Big Chip Dale's Christmas Message

I’ve been away for so long, I wanted to prove that I’m still here in Bangor, living the high life. Actually, things have been pretty grim. Gabby never stops complaining that I do nothing but sit in front of the TV and watch ‘Deal or No Deal’. She says I’ve let myself go.

I admit, there might just be a small fraction of truth in that, but I also like to think that I’m the same old Chipster. I’m just going through a period of self-discovery. The only bad thing to happen in my life is that I can no longer fit into all my favourite thongs. It’s now over three weeks since I abandoned the thong in favour of grey brushed cotton tracksuit bottoms.

Anyway, enough about me. It’s Christmas Day and I wanted to thank all of you who have taken time to read Chip Dale’s Diary in the last year. Will The Chipster be back in the New Year? I haven’t yet decided if I will. It depends on my financial situation and the amount of work I can get between now and then. To be honest, I’ve lost my regular bookings. People tell me it’s a slow Christmas, which I have to believe. Then again, life is slow these days. I thought stripping was a hard way to make a living, but it’s easier than writing.

This is Big Chip Dale, signing out until the New Year.

Have a great Christmas, and don’t eat anything I wouldn’t eat.

Changing Perspectives

Don’t expect to see much activity on the live Chip Dale monitor today. The subdermal tracking device has been setting off car alarms all morning so I’m restricted to the flat until Gabby can contact her supplier in the Romanian government and find out how to jam the frequency. The confinement has given me time to reflect on the exciting times I shared with Trixy. How we laughed when I got my thong caught in the heel of her shoe as we fled Bangor through the back gardens of Holyhead Road! I also think that marriage has left me a changed man. And I don’t just mean in the sense of my now being the biggest emitter of radio waves in the North Wales region.

The thought came to me this morning as I found myself browsing the increasingly troubled musings of Richard Madeley. The man has a monster of an ego but I think he occasionally serves a purpose. This morning, that purpose was in directing my attention to Why That’s Delightful, the comprehensively mad blog by Graham Lineham, who will be forever blessed (perhaps even cursed) as being known as one of the writers of ‘Father Ted’. The latest post is a gem and goes down as one of my favourite YouTube finds.

Harlan Ellison has written many science-fiction short stories, books for teenagers, and TV shows, though I can’t, honestly, ever recollect reading anything of his. His rant touches upon one of the truths of modern life as a writer, and indeed, as a blogger. I’ve often been contacted by people in the media asking me to do something for them, whether it’s give an interview or write a brief snippet for something they’re doing. What’s striking is that, every time, they don’t mention money.

‘Hi Chip,’ begins an email. ‘Would you give us a quote about your life as a top stripper in Wales?’

Or the phone will go. ‘Chip. We loved the thing you wrote about pineapple chunks and the guide dog. Could we reprint it in our next magazine?’

At other times, I’ve seen my wisdom crop up in newspapers, quoted in full, with the barest indication as to who said it. I’ve even seen my pictures used in the media without my permission. Blogging is the problem. The media treats us as though we’re easy filler for their papers, shows, websites. Many of us produce quality content for no money. It's insane!

Since I opened this blog in January, I’ve written 345 posts. If each post is, on average, 500 words long, then that would make this blog 122,000 words long, or as big as a thickish novel. Actually, many of my posts are more like 1000-2000 words long (some even longer) and the total word count for this blog is actually over 180,000 words. The point is, I’ve not earned a penny from all this effort. That’s like my having written two comic novels in the last year – or what Jeremy Clarkson or Billy Bryson write between them. Perhaps you could argue that there’s still fewer laughs. I’d hope there have been more. What would a serious bad writer expect to profit from a novel? A thousand pounds? Two thousand? I don't know but this blog has earned me $9.88 from Google ads. So that's 180,000 words written for $9.88, or about 0.002 pence per word.

So I gave a loud cheer when I heard Harlan Ellison’s rant. I've listened to it ten times now and it makes me smile and cry in about equal measure because there’s a degree of self-recognition there too. If I ever want to consider myself a professional writer, perhaps I should give up blogging. Why should I write for nothing other than my own amusement? As much as I enjoy writing about my adventures, isn’t it just foolish to do it for nothing? I’d ask anybody reading this the same question that Harlan Ellison asked the woman who rang him up: would you work for nothing? And isn’t this a failure of blogs? Doesn’t it make writing look easy? Doesn’t it devalue the very thing that so many of us are trying to accomplish?

[Update: The video is from a documentary about Ellison called 'Dreams With Sharp Teeth', which has leapt to the top of the list of things I want to see. The great thing about books is that you can go years believing you've read all the writers who deserve to be read yet I now find myself browsing Amazon for an apparently significant writer I hadn't heard of before today. And the man seems to be my kind of madman. He sits at his typewriter wearing silly hats, for Christsake! That almost beats writing in a thong.]

A Problem of Names

‘But they will think it’s porno!’ said the publisher.

‘But it’s my name!’

‘Then you’ll have to use a pseudonym.’

‘Like hell I will,’ I replied. ‘I’ve waited years for a chance to see my name in a book shop. I’m not going to hide behind Margaret Flippyhackle or John T. Moustache. What’s wrong with Chip Dale?’

‘Porno…’ said the publisher, stuffing my finished manuscript into her bag. ‘I would imagine that some shops would even refuse to stock it with a name like that.’

She was about to stand up but I couldn’t leave the meeting without resolving the issue.

‘Chipendale Monroe,’ I suggested as a compromise.

‘Sounds like an American president. And a bad Democratic one at that…’

‘Chip Pearl?’

‘A brand of toothpaste.’

‘Chip Waters.’

‘Too much like a bluesman from the old Mississippi.’ She sat back down. ‘You need to go for a radically new name. Something that sounds unique yet bland. Sean Marvin.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘How about Matthew Robbberts. We’ll play on the mystery of why your surname has three ‘r’s in it.’

She was clearly not thinking creatively. ‘Norbert Huskins,’ I said, believing I was onto a winner. ‘A novel by Norbert Huskins. That has a certain charm to it, don’t you think?’

‘Norbert? You don’t look like a Norbert.’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I look like a Chip, which is oddly what I am.’

‘Look Chip, my dear, I understand your frustration. But we can’t be selling you with the name Chip Dale. Nobody will take you seriously with a name like that. It’s going to be hard enough to sell a nine hundred page novel set against the backdrop of the Belgian kipper industry.’

‘Archibald Clinker. Stanley Krinkle. Arthur P. Mucklebeer. Ernst Gunst. Terrence Wriggle. Norman Clutterbuck Jnr…’ I fell sobbing to the table. ‘What about Hector Sparrow?’

The publisher looked at me with a tear in her eye. ‘Poor Chip. Something as simple as a name and you fall to pieces.’

She was right. It hadn’t been the weeks of polishing, proof reading, and corrections that had broken me. It was the fact that I’d dreamed of seeing Chip Dale’s name stuck between those of Roald Dahl and Charles Dickens. I sobbed for a while, muttering the occasional name which sprang to mind, but after a while, I looked up and found that the other chair was empty. I paid for my meal and walked miserably from the coffee shop. I headed to the station for my train back to Bangor. I’ve got a few months of searching for a new name, a new identity, but I know it won’t be easy. Gabby wants me to take a Romanian name but I’ve started to compile the list though, as you can see, I’ve not got very far. Henry Brusque. Victor Kripple. Saul Bellow. Simon Onions. John Updike. Randolph Mercy. Philip Roth… Philip Roth? Not bad...

Walrus Clogs

I've created my new blog ('Walrus Clogs' on account of all the good names having been taken around 2001 and never updated since)* which I've linked in my sidebar. I'm out of the house today so I won't have chance to do anything with it or add those of you who've shown an interest in reading it. I'll see if I can get working on it over the weekend.

Many thanks for those of you who've shown an interest. It should be interesting. I have to now go and catch a train in the rain.

* Why don't Blogger filter out these blogs that have a singe 'testing' post and haven't been used in six years? That way we might be able to get some decent blog titles.

Chip Dale's New Blog

My first full day back between the cracks, neither employed nor claiming benefits, and I’m already thinking about opening a new blog. I know I’m crazy. My Romanian psychotherapist tells me that every morning over breakfast. I also know I don’t find time to write just one blog a day so why should a man tasked with keeping Wales’ largest thong collection clean want to give himself more work? The answer is: I won’t be doing any more work than I’m already doing. I’m just considering publishing my work in progress daily to the web.

Quitting my job has made me focus on getting something finished and I think a new blog might be the way to go about it. The difference is that I’ll be blogging it to a site that is closed off to the general public and to the causal reader. I’d only open it to those of you interested in wanting to see something unfinished, liable to change, and more than likely to end in a wall at 60,000 words. The blog would rarely (if ever) mention thongs and would be a rambling mess that just details my adventure trying to finish a book. It might fail after a week or it might just be my own private playground. I just don’t know. Anybody interested in writing, literature, books, the whole writerly thing would be welcome.

For me, I’m making this step tentatively, aware that I’d be opening up my rather haphazard writing process to the world. I’d be looking for constructive thoughts, feedback, and occasional ego massage during my regular downturns of mood. In exchange, you’d have my eternal thanks and a credit should I ever get the book finished.

What can I tell you about the book? It’s historical novel with little sense of history, darkly comic, with a very scatological theme which I hope to make filthier by the day. It has vague sense of satire and, in tone, I’m aiming for Vonnegut but I figure I’ll be lucky to reach Jilly Cooper. I’ve got 20,000 words written but I’m falling into a trap of polishing the opening chapters. I need to get the words committed to the page so I can move on to write the next 20,000 and then the 60,000 after that.

If you’re interested, leave a comment or email me. I except to get no takers. If I get any, I’ll print up official Thonglateer membership cards and then think about starting the blog.

Balloons

Bit of a tough night at the club. A hen party had block booked and I performed my balloon dance. Normally there's not much to be said. I’ve done the routine a hundred times. I cover my lower half in balloons and pop them to the music, sometimes handing a member of the audience a pin to pop the last couple. Unfortunately, one of the bridesmaids burst out in tears when I picked her out for this honour. It seems I'd unfortunately chosen a poor girl whose boyfriend is currently suffering from giganticism in his loins. It was the sort of thing that pours a bucket of cold water over the whole evening.

I wouldn’t mind but I’d been having a good day. I got up at lunchtime and stayed in my dressing gown for the whole afternoon, squeezed in the armchair by the fire. I’m reading H.G. Wells’ The War in the Air and recommend it to anybody who wants a bit of well written escapist fare. It's probably what put balloons in my mind in the first place. With his reputation as a visionary and prophet of technology (a self-heating can of hot chocolate stood out in this respect) it’s easy to forget that Wells writes some wonderfully twisted prose. I do like writing that can appear florid yet controlled. It’s like a well trimmed privet hedge, a perfect embodiment of the early 20th century England. Just picking something fairly randomly,

Of all the productions of the human imagination that makes the world in which Mr. Bert Smallways lived confusingly wonderful, there was none quite so strange, so headlong and disturbing, so noisy and persuasive and dangerous, as the modernizations of patriotism produced by imperial and international politics.

I particularly like the awkward ‘confusingly wonderful’ and the repeated use of ‘and’ lodged between the commas. It’s a bit long winded but has a charm that even now, cheers me up despite the trials of my evening.

Now there you go: a man with giant testicles and an analysis of H.G. Wells’ use of the comma and comparing it to hedge trimming. How many blogs give you that on a Saturday night?

The End

I’m finished. I’m done. I’ve reached the point of completion. I’m at an end.

It’s taken me far too long to finish it but a draft of my novel is now sitting finished on my desk in its gloriously unpolished state. Perhaps I’ll post a photograph of it. Perhaps I won’t. There are more problems with it than with an inbred child, more fatal flaws than a Shakespearean hero. In the end, once I’d cut away all the unused chapters that always drop to the end of the big unwieldy document, discarded paragraphs that have never worked, humanely put to sleep jokes that never stood a chance of living, the book weighs in at a rather measly 82694 words. Perhaps I’ll rewrite some of the end and get it up to 90,000… There are more jokes in it than pages, but whether there are more laughs is a different matter. All I do know is that The Chipster needs a rest. Half of it was scribbled too quickly and the rest drawn out of me with the speed of a sadistic dentist pulling a tooth. It took me a month to write the first 50,000 words and five months to write the next 30,000.

I now feel a bit numb yet I’m already thinking about what I’d like to write next…

Whither My Withered Buttocks

I'm as over-worked as Clare's memory stick. In fact, there was a moment during the early hours of Sunday morning when I thought I’d taken a break. Only, I was mistaken. I was not sitting on a tropical beach being sang to by the Sheila's Wheels nude choir. I’d fallen asleep in the armchair for a few minutes. Disgusted with myself, I rubbed some vinegar into my eyes and got back to work. I managed another forty pages before my body gave out and I fell into a thin restless sleep.

Before Ms. Baroque starts to worry that I was working on my masterpiece for her blog, that little gem was polished off earlier in the day. Instead, I was up late, going through the draft of my manuscript which Gabby finally returned to me, yesterday, full of her edits.

It took me seven hours to remove all her jokes. It was hard work, harder than the time I worked a room of female lumberjacks during the winter break in the Canadian log sawing season. I was picking pine needles from my underwear for months afterwards.

I don’t know what led me to lose faith in myself the other day, but asking Gabby to rewrite my novel with her own brand of humour wasn’t a bright move. When I reached page 50 of the redraft, I had begun realised that a Romanian sense of humour is a dangerous thing. Not only did most of it involve gloriously over-the-top mutilations of farmyard animals but most of the routines were stolen from Norman Wisdom comedies. Not that Norman ever went at a sheep with a machete, but you get the idea when I explain that the hero, in Gabby’s redraft of my novel, could barely stay on his feet for more than five minutes before tripping over and skewering a goat with a pitchfork. Oh, it was funny at first. But, by page 200 and the body count entering into triple figures, I was feeling pretty unwell. I'd happily never read another account of a sheepdog going tail first into a corn thresher.

So, today is a fresh gore-free day and I continue to work. I still worry about my buttocks (above) being to big. I wonder too if my comments will drop off as my visitors feel ashamed of visiting. I’m also concerned about those quiet visitors, who I value as much as any, who come here every day but never introduce themselves. How have they received my buttocks? I’d love to know.

King Leer: An Extract

Do you ever feel like there are too many words in the world? Writing a blog is like flushing so much effort down the drain. Each day requires more effort and at least one more chance to flush good words away. Which is why I’m working on my first novel set in the nightclubs of North Wales. These words are 'keepers' which means that they don't disappear to be immediately forgotten in the white noise of the blogosphere.

I’ve been struggling for a title but after yesterday’s English lesson, I came up with ‘King Leer’. You see how it’s a clever play on words?

This is an extract from the first draft and occurs early on in the story when my hero, Crispen Leer, meets a mysterious Romanian girl during an audition. It’s not based on real life events, nor is it biographical. It’s a novel of mystery and unhinged love. Think of it as ‘Blue Velvet’ but with more references to coal fields, Romanian midget smuggling, and thong adjustments. I hope it will be written, sold, and published in time for Christmas as I think it will be a perfect gift for all the family.

––––––-

The girl was Romanian and try as he might, he could not overcome the great feeling of wanting to possess her; wholly, without compromise, from the yellowing top of her bleached blonde head to the cracked tips of her nicotine stained fingers.

Crispen leaned at the bar and washed the last of his ginger ale around the bottom of the bottle until the barman returned.

‘You’re in luck,’ said the man, slipping the notepaper back across the counter. He smiled a wide unpleasant smile as welcoming as a razor wound. ‘He said you should wait around. He’ll see you in half an hour.’

‘Does that mean I get an audition?’

The barman’s features collapsed. ‘Listen, I just deliver the message. It’s up to the gaffer if you do your thing.’

The edge of disgust in the man’s voice was hard to ignore but Crispen had lived long enough in the trade to know that not the moral life of a male stripper would never be the first thing any man would imagine. He shared the man’s apathy to the world. He shared his disgust with himself. There was really no reason no to.

He instead turned his attention back to the girl. She’d finished setting up her mike stand and had positioned a small cassette deck on a stool to her side.

She stood behind the microphone and waited as intro beats ticked off and the music began. He recognised it as a Depeche Mode song but couldn’t remember the title. When the girl started to sing, the lyrics didn’t help. They came out strung across a unrecognisable scale that wasn’t wholly melodic.

It took his ear a minute to understand the girl’s problem. Her voice was smoothed like brushed metal and emitted no warmth. Every note glided from her throat as though untouched by her being and the words held a natural pathos that froze on the ear. Studying her performance, Crispen wondered what it would be like to live without the constant rain of emotions. Rolling drops of sentiment came dripping from him when he performed but, with her, emotions existed without form and without function. They were as alien to the girl as the words she was struggling to pronounce. He slumped a little heavier against the bar. The girl’s failure only made his longing the greater and he immediately hated himself for feeling so drawn to her.

After three verses, she shook her head and pressed the stop button on the deck.

‘Not bad,’ said Crispen, stepping forward to the stage. ‘You have a natural gift.’

‘Do I?’ she asked, her voice as impassive in speaking as it had been in singing.

‘I think you phrase things wonderfully,’ he replied. The truth, he thought, was that she sang as impassionately as a cold front which descended on all who lay before it.

‘You can tell my English bad?’ A finger traced the line of her brow and pushed a tendril of blonde hair over her ear.

‘It gives you character,’ he said. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

She looked to the microphone. ‘I should practice,’ she answered.

Crispen was relieved as soon as she declined his offer. Did he really want to know more? What was there to know except that he was looking for affirmation in any place which wasn’t of the ordinary?

She dug a packet of cigarettes from out of her bag and quickly lit one with a lighter she had hung around her neck on a chain. It was that kind of detail that made him go weak at the knees.

‘But you buy me double vodka and we have deal,’ she said, blowing a cloud of smoke over him. Its chill was beguiling.

This is what I do and I'm doing it

I thought this morning’s lesson went rather well. I submitted my homework (which I’ll post here as soon as I’m done with this) and we read some more poems, some of which even rhymed. I was really delighted by the whole episode.

During a chance conversation during our break, Mrs. Rust mentioned that any of us with a ‘yen to write for a living’ must buy either The Writer’s Handbook or The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. And like the conscientious student I’m so desperately trying to be, I immediately nipped out to my local Waterstones and bought myself a copy of each. I’ve been locked up in my den since then, giving them a full and proper examination.

And my conclusion?

What a crock it all is!

Let’s be clear on this. There’s nothing I enjoy doing more in this world than writing. There’s nothing I’ve love more than to earn a living by making people laugh with my vaguely incompetent mutterings. But let’s also be clear: I’m not a man to be treated like a petulant child. I don’t want to be mocked, mimicked, patronised, or consoled. I don’t want somebody to take my dreams and package them between two bright yellow covers and tell me that all my ambitions can be realised if I unlock this prize with a £15 donation to the cause.

In other words: I’m pretty sure if there’s a certain way to become a writer, this isn’t it.

And, besides, what does it mean to be a writer? I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently. Reading other blogs have helped me come to the conclusion that I am already a writer. I write every day, sometimes for hours on end. I would like money for my pains, but the whole reason I do this is because I love putting words on the page. I like the way they sound, the ways they sometimes jar. I love the patterns I can make. I like how they sound on the ear, sometimes sad and sometimes funny. I don't know what it is to be a writer beyond doing this. This is what I do and I’m doing it.

So, perhaps what people mean when they say they dream of being a writer is that they dream of the writer’s life. Which, I might add, is probably all that it is: a dream. The considerable number of people I know who claim they want to write, find an amazing number of reasons why they don’t. They realise, I suppose, that the reality of writing involves hard work at some point in their day. And who wants to be stuck alone for hours on end, many of which are spent reflecting on your own inabilities to do your job well?

The solution to hard work is to buy a book that solves your problems. These books placate us all by making the path to publication sound so reasonable. The delusions begin with their descriptions of agents. Yet reading between the lines, it’s a matter of ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’. Agents attract bad writers like gadflies are attracted to... Well, perhaps the simile doesn’t quite work. My point is this: is there any way to get an agent to notice you other than stripping off and parading up and down outside their offices? No, I mean it. Is there any other way? When I tried the stripping off route (on seven different occasions with five different agents) I was arrested three times, groped twice, and in every other instance told that ‘we only deal with established writers’. This is the only reason I can see that 'Chip Dale's Guide To Thongdom' has still not made it to the shelves of hardbacks.

Yet I hardly blame them. I don't blame agents and I don't blame publishers. I blame The Writer’s Handbook. I blame The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. I blame every creative writing workshop. I blame the industry that has formed around the many millions of people who found that their PCs came with a keyboard. I blame the people who confuse typing with writing.

And I suppose in the end I also blame myself for thinking that I’m any different.

As Mrs Rust said to me at the end of this morning’s coffee break: ‘You know, Chip. It would probably be better for you if you stayed as a stripper.’

I nearly told her that this is what I love to do and I really don't want to stop doing it

The Chipster's Theory About MyBlogLog

Pour me a stiff drink. I’ve had my first comment from a real world fan! Thank you Jane, wherever and whoever you are. I'm delighted that you enjoyed the show. You have to make yourself known to me the next time you come see me perform. I’ve a complimentary thong with your name on it.

Now I’m back in Bangor, I thought it about time to take stock of my life with my blog. Jane’s comment only brought into focus my disappointment with the reality of blogging. If I performed on stage to the silence I find of the blogosphere, I don’t think the Chipster could get his shoes off, never mind the rest. And then there's all the work it takes, coming up with something new to say each day. The whole thing is a worry to me...

You know, I’m not getting any younger and I have to think about a career after the thong when my perfectly formed buttocks begin to sag. I’d hate to be still stripping in ten years time. That's why I think of alternative occupations. I enjoy writing and would like to find work crafting words, which is why keep pestering the local newspapers to see if they want any pieces of thonglateering to put next to their ads for second hand motors.

Sadly, my appeals fall on deaf ears. And I can’t help but feel disappointed that there have been far too few invites to review the papers on Sky News. The same is true of the BBC who ignore me daily. And as to the newspapers: they don’t even seem to know me. I’ve not had a single offer to write a piece for The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times… The list could go on and on.

Yet the one place where I feel like I’ve made some progress is with MyBlogLog. I subscribe to it a while ago and have found it lightens up my otherwise drab days. I enjoy nothing more than looking at the faces of some of you visitors and trying to gues what you’re all really like. I tell you that there’s a thrill to be had by looking at the picture on the Mybloglog profiles guessing what your blogs are going to be like before I see them. I’ve studied it for a few weeks now and I’m ready to reveal my conclusions.

The Seven Categories of MyBlogLog Visitor

1. The Beautiful People

Okay. We all know that I’m one of these. You can spot those of us who belong in this category because the picture on our profile shows you how bloody gorgeous we are. We’re the type of person who really knows how to communicate with our bodies and understand every commination sent out by our bodies in return. Webcams were created for those of us in this category. As were tropical beaches, which is where most of our pictures are taken. We’re also the sort of people who look straight into the camera. You’ll know too that we beautiful people usually have beautiful blogs where you can read all about our beautifully rich lives. Admit it, you hate us and love us and you want to be just like us. Bless...

2. The Charlatans

You can spot these people because they’re usually in some dynamic pose. They’ll probably be pointing at you in a ‘get off your arse’ way. These are the people who want to change you life for the better. The photo might have been taken an usual angle, full of Feng Shui. If you click on these people’s profiles, you’ll usually end up at a blog that’s promoting some sort of modern day quackery. These are the estate agents of the internet. The faith healers. The lifestyle gurus. The career consultants. The readers of the stars. In other words, these are the lowest of the low when it comes to blogging. Avoid them at all cost and never give them your credit card details. I hate to generalise but they all do strange things with animals and smell of feta cheese.

3. The Extrovert Shy

These are the people whose have their pictures taken but then go to great lengths to obscure their identity in some way. These are the people that hide behind their hands or they use Photoshop to obscure their features. Sometimes the pictures are taken in the semi darkness. These people are a mystery and their blogs are usually equally mysterious. Satanic rituals are usually involved and they don’t use any kind of blog template. Their websites are usually built from scratch, have a black background and yellow fonts and they’ve used javascript to play a tune and turn your cursor into a magician’s wand.

4. The Extrovert Extroverts

These are different to the ‘beautiful people’ in that they’re not actually beautiful. Yet in a way they are the people who are most a home with who they are. These are the people who put their passport photos on their profiles. Their blogs are usually very open about their lives but tend to get bogged down in detail about what their cat ate for breakfast. Ignore these people. They are extremely boring. Never under any circumstance give them your home address. They will visit you.

5. The Hidden

These are the freaks of the web. These are the people who hide their identities or prefer anonymity. Sometimes they create a false persona and blog from behind this veil of anonymity. You have to watch out for these people as they’ll often use a fake photograph. These are very odd people and you can’t believe a word they say on their blogs. They will lie about anything. You have been warned.

6. The Graphic Designers

These are the people who have designed their own logo. These people are creative bores with abnormally large egos. They seem to think they are so unique they need to corporate branding. Their blogs will be extremely well put together, with great visual style. Unfortunately their content shows why they are often accused of having style of substance. Usually that substance is weed which also makes for very long and dull ramblings about the nature of peace. They will often post about style sheets and tips on setting your website out in three or more columns. Don’t contact these people as they will definitely try to sell you some of their paintings.

7. The TV Bores

When you can’t think of anything else to use as a logo, steal something from the TV. That’s the mantra of these TV bores. They are very easy to spot because they’ll have stole a picture from The Simpsons and will be going around the web claiming to Police Chief Wiggum. These are the bloggers that usually bring nothing new or original to the blogosphere. They believe that to blog successfully you must rehash what they find on other blogs. Their sites usually contain nothing but the reposted scrapings of Youtube. Don’t visit their blogs unless you want to see videos of people getting injured, dogs attacking TVs, or long 'funny' clips of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings intercut with scenes from the original Star Trek.

A Bitter Stripper

I stayed up late last night writing a post I didn’t have chance to finish because the spin cycle on the washing machine came to a premature end and I had to go hang out my thongs to dry. I was intending to finish writing it today but changed my mind after reading the papers.

My thongs are now dry but, unfortunately, I’ve decided to give up blogging.

I’ll probably have a change of heart tomorrow but at the moment The Chipster is feeling very bitter and down. I’m planning on selling off my collection of thongs and getting a proper job. I don’t want to be part of Bangor’s entertainment industry any more. I don’t want to be Welsh. I don’t want to be a man. And I don’t want to be single.

That’s right. I want to be a wife in the north! I want to write about my infirm mother and the things she can do with her false teeth when my father’s standing with his trousers around his ankles flogging her with his belt. I want to write about the whimsical things my dog tells me and the things my children do to beggars they meet on the streets. I want to write long meandering sentences full of apple pie metaphors and smudged similies like finger painted smiles and clowns’ eyebrows.

But, Chipster, I hear you ask, if you want to do that, then why give up blogging?

Well, there comes a point in your life when you think ‘why bother’. Why risk serious pelvic injury every night to dance for audiences who forget you the next day? What’s the point in writing to amuse your readership? What is the point in trying to do something different to the ten million other blogs out there?

Today’s Sunday Times front page had the story I’ve been expecting for weeks. It’s the announcement that ‘The Wife in the North’ has just landed a 70,000 pound publishing deal to turn her blog into a novel.

I wish her well, of course, but I dislike the pretence that this was always just an ordinary woman who decided to start a blog. It’s one of those blogging success stories we all hope will happen to us. Except they don’t happen to us. They don’t happen to ordinary bloggers. They don’t happen to male strippers from Wales. They happen to ex-education journalists from the Sunday Times.

Yet here I am, a real man in a really grim northern (well, the north of Wales) town, stripping for a living, yet nobody wants to hear about the reality of my life ‘up here’.

The Chipster is feeling bitter today and even knowing that he owns Wales’ biggest collection of posing pouches can’t make him feel happy.

UPDATE: Bryan Appleyard has written a wondefully playful piece which just about captures The Chipster’s sentiments. I guess if I’m not the only one thinking this, I’ll be back in my thongs tomorrow.

On British Blogging, Tinned Peaches, and The Easy Option

What makes a good blog?

I’m a virgin when it comes to blogging, so feel free to ignore the way I thrust my pelvis forwards and backwards as I think and write. Besides, I’m sure blogging has no connection to the world of male stripping and it would be foolish to imagine that thong size has anything to do with it. As far as I can see, everybody involved in British Blogging seems to be fairly relaxed, nice people. Respectable too. And nobody ever ever looks at their readership figures! We all live in bliss in this happy virtual world. The Chipster has the worst and best blog in the country. As do you. As do all of us. It works like that, right?

But what am I supposed to do now? How does this blogging malarkey really work?

Regularity

Gabby tells me that I have to update once a day with some wry little anecdote of our life here in Bangor. I can see how this might work. I should thoughtfully consider and polish each line as carefully as I might slowly run a finger down the zip on my garage mechanic outfit. The ladies like that… But my darling little Banshee tells me that many of her Romanian friends update half a dozen times a day with random little musings about pretty much anything. This, I guess, is just like as I might throw off my Superman costume with no thought to the tease of the strip. The ladies only like me to do this when they’ve had a bit too much Rum and Coke and have a taxi waiting.

So the question is, fellow thongaleers: What’s more important to a blog? Quantity or quality?

Many blogs don’t update for days on end. Others update every few hours. But if you lead the life of The Chipster, you’d never have time to read these outpourings of inner monologue. And I don’t want to become the sort of person to bore you with:

'Have you seen the price of a tin of peaches in syrup these days? I’ve just been to Tesco and I’m appalled at how many you get in a tin and for sixty nine pence! Anyway, I’ve created a button for us all to post on our blogs so we can campaign for a reduction in the price of tinned peaches.'

There then usually follows sixty nine comments agreeing that the price of tinned peaches is too high and discussing the economic significance of peach sales to the UK economy and whether Tony Blair is stocking tinned peaches in some warehouse in Kent so he can have cheaper holidays in the regions where tinned peaches come from.

I’m sorry. I’m getting a bit agitated. My oily fingers are beginning to slip from the bloody keyboard.

Content

Which brings me to the question of content.

I’m a busy man. There are many many women in Bangor who rely on my services. So, I’ve been wondering how can the Chipster fulfil the desires of so many hundredweight of hormones whilst also satisfying his blog’s insatiable craving for content?

And then, this morning, I woke up with a bright idea. I could turn this blog into one of those places that don’t bother trying to do anything original! For all of twelve groggy seconds, I thought to myself: take the easy route, Chipster, old boy! Who doesn’t enjoy pictures of naked chicks? And when I run out of pictures of naked chicks, I could post the occasional bit of YouTube video. You know: babies doing funny tricks, serious tobogganing accidents, people settting their pets on fire, last night’s TV, a healthy big of voyeurism. It’d be sure to bring in the punters. Greatest blog in the world!!!

I told Gabby about my idea and she gave me one of those Romanian silences involving high pitched notes you can’t actually hear but make your teeth ache.

So, tomorrow, I’ll have to think of something new to write about. The Chipster won’t be choosing the easy way out. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. He’s a man of principle. It’s like that bit in my escapology act when I’m tied naked in a mail sack full of otters. Those a proper shackles, locks, and otters I use. And it takes me so long to get out, I sometimes wonder if the end result is worth all of that trouble.

Perhaps blogging and stripping aren’t that dissimilar after all.