DIY EVERYTHING

I made these crisps in the microwave. There will be more where this came from.

I once fixed a broken blackberry with sellotape and vodka. True story.
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Minimum Wage

We have a minimum wage to reflect the fact that nobody's time is worth less than a certain amount per hour. Why shouldn't there be a maximum wage, based on the most a person could feasibly acheive or need to be compensated for their time?

What got me thinking about it was this story: http://bit.ly/erPHNJ

What do you have to do to <i>deserve</i> £4k an hour???
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Top 10 things which don't involve hacking your own arm off

Ellen and I have just got in from watching Danny Boyle's 127 Hours. It was clever, engaging and utterly harrowing, at least from the the point where protagonist Aron realises that there's only one way out of his predicament. I feel emotionally exhausted. I keep grabbing my arm to make sure it's still there.

With this in mind, Ellen and I felt inspired to create an antidote to phantom stump syndrome. Here is our list of the Top 10 Things Which Don't Involve Hacking Your Own Arm Off.

1. Stroking a cat. This activity can be done with one or two arms, reduces 127 Hours-induced stress and definitely does not involve chopping one of your arms off.
2. Eating ice-cream. The "iron-y" taste of blood dripping oozily into your ice-cream certainly won't improve the flavour, therefore it's not recommended to indulge in this activity if you are or have been, cutting your arm off.
3. Playing the guitar. Not only does playing the guitar not require you to amputate a hand, it actually becomes exponentially more difficult with every one you lack. Facing the music in a life-or-death situation might mean giving it up in the long run.
4. Cuddling. It's a scientific fact that cuddling is stress-relieving. You know what isn't stress-relieving? Hacking your own arm off. I rest my case.
5. Drinking alcohol. This has the added benefit of helping you to forget amputation and general trauma-inducing based-on-a-true-story movie gore. It helped me to delete certain scenes of Irreversible from my memory, I damn well hope it works now!
6. Listening to Kansas' "Carry On My Wayward Son". While the after-effects of having hacked off your own arm won't directly impede your enjoyment of this wonderful song (apart from the drowsiness, nausea and inability to pump both fists in the air), why not just enjoy it with both arms intact - it's better!
7. Man-flu. Acting was invented by sniffly cavemen who really didn't fancy taking out a mammoth that day. It is to them we owe Hollywood, the works of Shakespeare and Premiership football. Lying in bed with lemsip and Call of Duty whilst seriously entertaining the notion that you have ebola is not only secretly quite fun, but also does not involve CRACKING YOUR ARM BONES AND HACKING, HACKING HACKING THROUGH THE MUSCLES, NERVES AND SINEW..
   
8. Wearing a cwtchy dressing gown. Fluffy, snuggly dressing gowns are brilliant for lazy bed days, mooching about the house, and making your loved one breakfast in on a weekend morning. They happen to have 2 sleeves, I don't think it's necessary to say that this is because you don't need to have amputated your own arm to wear one. So don't.
9. Typing a blog. Type. Kinda satisfying, no? Pleasing clicks, the cathartic process of laying out your thoughts and feelings..now pinch your arm. DO IT. Hurts, doesn't it? Well, I'd bet my right arm that's nothing on doing surgery with a penknife.
10. Pretty much everything. That's right. Pretty much everything is better than cutting slowly through the flesh, bone and other gubbins which make up an arm, in order to remove it from your body. Included in this almost all-encompassing statement are: being bitten by a duck, eating yogurt past it's "best by" date, and slipping over in front of children who'll point and laugh.

By Rob and Ellen.