Questionnaire: Are you a Predator or Prey?

Do you have what it takes to take stuff and eat things in this world, or are you just some sort of mamby-pamby loser always losing? Do you live life like danger is something that happens to other people when you dish it out, or is danger something that is dished out to you by people who live life like danger is something that they dish out? If you just got mangled by that sentence don't even bother doing the test, you are prey and I am the word predator! Hahahahah!
A-hem, actually please do the test, I would apologise but that isn't what us predatory 80's guys do, we tell it like it is and if a few pathetic sheep get it in the neck then that's how it is.
Anyways, here's the test:


1: You see some hump-sack wangdangler cycling past your tree. Do you:
   a) Scamper in front of their wheels for no apparent reason
   b) Throw your nuts in their direction
   c) Wiggle your bushy tail in a deeply sensual way and tempt the unsuspecting day-glo toogler up to your treetop lair where you then split them open, run your claws through their innards in sacrifice and praise to Squirrethulu.

2: You are a Floppy-eared Rodent and you have to cross the road to get to some juicy carrots growing on the other side. Do you:
  a) Hop slowly to the centre of the road and wait for the inevitable doom that awaits us all.
  b) Get drunk on nettle wine or whatever shit Rabbits use to get effed up on, steal a car and drive across the road.
  c) Wait for someone who looks like an Bloody Hippy Animal Lover to come pootling along in their clapped-out VW camper van and run out in front causing them to swerve dangerously, spontaneously combust, and plough into a Bus queue. 


3: You are a crow. Do you:
  a) Lose all self respect and get Crusty Jugglers to feed you Sugar Puffs (see 'The Tapping of the Crow' blog entry).
  b) Eat the Rabbit that chose (a) in the previous question, narrowly avoiding getting splatted yourself (see question 2 part a)
  c) Chase some woman who has realised your master is the Antichrist, peck her eyes out so she can't see the tanker truck that smashes into her, smashing her all up in a smashed up way (see 'Damien: The Omen II).

Where the fuggle are my sugar puffs, lady?

4: You are a Crust Juggler's dog living a half feral life on the canal path. Do you:
   a) Spend your days looking soppy, getting strokes off the passing people and carefully pooing where no one will step
   b) Stake out a patch of ground with your wee and poo and woe betide anyone who enters your territory of dog hell
   c) Try and mate with anything alive, especially bicycles. 

4: You are a Magpie and your Magpie pal has just got flattened by a car. Do you:
    a) Cry for a while, then tie a load of flowers to a nearby tree with your beak and place photos of Patchy lovingly there as a shrine of remembrance.
    b) Quickly race to Patchy's nest and 'inherit' all his shiny stuff.
    c) Wait till the car has gone and go and eat Patchy's eyes.


5: You have got to get to work but some lay-about good-for-nothing lazy lay-about Crusty Juggler has left all their dirty crud, dogs and children all over the canal path. Do you:
   a) Slow your bike down and carefully pick your way through, saying a merry "hallo!" to the merry folk, as they ambush you and steal your time by engaging you in a 'conversation'. 
   b) Ride as fast as you like, certainly not slowing down, it's their look out, the path is for everyone and just now that means just you!
   c) Stop your bike and start punching stuff.


ANSWERS:


Mainly (a)'s: You are not long for this world. Your 'why can't we all just get along' attitude will not win you any friends in this dog-eat-person-on-bicycle life. It will just win you a one way ticket to No Breathing Land stopping at Pain Town and Victimsville. PREY.


Mainly (b)'s: Not so bad, you certainly stick up for yourself in the face of some serious provocation, but you lack that true killer instinct it takes to be a total arsehat wrinklehanger. NOT PREDATORY ENOUGH (keep it up, you'll get there in the end, just expunge any last remnants of human decency you have left lurking in the corners of your rotten soul.)


Mainly (c)'s: You are the pinnacle of human dick-swinging evolution, you see what you want, you take it, and if any wobble-faced jibber-jabbers get in your way then it's goodnight for them! Some people may consider you a dangerous premium grade tool, but they are just jealous of your deadly get-ahead attitude. PREDATOR.


All done? Great! Now wiz along with total disregard for other internet users to the Person on a Bicycle Facebook page and enter whether you got mostly (a)'s or (b)'s or whatever on the question thingy there and we will find out whether readers of this blog are a blood-thirsty pack of go-get-em top-of-the-food-chain type Alpha types or just a very small gathering of nicely nice people.

ALL IN MY HEAD, EH?

Last night, as I was nearing the very end of the canal path part of my journey home, where it joins Winsley Hill, an incident happened that falls into the categories Dog Attack and Weird Shit.


The sky was dark, probably due to the sun being blocked out by the Earth itself (that's weird for a start), and the path at this point becomes very narrow, with a tangled hedgerow on one side, and the bottomless pit of miasmic blackness that is the canal, on the other. I have a very, very bright light on the front of my utterly futuristic bike, so even though the night was oppressively dark, my path home was totally illuminated like something lit up with a bike light. The path seemed empty, I say seemed!


Suddenly to the hedgerow side, a savage growling and gnashing of dagger-filled jaws broke out, and the sound of a hound from my twisted nightmares thudding after me came to my shocked and frightened and over-large ears. I could not see my hellish assailant though, due to the inky blackness behind me.


Now, after my previous Dog Attack by Snappy the Staff from the Dog Dispenser (see an earlier post, can't remember when, the days merge into one when you get no sleep), I have taken to wearing a dog whistle around my neck to help protect me from dog-based maulings, but this creates a dilemma: do I reach for my pathetic whistle and to go on the offensive or do I use my hands to change gear and outrun my tormentor?


All I can say is don't try to do what I did: Both.


I ended up with my head bouncing off my handle bars and actually slowing down as my unseen tormentor closed on me. Ahead was the turn off for the road that I needed to take, there I would need to stop and get off my bike to get up to the road, presenting a perfect opportunity for the creature to take some chunks.


But it didn't. 


Why? Because it had vanished! I know that is hard to believe, I hardly know whether to trust myself in my current mental state, but it is true! I scrambled up to the road bridge over the canal and shone my Super-trooper style light beam down the path: nothing! Suddenly I was filled with horror, fear and despair as I realised that I had most probably been chased by the ghost of a dog that may or may not have died on this exact spot 10 years ago to the second or some sort of spooky shit like that!

ACTUAL MIND-PHOTO OF MY ASSAILANT, EXTRACTED FROM MY HEAD BY COMEDY HYPNOTHERAPIST DERREN BROWN.

STAFFY AND THE DOG DISPENSER

There is nothing quite like travelling down the canal path, with the sunshine shimmering off the water and the birds staying at a safe distance in the trees. 


The gorgeous mud and majestic rocky peaks of the path itself make it a joyous experience. The wind in my hair, the rain on my back, the flies in my eyes. 


Yesterday as I was admiring the various canal boats with their colourful owners when I passed one that I like to call The Dog Dispenser. It was the turn of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier to be disgorged, the golden light playing on it's glossy coat and teeth. 


It greeted me with a happy growl and proceeded to lightly pound alongside me. On every down stroke on my pedal the hound playfully attempted to lock on with it's mouthful of biker maulers. 


Oh, I could have cried with joy with the pure feeling of being alive, if my soul hadn't actually been filled with horror, fear and despair. 


As the little scamp made one last lunge at my leg meat I thought, "Go on take a bite you psychotic piece of shat, it'll be your fugging funeral! I'll probably end up in a hospital bed having my hair stroked by a sympathetic (and buxom) nurse, whilst your crap-filled head will be developing a close relationship with a police marksman's bullet!"