Excerpts from ‘Never Hit A Jellyfish with A Spade’ by Guy Browning.

This book has How To articles that Browning wrote for the British newspaper The Guardian and here are some of the best bits.

On How To…

Ø Die: ‘The best way of preparing for death is to make sure you have a good life. This doesn’t mean you should live each day as if it were your last. You don’t want to spend every day of your life with eighteen anxious relatives around your bed and a priest warming up in the hall.’

Ø Be Beautiful: ‘Some people start ugly but become beautiful, like the ugly duckling. But if you are young and ugly you should brace yourself for the fact that most ugly ducklings grow up to be ugly ducks. On the other hand, swans make a nasty hiss while ducks make a lovely quake. There’s got to be a moral there somewhere.’

Ø Get Up: ‘If you don’t think anything will get you up in the mornings, simply have a small child. Then you will be able to get up quickly and efficiently, and you’ll be able to do this six or seven times every night.’

Ø Meditate: ‘The constant repetition of ‘om’ can help induce a trance-like state, either because your brain settles down or because your flatmate has just punched your lights out.’

Ø Reorganize Your Room: ‘Reorganizing your room is a cheap form of therapy, if you discount the cost of physiotherapy to rebuild your back after the attempt to move your bookcase with all the books still in it.’

Ø Be A Student: ‘When you first become a student you have to decide whether your life is going to centre around coffee or alcohol. If it’s alcohol, then you drink yourself stupid on a regular basis. This is a vital part of the education process. The first year has to be spent in the student bar where beer is cheap; the second year is spent between the off-licence and your evil-smelling digs; and the last year is spent in rehab, or the library as it’s sometimes known.’

Ø Put People At Ease: ‘The best way to put someone at ease is to make them feel superior. You can do this by admitting you’re stupid or sad or unlucky (most people will assume you’re at least two out of three already). The fastest way to make other people feel superior is to bang your own head quite hard against a low beam. This instantly robs you of dignity, composure and intelligence, and makes virtually anybody else look as though they’ve got their life completely together.’

Ø Love: ‘Men love women because they are the loveliest things on God’s earth. Women love men because chocolate can’t mow the lawns.’

Ø Live Together: ‘The key to living together in a relationship in the same as in the diplomatic world: nothing keeps people together like a common enemy. That’s why living together so often leads to children.’

Night Angel Trilogy - Brent Weeks

The Night Angel Trilogy: The Way of Shadows (book one); Shadow's Edge (book two); Beyond the Shadows (book three).
Author: Brent Weeks


Azoth, a Guild rat is desperate to get out of his current life and is willing to do anything to make this happen so he makes a deal which sees him become an apprentice to Durzo Blint, the best assasin, or wetboy as he prefers to be called, in the city.

A wetboys life is harder than Azoth realised. To start with he must turn his back on his old life and friends, especially Elene the girl he loves, and to do this he must become Kylar Stern. Durzo Blint teaches Kylar the basics of a wetboys survival; how to fight, make potions, and how to not care. In his new life Kylar sees just how corrupted the city he lives in is and is taught that he can do little to help. This, however, does not stop him from trying.

The Night Angel trilogy is filled with adveture, magic, betrayal, love, propheyies, war, hope, and more making it a fantastic series by debut author Brent Weeks. And as an added bonus starts one of possibly the best characters, that being Durzo Blint.

Dead arm is now gone

Went to get my jabs for India earlier this week and once again I ending up paying to get a dead arm which my brother would have given me for free, although his would not have lasted anywhere near as long.

I am now immunised against Polio (yup am going to one of the four countries in the world that still has polio, the others being Afganistan, and Pakistan and cant remember the fourth). Also am immunised against a few other things but cannot remember what, knew there was a reason they wrote it down for me.

I opted against paying $450 to be immunised agaisnt Rabies, for one it cost me enough without that added to it, and another is that I aint been bitten by a dog yet so will take my chances over there and not get bit again. If I do get bit and die its all good as my health insurance covers the cost of bringing my body (or ashes) back to NZ. I also have to take my chances with being bit my mosquitoes as all of Australiasia has run out of the immunisation for Yellow Fever (think that is the one, if not then they have run out of whatever it is), which would prevent me getting a brain infection and dying from mossie bite, thus savign me a further $385.

Interesting how the jabs to immunise against the things that can kill you cost the most. Guess they figure that people wont want to take chances so they can make money and if the immunisation does not work then said person will not be around to ask for a refund on the failed jab

My brudda text me last night to point out that I sounded rather pissed off yesterday in my post, sorry bout that, was just annoyed as work mates laughed at me for not knowing it was daylight savings. Still think the whole idea is stupid though.

Not been up to much recently. Been working lots, well as much as I can as need the money for India. Only 7 more weeks of work to go, just under really :) Getting bit more exciting now.

Not got much to say so instead of blabbling junk I shall go and do something productive - like try figure out a pin for my credit card...

I gotta move...

Stupid dumb New Zealand and its stupid dumb daylight savings crap. Who was the idiot that came up with the dumb idea... New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson. Wow look I get to blame a kiwi, makes it easy as wont have to go far to torture him to death (well the best you can an already dead guy)

Once again I came to work an hour early and had to sit and wait. And before you laugh because I 'forgot' or say its my fault, you can only forget something if you knew about it to start with, and like normal no one thought to tell me it was that time of year again, or even thought to remind me.

Meanies, all of you.

So I shall move to somewhere where this crap idea does not exist!!!