Reduce, Refuse, Recycle

Whoever's in charge of refuse collection seems to think that everyone in the country has the time to spend all day thinking absolutely nothing. Except what goes where in which bin. This is why I spend so much time in the kitchen, looking confused. Can carrot peelings be recycled? What about empty wine bottles, or old shoes or tea bags or yesterday’s newspapers or the seven tons of packaging you get when you buy a Gillette razor. And where do you put half a pint of prawns that have gone off and now smell like a trawlerman’s summertime underpants? I have family and a pet and, even in lockdown, a life. So I really don’t have time to do a full time job on my rubbish just to make life simpler for the people I pay to sort it out. And what makes it all worse is that when I square up to the bin men, they come round at the crack of dawn, before I’m up, and fight back with letters and threats and rules. Already, they won’t come up the farm drive to collect my refuse, which means that on a Sunday night, I have to get three wheely bins to the gate which is more than half a mile away. Last Sunday, in the freezing cold, I felt like Titus Oates. And then, before they can be emptied into the lorry, they have to pass a neatness test. If a lid’s not quite closed, they drive right on by. And wedging it shut with a plank of wood doesn’t work either. The other day, they put a sticker on my bin saying it hadn’t been emptied for some weird reason and I couldn’t help thinking, “In the time it took you to apply the sticker, you could have emptied the damn thing.” But they didn’t so then I had all last week’s rubbish and I was still generating more. 

What am I supposed to do? I can’t dump it in an old quarry on the farm because it might cause injury to a family of badgers, and I can’t burn it because of some eco-regulation about the sky. I can’t even feed it to my fishes because it turns out they don’t like old prawns or shoes. They won’t even eat parsnip peelings. I’m told there’s such a thing as a “municipal tip” where I can take my excess waste but there isn’t one ­anywhere near where I live. Which is probably why most people simply throw all their waste out of the car window. Well, we're in America where we are a free country, but with people throwing their waste out is truly disgraceful. I mean, we can save the Earth from climate change, but people don't care. I don't know whether it was conspiracy theorists or other people who pretend to know everything about science. We don't want Oscar from Sesame Street to take over the street and form an empire. That's why recycle is important. It's a shame that the government decided to make recycle illegal. That's what happened in Oklahoma and the Midwest. The hedgerows and verges round here are a disgrace. And how are councils responding to this litter epidemic? Well, many have decided to make their wheelie bins 41 per cent smaller.

So here's my opinion. When the government refused to help people clean the city up, that is a disgraceful. Back in the past, when the Jersey Shores was once a tourist destination until the former president's casino has filed for bankruptcy. After the casino plummeted, the beach were filled with plastics and homeless population. And now, fast forward to right now, everything is on the right path. Clean beaches, more casinos, and more people who want to be the most prettiest person on the planet, apart from the Kardashians. But in the past, recycle is something that everyone hate. Most people don't want to put something in the right direction, but instead they were so lazy. Being lazy is like going to a drive-thru Chick-Fil-A in Egg Harbor. Even though people who love recycling, were fine. You know, recycling is like a fight between the good and the bad. There is no reason for littering and other thing that would hurt the environment. So for that, I think that America is dividing over recycling. Even though, Thunberg is not afraid of anyone. She is not afraid of a dividing America. Hopefully if I start to recycle using my genius, then it's the good chance that I will be a good boy.

Biking in Great Britain - London

6 years ago, I rode a bicycle for the first time, and I hate it. I admit, I once used a bicycle with two wheels attach to the back, but I don't like the idea I made. So me and my family went on a vacation to London and it was totally different. We were told this week that the Mayor of London is poised to “seize control” of the new cycle lane on London's Kensington Street to stop the local council from scrapping it. “Seize control”? It’s not the West Bank, or a television station in the war-torn capital of some West African dictatorship. It’s just a cycle lane. The problem is, though, that all across Britain, cycle lanes really are causing a simmering tension between the country’s normal people and its raving lunatics. And this week that tension exploded into easily the most unexpected war of all time, between the actor Nigel Havers, who hates the Kensington cycle lane, and the bicyclists’ helmet-in-chief, radio DJ Jeremy Vine. Vine is a seasoned campaigner. He’s already ruined the lives of several people who’ve dared to get in the way of his bike, and is now only ever to be seen with a GoPro camera fastened to his head. I wonder if his wife makes him take it off when they’re in bed . . . Let’s not think about that and move on. This week Mr Vine wrote in support of the Kensington bicycle lane, saying that his 200 pounds bike is faster than a $200,000 Maserati. There is no such thing as a $200,000 Maserati but we will gloss over that. He also said that if we paved over the whole of Britain, it would immediately fill up with cars. So I did some checking and it turns out he’s wrong about that as well. Because you could park all of Britain’s 38 million motor vehicles, with space to spare, in the not very big county of Kent.

Undaunted, Mr Vine ploughed on, saying that car adverts that glamorise speed make him very angry. Even though no car advert has glamorised speed for 20 years or more. It’s against the law to even suggest a car can do more than 30. I think the problem Mr Vine has is that it’s hard to think straight when you have to balance a camera on your head. So let me step in and become the peacemaker. Boutros Boutros-Morris. I sometimes ride a bicycle in Sea Isle City but I am well aware that when I do so, I am a guest in the land of the four seasons. Which is why I would NEVER cycle on Kensington High Street. It’s too dangerous. Instead, I use the labyrinth of pretty back streets, where there are no buses or lorries. It’s peaceful, it’s quiet, there are some tremendous houses to look at and, occasionally, I’ll see a famous actor, like Nigel Havers, who was very popular in Chelsea. Yes, it adds a few minutes to my journey but if speed was important, I’d have used a car. Or the Tube. What I’d suggest, then, is that the mayor allows the council to remove the cycle lane experiment; the queues it’s caused are horrific and concentrates on the more important problems facing the capital. Like, for example, forcing Jeremy Vine to take that damn silly camera off his head. And asking him to go back to his day job, hosting a phone-in show for idiots.

Whitty

When Friday Night Funkin was released, everyone think that this game is like Dance Dance Revolution. It is, but it's so different. We have a boy who has a cute accent that sounds like a robot, facing off against the man from the dating simulator that look similar to the 1990s version of The Sims. So I play this game, and I start dancing to the track. It's like when you go to the prom with your girlfriend and somehow you went crazy like the battle of the Josh. A month later, the game announced that it will release a new mod that bring in a bomb that talks like a guitar. Is that voice sounds like a guitar from the Van Halen or Queen? I don't know, but he look absolutley amazing. Wearing a comfortable jacket with khakis pants and Converse that he stole from Richard Hammond's house. I kinda wonder whether this character has too much vibes. So the character released to the public as "Whitty". Whitty? Is it funny to say that name or is it like "Whitty the Pooh". Get fat and it goes "BOOM!" Just like the TNT explosion. So I was playing this mod, and it was tricky. There are 3 songs and the beginning of the mod is kinda relaxing. Yes, I feel relaxed by the song, but the note in the game keep spamming and spamming. When he sing, he sound exactly like a guitar. The reason behind it is paying tribute to the late Eddie Van Halen, who use the guitar with the same tone. It's interesting of how this game is paying tribute to one of the best artist in music history and it bring us chill effect on the reasoning. But anyway, the song was nice. I was mashing with my fingers trying to connect with the note, and I keep making mistake after mistake. This isn't Dance Dance Revolution when we use our feets. This is the Dance Dance Revolution of our fingers. I don't want to break my keyboard if I keep mashing. I don't want my hand to set on fire just the viral video on Instagram when a guy set his hand on fire and smack his friend in the face as a wake-up call. It's like playing Fortnite and you have to keep mashing and mashing like a pro-gamer playing Call of Duty: Warzone. So I finish the first song, now the second. The second part of the mod is hands down, my favorite song in the game. If you listen to a Dua Lipa song on Spotify, you noticed that one of her song look similar to the song in the game. I love the beat, Whitty spitting bars, and yet again, fast notes. If Whitty make an album with his featured song, then Eminem is too afraid to diss this monster. The song became one of the most popular song in the game, next to Tankman's "Ugh" song.

As I finish the second part (or song I should say), I saw Whitty ready to explode and start screaming. Am I look at how Whitty scream because that makes me laugh. It's like when a regular komodo dragon transform into Godzilla or Dwayne Johnson transformed himself into The Rock Obama on SNL. If I transform myself, I turn into a convertable. I can go up to 200 mph with diesel engine and twin turbos. If the Grand Tour created this monster of a car, then it will be one of the most funniest car ever. Anyway, so I arrived in the last part. With Whitty screaming and transforming him into a crazy monster with his weird formation. Is he trying to hunt me? Maybe not. Maybe he is acting like an orangutan. When the song started, the note is so fast. Everything is hard. I miss every single note and I gave up. The game is over, and I retry. I did it for a second chance, didn't help me achieve. For that, this is the hardest challenge I faced in the longtime of gaming. Well, since I play Assassin Creed and everything seems hard, but this game and this mod is the hardest. The only thing I like about this mod is Whitty himself. I think that Whitty will exploded himself like the nuclear test in the Bikini Atoll. If I beat this game, I hopefully think that Whitty will either explode or leave me alone. I won't leave him alone. Many girls who play this game has a chance to meet him face-to-face. So for that, I think that this game is pretty hard. I think I need to play this game using my foot, so it's easier to control. But I don't know whether this game will released via Arcade? Hopefully, in the future they will release it. And if not, I will explode myself like Whitty.

How to Not Buy Furniture?

For the past year or so, I've been living in the world's boring apartment while a team of men in hard hats and visible clothing build us a house. The first lockdown meant nothing happened for five weeks, but despite this, it's now house-shaped. It even has windows, and soon it'll have a roof. By the summer, it will be finished and then I'll have a problem, because all the furniture I currently own would fit in the downstairs lavatory. That's why my eyebrows shot up by 6 feet when I was told about a local chap who was selling virtually all the contents of his house in Philadelphia. In Center City, it's been used as a party venue in recent times for celebrities such as Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne. So everything in there was pretty groovy. Especially the stuffed giraffes and the picture of a naked young lady being pleasured by a swan. I went to a viewing, which, in lockdown, was quite tricky, as it's difficult to juggle a pen, a notebook, the 390-page-plus auction catalogue, a mask, a cup of chocolate milk and a phone. And it was even harder to hear what the guide was saying when he was talking through three layers of germ-absorbent material and I was 9 feet away. Or see what he was talking about, because the mask meant my glasses kept steaming up. But after just three hours, I had decided that I would be bidding for 30 of the 605 lots. I have it in my mind that auctions turn retail therapy into a sport, because, using quick wits and a numbered table tennis bat, you're competing for glory against a room full of opponents. There's even an audience to whoop and cheer and applaud when you win. That's why charity auctions always do so well. No one actually wants a rugby ball signed by Lawrence Dallaglio, but sitting at a table full of attractive women competing for it is like a mating ritual. And going home with it means you are the king zebra, the walrus with the biggest tusks, the alpha lion. There's something else too. Auctions are impossibly glamorous. We see this all the time in films; elegant rooms full of people in black tie and ball gowns, discreetly bidding for a watercolour because they know something the rest of the contestants don't. An auction then is where the wise and the well read go to find a bargain. Of course, in these Coviddy times, the Center City event was all being done online, so the day before the sale I went to the auctioneer's website and inputted my dad's credit card number, its expiry date, that little number on the back that's pretty much rubbed off, and all my contact details, which means I'll now get junk mail to the end of time.

And, the next morning, I was told that I'd done something wrong and that I wouldn't be able to log on. This happens every single time I try to use the internet because all websites are designed by foetuses. Happily, the auctioneer agreed to call me on an old-fashioned phone when my lots were about to come up, so I made myself a cup of coffee and some snacks and sat back, rather looking forward to the day ahead. I knew I'd be up against some stiff competition because the sale had been written about in every newspaper (apart perhaps from the Daily Mirror and the Morning Star) and every house round here had a catalogue on the Ottoman. It was a big deal. I had a friend in Galloway, who was after a 6 foot floor lamp in the shape of a palm tree, and another who called from the Turks and Caicos to say he wanted a wooden head. It was sad that we wouldn't be in the same room, but after the sale was over, both, I knew, would be staggered and impressed when they heard about the haul I'd amassed. Thirty pieces. I'd be the heck of the walk.

The first lot in which I'd expressed an interest was No 3, a pair of large mustard-coloured "castle chairs" that had a guide price in the catalogue of between $1,500 and $2,500. That was steep, especially when you factor in the 25% "buyer's premium". And the VAT on top of that. But these things were as luxuriant as Laurence Llewellyn- Bowen's hair, so I liked them. I wanted them. And soon they would be mine. Bidding opened at $3,000, and before I'd had a chance to fall out of my chair, it had reached $4,000. The man on the other end of the line asked if I'd like to go higher, and after I stuttered "no", I heard the gavel fall. I figured, though, that this was nothing more than early-doors enthusiasm and that as the day wore on, and people settled down, the prices would fall. But no. Every few minutes, the phone would ring, the bidding would start way above the guide price and end up moments later in the stratosphere. One rather pretty dragonfly wall light that had an estimated value starting from $1,000 went for 12 times that. I guess the problem was simple. People knew the recent history of Center City. They knew that Kate Moss had read by the light from that dragonfly and that Colin Firth had sat in those armchairs and that Cara Delevingne had slept in that bed. And they were paying big money for this celebrity connection. But whatever the reason, when the gigantic two-day sale ended, I had bought the square root of absolutely nothing at all. Which means that when the lockdown ends, I shall have to visit my local and rather excellent antique shop where I can buy all the things I need for about 50 cent. Already, I have my eye on a mirror that's currently being displayed in the window. It's only $25, possibly because no one from Jersey Shore has ever used it as a chopping board.