Red letter day

No, not excitement and fun, more the kind with lots of dire warnings that you must do this now or else.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs department tell me I've failed to pay my taxes by the end of January, and if I don't pay £163.39 by Sunday they have authorised a man to come round and thump my thumbs with a hammer whilst shouting "It's bone crunching time sonny!"

Which came as a bit of surprise considering I'd paid what my accountant told me to pay. So checked I'd really paid and not just imagined it, and yes I had. Drove to the accountants to find my man isn't there until next Wednesday. But the nice lady looked on the computer, and it said I owe more money.

So I've paid, and now await to see if it gets there before the man with the hammer gets here. Joy.

Blogger sounds

I was catching up on that there Pseudonymph's blogage specifically the 10p tour of teh house , when it struck me, hang on, this be narrated by said woman.

The only problem is, it sounds wrong. You think you "know" peeps, and so "assign" a voice in your head for them. (FWIW Pseudonymph sounds more posh than I imagined).

Before I met the lovely Debbie McGee Misty, all I had to go on was "Teutonic celt from London", which really gives no clues at all. Doth she sound London-y? Germany? Answer :Misty like.

I's not met that there Scaryduck, but has seen videos on his blogage. I think he's the one that most matches though to reality.

Perhaps I need to meet more people and spend less time with my collection of singing potatoes....

Neighbours

everybody needs good neighbours....

Perhaps someone should tell the bloke next door:



They also need teaching not to steal asda trollies, but that's another story.

Eastenders Live!

As in not dead, curses.

Apparently this pap has been wasting the brains of tv addicts for 25 years now, and to celebrate they had a live episode with the finding out of who killed Archibald whatsisname to ensure maximum idiots would watch.

I of course only endured a few minutes of it as I was walking past the tv. So I'm only partly brain damaged, but thought I'd tell you all what happened just in case you missed it. Tis possible I may get it a soupcon wrong at times due to not having a clue who anyone is, and not watching it. I could get a job at the sun doing reviews with those qualifications.

Scene: Albert square. Cast: everyone. Giant poster announcing the killer of Archibald Tuttle is to be revealed tonight. Mood: Shouty.

Ginger & missus: Shouty shouty, we gonna get stitched up for this, lets do a runner to where they'll never find us, somewhere like brookside close.

Used car lot:
Baldy bloke gets a visit from inspector knacker of the yard. Turns out changing dead guys cambelt did not result in death by blunt force trauma, as cambelts are not capable of this act.

Queen vic:
Shouty old woman demands rest of cast present admit who dunnit, or she will get her baps out again just like in carry on camping, and starts to lift her skirt to show she's serious.

Pint of Guinness on bar: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than this place.

Ian Boyle: My mum dreamed a dream, and it was you all pay me twenty quid for these here jellied eels.

Cut to street outside. Ginger + tart are running away very very slowly.
Enter inspector knacker.. "Can we have a word?"
ginger: "vermilion".
IK: "Ta. Keep on running away if that's what you're doing."

Queen vic:
Assorted slags: Bugger this for a game of soldiers, lets run away as well just in case we did it and just can't remember.

everyone else: Yes, everyone run away.

Ginger: Lets escape by going onto the roof where I'm sure we'll find a hang glider or sumfink.

Rooftop:
I am inspector knacker, and vermilion is no bloody use in the dibble scrabble tournament as I have only the letters J, A, Z, F, P, L & K. Give me another word NOW.

Ginger: Bugger, I'll take a step back and think about it.

Wheeee.....splat.

Ginger's tart: Oh no Ginger is dead an all. Who's going to help me escape from killing Archibald to death now?
Inspector Knacker: What you say?
Tart: Er... Ginger did it. Pal any good for your scrabble?

Phil Collins: dummm dummm dum dum dum. I'm getting tired of doing the eastenders theme after 25 years. Why did I leave Genesis?

Tubetastic Thursday: Never enough

Ye Gods, I'm turning into Misty with the lack of posty due to life getting in the way disease.

I bring to you:
Epica - Never enough.




I actually heard this lot for the first time yesterday. (who says il legal downloads don't lead to discovery of new stuff, and sales thereof?)

It's very strange. "symphonic metal" I think they call it. Very contrasty, high pitched woman, death grunts bloke, and a feeling of it's going to rock in a minute, and then it does!

I think I could like it. But it could also suffer from a bit too much same same. Will have to give it time and see.

Tubetastic Thursday: Close my eyes forever

I'm veh tired today, as I got up at 8am, drove to Birmingham, faced fears, survived, drove back home again.

So straight to the point.
I bring to you:
Lita Ford & Ozzy Osbourne - close my eyes forever



Cruel people will say how can you tell the difference between Ozzy & Lita, as they both look the same. Simples: Lita's the one who can sing!

Methinks I like this one 'cos you can't beat a good song about dying. Plus it check all the boxes: Big hair, silly guitars, dark n moody fade cuts...

Darn it

Today I got up early. Like the first thing in the afternoon. 12:27 pm to be precise. My phone has a missed call, so I boot the pooter and phone back.

It goes a bit like:
Did you get the message?

Which message?

The facebook one, this morning.

Hang on... pooter boots. Message received 8:06 am.

I've only just woken up. So, no I won't be in Huddersfield for 1pm.

2 pm?

Ok. Later...

So I spleep walk thru a shower, dress and then drive like a mad man to get there on time. Meet mr. Bharj, and we go hunting the Biff. (another name on our potential reunion list).

Biff is found. The man appears to have been in stasis for fourteen years. True he has gained a huge workshop (that I don't covet in the slightest. Cough), and 2 kids. And appears to be doing really well (Like everyone else, bastards). But no, not aged at all.

The result is, yes, he's up for a reunion. And thinks he can contact another name on the outstanding list. So if he's successful we only have two more to find. This is actually getting quite scary, the thought that I may have to go thru with this....

Tubetastic Thursday: Relax

Mahaha-hiya, guess what's happening now?

Yes, if you're unlucky enough to have me on your faceache list, you're getting double the videos.

If you're not lucky enough, it's my birthday today. So I'm technically older, but that's every day. The only real difference is I get to try (and fail) to pretend to do the happy when the peeps try and make an issue of it. You'd think they would learn by now, I'm just not interested....

In other news:
It has snowed again. 1.0 imperial inches. So not a lot. So obviously, that's why I get the phone call from idiot girl that she needs help in the evil snow. I should point out idiot girl has a (girls) 4x4, a freelander. She be 300 yards from home, has just missed crashing it and daren't drive any more.

"Almost" crash could be something to do with her driving technique of slowing down not working, so drop the clutch and stamp on the brakes. Repeatedly. Er, IG, leave the clutch alone, take your foot off the loud pedal and it will slow down on it's own.

So muggins gets to walk in the snow to her, drive her the remaining 300 yards home, then walk back. Joy.

On to Tubetastic Thursday.

I bring to you:
Frankie goes to Hollywood - relax



Yes, we all know the story of banned by the BBC so instant mega hit. Even if us innocent kiddies had no clue what it was about.

I was listening to the radio the other week while doing the work thing, and they had an interview with Holly Johnson, which was rather surprising to me, as I had the thought in the back of my mind he was dead a-la-Freddie Mercury. But no, he be still alive.

Mind, interviewer must have had the same thought, as interview kind of went, sooooo you're not dead then..... and you're not Frankie goes to Hollywood any more... so what are you doing while waiting to shuffle off? (He paints). Buy the greatest hits album plug. And ,er, that was it.

(Yes, I have worked out what the song is about now, thankyouverymuch).

I'm a real blogger now

Just had to delete my first comment spam, so I think that qualifies as having arrived!

Woo. Yay!

Also in large amounts of pain. Starter motor on my car is faulty. I have the "fix it" kit, to er, fix it. Land rover have made it so it's easier to remove the engine than to remove the starter motor. So ended up taking the motor apart while it's still fitted to the car, which means lots of stretching and jamming your hands in small places where you can't see or really reach that well. But at least it now starts. Double woo!

Additional

After 4 hours & 52 minutes I have been knocked out in 27th place.

This means:
a) $33 scoop ticket won
b) I'm bloody knackered as it's daft am.
c) Not doing that again.

Gambling bad kids!

Tubetastic Thursday: You can come if you want to

Greetings pop pickers!

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the following (almost) exciting information:

It's 2:28 am... 1843 players entered the blogger poker tournament that started, oh, 3 1/2 hours a-bloody-go.

And I'm still playing...
And just like the cute children on daytime tv, I'm now guaranteed a prize. Currently 38 out of 109 left so I've at least won a $11 scoop entry whatever that is.

Hang on a minute... $11, that's about 5 quid. For 3 1/2 hours? Does not compute. Could be worth it if I win the bloody thing, but somehow I doubt it.

Back to our regular programming.

I bring to you:
The carousels - you can come if you want to.


Now no doubt someone is screaming argh no! not more doo wop, make it stop!

But this is of the excellent. Excellent I tell you. I can listen to this a bajillion times, and every time is electricity running down my spine.

Ok, some will say she screams like she's killing cats, but they are also full of the wrong.

There are a few more sides from the carousels out there, and while they're fairly ok, this is definitely their triumph.

The dead man's hand holds Aces and Eights

Ok, so Wild Bill Hickok was playing 5 card draw when killed with that hand.

I however, am a) still alive and b) was playing pot limit omaha.

I also lost out in the below pimped blogger poker tournament. Top 153 get the prizes, and I came 203 out of 1600 entrants. Not too shoddy, given I'm not a huge omaha fan. And there's still tournaments to play the rest of the week for no cost.

So as the lottery used to say before they got banned for false advertising "It could be you".

Schemes and dreams

Hard as it may be to believe, I went to University and survived to get a (poor) degree. This is all ancient history (1996) and is filed on my flickr as "I had a life too once".

I forgot about it, until last week. Found one of the blokes on facebook. Oh, you're successful and have wife, child, house on the hill. I'm not... That was fun. Then another ex Beng bloke contacts me.. wife, 2 x child, house on hill, more success.

(I should perhaps at this point make clear I wish no ill, and am not bothered by their success... I assume they've earned it and thus deserve it. I haven't, and don't.)

At points in the past various peeps have said "we should have a reunion", but nothing has come of it. However, this time I think it could work, and nobody will have to get nailed to anything in pursuit of it. After all, everybody is starting to put their lives on t'interweb.

Without doing much searching emails are exchanged between six of us. Discounting foreign students, those known to have left the country since, those who didn't socialise during the course (I'm thinking of you Gailasuarus), this gives seven more potentially to find. One more can probably be discounted ('cos she's a lady and we're smelly blokes), and a further one (black ball from everyone so far). So that's five to find.

So on Saturday I set off to meet a small group of localish plotters. One wasn't coming out to play, so it was Zulf and Dara and moi. Despite my natural apprehension, we had a really nice time and came up with some perhaps viable strategies for finding the missing people. I'd like to say we haven't changed in what? 14 years, but it would be a lie. I've got fat and mental. Zulf's stopped drinking and Dara appears to be a straight and honest geezer. God have we gone downhill.

There is one slight snag, should we pull it off. What do you do to celebrate this reunion?

Now you could say go to the pub.. but people are older, with house on the hill etc, and it's not much of a draw to get people to come many miles.

Possible thoughts so far include:

Meal out somewhere.... followed by pub.
Blokey things... paintball, go karts etc. followed by pub.
Fly to somewhere cheap and cultural. Ignore the culture and go to the pub.

Any ideas from the blogosphere are most welcome?

Plz to note that we be blokes. Smelly older blokes. You don't get many lady engineers, so it has to be something where when we get there they don't think we're a stag party and throw us out. Attempting to appear sophisticated is also out (we're engineers).

Tubetastic Thursday: Russian roulette

Before I get to the usual Thursday guff, I must say woo! yay! to Facebook.

Yes, I'm still sceptical to it's uses (eg tried the poker, and you can buy fake chips that have no value with real money? How whack is that!), but on the other hand have caught up with a few peeps I've not seen in years. We even be thinking of having a class of '96 meet up. Well, the survivors who are local anyways.

A chance to find out who's gone bald, got kids, and to prove that none of us can dance still... Just as long as Phil is still frying chickens at Alton towers so I'm not totally last in the life success stakes.....

Tubetastic thursday.
I bring to you: Rihanna - russian roulette.


Ok, so I swore back in the day I'd never forgive her for the bloody umbrella song where it rained in real life for a billion days. As soon is it finally dropped off radio play out came the sun. But this be a catchy sort of tune. In fact at times it verges on earworm.

Other factettes n observations:

Uk radio play of this song cuts the final gunshot. Why, I don't know.

You have a 1 in 6 chance of taking a bullet in 'Nam if you try this at home kids. Which works out at about 50:50 if you have four goes and give the gun a spin each time. Plz to not check the statistics of this empirically.

Derrin Brown did a russian roulette based tv stunt thing. Yes, I was hoping it would go a soupcon wrong. I don't want him dead, but would settle for maimed enough that he no longer gets on tv. Which is rather odd as I don't watch tv anyways.

Rihanna is rather good at doing the wearing minimalistic clothing thing.

The following public service announcement

is brought to you in part by Slim Shady our evil overlords.

Announcement begins:

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! Bloggers can register for to play for free in the WBCOOP, if you don’t have a PokerStars account you can get your Poker Download here.

Registration code: 904446

Announcement ends...
There, I've admitted I'm a bad gambler. No doubt I'll be punished for it one day.

Tubetastic Thursday: Weekend!

They say when God closes a door he opens a window. I haven't a clue what use that actually is, unless you're a cat and like jumping thru windows?

I'm going to have a moan. I shall do it now:
My ISP have force migrated my email to google. They pimp it as being, no lie "New and shiny". That's the exact words used.

It is a load of shash. "You don't have to do anything, except wait for the shiny". it says. Oh yeah?

So.... now you can't send hardly any mail attachments. Ah.. that's useful.
And
You can only download mail once. So check mail on your phone, and then you can't get it on your pooter as well. Not like people use multiple devices these days is it? And it's Shiny! Woo! Arse!

Moan ends.

****************

I am now going to attempt an experiment. See if I can alienate approximately half the population, and attract the rest.

I bring to you:
Scooter - Weekend!



Just in case you haven't worked out the attraction it is thus: Bossoms.

There are actually several versions of this video, with varying levels of Bossoms. I have one on my pooter that is really quite overflowing, so they have also added snow to make it more arty. Snow = art, not porn if you didn't know.

Pointless additional fact for those not interested in Bossoms:
"Respect to the men in the ice cream van" refers of course to the KLF.

Fixed.. and broken

Yesterday, after only a five week wait I finally had my nanocom delivered. This be a magic box to remove the three amigos from my landrover.

Slight snag... it no work until you register it with the nice people in Italy. Who ignore your registration attempts as they're no doubt doing more exciting things like spend my money.

But today I finally got it registered, and blam! Amigos be gone. So I hope you enjoyed the snow, as now I have a working 4x4 there won't be any more.

Of course, as I've fixed something that's wrong, something else in my life must be broken. It's the turn of email. The muppets at virgin have "migrated" to shiny new google powered email. That's dead wonderful*.

Shame it turns out you only get one chance to read your mail, so if you read it on your phone that's the only copy, despite having "leave messages on server" turned on. Getting nowhere fast with support who appear to be going down the path that the solution is to read on the phone, then forward it back to yourself?

And relax.

*complete and utter shash.

99.... 100

This be post 100. Rather surprising considering I wasn't expecting to get to 10.

Sadly I've been thinking for about a week now, must have something exciting for post 100.. what's happening today? Oh. snow. cold. wet. bored.

Nothing has changed , so methinks post 100 is "still alive, plz to standby".

To prove sanity, I give you:
James last - This is my song



What do you mean insanity more like? My collection of singing potatoes tell me I'm totally sane.

New year. Old Idiot.

Or idiot girl fails to learn.

A test:
You have a (one) crusty bread roll, and you want to cut it in half. Do you

a) place on a bread board, and keeping your fingers out of the way of the knife carefully cut thru it?
or
b) Hold it in your right hand. Take your sharpest knife and hack at it brutally with your left hand?

Need a clue? Idiot Girl selected option b).

This may be why we got a phone call saying there is a cut of unknown depth on my finger that is redecorating my kitchen in a fetching shade of red and please fetch a bandage ~thud~

(~thud~ be where she passes out on the floor).
We arrive to find said thudee being ignored by the dog, so so much for all that lassie comes to the rescue shash.

Sadly no photos as I got the evil eye when I got my phone out, despite pretending it was just in case I had to call 999, and the thought of getting a quick pic to blog about didn't even begin to Cross my mind, honest. ~cough~

Say goodbye to 2009

and hello to 2010.

Yes, the year number has changed, but the quality crap blogging you've come to expect is still the same.

I've just been stood outside at minus 2 degrees, while detritus from other people's fireworks falls around me. That would have made a good new year, clonk, ow!

I wish you all the best of luck for 2010 (the year we make contact?)

I will not be making any resolutions, wishes, predictions as I don't do that sort of thing any more due to being completely shit at it.