It's time to stop hating Mondays

None of us like Mondays - when it arrives, the working week stretches out ahead of us like a long straight highway across an arid, joyless desert of mundaneness, whilst the fun and frolicking of the weekend just gone is already fading into memory.
Mondays are the low-point, when our yin is at its zenith and our yang is languishing at the bottom of a mine-shaft (or is it the other way around?). We have about as much enthusiasm for the days ahead as a curry-house lavatory at opening time, and we really just want Monday to pass without anything really shitty happening.
But, my friends, it doesn't have to be this way!

Now I'm not for a moment suggesting that we can learn to love Mondays - that's just silly. Unless you're on holiday, Mondays are, and always will be, the crappiest day of the week.
But perhaps we can, with a little bit of effort, begin to not 'hate' Mondays, and instead start to grudgingly accept that Mondays are a necessity that we just have to deal with and, because we just have to deal with it, it's worth making the effort to make Mondays as tolerable as they can be.
That's why, in addition to the phenomenally successful #ShoutAboutItThursday, I'm going to introduce
#MakeMeSmileMonday.

So how will #MakeMeSmileMonday work?
Well, it's simple - I'm going to share something which made me smile and which, I hope, will make you smile as well…and in doing so, bring a little soupçon of light into what is too often a dark and miserable day.
So here goes - watch the video below (brought to my attention by Kayleigh and Joe - ta very muchly) and let the grin begin...

And if this didn't bring a smile to your face, then I'm afraid you're already beyond help!

Hey, whiney pussy? Get the f**k out of here...!

Another thousand words of 'The Peculiar Case of God vs Pratt' written this morning...oh, it's good to be writing again.

Yes, my friends, the ultra-positive Andy is back!!
I faced up to my whiney, impatient, ungrateful alter ego, visiously tweaked his right nipple, gave him a Chinese burn on his arm, pulled seven nasal hairs from out of his right nostril (which I'm sure really hurt), poked him in the left eye, beat him to the ground with a poster of Natalie Portman, stripped him naked, pointed at his genitalia and laughed, then sent him on his way.
He won't be back in a hurry, I can tell you, the pathetic little shit!

So, let's just go back to all the things I was moaning about yesterday and re-assess those comments:

• Rejection of my children's poetry work by a literary agent - I'm okay with my poetry being rejected by an agent; it goes with the territory. If I believe my poetry's good, I need to keep sending it out and not even contemplate being a quitter...and I believe...no, I know it's good.
• The absence of any sales of my books for the last couple of weeks - So there's been no sales for a couple of weeks; what of it? Let's be realistic here. If my book's going to take off, it will be a slow-burn as word gets out about it. There was never going to be some kind of Dan Brown-esque surge of massive sales. Realism, man! And I always said that I wanted it to be a 'cult classic'. There'ssomething uber-cool about being known as the author of a 'cult classic'.
• So it's hard work promoting it...that's the nature of the beast, kiddo. No promote-y, nobody read-y. Comprende?
• Recent criticism of my book - What the fuck did I expect? Universal adoration? Wall-to-wall 5* reviews? Everybody's different and they like different things. It's a fact - deal with it. In fact, I need to be really thankful that someone has been kind enough not only to spend time reading my book, but to explain to me why it's not working for them. Come on, Andy, be a man and accept what they say, after all, it's there opinion, and didn't I write something a while ago on my blog about opinions...? What was it? Something about TripAdvisor and a git called Mr Unhappy Bunny. Man up!
• Bizarrely unco-operative people - Well, I'll give myself that one; he was just being a bit of a knob.
• The delay in producing an article about my book for the Bolton Evening News - Again, realism. It's an article about someone who's had an e-book published. It's not an article about finding a cure for cancer. It's likely to be of limited interest, but at least it's getting your name and your book mentioned. Be thankful Miranda didn't turn around and say: 'Sorry, Andy, but you are boring and your book sounds boring and we're going to publish an article about a man catching a fish in his garden pond instead.'
• No-one responding to requests to review my book - Give it time; these are busy people doing this in their spare time, so give them a break and be thankful that such people exist. And if they choose not to respond (which they are perfectly entitled to do, my friend), then just move on to the next one on the list instead of whining about it - by the way, if any reviewers out there are reading this, I love you all; you are the best!!!
• Hearing that Dan Brown's Inferno has already sold 228,000 copies in hardback alone - This is simple. He's an internationally renowned best-selling author. I'm not.

So, apologies to everyone who read that pile of introspective, self-bemoaning shit that I blogged yesterday.
I promise that that guy, now that he's had his nipples tweaked, his nasal hairs pulled and his manhood belittled, will not be back any time soon.

And, just for the record, my manhood would not be laughed at...

Much...