This one took a little more rummaging in the Think Tank Toybox to find but I got there eventually. This time around I decided I would quiz the league of lethargy about

Money

I was a bit wary about how many people would go for this, surely when money was involved laziness has no dominion. I asked

“How has laziness cost you money?”

I’m no saint here of course, these things usually sprout from something stupid I’ve done. Kinda makes this whole process a self validatory thing but never mind. My shining example was

“I once left a mobile phone contract uncancelled for 18 months because I was too lazy to cancel it. It cost me roughly £280.”

My caution proved completely unfounded (as per usual) and I watched as the wasted money gathered in a metaphorical pile.

Mo_Jesus: Due to a fuck up with rooms at our wedding (in 2008), we’re entitled to a free night at the hotel. We still haven’t used it

BobbyLooga: I have a £10 Woolworth’s voucher somewhere. Had it for about 8 yrs. Useless now. Got an M&S one somewhere

profanityswan: My wife pays about £60 a month to a gym that she NEVER goes to. Boils my piss it does.

BryceElder: Just remembered: took insurance with a mortgage on a house that was already insured. Sold house 5yrs later. Cost: ~£4000.

siansparkles: bout £60. Forgot to cancel subscription to pathetic on-line dating site. Went on one hideous date before I hid my profile.

skoravensis: I’ve frequently replaced films that I know are in the loft, but can’t be arsed to get. Six copies of Episode IV to date.

Mrs_Kensington: We moved 1/2 a mile further from the gym then only went 4 times in 18 months. £1296 wasted £324 a workout

TheFagCasanova: I often buy pies from the supermarket. Baulk at the cooking time and so order a takeaway.

euzie: i didnt go to see My Bloody Valentine’s reunion shows at the roundhouse, despite having tickets

BobbyLooga: I’ve probably dropped £50k in lost earnings after an incident in ‘93 when I couldn’t be arsed to wear a tie.

DarkBeige: just want to add that right now i have a vacuum i hired for £20 a day. too lazy to return it b4 work on mon tue & today

pEarl117: once sold a car for £2500 cash which I couldn’t be bothered to bank, that cash got frittered rather quickly

britswitch: I bought pack lunch box and flask to save money on lunch. Total cost about £50. I still buy lunch.

webstl: I didnt return a DVD to the shop. it was a day late. A month later I got a letter from the shops solicitor demanding £78.90, or to court I go. The DVD was VAN Helsing.

TheFagCasanova: I’m owed nearly £2000 in income tax. Claiming it includes filling out a 9 page form. I’ll never do it.

pinkytheflorist: I still have my old car insured, complete with 9yrs NCB that could be on my new one, cos I CBA to clean and sell it

DanielNothing: I also agree with the guy who said he couldn’t be bothered to collet debts. I must be owed over a grand by now.

unslugged: Failed to sign up to employer pension 3 times. Employer contributes. Prob cost me £20k.

euzie: I once caught a cab from my house, to the cashpoint (to pay for taxi), to the shop to buy milk, and home

euzie: 2 Open Uni modules, 1 full year of college – bailed after first month – total approx £1300

NickMB: Unless it’s a LOT of money, I can never be bothered to collect debts owed to me. Probably shouldn’t admit this on Twitter.

reggington: I have a great staff deal here that I’ve never taken advantage of, could have saved about £200

DanielNothing: If I know a CD/DVD etc is cheaper, but involves a walk/tube ride to another store, i’ll spend the extra to save me the slog

pEarl117: I paid the min payment on a credit card balance of around £1000 for a few years, too lazy to phone up to pay it off…I had the money to pay it off, just couldn’t be bothered. Probably cost me a few hundred in interest.

leeturnerconn: Number one response must be cabs. They just make everything easier and they cost me a fortune.

Theoutdoortypes: I had a gym membership for 18 months and went three times.

Theoutdoortypes: I’m still subscribed to lovefilm.com but I’ve had the same 2 dvds for 2yrs.

BryceElder: Took ESPN to watch 1st game of the season. Haven’t looked at it since. So far, that game has cost me £84.

So there you go. Thousands of pounds lost in the name of a distinct lack of effort and application.

I think an honourable mention needs to go to euzie for the milk taxi debacle, the work of a true oaf.

• The colour must be red
• It must have 4 doors
• It must cost less than £30,000

The keyword here is MUST. I learned the true value of the word must in university doing requirements engineering. You have to strictly define what the software must and must not do.

I realise this has been quite boring up until now but we need context people!

I was having a chat with TheFagCasanova about the possible middle name of the Ski Jumper, Andreas Wank. We decided Alan would be best and then we moved onto good cat names and reminded me that I have strict rules for potential cat names.

Before I lay out my rules, I decided to quiz the Twitterati about their cat’s name to see if any subscribed to my strict naming policy. They didn’t disappoint in their diversity

• Big Dave Jeffries
• Fattie
• Thinnie
• Bumble
• Velvet Moon
• Hector
• Bill
• Fluff
• Bob
• Other One
• Lola
• Hamble
• Chloe
• Flower
• Twinkle
• Milo
• Ghandi
• Darren
• Saucepan
• Lao
• Raspberry Watkins
• Bootsie
• Oscar
• Tiger
• Flying Tiger Fury
• Smudge

Aren’t they marvellous? But! as marvellous as they are, only one fits the bill as defined by me

Darren

The splendiferous magicnose nailed it with the only one that truly subscribes to my rules.

So what are my rules? I hear you shout as your spit your fish supper all over the screen (you should really clean that up). Well I’ll tell you, the rules are as follows

MUSTS

• It must not be traditional cats name (Fluffy, Marbles etc)
• It must not be a name that could be attributed to a comedy horse (Colin, Charlie etc)
• It must not be a name that could be attributed to an WW2 army general (Archibald, Wilberforce etc)
• It must not be a name that could be attributed to troubled Anime character (Azrael, Jiro etc)

DESIRABLES

• It should be a name that can be attributed to a man who works in a garden centre
• It should be a full forename (Don’t care for Bob, for example)

EXAMPLES

• Darren
• Liam
• Alan
• John (possibly Johnathan)
• Simon
• Richard
• Robert (not Bob)
• Ian
• Paul
• Matthew (not Matt)

As an example, I went on holiday to Spain with my dad and sister a couple of years ago and I explained these rules to Sophie. We spent a fair chunk of time, a good hour, walking across the big rock of Gibraltar in complete silence save for

Sophie: “Stephen?”

Jason: “With a ph?”

Sophie: “Yeah”

Jason: “Perfect”

We built up quite a list, great fun.

Now I must stress these are my rules, this is my system. I would never begrudge a Cat name you choose, I just personally wouldn’t choose it. I’m not going for a world domination here, no thanks, too much hassle. I just have my own system for naming cats, you can call yours what you like, live and let live. But if you ask me what you should call your cat, then its game on.

This mainly extends to Male cats. Because the ladies have two X chromosomes they are twice as varied and thus harder to define. Us males only have one X and the Y is redundant meaning we’re a lot easier to pigeon hole, it’s a pleasure.

Naming female cats is like plotting a ladies drinking timeline, the typical male drinking timeline is a lot easier to nail down. There are obviously some deviations from the mean but this is a good indicator of where a man is in his life

Cheap Cider/Alcopop >> Cheap Lager >> Stronger Lager >> Proper Cider >> Stout >> Real Ale >> Real Ale with a Handle >> Whiskey Straight >> Whiskey with Water >> Death

Women? I’ll be buggered if I know. Female cat names? Same story.

So there you have it, my hard and fast rules for an acceptable name for a Male Cat. Hell why not? female cats too. To be honest it would be quite funny to own a girl cat called Andrew (not Andy).

I asked around twitter and a few things came up

• X Files
• Fabric Textures
• Spiderman Comics
• Making Tea
• Photoshop
• Buffy
• Making Popcorn
• Cheese and Onion Pasties
• Obscure Cutlery and Etiquette
• Eating a Whole Big Bag of Haribo Tangfastic in One Quick Sitting
• The Availability of Twirls in London (http://londontwirls.blogspot.com/)
• The Circumstances of My Sneezes (http://www.sneezecount.joyfeed.com/)
• Sugarcraft
• Playing Spy on TFC (Team Fortress Classic)

I was having a chat with Sam and the course of discussion turned to sampling free products for market research and it triggered a memory of the one time I was taste tested. Even though I’d forgotten it, I remember it like it was yesterday.

This was during my college years at plucky old Barton Peveril. Barton Peveril is in Eastleigh, a thorough toilet of a town near Southampton. We would often go to the town centre during our free periods to mooch about. There was nothing really there to do except eat and wait but it beat doing that at on campus.

Whilst plodding around we were approached asking us if we’d like to try a new kind of crisp. Being bored we of course agreed and were whisked to an open plan room full of people being interviewed with plates of crisps in front of them.

The crisps they were testing were Bugles. This was the early 00’s (remember them?) and they were about to launch. The wiki says they now sell over here but I rarely see them anymore and avoid them like the plague if I do, which is the point I’m meandering towards.

When I was interviewed I was asked to pick my favourite flavour, I picked Salt & Vinegar, my weapon of choice. Now the Bugle people hadn’t really considered what they were contending with, for you see

I am an expert on Salt & Vinegar crisps

I shall illustrate this with what went down and then elaborate on some further theories I have. They made 2 errors:

1. Putting their weight behind an inferior crisp
2. Taste testing it against two heavyweights of the s&v crisp world

With regards to point 1, I think we all know this by now but I shall declare

Bugles are rubbish

They’re far too wheaty. This means the crisps taste like nothing but wheat and any flavour they have been imbued with is absorbed by said wheat making them a weak effort. A vague whiff of salt & vinegar when I want the flavour to knock my block off.

I could probably handle the banality if the competition wasn’t so fierce. They let me try two bad boys, Quavers and Discos.

I couldn’t find a picture of Quavers as I think they maybe now lost to the pantheons of crisp history…crisptory. Though I think they maybe multipack only. This would be a shame as the Cheese Quavers are horrible.

Anyway, Salt & Vinegar Discos are still going strong and are bold, bloody powerful though also a little dry. That said they were more than enough to beat the pathetic Bugle.

Now they didn’t give the names of these crisps but I’m an expert, I could pick em off a mile away.

When asked for my opinion, I was blunt. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I know it was scathing about the poor quality of the Bugles, I was quite enjoying telling them just how crap their crisps were and I left them with a lot to think about. The crisps didn’t change.

There’s only one thing that could be possibly going through your brain now

So Mr Smarty Pants, what is the best kind of Salt & Vinegar crisp?

I’ll tell you and less of your lip thank you very much. Novices among you might assume I’d pick something twatty like Kettle Chips. Bleurgh, no. The vinegar is far too sweet and the crisps themselves are too big. It shows a complete lack of understanding and an arrogance for which I have no time. Fuck off Kettle Chips and all your brethren of presumptuous garbage.

Now.

There are a few contenders but I know my favourite. Discos are quite good but as I said quite dry. Some people like dry crisps which I can fully understand, live and let live.

If you’re looking for a dry salt & vinegar crisp, you can’t say fairer than these.

Of course! Square crisps.

I swear by these when I’m feeling dry. Sharp, robust and full of flavour. They are a joy eaten out of the packet or made into a sandwich. I would usually get Squares in multipacks, eat all the Salt & Vinegar, trundle through the admirable Cheese & Onion and then trudge through the frankly boring Ready Salted.

Though they are not the best Salt & Vinegar potato crisp adventure that you can take your taste buds on. That honour is reserved for

Here it stands. The king of crisps. Chipsticks.

The maize and potato snack, made for us by the crisp gods to stave of lingering hunger with a brand of flavour second to no bastard. Layered with delicious oily, vinegary stuff, stands this monolith of snack food.

Dry crisps lack of oil means it lacks the full punch that only Chipsticks can bring.

Take yourself on a roller-coaster ride of flavour as you shove 5 in your mouth at once, getting grubby fingers before digging out the lumps of maize caught in the bridge of your mouth. Heaven.

So there you go, that’s my field of expertise as I see it. You might not agree, but hey, you’re wrong.

There’s only one thing left to ask, what’s your area of expertise?

“I am to a great extent impressed with the article I have just read. I wish the writer of http://www.thinktanktoybox.com can continue to provide so much practical information and unforgettable experience to http://www.thinktanktoybox.com readers. There is not much to tell except the following universal truth: Don’t judge a book by its cover, judge it by its color, its weight, its height, its width, its complextion, and all of its other features. I will be back.”

There’s so much I love about this, the ‘unforgettable experience’, the book judgement and the prediction of the return. Marvellous.

Lazy Meals

This is a goldmine of truly lazy twatty behaviour of which I am a firm believer. So the question was proffered:

“What is the laziest meal you have ever made? #leagueoflethargy“

I of course gave my best example

“Mine is a canned hot dog and spaghetti hoop sandwich. It was an awful awful thing.”

And the answers were a deluge, observe

the_incredulous: cuppa soup with cous-cous in. called chunk chicken soup. And pasta with butter and soy.

mergyeugnau: Soymilk drunk from the carton for your protein/hydration/CFS needs.

BearNoiz: Cheese… Id say pickled beetroot from the jar but that requires getting a fork & opening the jar

kirtle: Breadsticks and philadelphia.

wisecur: Laziest Meal : Beans on Toast…..Just un-toasted bread & open cold beans on it.

jendinary: cereals.

EthanRunt: I once made a burger that slouched next to me on the sofa, that’s a pretty lazy meal.

mikehjapan: ketchup in a bowl

euzie: I used to just pour milk into Variety packs of cereal and drink it all on the way into town

atlasbagshaw: Cheese toasties for every meal for four days. Didn’t have one again for 2 years after that.

Theoutdoortypes: Pasta with butter. Not as nice as it sounds

OneInchMan:  Uncooked, dried spaghetti dipped in marmite.

euzie:  Pasta and Ketchup

kezbat: does having crisps for breakfast count? Big night out, didn’t go home, only had 60p left…

cripesonfriday: Oh, I once microwaved noodles, and poured a hot cup a soup over them to make noodle soup.Not great, not at all great.

NickMB: It’s a toss-up between ‘handful of rice’ and ‘glass of water’.

Sifter: a Creme Egg

stueymac71: Dry cereal, really couldn’t be arsed to add the milk

cripesonfriday: I shook the toaster over a slice of bread once, didn’t even butter the bread.

This game never fails to disappoint :)

*Edit*

Because I’m rubbish I missed a comment from the lovely sylviegreen69 which is

“What the… you will not belief this. This stupid cat simply farted on my knee!? I mean what is the matter with that!? I feed that thing and I end up with this in return. I still will not belief this. Anyway, you have quite a few useful information there in your post. I knew Google will bring me to a few fascinating stuff today :). Alright must hunt this pet now! Have a great time you all!”

This comes from the “user” using the handle, Bedroom Furniture.

This is a story about how I destroyed a friends goalkeeper top when I was a weeun.

There was a big field in the middle of the suburban estate on which we all lived, circled by the back fences of the enclosing houses. All the kids would gather and play football, more often than not smash the ball against their fences, they presumably loved it.

One guy in particular was this large Italian chap who didn’t particularly care for us smashing his fence to bits everyday. So when the ball inevitably went over his fence he would very much enjoy not giving it back. Though one day he was shouting at us over the fence and a friend of mine sang the lyric “Golden brown, texture like sun” and he shouted back, “Yeah! Golden Brown!” and threw the ball back. I digress.

A friend of mine had a Man Utd goalkeeper top with Schmeichel on it. This was back in the early premiership years when Utd were unstoppable. For a reason I don’t remember I was wearing it and we were playing hide & seek.

A prime spot was hiding in the Italian man’s garden and I had disguised myself there. I climbed onto his fence (about 6 foot high) and sat on top to survey the surroundings. A momentary loss of balance caused me to slip from the fence catching the top on a jagged edge. I heard a horrible tear and I was left hanging like some hoisted cartoon villain. The head hole had come to the front and I was there with my face poking out unable to get down.

Besides being caught out I’d also ruined my mates favourite top. Ah well he was a United fan and so could obviously afford it.

To bring together individuals capable of fantastic feats of lethargy

My process when using twitter is to pretty much tweet out any silly idea that pops into my head. I think it’s too much for some people and I can’t begrudge them unfollowing me.

Anyway, I was making a cup of tea and to my horror I discovered there were no clean teaspoons. I could have washed one but anyone who knows me knows that’s the last thing I want to do. I eventually resorted to using a tablespoon, I was so proud.

So proud I was that I immediately scuttled upstairs and tweeted

“You can’t call yourself a slob till you’ve stirred your tea with a table spoon.”

I gotta couple of replies and I realised I had poked a rich vein of fun, so I asked the question

“Ok I seem to have poked a wasps nest here. Whats the worst thing you’ve stirred a cup of tea with?”

Then the torrent began, I quote:

‘congratumalations’

It’s great! Sounds better and underlines a core daftness I like to lace my entire life with.

I think it’s genesis came from the Simpsons and Homer’s adorable pronunciation of the phrase ‘Saxophone’ or as he calls it ‘Saxomaphone’. It was really nailed home in this little exchange between him and a diddy Lisa

Homer: So, what do you like, Lisa? Vio-ma-lin? Tuba-ma-ba? Oboe-mo-boe?

Lisa: [pointing] That one! [Lisa's adorable little digit points up to a beautiful new baritone sax.]

Homer: Oh…saxo-ma-phone. [reads price tag] Two hundred dollars?!

Another one I like a lot is ‘investimagate’. It implies investigating with your tongue out, digging around in a toybox to emerge with playdoh in your hair.

On initial investimagation it seems to work best with 4 syllable words. I can think of a few examples now of good words improved by the addition of a ma

• Communimacation
• Pornomagraphy
• Mandamatory
• Oblimagation
• Unbearamable

I’d love to hear people’s suggestions, 4 syllable words are a good start but there’s gotta be more diverse ones.  Come, share with me the power of ma, We know it is formidamable.