Karlology Blog Week 4

Karlology Blog September 2008 - November 2008 List of entries

Entries: Week 1 - 8 September 2008 Week 2 - 15 September 2008 Week 3 - 22 September 2008 Week 4 - 29 September 2008 Week 5 - 6 October 2008 Weeks 6-7 - 14 October 2008 Weeks 8-10 - 30 October 2008

This week Karl gets a visit from the Roundhead Police, courtesy of his friend, Ricky Gervais.

September 29th, 2008

Clinophobia

I read one of the facts that you have posted on the ‘Learn Me Something’ section of the blog that says that Clinophobia is the fear of going to bed. I think I’ve got a touch of that. My brain never wants to go to sleep when I do. The other night, even though my body was knackered, my brain lay there thinking about death. I thought how it would be a good idea to capture a dying relatives final few breaths by getting them to blow up a balloon. This would give you something to keep that belonged to the one that has passed away, plus having balloons around would lighten the mood. That’s unless you have globophobia. (fear of balloons)

My brain nodded off after that. not for long though as my restless legs kicked in and woke it up again. It’s like I’m sharing a bed with two other people.

Speaking of my brain, I had a brain scan for my new book.

Here’s one of the pictures of it. If this is me, god knows what Steve Merchant would look like.

September 30th, 2008

Bees

Not got much to tell you about today. I’ve been doing a few interviews to promote my new book and the problem with doing interviews is you only talk about yourself, and I know everything about myself so it’s been a boring day. I’ve learnt nothing.

So I thought I’d just post you a photo I took on Saturday. I don’t know what was going on here. I was tempted to break it up but then I thought I shouldn’t really interfere. People talk about reincarnation and how people come back as insects and things. I imagine this is what it would look like if me and Ricky came back as bees. He’s the one on top trying to squeeze me head.

I’ve heard that bees communicate by dancing so maybe that’s what they were doing, just having a little bee chat. I have problems understanding the story line in any ballet I’ve seen cos they only use dance for communication, so I doubt I’ll have much joy working out what these two were chatting about.

October 1st, 2008

Normal Day

The problem with having to do a blog or diary is that it makes you realise that your days aren’t very interesting. I’ve just had a normal day today, done a few more interviews talking about my book and went round to Rickys office for one of his pointless meetings. If you live in the north London area you may of heard my arrival to his office. If you don’t, I will try and paint the scene.

Ricky called me at 12:20pm

Ricky: “Where are ya”

Me: “I’m in Chalk Farm. I’ve just had a meeting”

Ricky: “Well you’re only ten minutes away. Get on the tube and come over for a meeting here.”

His meetings are very rarely useful. I can’t even eat in his office cos he doesn’t like the way I end up leaving crumbs around, so he put a stop to it ever since what he likes to call ‘the pork pie incident’ (I’ll save the details for some other time. Actually I won’t.) Normally the meetings just involve him wanting a wrestle. Sometimes Suzanne will ask me what the meetings were about and I prefer to lie and tell her we were discussing doing some new audiobooks or something rather than the truth that he just wanted a wrestle. It’s like being a member of Fight Club.

Anyway. I got on the tube and made my way over. Ricky had not wasted the 10 minutes it took me to get to his office. He had found a big piece of card, that once rolled up and sellotaped, made an excellent megaphone. He then waited by his office window for me to come into view at the end of the street.

I was making my way down the pathway when I heard:

“STOP. THIS IS THE ROUNDHEAD POLICE. YOUR HEAD IS TOO ROUND”

Four fellas working on the road stopped their drilling, people came out of the local cafes and restaurants and calls were put on hold as office staff came out to hear the warning again. Luckily, he repeated it.

“STOP. THIS IS THE CRANIUM POLICE. YOUR HEAD IS TOO ROUND.”

I couldn’t see where it was coming from. It was like that film Phone Booth where that irish fella is being threatened from some loon in a tower block with a gun.

I went into the office where ricky was rolling about laughing on the floor.

There was no meeting.

Like I say, just a normal day.

October 2nd, 2008

Quick One

I’m writing this in a cafe that has free internet connection. (I say free, I had to pay £2 for a coffee to use the FREE internet) I’m doing it as quick as I can before the power on my laptop runs out as I have no electricity in the flat. We’ve had no power from 10:30 last night. It came back on at 3:24am when three lights and the radio came on and woke us up then went off again at 9:20am. On top of that I’ve had my knackered boiler serviced for the sum of £111.63p. The engineer had to do his work in the dark due to the power cut. I don’t know if the boiler works yet as it can’t be tested until the power comes back on.

Bruce Parry might be good at surviving in the Amazon Jungle, but I’d like to see how he would get on living in my flat for a week. I’m sick of it.

If there is no blog tomorrow, you know why.

Thanks for continuing to send in the facts.

Johnny sent this one. “If you keep a Goldfish in a dark room, it will eventually turn white.”

Suppose that’s something I can try tonight to kill a bit of time.

October 3rd, 2008

Marketing

I’m still doing more marketing stuff for my new book Karlology.

The marketing of things seems to be more important than the product itself these days. Every effort is used to try and get people to believe that they need the product in their lives. Look at the apple iPhone. That picture below would have been one of loads of images taken especially for the advert. They probably went for this image as it looks like the sort of person they are aiming at. A thirty something bloke who looks like he’s enjoying his life, probably got a good job and money to spend on the latest gadgets.

They wouldn’t use just any photo.

This is an image that Ricky took on his iPhone of his mate Robin after dressing him up like something you’d see on Scrapheap Challenge. This is a photo he’s got on his blog at the moment to show you how much Robin looks like some fella who was on the TV programme Come Dine with Me.

Probably not the best example he could have used to show the likeness. Robin looks more like a starter you’d see on Come Dine with Me.

Blog back on Monday.