became quite explicit when I began cycling so slowly that the machine switched itself off. After five years I turned to look at the clock, which informed me I'd been there for twenty minutes. My prospects were bleak.
I needed to play for time. I spotted the prime opportunity: water. Anyone in the gym needs water so I spent around ten minutes messing around by purchasing the bottle, drinking the contents and then filling it up again slowly. By this time I needed the toilet so that was another couple of minutes well spent. Now I was back in the gym and the running machine beckoned so I obliged. I share the same observation here as I had with the bike machine, which is why run in the world's worst room when you can run outside. After ten minutes I'd had my fill and still had to somehow waste twenty more minutes in the artificial torture chamber. There was no way in hell I was climbing aboard one of those muscle machines so I had some more water and left.
I'm not obese, in fact I'm not even overweight. I occasionally kick a ball around with friends and eat fairly healthily. I certainly do not play sport regularly. Therefore I need the gym like I need an Aston Martin - it would be nice but it's not happening and that doesn't really matter. I shall fully accept my mid-life beer belly and sit alongside similarly chubby ex-gym monkeys knowing I spent my time having a life rather than running to nowhere, cycling to nowhere and rowing to nowhere.
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