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How to Get a Surprise Seaside Birthday Trip

Wait for your birthday. Travel by train to a competition. Ignore the announcement that the route has been modified due to signal failures. For best results, be sleep deprived and have your earphones in. Wonder why so many people are leaving the train at the stop before yours. Prepare to get off the train. Watch in horror as your stop gets further and further away. Get told the train won’t stop for another couple of hours until it reaches a station by the coast. Look out of the window at the appropriate time to get a glimpse of the sea peaking through the gap between two houses as the sun sets. Appreciate the beauty of nature for a second before you’re pulled relentlessly onwards. When the train finally stops, get off it and take the return train to your intended destination. Fail to maximise pity points for your misadventure at the competition. Only get second place.

Fluid Running

My runs are rarely exciting. I enjoy running: it’s healthy and improvements are measurable. I also feel great after the run. However, the actual act of running - particularly if I’m by myself - is monotonous. My feet plod along the pavement. There are roads, cars, and other people to dodge (while internally complaining about their lack of spatial awareness because obviously I deserve the right of way in all situations). And that’s about it. As a distraction technique, I have a running playlist with pumpy, energetic songs that say stuff like “Everything hurts? Good. Push harder!”. Fun fact: Work Bitch by Britney Spears ended up as one of the top songs on my Spotify last year because of my repetitive use of the same playlist. Though I respond well to negative reinforcement, after hearing Britney ask if I wanted a Maserati an excessive number of times, I started wondering if I could be doing something more intellectually stimulating. I decided to occasionally swap out mu...

Bad Apples

Have you ever had an issue where the apples you order for your grocery delivery have been unavailable so they’re swapped out for alternatives and the replacement apples you get are bigger and better quality and more expensive but you get them cheap because they aren’t your original choice and it sounds great at first but then you start eating the apples which turns out to be An Ordeal because these apples are double the size of the ones you’re used to and take so much more time and effort to eat and you can’t have half an apple and save the rest for later because that just feels weird but you don’t want to throw away an half-eaten apple either because that’s a waste so you just end up avoiding eating apples altogether to sidestep the problem. No? Um, neither have I.

How to Roast Potatoes

With Christmas coming up, I thought I should write something festive. So today I’ll be showing you how to make roast potatoes, an integral part of Christmas dinner. There are many ways to roast potatoes. I’ve given a few options below: Pomme de terre? More like pomme de terrible. No one’s ever said “you look like a potato” as a compliment. At least my gas doesn’t literally kill people . When you describe someone as hot, it’s usually a good thing. But nobody wants a hot potato. You can’t spell potato without “poo”. They say that “eyes are the windows to the soul”. I’d say that’s accurate considering your eyes are poisonous and should be avoided. Yukon Gold? More like you can go away. I’m not saying you have a terrible personality, but we literally had to find another species before we could describe potatoes as “sweet”. I hope I’ve helped make your Christmas dinner a success. Let me know how you found the recipe. ...

Cool Storky, Bro

With each dip of my beak, the water ripples outwards, circles stretching out into infinity. I pause for a moment to appreciate my gift for words before launching into my next insightful comment. The butterfly effect says the simple act of a butterfly fluttering its wings could cause a tornado on the other side of the world. I wonder what outsized impact creating ripples in the lake could lead to. Maybe world peace or something cool like that. Or maybe someone will take a picture of the ripples and post it on Instagram and pretend to write in the POV of a bird and then copy the Instagram post to their writing blog because they think they’ve written something funny.

Introducktion to Philosophy

I ponder questions so complex they’re deeper than the river I’m thoughtfully staring into. What is the meaning of life? Is war ever just? What should form the basis of my morality? Why am I being anthropomorphised? I’m a duck. Just feed me or I’ll poop on your boat. Quack.