Recipe: Thunderhonkey

A delicious alcoholic shot.

There's not much to this one, it's all the rage at parties and I bet after reading this you'll give it a go yourself...

Thunderhonkey. I know the name sounds a bit racially dubious, but it actually stems from my housemate Jamil mishearing the word "spider". I don't exactly understand how that works, but then... he is a little bit mental.

The premise behind this one is to get drunk whilst enjoying a flavour sensation. Or, it was just what was to hand at the time. I think someone had left half a bottle of sambuca after a party (lets face it, no-one intentionally BUYS that stuff) and we were sat at the kitchen table with some shot glasses. On the table there was the key ingredient... a jar of jalapeño pepper slices.

Naturally, a slice was added to each shot. The two contrasting flavours kind of work together, as they each make the other seem "not as bad".

A variant using a red chilli slice was later invented, known as a Bleeding Thunderhonkey. The effect is much the same. You can decide for yourself which one this is, since it's not in colour:

Oh, it needs to be chewed too. You wouldn't want to get a jalapeño stuck in your throat, gently sizzling away... requiring to be washed down with more sambuca.

Boots

Less than 2 weeks ago, I turned 24. My housemate and good friend Jamil decided to get me a paint-it-yourself figure of a monkey called Boots. The box indicates that he is from a TV show called Dora The Explorer, which I can't say I've ever seen... though I've heard people mention it. Usually in sentences that begin with "I really hate that program called..."

Anyway, the suggested colour scheme of blue, pink and yellow looked horrible on the box art, and since the character is of no relevance to me, I decided to just paint him like an actual monkey. I say actual monkey, I mean generic cartoon monkey. With gold boots.

I didn't use the provided bright acrylic paints or horrendous plastic fibre brush, otherwise it would have looked like a child did it. It seems unfair how they provide such terrible tools for children, they're never going to do anything good with them. No one is!

Anyway, without further ado, here is Boots the monkey:

As you can see, he's in a bit of a stupid pose. He's sort of looking skyward, but based on the size of his massive head, I suppose it was necessary to prevent the figure from falling over. I took a photo to show more of his face anyway:

Horrible little bugger, isn't he? I wouldn't trust him with any kind of footwear, especially golden boots. If anyone is wondering what his back looks like, then here it is:

Why anyone would wonder what that looks like is beyond me. What, have you never seen a monkey's back? I suppose it does show off the "copyright 2007 Viacom International Inc." thing, which I also decided to paint gold. Finally, how's about a close-up of his disco footwear?

As you can see, I also gloss varnished his boots and the word "Boots" on the stand.

I had a good few hours of entertainment out of this £1.50 statue designed to be painted by a child. Let's face it, they would have only done a balls job and then given up.

He now sits proudly on a shelf above my desk. I was also given a similar paint-it-yourself figure of a horribly sculpted Spiderman, by my housemate Ian. That abomination (Spiderman, not Ian) is getting painted next... Keep an eye out!

Listen Right,

Listen right,

This is a post about my favourite way to begin a letter.

The story behind this one involves my housemate of many years, Jamil... and some berk who was living here when we moved in, called Ian. This Ian character was a terrible human being who was very much all about himself, especially when it came to money. He would avoid paying bills, buying essential household items like washing up liquid (but using whatever had been bought), and refused to chip in to the council tax. We even had to change our internet password to prevent him using it since he wouldn't pay the phone or internet bills!

His reasoning for not paying the council tax was that he shouldn't have to pay it when another three of us didn't need to at the time as we were students or unemployed. That's the law, but he was such a skinflint that he went down to the council offices and changed our housing type so that the landlord had to pay the council tax instead.

In order to pay this new bill, our rent got bumped up by £5 a week. Not a big problem on a weekly basis, but that's a extra £260 a year each, which we would rather have kept and just paid the council tax ourselves. It wasn't a problem for Ian though, he was living in the tiny spare room and only paying £25 a week even with the added £5. He was also working a lot, or playing with his expensive games consoles and iPhone. He could have easily just paid his share.

We decided we'd had enough of this berk. He said he was going to move out at the end of the year, but we couldn't really cope that long. It's very awkward being in the kitchen at the same time as someone you never want to speak to or be around.

So, Jamil wrote him a nice letter, which is presented here:

The bit about TV license was an issue because the housing type had been changed to a student flat instead of a family home. This means each person needs to get a TV license for their own room. Thankfully, we got it changed back when he moved out, but the rent is the same. I suppose it would have gone up at some point anyway, but it's always good to be able to pin the blame on an utter berk.

Signing it from "The Lads" seemed a bit cheeky of Jamil since he did it one night when wrecked and the rest of us were asleep. However, it needed to be said, and it's pretty damn funny to look back on now!

Thankfully, rather than talking to any of us, he wrote us a letter back. It isn't anywhere near as succinct, and sadly not even as hilarious. You can tell he's a berk from his bad use of words though:

It was still a long time before he moved out. It felt like forever! But thankfully we saw the last of him ages ago now. These letters are still present on his old room door, for pure comedic value. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed re-visiting them and reminding myself of a terrible time that came to pass. Life is pure bliss compared to back then!

So, the phrase "Listen right," is now regarded as a classic motivational letter opener. I can already imagine using it in many everyday situations:

Listen right, can I have a job?

Listen right, do you want to go out tonight?

Listen right, sorry for your loss.

...and so on. In the immortal words of Neil Buchanan: "Try it yourself!"