I wish you a happy Thursday

My word! At 2.32, such was my pleasure that my fez began to quiver excitably some inches from my head!

I hear some excellent news from monkeyworld

Yes, it is true, M. Jackson is no more. I will not get into some sort of chit-chat about whether or not I care* for fear of filling the comments box with the barely-literate words of either angry Jackson-detractors or adoring fans, but I am very pleased to report that Bubbles is, apparently, still "a carefree monkey .... interacting with friends, eating well, taking cover when it rains."

Shamon indeed.

* Answer: not much, but this is brilliant, whether you were that bothered about him or not.

I wish you all a happy Canada Day

Yes, it is Canada Day. Canada's national anthem is quite good; in the English version, it is described as "the true North, strong and free", which I think is an excellent way to describe Scotland. The French Canadian version is, as far as I can tell, always sung by Celine Dion. (Note: the French-Canadian pathologist with whom I live is clutching his sides with mirth as I play it; not all French-Canadians love Celine and spend every weekend watching Cirque du Soleil DVDs, whatever they may think in Toronto.)

Canadians are likely to vote in Michael Ignatieff as Prime Minister at some point, I think, which is good - because I remember him mainly on BBC 2 talking about books and being an "intellectual". I think it's a good sign. Also, their current Prime Minister (whose name you are unlikely to know unless you are a Canadian), is a right cock, and a boring one at that.

Anyway, Canada has been very kind to me so far, and although I am often homesick (for reasons related to things like this or this) I am, on the whole, glad I am here.

(And no, I don't know what these people were doing jumping out of a plane with a maple leaf parachute either, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.)

I am experimenting with advertising

Please forgive me whilst I try and earn one cent a day from carrying hideously unattractive advertising on this web-blog. With any luck, most of it will be for prosthetic monkey limbs, wedding photographers and Greek statue suppliers which would be amusing in and of itself, but already I feel grubby, and already my web-blog (to my eye anyway) looks cheaper; the web-blog equivalent of, say, Leslie Ash after she had her lips done.

Let me explain: regular readers will be aware that I give back to society every day by working in an advertising agency (an industry in which one does well not to take oneself too seriously). As we spend quite a lot of time giving people on advice on, for e.g., "web strategy" and suggest they do things like "banner advertising" and what-have-you, I have decided to see how it works "live" and from the consumer-interface-first-hand-experience/experiential widget clickthrough type dimension. (So far, so good: I press some buttons and then apparently the Google will send me a cheque. Result!)

In the meantime, if you want to know what Andrew Lloyd-Weber and Clive Owen thought of this blog and how much Will Self likes me, scroll up and down a bit on the right.

Pip pip

NWM

**UPDATE** I literally couldn't bear it, and took them down. If you missed it and give two hoots, it looked like this:

I watch wedding porn, Pt 1

I have been despondent of late. In the olden days I would leap from my fur-lined monkeycot and rush to my computer, fez awry and absinthe at my paw, and tap and tap until juice squirted from behind the space bar. But these days seem to have passed, and instead I watch my 'site traffic' fall (from 23 readers per day to 7) and with it, my hopes of a blog-rich future.

Instead, the kidz are having a go on Twitter. "OMG!! I just broke my nail!!!!", writes Demi Moore. "At the pub having a pie and a pint of mild", writes Cat Deeley. "Eating Jammy Dodgers and reading Andy McNab", tweets Alain de Botton. "Called it Twatter by mistake", I write with one hand, whilst simultaneously updating my Facebook status and searching for pictures of dogs in lobster outfits.

The once-constant source of my joy - this web-blog and its remarkably attractive readership - is left neglected and dusty, as I fill my days with other considerations, including 18 inch bum-wipers, enormously fat upside-down cats, and wedding porn.

Yes. On the internet there lives a group of ladies whose lives are, it seems, devoted to planning their weddings. They are special ladies with high standards and special decorative needs and I have, to my shame, been obsessively reading their writing and looking at their pictures. It is very informative, and I have learnt a lot about how to plan a wedding in the twenty-first century.

Here, for your amusement is a "compare and contrast" type entry, in which I compare the wedding norms (as defined by wedding ladies on the internet), vs. what I am doing when I get married on 17th October to a French-Canadian veterinary research pathologist. I will have to do it in two parts, otherwise your heads - like mine - will explode.

Proposals must be romantic

Ideally involving getting down on one knee, flowers, crying etc, or perhaps a piece of animation that takes 20 people 3 months to make, audiences, Italian restaurants, more tears, rings hidden in fortune cookies, mystery trips away for the weekend, Ferraris, etc, and a lot! Of exclamation marks! About the whole! Thing!

My real-life proposal moment:

We are in a restaurant where they do not stop giving you food, including candyfloss in a box and over a hundred different types of cake.

Pathologist: So, do you think we should get married then?
Me: Did you just propose?
Pathologist: Yes.
Me: OK then.

The bill is put on our joint credit card. I am reminded that the pathologist is a French-Canadian and marriage is, to him, "counter-intuitive" (i.e., they don't do it much and think people that do are a bit weird); he is doing this thing for me.

Engagement rings are really important.

As any fule kno, all men must spend at least 12 months' salary on a ring and it must be presented in a box with said gentleman down on one knee with a rose in his gob. Ideally, music will also be playing. You have to worry about the 4 Cs and all of that and it must be very shiny, and perhaps made of diamonds made of old coal.

According to the web-blogs, it is also a really good idea to have it custom made on Etsy or have something 'vintage' (i.e., old) 'reworked' according to your own design (e.g. the face of Andrew Lloyd Weber, celtic knot-cum-arabic logo, etc).

Note: the amount of money the person who proposes spends on the engagement ring is directly related to how much he likes you and if he is able to chop wood, protect you from wolves, pay the bills, etc.

My engagement ring

Pathologist: I have not got you an engagement ring. I thought about it but I thought it was a waste of money.
Me: Oh. OK then.

I wear my great-grandmother's ring instead. This has a double effect: I get to wear something that I like and wouldn't otherwise wear, and I do not have to have the following conversation:

Nosy lady: If you are engaged where is your engagement ring? Is your fiancey a stingy motherfucker or poor or stupid or something?
Me: I do not have one because the person I am marrying is a particular type of person who is very generous, but does not believe in spending the same amount as a car would cost on a ring that I will keep getting caught on things.


Engagement shoot

This is vitally important and must feature pictures of shoes, a shot in a field, umbrellas, balloons and jumping in the air. (If you are portly you probably better not have an engagement shoot in case you do yourself an injury.)



























































































Gentle cupping is also 'de rigeur' in North American engagement photograph sessions:















Our true-life engagement shoot conversation (today, c. 11.12am):

Me: Oh my fucking christ! We haven't had an engagement shoot. We have to have an engagement shoot otherwise we will die.
The pathologist: Who do we shoot?

Coming next: invitations, wedding inspiration boards, calligraphy, dresses, bridesmaids, food, decoration and the answer to that eternal question: do I have the cat as a ring-bearer, or just put her in a matching frock?


**UPDATE**: The pathologist (who has just read this post) fears that I have made him sound like "a terrible man". He is in fact the best of all men, which is why I am marrying him. He is also very handsome, mends things, does all the administration (including paying bills and every bit of negotiation and paperwork when I was buying a flat in Montreal), is enormously patient and very generous with himself and his money .

These things are harder to do all day, every day, than buy an expensive ring. Fact.