The Kevin Harrington Award for Post of the Week

It's time once again to give out the Kevin Harrington Award for Best Post of the Week. As you may remember, this award was named after the great Kevin Harrington who died in a bear attack after he left pastrami in his pocket. Rest in Peace Kevin. May all your bears in heaven be like Winnie the Pooh. Ha! POOH!

So who does this week's award go to? Drumroll please!

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No one. Ya'll sucked this past week. Just because we were too lazy, angry, depressed, drunk, sick, in jail to post doesn't mean our faithful readers can get away with not commenting.

I'm off again.

That's right, after 2 whole days of work, I need another holiday. So I'll see you on Tuesday when I get back from my Euro city break this weekend.

Why?

It's a simple question, but it's not my favorite question. My favorite question is: What seems to be the problem officer? "Why?" isn't nearly as entertaining as that question but it is perhaps the most introspective of all the questions in the world. Also, at some point, it becomes every small child's favorite question of challenging parental authority.

Go to your room!!!
Why?

We can't eat ice cream for every meal.
Why?

No we can't kidnap the Wiggles and lock them in the basement.
Why?

All of those quesitons have the same answer: Because I said so, you little bastard.

However, sometimes people point the ol' Why gun my way and ask me why I'm lazy. I usually respond, "Get the fuck out of my face, you whore spawned waste of skin." because I'm a surly bastard who long ago lost the will to live. But then, sometimes, later on, I'll think, "Hey....Why am I lazy?"

I suppose the easy answer is because it's easy. You know, path of least resistance and all that stuff. It can't just be that though, one of the causes of laziness is also the reason? Too circuitous for me. Do I have some character flaw that makes me lazy? Did my parents make my life so easy that I learned to despise all things that required effort? Is this all society's fault? Can I get a disability check for being almost too lazy to walk?

"Why?" seldom leads to an actual answer. It often leads to more and more disturbing and self analytical questions. In the end, after about 10 minutes of thinking, I'm horribly depressed and my brain demands beer. I end up no more informed than I was when that whore spawned, monkey fucker first asked the original question. Maybe that's the point. The purpose of the question "Why?" is not to come up with an actual answer, but to evaluate something abstractly and analyze your thoughts and feelings. Maybe the true nature of the question "Why are you lazy?" isn't "why?" but "Are you happy being lazy?" And I know the answer to that one....You're goddamn right I am.

I'm also back.

Some people are active people, they'd be bored silly spending 4 days doing almost nothing other than sitting around, reading, sleeping, playing games and watching the odd bit of Wimbledon when it wasn't rained off. I am not that kind of person so my recent holiday was absolutely brilliant. It was totally stress free, which is really great after all the house buying stress (live with your parents forever kids!), although I did drink an extremely large amount of wine. Luckily it was in wine boxes so we have no idea how much we actually did drink.

Next time I have a weekend where I can sit around and do nothing looks like being sometime in September. This is not good.

I'm back

That's right. You read it. I'm back. Was I ever gone? I don't know. Why was I gone? I don't know. What am I going to blog about today? I don't know. Is this post really just wasting space? You betcha.

I'll tell you what I do know:

Holiday!

I'm afraid there won't be any updates from me in the next few days. I'm going to be spending the next 5 days generally lazing around in a big house in the country. I'll probably be sitting around inside reading old Harry Potter books in preperation for the new one coming out as it seems like it's going to rain the entire time I'm away. If I can get off my fat arse there is apparently a table tennis table and snooker table there which I can beat my brothers on. Yeah, right, they'll thrash me. I was pretty good at Table Tennis, we had a table in our garden when we were kids, but they are both younger, thinner and fitter than me.

The pain of a non-functional remote.

Do any of you remember an ancient technology from the 1980s, a world before DVD recorders, TV cards in computers, hard drive recorders, TIVO, Sky+ and all that wonderful stuff? It involved recording television onto magnetic tapes and was called a Video Cassette Recorder or VCR?

Well, I have a horrible admission. I am still living in that 80s world. Not because I'm sitting around playing nerdy computer games and listening to Iron Maiden... although I am doing that too, but because I'm still stuck in the world of the VCR. If I lived in a perfect lazy world we'd have a wonderful Sky+ machine with the one button record, series link and all that other great stuff that makes recording your favourite programs utterly trivial. Unfortunately this isn't the case. Currently we're in rented accommodation and getting the landlord to agree to put a Sky dish on the flat is a pain. Cable services have been really crap and annoying with awful customer services until recently. I had 3 years at a place with cable and nothing but problems with billing etc. Also, we are moving shortly and I can't be bothered setting it all up twice, plus there's the minimum contracts and all that crap. We could just get a DVD recorder or hard disk recorder but it seems like a waste of money if we're going replace it so soon with the holy grail of laziness the HD Sky+ box.

So now I have the excuses out of the way. I'll let you know the current situation. In our flat we have 2 video recorders. Mine, a very cheap one that's over 10 years old and has some kind of power issue that means it can't rewind or record without getting a bit stressed out, groaning for a while and then powering itself off, and my girlfriends which is newer but similarly cheap. Her VCR works fine except for the remote control which has decided to stop working. It's not the batteries, we tried that. Taking a remote away from a Video Recorder is like taking me away from the internet it becomes incredibly stupid and only able to perform the most basic of tasks. So we can play, record, stop, fast foward, rewind, eject and change the channel up and down, and nothing else. We can't program the thing to record, if we are going out and want to record something later in the evening we just have to find a long tape, hit record and hope the tape is long enough to keep recording long enough to record the show we want. Luckily the VCR is stuck on Long Play (we can't change it so Short Play) so we've got up to 8 hours of recording. Forget recording anything if you are away for more than a day. You're just missing that show.

Doing anything to fix either machine would be more expensive and more effort than just buying a new one, and I can't even be bothered to do that. How did people survive before videos and TVs had remotes? At least we can change channels on our freeview box so we never need to change the channel on the VCR. I don't really mind most of the hassle of the non working remote though. Having to fast forward the video to get to the start of the show, recording 4 hours of crap before the show you want are both fine. The thing that really annoys me is that you have to get up to fast forward through the adverts! 4 times in a typical hour long show I have to get up, crouch by the machine and hold down the ffw button for 45 seconds or so. ARGH!

Don't worry, I found a solution. Now, we record stuff upstairs, on my girlfriends video that you can record on, and then transfer the tape downstairs to watch the program the video with the working remote where we can easily fast forward through the adverts. Even in the harshest, most deprived of environments laziness can find a way.

Oh yeah... I do have a computer with a TV card and theoretically you can record stuff onto that but it's really complicated to set it up, I don't have the right cables to allow me to watch TV on that and simultaneously in the bedroom without changing cables over and and the timer stuff on that seems to be really crap, especially if you have any kind of powersaving stuff set up on your computer.

Packing

As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm going to be moving house in about a months time. This is a real pain, and really, if you can get away with it the lazy way is to not move house ever. In fact, if you can stay with your parents for ever you can probably get really cheap rent, food bought and cooked for you, all your washing done and loads of other perks. You just have to put up with the "you treat this house like a hotel" lecture several times a week. Also, it's not ideal for meeting girls.

Anyway, it's 10 years since I lived at home and during that time I've lived in 5 or 6 different places. One thing that's always true is that moving house is a real pain. You have to find somewhere to move to, sort out all the admin crap that goes with it and get fleeced for a small fortune by every party along the way. If that wasn't enough, once you've done all that you then have to do the actual moving.

On my last move my girlfriend was moving to where I live, from London, and it was a 2-3 hour drive, so we bit the bullet and hired professional removals men. They were the cheapest guys we could find, real south london wide boys with what looked on the outside to be the worlds crappiest old removals van, but they were brilliant. They cleared my girlfriends place, made the 2-3 hour journey to my flat, cleared all my furniture and got us all loaded into the new flat in a grand total of 4 hours. All for a meagre £300. An absolute bargain. This time, even though we're moving about half a mile, I was adamant that we'd get removals people again. Sure we've had loads of offers of help (thanks!) and we could have hired a van and done it ourself, but I've done that several times before and it's really hard work and really slow.

Almost everything is sorted and now the only bone of contention is that I'm basically planning to pack everything on the day before we move, because I know I really can't be bothered to do anything like that unless I'm really under pressure, but my gf wants to pack things bit by bit over the next few weeks so that she knows we're ready. Tricky. I wonder if I can persuade her to use the removals companys professional packing service..

The lazy way to stay updated - part 2.

I stumbled upon AddThis.com earlier today on another blog. You quickly set up an account, give it the URL of your blog feed and it produces a button, like the funky one at the top, which pops up a box where people can subscribe to your blog using almost any reader. They also have a widget for bookmarks. It's loads easier than having all those buttons that I used to have. Which goes to show, I should have spent a bit more time researching, and less time trying to figure it out for myself in the first place.

Play a game yourself? Why bother.

You can just build a robot to do it for you. Some euro-nerds have built a robot to play Guitar Hero for them. They call it Guitar Heronoid.

Some people read because they are too lazy to think.

The quote in the title of this piece, by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (as quoted yesterday) is a great example of someone using the term lazy in an accusatory and derogatory manner even though he's spot on.

The first and most obvious point is that learning about something by reading another persons work is an absolutely fundamental requirement for human progress. If every person had to start from scratch and develop their own basic form of mathematics, engineering, chemistry, recipes to cook, sporting techniques etc. we'd never achieve anything. It's much faster to read someone elses conclusions than to perform experiments yourself.

As I mentioned before my job is in IT, specifically web development. It's an area where there technology is moving forward at an incredible rate, it's virtually impossible to keep on top of every new technology and every new development so you have to read about what other people are doing in the area you are interested in, and then if/when you find out that what you are doing is pushing the boundaries, you have to start working the last little bit out for yourself.

I find the same is true in almost every area. Computer games are another. I quite like RTS* games. These days with loads of games being multi-player online you have to devote a huge amount of time practicing to learn the skills to become competitive, I obviously can't be bothered with that though. You can learn as much by reading a couple of guides that someone has written online as you can learn by spending hours experimenting and pouring over statistics tables. Who wants to spend time doing that?

The one caveat of this is that you do have to think a little bit as you are understanding what you read, but that's not too hard as we know, you can't be truly lazy unless you are bright enough to get away with it. I think the second quote by Einstein is much more accurate, but anyone who's read anything about relativity knows that sometimes reading can involve a great deal of thinking indeed.

So saving your thinking energy for interpretation and thinking about the last little bit of a problem is a sensible and useful thing for everyone to do. We should really say, "Some people needlessly waste time thinking, when they could just read."


*RTS = Real Time Strategy. It's a stupid label, but I didn't make it up. Basically the genre involves building bases which you then use to build armies which then get slaughtered in 30 seconds by a 12 year old from Germany who laughs at you as he logs off.

The Kevin Harrington Award for Post of the Week

It's time to give out the inaugural Kevin Harrington Award for Best Post of the Week. This prestigious award will be handed out each week (hopefully each Monday unless I forget again) to the visitor with the most insightful, profound comment of the week.

The award was named after Kevin Harrington, who heroically sacrificed his life so that this blog may live on and continue to shape the world. May his spirit ever guide us. Hold on, I'm hearing that Kevin Harrington might not actually be dead. We may need a fact check on that. I really need an editor.

So without further ado, I give you this week's winner.....Anonymous! Anonymous' post on June 5 in Mike's now legendarily bland Subway Ordering post. Such a gripping tale of innocence lost in the dark, and faceless heart of America. Either that or it's a cautionary tale of a mentally challenged man launching an invasion of inconvenience on the normal folks of that same dark and faceless heart of American.

Lazyview thanks you Anonymous! The people of Subway probably want to kill you and your family, but so goes life.

Good luck to all our future commentators. Which has just made me think of tater tots. I'm hungry.

Lazy Quote: Einstein

The following quotes were sent in to me by Joe in response to my previous quote.

"It seems the cleverer you are the more lazy you are." says Joe, of course, we at Lazy View would modestly agree with that. He then provides the following examples

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein 1879-1955

Some people read because they are too lazy to think.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German physics professor and scientist 1742 - 1799

We can't help but agree with Joe's conclusion "even einstein couldnt be bothered to come up with his own original quote. a lazy sod, albeit a clever one." Very true! Thanks Joe! Joe also provided a link with loads more quotes, but I'll keep that quiet so I can steal more from the site in the future.

Speaking of contacting us, we hope to have a Lazy View e-mail address set up soon, depending on when we can be bothered.

Lazy Quote: Agatha Christie

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention - invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976), An Autobiography, 1977

Absolutely spot on Agatha! How many times have we, as lazy people, spent hours devising an easier way to do a ten minute job?

The ways I am lazy

Have you ever been too lazy to get up to eat?

Have you ever been too lazy to sit up to drink causing you to spill your drink all over yourself, yet you still refuse to sit up?

Have you ever been too lazy to clean something, say Tupperware or dishes or maybe even clothes, so you just throw it out instead?

Have you ever been too lazy to cut your grass for such an extended period of time that the Mexicans maintaining the golf course behind your house actually come and cut your grass because it's such a disaster?

Have you ever been too lazy to get dressed and you just wandered around your house naked all day?

Have you ever been too lazy to close your blinds?

I've been all those things and I was too lazy to search for a story to link to, but at least I'm wearing pants this time. They're not clean though.

Volunteering, helping and generally being nice.

Laziness Theory is like any great science, a subject of great debate amongst the experts. Like any other area new ideas are treated with a great deal of scepticism and even anger. With that in mind, I'm wary of posting this idea, because I know how controversial it is. This is the highly controversial idea that actually volunteering to do stuff can end up allowing you more time to spend doing nothing. It's as unintuitive as most of quantum physics and if you bring this up in a more traditional Lazology department people will generally look at you in mouth open disbelief. It's really not that silly. As Syl commented on my Dishwasher story sometimes being lazy takes some work, whether it be learning to use a dishwasher or writing a bit of code that'll do some boring repetitive task for you. I think that volunteering and spontaneously offering to help people out can actually make life easier.

I work in IT, and if anyone else reading this also works in IT you'll know that we get asked a lot of questions all the time by less IT literate people about how things work or for software or ISP recommendations etc. The questions often seem quite trivial to us but if you help someone out with their problem they are normally very grateful and will remember your help. If you go out of your way to help friends and acquaintances with a problem in an area you really know and understand you'll find that you'll get offers of help in areas that you are less skilled, saving you loads of time and effort. It's a win, win situation for both parties because everyone gets help with something they find hard, in return for giving some basic advice in something they find really easy. Some people might take advantage and never give anything back, but that's ok, you'll more than make up for that with the people who do help you in return. When volunteering to help you should do so for the right reasons and not put conditions about you getting anything in return, the friends and goodwill you build up will end up helping you loads in the future. The general rule here is that if you are nice to people, they'll be nice to you and your life will be easier.

Another much more calculating and cynical time to volunteer is when you know that an arduous task is coming up in the near future. In that case you should always get in early and volunteer for an easier task. You look keen and some other poor sap gets to do the difficult task.

Embrace your Laziness

I've never been religious but if I was going to be then I think I'd have to become a Buddhist. I have just found an article detailing the different types of laziness and the Buddhist view on how to be happy we really have to understand and embrace our laziness. On this blog we tend to focus on what this article calls "Comfort Orientation". This is not just about the best way to lie on your sofa whilst watching TV, it's more about the fact that what you really want to do is lie in front of the TV. So on the day that the Metro this morning shouted out at me that Brits were the hardest working people in the developed world let's take a few minutes to meditate, relax and leave work early. It is a Friday after all.

Stair Lift

The Japanese robot we featured the other day may have no practical application for us but today we've had an announcement about a new robot from the US Army called the BEAR. It's a piloted robot designed to rescue casualties from the battlefield and carry them long distances to safety. The photographs on the BBC news report show a BEAR robot carrying a giant GI Joe to safety. Let me draw your attention to this very important statement: "It can even tackle stairs while carrying a human-sized dummy."

That's right everyone, the US Army have developed a robot that can carry you upstairs to bed at night.

Great Moments in Laziness

Queue up the fanfare everyone, we've got a new feature! And if you don't know what fanfare is, it's that heroic sounding trumpet powered musical blast that normally accompanies a sports highlight show, or the music I play when I sucessfully tie my shoes.

You know how it goes: First the music, "BAH DAH DAH DAH DAAAAAAAAAAAH". And then the highlight. "On this day in sports history, Babe Ruth hit 3 home runs while eating 2 hot dogs, drinking a bottle of whisky, chopping down a tree with his bare hands, eating a bear, and banging 3 different women. One of whom may have been a bear." Previous sentence translated for the European Crowd: "On this day in sports history, George Best scored a hat trick while smoking 14 fags, drunk off his arse while racing his Jag to the local massage parlour. And we hopefully don't mean Ray".

Us unathletic types will never know such glories. Instead we bask in the warm glow of a different kind of glory. That of urine when we're too drunk and lazy to make it to the bathroom in the middle of night. Also, we bask in the comfortable arms of Aergia. She's so easy. And that's the way we like it.

I'm sure I had a point around here somewhere, ah yes, there it is. So, for all the lazy twats out there, I hereby present the first in a sure to be long series of post, (as some of our smarter readers may have guess by the title) ....GREAT MOMENTS IN LAZINESS!!!!!!!

Today's great moment: I give you *BAH DAH DAH DAH DAAAAAAAAAAAH*: The invention of the Television Remote Control!!!!! Exclamation points for everyone!!! The first television remote appeared in 1950. It was called the Lazy Bone. Huh huh, I said bone. What an awesome name though. The Lazy Bone (ha! Bone!) had a cable that connected to the TV. It was able to change the channel AND turn the TV on or off. You were fucked on the volume though. The Lone Ranger was coming through all up in your ear hole. Unfortunately, due to the tripping hazard of the massive cable, the device never really caught on. Thank Aeigia that technology continued its relentless march forward towards the mighty wireless remote. But the Lazy Bone(r) came first. And laid the groundwork for the channel surfing and ass grooves we all enjoy today. Here's to you! You've made me at least 15 pounds fatter and my insurance company is incredibly happy about that.

I thought about carrying on with the history of the remote, but if I did that I'd lose my journalistic integrity of laziness. Go read something you illiterate monkey humper.

Dishwashers

A dishwasher should be a wonderful tool, a magical time saving gadget that you put your dirty dishes in and, a time later, they emerge, clean and shining brightly. Gleaming like they do in the adverts for dishwasher tablets. It should be one of the greatest inventions ever to appear in our kitchens. It should be improving dozens of relationships around the world as arguments about who has to do the dishes are removed from your life.

Alas, it is not so. A gadget with such magical promise is compromised almost beyond all usefulness.

The first major lie is that you don't have to wash up by hand any more. This is the biggest lie of all! We have a dishwasher, but after almost every meal we have to wash stuff by hand. Ironically the biggest culprit here is non-stick pans. Another invention that's supposed to be a boon to the lazy but even on the rare occasions when non-stick pans say they are dishwasher safe you find that they get discoloured and damaged in dishwashers. You can't put wooden stuff in, the dishwasher will blast the logos off mugs and glasses, it'll damage any valuable china you might have. In all probably about half the stuff you regularly use can't be put in the dishwasher!

Still, you can simply put the remaining half of your dirty dishes in the dishwasher and they just come out clean, right? Oh, how wonderful that would be! No, in reality you have to piss around for ages trying to fit your perfectly normally shaped dishes into it. Have dishwasher manufacturers never seen a bowl? Maybe I am a bit of a freak because I regularly use them. I guess I should explain in case Mr Hotpoint is reading. A bowl is like a plate, but it has a deeper impression in the middle which stops liquids from slopping over the edge. I find that they are good for eating soup or breakfast cereal out of. Sometimes I even use them to keep things in in the fridge. I can't easily put them in the dishwasher though. There's no suitable space. How dare I have something wider than a plate that I want to fit in there. Don't even think about trying to put something plastic and lightweight in there. It'll get blasted around the dishwasher and block your nozzles within seconds. Even if you don't have anything inconvenientlty shaped you still can't fit your stuff in unless you have a number of cups and plates (no bowls) that corresponds exactly to what the dishwasher manufacturer designed the dishwasher for. You've had a few people round for drinks and only have 2 dirty plates but 40 dirty glasses to wash? Unlucky.

Once you've finally managed to fight your stuff into the dishwasher, having scraped it so much you could practically have washed it yourself already, you find that it doesn't even clean it. The fact that you've freakishly used a bowl to eat your breakfast out of and wanted to wash a chopping board means you've blocked one of the nozzles somewhere and half your mugs are still dirty.

And after all that, you still have do unload the damn thing, and if you can't be bothered, you get the dirty washing stacked up until someone can be bothered. It's not just dishwashers that suffer from this kind of problem. You look at these newfangled robots that hoover your floor and mow your lawn and you find they have similar flaws. Sure, they can mow your lawn, as long as it's perfectly flat and the grass isn't too long. They can hoover your house, but they can't go up and down stairs and they can't lift the sofa up to hoover under there (not that I'd do that either).

Despite all this, I still can't believe that the people who used own the house I'm buying put in a kitchen a couple of years ago and didn't put in a dishwasher! The fools! Didn't they think about all the extra washing up my girlfriend is going to have to do?

Be a Regular

Readers, I am ashamed. With all this talk of getting your orders quickly and efficiently I forgot the laziest and best way. Become a regular at an establishment, preferably a small independent one where the owners or same small group of staff are working every day and soon you will get to hear these two beautiful words.

"Your usual?" *HALLELUJAH*

It doesn't matter how complex or idiosynchratic your order is, once it is your usual it is reproduced the same every day without any need to say anything other than "Yes please." Sure, you have to have exactly the same thing every day but you are a valued regular customer and treated as such. I was reminded of the power of being a regular this very morning. We have a nice little independent coffee shop on my way to work. It's run by a very nice Turkish couple. Anyway, I've been stopping in there for a cappuccino every day for the last week. It's damn tasty coffee and I need it in the mornings at the moment, plus I have to literally walk past it.

Today for the first time I had the *HALLELUJAH* moment. He knew what I wanted when he saw me coming and he was starting to make it as I walked through the door. He still asked me whether I wanted chocolate sprinkles (yes) or sugar (no) but he'll learn that too. He's also learnt that in the morning I am incapable of any sensible conversation about whatever crap is on the local radio and has given up on the small talk. I feel a bit bad, he's a nice guy, but it's not my fault I genuinely can't talk coherently in the mornings.

I can't compete with my little brother though. He was once so well known at our local chip shop that on one occasion, when my mum went to order fish and chips for the family, she was told by the proprietoress when she ordered my brother's usual (quarter pounder burger) that "he's already been in today". Yes, he was such a regular that any member of his family could order his usual for him, and not only that but the nice fast food lady was concerned for his health.

So if you are lazy, support your local independent establishments, not because of some anti-globalisation bullshit, but because they'll go out of their way to remember what you eat or drink and do things that make your life easier. This works in bars, coffee places, fast food outlets, anywhere the people working the counter have their livelyhood utterly dependent on the business succeeding.

The Future of Laziness

I was tempted to label this post something like Crazy Japs Strike Again, but on the off chance that one of the few remaining Pearl Harbor survivors reads this blog, I didn't want to cause a flashback induced stroke. Also, some people might think "Japs" is vaguely racist. So let's just stay away from the Japs comments. It's going to be tough, because I'm going to talk about them and the lazy way is to shorten as much as possible. For the sake of political correctness I'll try my best to be good, but I promise nothing. If I fail, I don't really care. No one likes me anyway.

Anywho, our wild friends in the Far East have long been on the cutting edge of the future of laziness. "What the hell are you talking about, you fat tub of shit?" I hear you ask. Well, robots of course! Robots are the future of laziness. And the Japs (oops) are building so many crazy robots they've already started building Zion. Just in case. One day in the future we'll have robots doing everything under the sun. We'll either be slaves polishing the chrome asses of our new masters or we'll have so much free time we'll all be so content with life that we won't even have to get out of bed. That's the pinnacle of laziness right there. The Ultimate Dream.

Unfortunately, the newest robot our Ninja Warrior loving comrades have created is this monstrosity. Weird, huh? Damn right it is. This kind of robot brings up so many questions. Why a giant, baby robot? Why are those Sumo loving samurais wasting time making slightly realistic metallic demons when they could be building specialized robots that will do my laundry, drive me to work, service me sexually, and paint my toenails? Do we really need human robots? I think not. Replicating a human with robotics is incredible difficult. In the meantime all this effort would be much better spent giving me one robot for one job. Now get to work my rice loving, karaoke singing, electronic wizards...my laundry is piling up big time.

Paging Kevin Harrington, Kevin Harrington where are you?

Kevin, you have the great honor of being the first legitimate person, other than the twats who run this place, to post a comment. We want to honor you, and this moment by creating a weekly award named after you. The Kevin Harrington Comment of the Week award will go to the person who, shockingly enough, has the best comment of the week. With your permission of course.

To all 4 other people that read this site, I expect competition to be fierce and without mercy. Comment early and comment often, and this great honor could be yours.

People who exercise thinner than people who don't?

Some stunning and shocking research has been reported by BBC News. They've concluded that if you exercise you can eat more than someone who sits around doing nothing all day and not get as fat. I'm not sure how this revolutionary news will change our lives. I guess the scientists would suggest we should actually get out of the car and use FFOM 1.

Opportunity Knocks

I found this article on another blog yesterday and it relates quite well to us I think. For those that can't be bothered to read the article features Doug Richard, formerly one of the Dragons on Dragons' Den, talking about the way luck plays a part in business success. It's a concept that should be familiar to anyone in the world of the lazy. Sure, we want to spend our time doing nothing, but sometimes opportunities come up and you have to move fast to seize them. I guess everyone has heard the joke about the guy trapped in a flood?

A guy is caught in his house in a massive flood, maybe it's New Orleans and he's too poor to get evacuated with the rich folk. So anyway the flood waters are rising and when the water starts to fill up the ground floor of the house. Then a man in a rowboat rows past and asks "Need any help?"

But the guy in the house said, "Nope, the Lord'll take care of me!" Anyway it's a long joke but a few other people come along and try and help him but every time he says "Nope, the Lord'll take care of me!" Eventually the guy drowns and goes to heaven and when he gets there he says "God! Why didn't you save me?" and God says, "Well, I sent two rowboats, the navy and a helicopter!"

Anyway, for the lazy it's extremely important that you take your opportunities when they come along, after all, you're not out there making your opportunities for yourself are you? When I was at university the uni had a policy that in the first year it'd endeavour to provide all first year students with a place in university accommodation, but in your second and third years you were pretty much on your own and had to find private accommodation. I got together with a couple of friends and we agreed we'd find a house to share. Now, of course, we were really lazy and did nothing whilst everyone else spent a great deal of time searching and dealing with dodgy private landlords.

A lot of time passed and it was getting perilously close to the time we really needed to have somewhere sorted, and we'd done literally nothing. We were going to end up with a complete shit hole in the middle of nowhere, miles from college, which is pretty disasterous. Then we got word from a friend of ours about a great opportunity. The university actually had some houses that it managed on behalf of private landlords for second and third years to rent. You had to get in really, really early to register on their lists to get to pick from these and obviously we hadn't managed it. At this late stage though, there were still a few houses up for grabs, and we got wind from a friend of ours that the houses were going to be released to the general population on a certain day, so we got down there early and nabbed a brilliant house, miles better than anyone else that we knew had got, cheaper, and only an 8 minute walk from my bed to my lecture theatres. Once again being lazy had paid off handsomely.

So, I totally agree with the article, the secret to business success, or achieving your adequacy with ease is that when you get a bit of luck like this you have to make sure you take full advantage of it otherwise all the benefits of your lack of effort will slip through your fingers!

Fast Food Intricacies

Here at LazyView, we love fast food. Because it's fast(ish) and we don't have to make it. Unfortunately, sometimes fast food isn't easy as it should be. Most times it's because of the people behind the counter. Other times it's because people don't know how to properly order. Now I have a great bond with those people behind the counter, they're almost certainly lazy as hell. Let's face it, 95% of people don't work at fast food restaurants because of the great career opportunities.

Not that they aren't fine people mind you. No. Quite the opposite. They're just out there looking for some money with the least possible effort. We here at LazyView wholeheartedly support that.

No, I'm here to talk about ordering. As Mikey Mike and the Funky Bunch alluded to in an earlier post, ordering at a fast food place can be tricky. Luckily for you, I'm here to help. After all my years, and my 3 heart attacks, ordering at Bojangle's, I've finally figured out that there are two distinct Fast Food Ordering Methods. One for the drive through, and one for inside the restaurant. Using both of these will allow both parties to maintain maximum laziness, with minimal work, resulting in maximum efficiency.

FFOM 1: Interior Restuarant Method.
Pros: Higher likelihood of a correct order. Exercise. People watching.
Cons: Have to get out of car. Have to be around other people. No car radio. Slower.
Methodology: This is the method discovered by my platitudinous colleague entirely by accident while this advanced theory was under development. The problem is, when people are face to face, they automatically expect some form of structure conversation. Look at the following example where you and your homie enter a Bojangle's for some fine Southern nourishment (and possible heart and bowel problems):

Employee of Doom (and Laziness): "Hi. This for here or to go?"
You: "For here."
Employee of Doom (and Laziness): "What can I get you?"
You: "I need a filet biscuit combo."
Employee of Doom (and Laziness): "French Fries and Ice Tea?"
You: "Yeah"
Employee of Doom (and Laziness): "Anything else?"
You: "Yeah. Can I get an extra order of fries."
Employee of Doom (and Laziness): "Is that it?"
You: "No. I also need a quarter white."
Employee of Doom (and Laziness): "What sides?"

And so on and so forth. See? It's not an order. It's a legitimate conversation. If for no other reason that the make up of the human psychology. When you're face to face with a person you're on a level playing field and things like eye contact and body language come in to play and the full complexity of human interaction is on display. Even when you're just trying to stuff your face with some greasy shitfood. There's no magic to it. And there's no way around it.

FFOM 2: Drive Thru
Pros: Usually faster. In car entertainment to fill waiting times.
Cons: Planet raping (possibly a pro) via carbon monoxide emissions. Only one line, so it CAN also be slow. High likelihood that your order will be more fucked up than 3 year old after a shot of whisky.
Methodology: This method of ordering offers a completely streamlined experience. Since you're talking to an inanimate speaker there's no need for eye contact or those natural conversational pauses that normally occur when two people face off. There's no give and take in the conversation. The people manning the register on the other side of this speaker are trained to keep listening until you stop talking so fire away with your complete order, only pausing between complete sets of food. For example, you and your dogg are ordering at a Bojangle's drive thru.

Speaker of Doom (and Static): "Welco to Bojangle's. Can help oo?"
You: "Can I get a filet biscuit combo, French fries, Ice Tea, and an extra order of fries?"
Speaker of Doom (and Static): "Will tha be al?"
You: "I also need a quarter white, 2 biscuits with jelly, Ice Tea, and some Bo Rounds."
Speaker of Doom (and Static): "Th'll be nine sixty plurh. Pull round."

Pure speed right there. I love it. Plus I don't have to stand in line. I can sit on my ever expanding ass and listen to Earth, Wind, and Fire...I mean TI. Assuming Consuela and her microphone picked up everything you said, you're golden. I can't stress it enough...Do not wait for Consuela to confirm any part of your order. You will start talking over each other and things will get strange and awkward from there. You further increase your chances of a fucked up order and you may even end up on a date with Consuela. Consuela is not pretty. Trust me.

Conclusion
Both methods have their merits. You just have to know what you're getting in to. If you go into a restaurant you have to use method 1. Ty method 2 and you'll end up like poor Mikey. Repeating yourself like a parrot with a stutter. When speaking face to face people don't like to be ordered around, even though that's exactly what you're supposed to be doing. They like to spoken to like human beings. Not inanimate objects. Damn them all to hell.

Inverse Laziness

I get the train to work every morning. Well, every work day morning. Unfortunately so far I haven't been able to find an alternative to a normal job to provide me with an income to provide for my adequate lifestyle. So every morning I turn up at the station, buy a ticket, get on the train and go to work.

Wait, I hear you cry, you buy a ticket every morning? Can't you get a season ticket or something? Well... yes, yes I could get a season ticket. I even did that once a few years ago. I ended up leaving it in my trousers when I washed them thus destroying the ticket. Considering I was single at the time and subsequently was quite smelly and washed my clothes as infrequently as possible, this was quite unlucky. Anyway, since that brief flirtation with season tickets I've never bothered again. It's actually really easy in theory, all I need to do is get a photograph, go and sign up at the station and then I can just buy 1 ticket a month rather than 1 a day. There are a couple of photo machines in the station, and as I said, I pass through there twice a day so it's not even out of my way. I think I can even buy my renewals from the automated ticket machines now rather than having to queue up to get to the ticket counter. It'd also save me money. The danger is you go to all that effort, and then destroy it again.

It's not just me who does this, I know at least a couple of other people do, or have in the past, bought their tickets daily instead of getting a season ticket. It's quite bizarre really. I guess the daily 2 minutes getting a ticket feels like less effort than getting season ticket once a month. I wonder if this is one of those times where I'm actually going to have to take some action to sustain future laziness?

Success vs Adequacy

I was having a search around the world of Laziness on the internet and I came across the following site. This is the blog of a guy, Fred, who has a similar philosophy to ours in some ways. His website, and book, is the Lazy Way to Success and he talks a lot about how you can be successful without expending much effort. He talks about some of the problems all lazy practitioners will experience. For instance as he points out Lazy isn't really the right word in all situations. In a work environment I'd definitely say I was "efficient" because I am getting the maximum output from the minimum input. Someone in a management position might say I was Lazy because I wasn't expending the minimum effort all day long. My view is that if I get the work that needs doing done in a fraction of the time no-one should care, right?

D (no-one calls him that, he's neither cool or a gangster) mentioned in passing in his post earlier today that a much simpler goal is to aim for adequacy. We'll probably talk about this in much more depth in the upcoming weeks and months but it's worth giving you an overview. What people basically want out of life is a few basic requirements: a nice roof over your head, enough to eat, a comfy bed, someone to sleep with, as much booze as you can drink and a massive widescreen TV with surround sound and millions of channels. Once you have those things, why try any harder? The lazy man should never strive for success when adequacy is so much easier. It doesn't matter how easy Fred's concepts for achieving success are because using the same techniques to achieve adequacy requires much less effort. Being rich might sound good, and if something comes along and makes you rich without you doing anything then great, but it's really not necessary in any way.

I should note that, as my girlfriend will almost inevitably read this post, that one area of my life I'd never be lazy in is my love life. Ah, who am I kidding, she knows me too well. I was just lucky that I ended up with the girlfriend equivalent of something great coming along and making me rich without me having to do anything.

Laziness and You

People often say to me, "Hey D" (they say D because I'm totally cool and a street gangsta, also they're lazy and don't want to say my whole name) "How can I make laziness work for me?" After a hearty laugh and a slap on the back/shoulder area I sit them down, attempt to steal their wallet, and drop knowledge as they say.

Laziness can work in many ways. For example: When you're at the club, don't aim for the hottest chicks in the building, they're way to much work. You'll need to dance and dance well. You'll need to buy drinks. Probably those expensive foofoo drinks those high maintenance girls always need. And you'll need to be witty and charming and handsome. Good lord, I'm getting tired just thinking about it and I haven't even mentioned potentially fighting off meatheads for their attention. Instead, go for the middle of the road girl, slap the beer goggles on, and get to work. There's much less work involved on all fronts and you're more likely to score.

Remember: When you overachieve people expect you to be great all the time. When you're adequate, you never let anyone down.

I think it's time for a nap.

The lazy way to stay updated

If you're interested in reading this blog regularly, you're probably as lazy as us and quite likely can't be bothered to remember to check back here to see if we've written something new. With that in mind, I've spent a few seconds searching the web to find the buttons to add this feed to whatever RSS reader you use. Luckily I found one blog that already had a whole load of different buttons to add their feed to a whole bunch of readers so I could just use them. Brilliant! Whatever you want to do on the internet, someone's probably already done it. Get good at searching!

If you have a blog, feel free to view the source of this page and steal the code for all the buttons yourself. If whatever reader you use isn't represented you'll have to do it manually from this link. Sorry!