So the Tesco I visit is becoming famous on Twitter due to the volume of attractive men that both work and shop there. I counted 30 today, 21 customers and 9 staff. This has become known as #HotTesco (remember hashtags from my previous post?)
It got me thinking, is this just a one-off phenomenon or is Tesco the choice of the prettier of us in the UK. Comments I've been getting so far on Twitter indicates that Tesco is actually the choice of chavs and trolls and that I'm just lucky, so it's time to make this scientific.
From this Thursday I will be launching #HotTescoUK, a study into where is best to shop for eye-candy.
This won't be purely for women and gay men, each week I will be looking at a different demographic based on age and sex. The results will of course be subjective, but I am developing a test to try and balance the results, based on my Tesco being the control.
The schedule will be as follows:
25 November-1 December Men aged 20 to early 40s i.e old enough to have children, unlikely to have grandchildren
2 December-8 December Old Ladies (over 60s)
9 December-15 December Women aged 20 to early 40s
16 December- 22 December Old Men
23 December-5 January Xmas Break
6 January-12 January Middle Aged Men (40-60)
13 January-19 January Middle Aged Women
When counting, the 'subjects' don't have to be stunning, just 'do-able' and we won't be rating the hotness of the elderly people, just the number who are shopping.
To register for this experiment email hottescouk@gmail.com and have fun shopping!
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Thursday, 25 November 2010
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Club Jeffery
So, what do I get up to on Twitter? In short I spend pretty much my whole day on there but I've made some friends in the bizzarest of conversations. A perfect example of this would be the creation of #clubjeffery. For those of you that aren't Twitterate (I may have just made that up but I mean 'Twitter literate') #clubjeffery is an example of a hashtag, by putting a hash sign before a word or phrase it makes it easier for users to search for a certain topic.
So back to the evening #clubjeffery was formed. It started with a conversation between Dave, a friend I met on a course last year, and his friends Jo and Gavin, about going on a road trip. As the conversation progressed, as they oh so often do on Twitter, it was decided the roadtrip would be made wearing wedding dresses. Enter me...
I should probably take you back to last July when me and Dave met. It was a residential course with work, which meant all the delegates bonded over the week we were there and in the evenings we were given activities to keep us amused (and keep us in the bar!)
On the Wednesday once we'd gotten to know eachother and were starting to feel relaxed we were told we would have to put on a short play based on a film. My group were given Grease and all eyes turned to the guy with long, blond hair, there was no point in arguing I was going to be Sandy. Cue hysterical women running around the building searching for dresses and make up.
So we rehearsed the play apart from the finale where I would kiss the rather dishy guy that played Danny (who didn't actually find out I was gay until we were having a drink later that night.) We figured the kiss could wait until after a few beers, and a shot of whiskey we kept at the back of the stage.
So the performance went well, as cheesy and amateur as the ones before us after only a couple of hours preparation, until we did a slow motion run together at the end. We stopped, just before the kiss, said "wait a moment" knecked the whiskey and went in for, what became a legendary kiss. I think it was a combination of the whiskey, 'Danny' being a fair bit taller than me and my tendancy to over-act, which meant I mounted the poor guy, winning us first place in the competition.
So, I felt as Dave was planning this trip in a dress I would get myself involved (the course wasn't the first time I've been known to don women's clothing!)
Jo said there should be a name for this newly formed club to which Dave suggested Jeffery and so Club Jeffery was formed.
As I said, conversations quickly progress on Twitter and when Jo said she would make sandwiches it took another turn as to what the sandwiches would be. This conversation was never going to get normal and we weren't going to be content with cheese and ham sandwiches. Exotic animals were the order of the day and since have partaken (only in a virtual way) in everything from tiger penis to whale with grated puffin.
This takes me back to my first post, we four have become firm friends and spend most evenings chatting on twitter, all because of one random conversation we wouldn't have had via any other form of social networking. And this is the reason I have fallen in love with Twitter, these are people I would never have met, and yet now we make eachother laugh every night, and I'm sure at some point we will meet up and have the time of our lives.
I will go on to discuss other friends I have made through just as random evenings, but for now... Join #clubjeffery. That is all.
So back to the evening #clubjeffery was formed. It started with a conversation between Dave, a friend I met on a course last year, and his friends Jo and Gavin, about going on a road trip. As the conversation progressed, as they oh so often do on Twitter, it was decided the roadtrip would be made wearing wedding dresses. Enter me...
I should probably take you back to last July when me and Dave met. It was a residential course with work, which meant all the delegates bonded over the week we were there and in the evenings we were given activities to keep us amused (and keep us in the bar!)
On the Wednesday once we'd gotten to know eachother and were starting to feel relaxed we were told we would have to put on a short play based on a film. My group were given Grease and all eyes turned to the guy with long, blond hair, there was no point in arguing I was going to be Sandy. Cue hysterical women running around the building searching for dresses and make up.
So we rehearsed the play apart from the finale where I would kiss the rather dishy guy that played Danny (who didn't actually find out I was gay until we were having a drink later that night.) We figured the kiss could wait until after a few beers, and a shot of whiskey we kept at the back of the stage.
 |
| Me after the performance |
So the performance went well, as cheesy and amateur as the ones before us after only a couple of hours preparation, until we did a slow motion run together at the end. We stopped, just before the kiss, said "wait a moment" knecked the whiskey and went in for, what became a legendary kiss. I think it was a combination of the whiskey, 'Danny' being a fair bit taller than me and my tendancy to over-act, which meant I mounted the poor guy, winning us first place in the competition.
So, I felt as Dave was planning this trip in a dress I would get myself involved (the course wasn't the first time I've been known to don women's clothing!)
Jo said there should be a name for this newly formed club to which Dave suggested Jeffery and so Club Jeffery was formed.
As I said, conversations quickly progress on Twitter and when Jo said she would make sandwiches it took another turn as to what the sandwiches would be. This conversation was never going to get normal and we weren't going to be content with cheese and ham sandwiches. Exotic animals were the order of the day and since have partaken (only in a virtual way) in everything from tiger penis to whale with grated puffin.
This takes me back to my first post, we four have become firm friends and spend most evenings chatting on twitter, all because of one random conversation we wouldn't have had via any other form of social networking. And this is the reason I have fallen in love with Twitter, these are people I would never have met, and yet now we make eachother laugh every night, and I'm sure at some point we will meet up and have the time of our lives.
I will go on to discuss other friends I have made through just as random evenings, but for now... Join #clubjeffery. That is all.
Monday, 15 November 2010
A Little Light Reading
I've got two links on the left hand side of my page, I'm sure I will add more in time but these sprung to mind when I was setting my blog up. The first is a blog by my boyfriend entitled Food, Thoughts, Drinks...and Um...Fitness in which he discusses his main loves of food, wine and movies, as well as an upcoming fitness regime which his work colleagues have talked him into. He's an excellent cook, and I mean a proper cook, we discuss at length combinations of flavours and are both the kind of cooks that can throw together ingredients knowing it's going to come out well. I may well blog about recipes I have come up with at a later date. Incidently, I do have a recipe I posted on the BBC Goodfood website if you want to check it out! He is also expanding my rather poor movie knowledge, and rather enjoyed Howls Moving Castle on Friday night, a film I have wanted to see for a number of years. To illustrate my poor taste in movies I am writing this while watching Tim Burton's adaptation of Planet of the Apes, a film I think most movie buffs wouldn't touch with a barge pole. SIMON: I NEED EDUCATING!!! The second link is a website from a Twitter friend, Karl Webster. He has decided to leave the ratrace and spend 2011 visiting around 80 festivals from music to religious festivals to study how people around the world celebrate their freedom. You can follow his journey from the website I have linked to, and also follow him on Twitter- @karlpmole
Sunday, 14 November 2010
From T to B
So lets go back to August, that's where this story begins. I'll touch on my life before hand, but the title 'A New Hope' (apart from a Star War reference) is about what's happened since.
I was sat at home one afternoon, I'd read everyone's Facebook posts, caught up with everything on the iPlayer, and stared blankly at my laptop. I had wondered what the hype about Twitter was over Facebook, but as I had resisted the pull of Facebook for years until someone asked to add me, I had also resisted the pull of Twitter.
But what could the harm be? I could sign up, have a nose around and then leave it alone like the MySpace account I think exists somewhere.
Quite soon I realised the difference. On Facebook you update your status and wait for your friends to reply, people get bored quite quickly if you post every sandwich you eat or bus you catch. With Twitter I found the ethos was different. If something pops into my head I can Tweet, people will see it, if they care we can get into a conversation, if not, onto the next sandwich.
It took a while of randomly looking at people's tweets, randomly tweeting things myself and retweeting things I liked to slowly get the hang of a whole new form of social networking for me (as well as getting used to cutting what you want to say down to 140 characters)
In the subsequent 3 months I have gained over 100 followers (albeit some of them automated 'bots') but out of those I have also made some new friends.
This is the difference I had to get used to, how a conversation works. If someone speaks to you on Facebook you have at some point in your life met them and to be polite you feel obliged to reply. If someone follows you or speaks to you on Twitter you have the chance to look at their bio, read what they tweet about and decide if you have similar interests or views. Personally I'm up for a laugh, and most people I follow give me a bit of a giggle during the day, so I began to converse with people that did that. To that end I have had conversations this week about taking over the world, custard football and monster munch, to mention a few.
So that's the T in the title, the B stands for Blog where I am going to document some of the more bizarre sides of Twitter as well as release some of the weird thoughts that pop into my head (of which there's a lot!)
Enjoy...
I was sat at home one afternoon, I'd read everyone's Facebook posts, caught up with everything on the iPlayer, and stared blankly at my laptop. I had wondered what the hype about Twitter was over Facebook, but as I had resisted the pull of Facebook for years until someone asked to add me, I had also resisted the pull of Twitter.
But what could the harm be? I could sign up, have a nose around and then leave it alone like the MySpace account I think exists somewhere.
Quite soon I realised the difference. On Facebook you update your status and wait for your friends to reply, people get bored quite quickly if you post every sandwich you eat or bus you catch. With Twitter I found the ethos was different. If something pops into my head I can Tweet, people will see it, if they care we can get into a conversation, if not, onto the next sandwich.
It took a while of randomly looking at people's tweets, randomly tweeting things myself and retweeting things I liked to slowly get the hang of a whole new form of social networking for me (as well as getting used to cutting what you want to say down to 140 characters)
In the subsequent 3 months I have gained over 100 followers (albeit some of them automated 'bots') but out of those I have also made some new friends.
This is the difference I had to get used to, how a conversation works. If someone speaks to you on Facebook you have at some point in your life met them and to be polite you feel obliged to reply. If someone follows you or speaks to you on Twitter you have the chance to look at their bio, read what they tweet about and decide if you have similar interests or views. Personally I'm up for a laugh, and most people I follow give me a bit of a giggle during the day, so I began to converse with people that did that. To that end I have had conversations this week about taking over the world, custard football and monster munch, to mention a few.
So that's the T in the title, the B stands for Blog where I am going to document some of the more bizarre sides of Twitter as well as release some of the weird thoughts that pop into my head (of which there's a lot!)
Enjoy...
Thursday, 11 November 2010
This is me!
It was suggested that I write a blog due to my excessive tweeting on Twitter, so I did, here it is. I have now been sat here for an hour over a pint trying to work out what to write, but I don't plan well so I'm just going to ramble until I run out of steam. I suppose I should start with me... As you can guess from the fact I decided to come for a pint to write this, I like a drink. I've recently moved to a small town in Dorset called Wimborne and have rediscovered my love for real ale, but I also like a good bottle of wine or bourbon on special occasions.
I'm gay, but it's not my life as I've found it is for so many after spending six months living close to the Bournemouth scene. I didn't come out until I was 26 and my best friends response was 'well you're still Dean.' And that pretty much sums me up, I am just me, there's no-one else quite like me and I would never change that.
As I've said I'm a prolific tweeter, I only joined in August through boredom and have already racked up over 3,000 tweets. I've made a lot of friends over these months and like the freedom to write anything in your head as opposed to Facebook where I find myself (slightly) more reserved.
I saw a tweet recently that said Facebook is for people you know that you don't want to talk to and Twitter is for people you don't know that you enjoy talking to. This is by and large true, I have some very good friends on Facebook, but also a lot I added because I 'knew' them and have never spoken to since. I also now have a lot of friends on Twitter, but we started off knowing we have similar interests, thoughts and ideas.
Ok, ramble over for now (must get back to Twitter!) There's more too me than beer and Twitter, but that's the idea of this blog, an insight into what's in my head, so you'll have to stay tuned...
I'm gay, but it's not my life as I've found it is for so many after spending six months living close to the Bournemouth scene. I didn't come out until I was 26 and my best friends response was 'well you're still Dean.' And that pretty much sums me up, I am just me, there's no-one else quite like me and I would never change that.
As I've said I'm a prolific tweeter, I only joined in August through boredom and have already racked up over 3,000 tweets. I've made a lot of friends over these months and like the freedom to write anything in your head as opposed to Facebook where I find myself (slightly) more reserved.
I saw a tweet recently that said Facebook is for people you know that you don't want to talk to and Twitter is for people you don't know that you enjoy talking to. This is by and large true, I have some very good friends on Facebook, but also a lot I added because I 'knew' them and have never spoken to since. I also now have a lot of friends on Twitter, but we started off knowing we have similar interests, thoughts and ideas.
Ok, ramble over for now (must get back to Twitter!) There's more too me than beer and Twitter, but that's the idea of this blog, an insight into what's in my head, so you'll have to stay tuned...
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