Keith Lard’s Diary

Modern lifestyle busy. No time. Communication reduced to 140-character blipverts. Follow @keithlard on Twitter.

• “Fed up with reading the news as it is always gloom, misery and disaster. Is there a newspaper featuring bunnies? Or just a big smiley face.”
• “So, should I get a Lotus Elan S2 Turbo convertible in British Racing Green, or a girlfriend? I’ve a feeling it’s one or the other”
• “The Avalanches are like the cheerful Portishead”
• “Worried, had the hottest south indian curry and it seemed mild. What am I becoming.”
• “Everyone at the party looked a bit blank when I talked about click-through ratios, PPC and AdSense. One person thought I said ‘absinthe’”
• “Invented a new game I like to call ‘Belgian Roulette’!”
• “Each person takes it in turn to choose a beer, and then everyone drinks one of those beers. Like an alcoholic book group.”
• “How disappointing was “Jaguar Adventure”. Man I thought he was going on an adventure with a Jaguar car. Instead it is about some animals.”
• “It would be pretty awesome if I was a top weapons designer and international playboy, with a hott redhead assistant. And could fly”
• “Working on Cribbage Corner a bit more. Man that is an obsessive compendium of information about a very obscure card game.”
• “Fajitas: marinade cubed meat in tomato passata, black pepper and chilli powder. Cook, add stir fried sweet peppers and serve in tortillas”
• “The nice man in Kris Wines gave us free Duvel glasses! It is London’s best beer shop. Not just because of that. http://twurl.nl/mjkikm”
• “Bush: Iraq words like “bring ‘em on” and “dead or alive” may have misled people to think I’m not a man of peace. http://twurl.nl/6owted”
• “Planet keithlard is dying. Too hot to do anything but stay in a darkened room listening to M83. Fab new album”
• “Ate too many lambs, washed down with tasty McEwan’s Champion. It is traditional barbecue overeating, so do not offer me a waffer-thin mint”
• “British summer algorithm: IF weather = “sunny” THEN GOTO barbecue ELSE complain(“Can you believe this terrible weather?”) END”
• “Wearing shorts, a MacBook in a laptop rucksack, and a black T-shirt proclaiming my affiliation to a cult web comic. Geek, much?”
• “Risotto: fry mushrooms, leek, garlic, beef, herbs, in olive oil, stir in arborio rice, gradually add white wine & chicken stock as absorbed”
• “When buying DVD box sets, be sure not to mix up ‘The Complete Jericho’ with ‘The Complete Jethro’”
• “Finished guardian xword in 10 mins. PERSONAL LIFE BEST. Celebrating with a beer and a Lost.”
• “Pairing socks. I quite like it actually. I am creating tiny pockets of negative sock entropy.”
• “Hottest chicks off of TV’s ‘The Wire’. Russell. Pearlman. Greggs. Man I ain’t mind gettin’ me some hott police right now. Knowm sayn.”
• “Playing with R. I have done a least squares regression! And a posh graph. It is more fun than Eurovision, though I do not know what that is”
• “New toaster! A basic one since I do not need the advanced functions such as… you know… making… NINJA toast. (You can get those.)”
• “The nice thing about chatting up Austrian girls is they do not know when you have accidentally compared them to a Terminator.”
• “Affiliating and monetising! That is an exaggeration in fact as I have not made any actual monety up to this point. I have typed a lot though”
• “Scrambled eggs: fry chopped chorizo and black pepper in smoking hot butter, add whisked eggs, stir lightly until almost set, serve on toast”
• “Me: Patrick O’Brian’s “Desolation Island”. Tube neighbour: the Qur’an. Everyone else: Metro.”
• “Wearing a stripey black & yellow Cornish rugby top. I look like a massive friendly bee! That eats crisps.”
• “Due to a chain of circumstances I don’t feel the need to go into, I now have lavender scented pants!”
• “‘Ostracise’: the new fitness craze that’s sweeping Britain. It is basically like dancercise, or boxercise, only with an ostrich.”

Well I just got through reading The Book Thief, which was terrific! And I have actually stolen it, as my friend that lent it to me does not realise that she is not going to get it back. There is an irony there.

The narrator is Death, which makes a change from the usual gin-sodden female thirtysingles of chick-lit, and it is all about a little girl that loves to read. I can identify with this as I used to be a little boy that loves to read, and the only thing that has changed since then is the size of the boy, and the amount and quality of the pornography on his computer. That is by the by.

It is set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany, which is not as heartwarming as it sounds; bad books are always set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany and one family’s saga of love and loss spanning six world wars. But it is Hitler’s Germany seen through the eyes of Adrian Mole; Liesel, the book thief, is more interested in penny dreadfuls, the boy next door, and playing football than Kristallnacht. She does have a Jew in her basement, but when you are a kid, everything your parents do seems normal. Then, embarrassing.

Over time we come to know the characters in Liesel’s ordinary little town, though given who is telling the story, the outlook for them was always bleak. But it is not a story of horror or Holocaust. The Book Thief remains upbeat; the magic of reading and the kindness of strangers light up a little corner of Germany in Hitler’s shadow. I normally only like books about people blowing things up or going into space, or, better, blowing things up in space, so it is a rare mark of approbation for me to declare this book a “keithlard’s Must Buy”. Or steal.

• books

Twitter is down (addickts everywhere are jonesing for their fix right now. Not me obviously.)

But a blog entry seems a big job compared to a 140-character tweet. That text box is massive!

Also, it seems like you have to say something important and worthwhile, where Twitter just asks you ‘What are you doing?’. I will pretend this is Twitter. Well, I had some tacos for dinner earlier and watched Top Gear (it was the one where Richard Hammond races an Aston Martin against a German man on roller skates wearing a jet engine). Then relaxed in a bubbly bath listening to Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, and reading more of We Need To Talk About Kevin.

I was going to affiliate that book but I realise I find it too distasteful to actually recommend to anyone. It is well written but just unrelentingly sour and depressing from the start, then unpleasant and frightening, and finally sickeningly violent and disturbing. Like American Psycho without the fashion tips.

I now need to read something innocent and cheerful, like Paddington, except I would be worried that Paddington would start pouring acid into Mr Gruber’s eyes or something. But then they would chuckle about it afterwards over a mug of cocoa.

• books

What the hell was that movie about. Still, Daniel Day-Lewis does have an exciting moustache in it. I think I am going to grow one of those moustaches on my face.

My campaign to become an internet tycoon continues, although I have not killed anyone with a bowling pin yet, that is only on the Advanced Affiliate Marketing course. I think I would be quite good as a tycoon. If I’m honest, I just like to say the word ‘tycoon’.

Still it is a good movie. I understand it is available on DVD to pre-order at Amazon, if you click the picture of Daniel Day-Lewis’s moustachioed face. I do not say whether you should do this or not. As an honest broker I remain neutral.

Please buy it or they will hurt my family

• movies

I used to have a web site full of intresting facts about cribbage, Britain’s most popular game after happy slapping and Celebrity X-Factor. I used to play it with various girlfriends over the years, when on reflection, I should really have been having sex with them instead. Still, I renewed my enthusiasm for doing web sites by going on the Wordtracker course, so here it is, ta-da, the relaunched

Cribbage Corner
http://cribbagecorner.com

So go and have a look, even if you do not like cribbage. In fact, especially if you do not. I enjoy the thought of you suffering due to looking at a web site that is not intresting.

Keithlard. Hurting users in an attempt to live off meagre AdSense revenues.

I know corlimey says I should get affiliate marketing paymints, or be soundly beaten, for mentioning Twitter so much. It is fun that’s all. Here is some of the golden 140-character aphorisms, bons mots, quips and sallies that you missed by not following @keithlard:

• “The good thing about Dickens is that the names tell you all you need to know: eg hero = Cheery Lightheart, villain = Sir Dryasdust Grindface”
• “Drug boat haul enough for one spliff per person in UK” Alright! Looking forward to receiving mine http://twurl.nl/maxbhr”
• “Memo to self: use the phrase “punk-ass bitches” in conversation.”
• “It is rather embarrassing to have to ask for no spoilers to ‘Oliver Twist’. It has been out for 170 years.”
• “If you are lost in a maze of twisty council estates, remember satellite dishes always point south. Fact!”
• “I quite fancy seeing a 3D movie like in that interview with James Cameron. Or any movie. If I can eat my own weight in popcorn I’m happy.”
• “Opera Mini. Now browsing the Web on my phone is less like painful, unnecessary dental surgery. http://www.operamini.com/”
• “Aldi is like a parallel universe, full of brands you’ve never heard of. What year is this? Who’s the president??”
• “Twitter: for once I’m the first among my friends to jump on a bandwagon. I get to ride up front and pretend to be the driver! ”
• “Man do not be behind me in line when i am chatting up pretty checkout girl. I can pretend to forget my pin for hours.”
• “Spicy salami, Provolone cheese and pesto basilico on focaccia, and a coffee. It’s not a bad old life if you don’t weaken.”
• “The plan: ironing, yoga, accounts. The reality: beer, crisps, TV. My imaginary life is doing great!”
• “Secret shames: Monster Munch. Avril Lavigne. The Body Shop. Ladette to Lady. Looking at pens.”
• “The surly bookshop assistant’s aura is projecting: not another fucker that wants to buy books.”
• ”’…at breakfast, yoghurt - a glamorous substance he knew only from a James Bond novel.’ reading Ian McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach’.”
• “Twanking, n. Coining annoying Twitter neologisms, eg ‘tweetup’, ‘dweeting’, ‘twittable’, ‘twitterverse’, ‘twitterrhea’.”
• “Buying herbs, cheating on my girlfriend waitrose with that cheap slut morrisons!”
• “the assassination of a bacon sandwidge by the coward keithlard”
• “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Man that was awesome. Normally I do not like things that are heartwarming. I just left my comfort zone! :D”
• “is flying helicopters while eating crisps! Do not do this yourself.”

It is 800 feet high, built from 27,000 tonnes of steel, and is visible across twelve counties. One Canada Square in Canary Wharf will probably not be the UK’s tallest skyscraper for much longer, as several very high buildings are under construction in London. So enjoy it now in keithlard’s lovingly crafted photergraphs.

• architecture
• photos

It is a bit like primitivepeople who has been keeping a diary of the books he has read this year. I have gone one better and kept a photo book diary!

You can click on any of the books to see a bigger pickture. If you like any of the books, or if you like me, why not comment to say how much you like the book, or me.

• books

It is only for a laugh really, as I am happy enough with Susan and a lot of crisps. But this is what it says on a dating site:

About me: Hi, I am like Henry the cheerful vacuum cleaner, except that I am no use for getting stubborn dust out of carpets. I do have a smiling face though and a long flexible plastic nose. The result of a childhood accident. Not really of course, the power of suggestion. I am quite a successful IT consultant with the usual big car, solid gold house ekcetera, but there is one thing computers can never provide. Love! Unless it is one of those sex robots that you hear about, in which case they can. But those robots are expensive, and there are question marks over electrical safety. So I am looking for a real human girl, at least until sex robots become more affordable.

About my match: After some bad experiences, I have decided I am looking for someone with mostly her own hair and teeth, and a human face. Some monkey faces considered, if it is a good looking monkey.

Do you like wandering aimlessly around London looking at blackbirds and drinking pop, or sitting on the sofa laughing at comical television programmes. If so you could be one of my chosen five girlfriends. I am not a Mormon. Just greedy.

• love