Tubetastic Thursday - Crucified

It's Thursday. And I'm in huge amounts of pain, as I went to readjust my hairband, my shoulders spasmed and now they plus my neck are going ARGGHHH! for no sensible reason. Add in I have a lot of physical work to do and today will be "interesting".

But never mind that tot. You're here, (well I assume you're here, you may not be) for Tubetastic Thursday, yay!

I bring to you:
Army of lovers - Crucified



Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I like this one for the lady with the gravity defying breasts aren't you?

Well, it is true to say if La Camilla (for that be who she is) was to offer me the chance to put my head between them and go blubble blubble blubble I wouldn't say no. For that would be rude.

But the truth is I actually like this as a song. It's a good example of euro cheesyness. In fact back in 1992 when this came out I actually spent hard earned money in rip off HMV buying the import album. As this was pre interweb it was of course priced at think of a number and double it pricing.

It's still one of my favourites today, though of course since the t'interweb you can now find euro cheese that you'd never have heard before 'cos the marketing men decided you wouldn't like it. We've never had it so good.

ps. As observed by one of the you tube comments, one of the blokes does look like Amy Winehouse, with the exception he can sing.

On not being defective

I think I'm going mad. Yes, madder than normal.

For a while now I've been thinking I can't see properly. Like I'm driving along and I have to concentrate to make out the next car's number plate. So being a dutiful citizen who follows the laws I booked myself in to the opticians.

Just been there now, explains my concerns, read my chart plz. Er.... you can easily see two lines more than the driving standard. Twiddle twiddle, better with this lens and all that tot, and the verdict is my current specs are the correct prescription, and I can see perfectly fine.

So it's either all in my little head, or I'm not allowing for it becoming winter and darker, or there be something wrong but it's not happening right there in the shop. I don't know if I should be relieved that there's nothing wrong, or upset that there's nothing wrong.

Oh well, it will soon be winter properly and I'll get SAD again and won't want to go out or do anything but sleep, so maybe that will cure it. Depression as something to look forwards to. Hmmm.. yes I am a fruitloop..

Wait! You have a tv?

No. If you read the tv guide, you don't need a tv.
- Grandpa, the lost boys.

He's right you know... Plz to observe exhibit A) over that way <<<<<

Yes, it's another book I bought in my mad book battle of wills with the post man. And it's surprisingly good. I'd even go so far as to say I'm definitely enjoying it more than sitting down and watching the dvd.

The freaky thing is, every time I pick it up and look at the cover I hear Brad Fiedel's terminator theme in my head.

Awooga! It's a wild tangent... Naturally I've not seen terminator salvation yet, but the message I'm getting from the mean streets is it's not very good. So I have a theory why... It's the soundtrack. Composed by Danny Elfman. You know, the bloke who did the simpsons theme. So 'tis obvious why the film I haven't seen is no good.

I'm going back to my padded cell now. If you have any wild theories you'd like to inject into my psyche then plz, comment me up!

Tubetastic Thursday - Live it up

It's Thursday, and I'm feeling 80's today. Ok, the decade that taste forgot, but technically my era, so what the hell.

Caution, may cause earworm.

I bring to you:
Mental as anything - Live it up.



Of course this was massive due to being used in crocodile dundee. The single has a huge pic of gurning Paul Hogan, a large crocodile dundee logo, and a little "mental as anything" hidden away.

While I like it, I must admit, having downloaded er legally purchased their album, it is, in fact, a complete and utter load of tosh. Shame really.

Oh go on then:

Madama Butterfly

I got another one of my cheapy books delivered.
But I think I like the envelope more than the book:

2nd class large letter for 47p or I'll use this knife....

A book at bedtime : Roadblaster #1 - hell ride

Ok, I admit to buying this book. I was trying to injure postmen, and that's my excuse.

Not fooling anyone am I?

One of my weaknesses is the post apocalyptic trash novel. Popular for a brief period in the eighties when it looked like Ronnie Raygun was likely to accidentally use the wrong colour phone to order a pizza and wipe out the planet by accident.


If you've never read one it works like this. The "hero" is a 'Nam vet etc. Who happens to be taking a weekend out of civilisation, living off the land in the wilderness when the button gets pushed and nukes go off everywhere. Lucky him, he doesn't die. But he now has a quest, to cross the US of A to "find his family". In the way are corrupt government killers, biker gangs, radioactive zombies etc. Our hero spends the rest of the book protecting the weak, shooting lots, and coming out with worse one liners than any Arnold movie.

So simple mindless fun for an evening's reading.

Except... this book is wrong. Very wrong. It looks right. Double checks the list:

tag line, check! :
After the war the dead outnumbered the living and gasoline was more precious than blood
Silly title, check!
Author with unpronounceable name, check!
Nuke scorched cover art, check!

Problem's are:

Boom.. there go the nukes. So he goes for a drive to see what the bang was. Now at this point there should be radiation mutated zombies, biker gangs etc. There isn't. Instead there be friendly townsfolk who feed him and give him fuel before waving him off on his quest.

He goes to the big city, and starts helping people. Still no zombies etc. This is all wrong. In fact I'm at page 100, and nobody has died yet... There's no descriptions of burger joints where the only things char broiled where the customers.. No bullets tearing thru skulls, brains flying like strawberry thick shake.

It is, to be blunt, an epic fail. I don't think I can read more. It's mad max - the disney channel cut. The last time I was this disappointed with a book was "rendezvous with rama". (Oh look an alien spacecraft, oh yes, it's alien alright, right that'll do, then end.)

The only thing that truly amazes me is he found somebody stupid enough to publish two more followup books, imaginatively called "death ride" and "blood ride".

More books coming soon...

Tubetastic Thursday - Daria

Thursday, blah, busy busy busy, places to go, people to kill etc.

I cut to the chase and bring to you:
Daria - Esteemers.



I identify with Daria. Yes indeedy.

She has the mega popular sister who hates her, the dysfunctional family etc.

I also have the envy, as she has Jane Lane as her best friend. I need an outsider best friend. ~sigh~

I like having low self esteem, makes me feel special.

Clickage ideas required

So it's Wednesday already, I've got work piled up to here, and I also want to go to machine mart for the don't pay the vat on shiny new tool things day, which also happens to be today.

So veh busy... but tomorrow is Thursday. Thursday of rather boring clicky photography course. The one where last Thursday the nice man said it was very important that we all go and do the clicky.

The only photo I've taken all week was on my phone today. A car where some deranged person had stuck on gajillions of flower stickers, and then put in the back window "pimped my ride".

So I've got this mental picture of everyone else turning up with carefully composed masterpieces, and I've got one wonky shot of a crap car.

So, dear reader, what can I take pics of today that isn't going to need loads of time to do, given I have to be busy with the acid tank and buying shiny?

Help. Plz.

Doctor Doctor!

Can't you see I'm burning, burning?
Oh doctor, doctor, is this love I'm feeling?

Or is it in fact not love, and more like something very wrong with my foot? Yes, it's the foot isn't it....

I'm not a happy chap. 5 weeks ago I woke up with my foot hurting for no apparent reason. Nothing looks wrong with it, just aches all the time and goes argh! every step I take.

2 weeks ago I thought bugger this, and went to the new shiny all singing and dancing (them not me) walk in fix it clinic, as it would be 5 weeks to see a doctor at my own practise. 5 mins later I am seeing the triage nurse. Looks normal.. yes.. I know that. Take Ibuprofen & paracetamol for a week, and if no better come back and see the vet.

1 week ago I went back to see the doctor. Looks normal... yes... I still know that... I now have some diclofenac sodium 50mg.

Today I still have pain, and less tablets left. So I googled what it is, and it's an anti-inflammatory. But, er, said foot looks normal and not swelled in the slightest.

So, er, what's going on? C'riz suspects I've been given a big box of do nothing tabs in the hope that whatever it is will clear itself up in the time it takes me to use them all up.

Teh happy, I no have it.

The war is over

I won. I think.

Books are now appearing behind my door, posted properly. So I could have beaten the postman into submission, or, perhaps, the original postman is back, in which case I've not won, and I am torturing an innocent. Bugger.

I also have quite a few books to read. The problem with buying books off ebay is sellers are a bunch of lazy gits. Take a photo of the cover, type in the title and author, and that's all they do. Call me stupid, but surely you sell more things if you say, include a photo of the back cover? You know, sell to the people who are browsing, not just to the peeps who want a specific title.

So I've been buying by a combination of "read his books before" and "interesting cover".
The one I'm reading at the min is:



This satisfies both criteria.

Joe Haldeman is of course perhaps best known for the award winning "the forever war". It's not my favourite, which be "All My Sins Remembered". He took a bullet in 'Nam, so rather unsurprising that his works tend to be anti war.

Then there's the cover. Oh my.

Cat faced alien being - Check.
Bold man with ray gun - Check.
Woman lacking clothing - Check.
(If I had a bottom like that I'd never leave the house.)

So it's a double reason to buy. And only a pound too.

It's actually been a while since I was seriously into reading. As an ankle biter I read pretty much constantly, which baffled the adults. How come he's so crap at spelling and writing when he reads so much? The answer is obvious to me, I was busy being in another world far in the future. I didn't have time to take notice of how the words are spelled, only where they took me. Silly people.

Sadly, I won't get to read all these books. I have already caught the Ma stashing some of them in a carrier bag-o-doom. This being why I have purchased some titles 5 or more times.

Carrier bag-o-doom > lost or charity shopped. Why the bag-o-doom is never used for good instead of evil I don't know. Sister in the bag? No problem...

Stopping now. Ramble over.

Tubetastic Thursday - Double bill

Thursday... now almost 2 hours old. 22 scary ones still to come.

I have a lot planned for Thursday. I will relate this now:

Firsty, I am the man who you phone up when you a) want your pooter fixing, and b) don't want to actually pay for your pooter fixing. It's got to levels of the silly now, as I get phone calls from people I've never even met. Friend of friend type stuff. And I just don't have time for it. So I now operate on a simple system, pay me real money or wait. Wait a long long long time. This has cut down the calls a lot.

But I got one on Sunday night. Friend of a relative, who we will call Sonja, for that be her name. I fix her pooter as notes of the realm are involved, and it's never really broken. More like infected to hell as still not learned when a box pops up saying "click here to infect your machine to hell" it's a good idea not to clicky. So going to go and do battle with that monster tommorrow.

I am also going to my photography course at night at the university 15 miles that way>>>

Did the first session last week, and it was fairly awful. No clicky occurred, but several old people monopolised the time with stupid questions. As instructed I duly emailed the lecturer, and casually pointed out I was one of the quiet ones, due to being mental. I got a reply saying a) ta for not killing him to death in a mental way, b) he intends to stop the oldies from monopolising the time, and c) (scary) hang around after the lesson and have a chat if I feel up to it. Do I feel up to it? Somehow I doubt it...

Anyways, you're not here for my so called life. You're here for Tubetastic Thursday. And as I missed a week I'm going to give you 2 bites of the cherry. Lucky you eh?

I bring to you:
Titanic. In 5 seconds.



Sorry, but this just makes me laugh like a total loon.

I also bring to you:
3 doors down - Be like that.



If I could be like that
I'd give anything
Just to live one day
In those shoes.
If I could be like that, what would I do?
What would I do?

Answers on a postcard..................

Battle of wills

I is back. Woo... yay... maybe...

Domestic situation is now at defcon 3, where people politely pretend there isn't a problem, while at the same time looking for any excuse to go off on one. Still, I can live with it.

Besides, I have new excitement in my life, A battle of wills, er, with the new postman.

As you may know, I am a professional fruit loop. So I have no option but to be self employed, as there is no way I could hold it together working for someone else. Now being self employed is bloody awful wonderful!

One of the things you tell normal people to make yourself look good is you're the boss and you set the hours you work. Want the day off, take the bloody day off, enjoy yourself! You're the boss! You kind of gloss over the bit where the job has to be done no matter what and there's only you. Besides 70 hour weeks are good for you.

Er,where was I? Er... Yes! Well I never liked mornings, so I made an executive decision that I'm not going to work them. So while normal people are going about their ant like lives, for the last twelve years I've been sleeping my way thru mornings. True, I have to work evenings to catch up the work, but it suits me fine.

Until last week. "ding dong ding dong.... ding dong ding dong" Wha? 10:30am.. Must be post... Opened the window, and it's not my normal postman. It's my (soon to be) enemy... Shambled downstairs, "parcel for you" he says, holding what is obviously a slim paperback book wrapped in brown paper.

"oh, thanks. Er, that would fit thru the letterbox".
"oh. Bye!" And off he goes.

Next day... 10:30am.. annoying doorbell plays a bontempi special version of "yankee doodle". It's the same postman. With another very thin parcel. Hang on, there's a pattern emerging here, but I can't quite put my finger on it....

Obviously I cannot let him win, and just get me out of bed every time I get a parcel. Then I had a revelation. He can only wake me up once in a day, no matter how many parcels he has for me. He also has a finite space in his post sack, and if it is exceeded will have to go back to the post office for the rest of the mail. I can punish him back!

So I went on ebay and accidentally bought a few books. Next time he got me up he had four parcels, and I detected was not over happy. But he'd still got me up... so up goes the ante. Back to ebay....

Today he had 10 books, and even less happy. But, he knows my game now and turned up half an hour earlier, the fiend!

The question, dear reader, is do I escalate it further? I have been buying books that I want. But I could start buying not for desire to own, but for desire to punish. I'm thinking big heavy books that no one wants and thus are cheap. £10 spent on crap books could easily weigh 5 kilos, maybe more.

To be continued....

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

I'm putting blogging on hold for a bit... Yes, I know you won't spot much difference.

Real life™ is rapidly becoming a misery, so blog would just become one big boring rant. I will return if/when teh happy does.

Take care.
C'riz

Television

"The drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation"
as the song goes.

By now long term reader(s) will have realised I'm strange and don't do what normal people do. Yes, you guessed it, I have very little time for television.

In fact my interactions tend to be Ma screws up the tv and shouts at me to fix the tv now Now NOW! as she's missing whatever mind numbing pap they are showing. I'm not over fast at doing this, as there are 4 remotes (tv, video, dvd, satellite), and because I don't use them it takes me a while to work out a) which one is which and b) what button to press. (She normally screws it up by changing the source to something that isn't switched on - no signal = no picture).

The last time the tv broke in a smoke leaks out way it made no difference to my life at all. Well apart from the Ma driving me insane about finding the "perfect" tv to replace it. When the end days come and it's just me left I won't have an idiot box, and will have hours of entertainment with the tv licensing people who assume you can't live without one, and thus you must be lying and will keep sending you demanding letters to stop lying and start paying.

I do have the odd small weakness though. Not that I watch them on a tv of course. The Americans have had the "season premiere" of CSI Las Vegas on Thursday night. And thanks to the evil powers of the interweb and my rather fast broadband I can start downloading an illegal copy on Friday, and 3 minutes later can be watching it. Why bother waiting 6 months or more for it to come here?

I must admit to being in geek heaven. The episode opens with this:

Yes, it's a "bullet time" shot of morpheus from the Matrix kicking ass. Ok, so he's called Ray in CSI, but he'll always be Morpheus to me. It's almost worth losing Grissom to get Morpheus.

So I have 45 minutes of tv a week until Januaryish. I feel slightly dirty, the bad kind of dirty.

Made in England

That bloke with the wrong way round name who deserves to die painfully for the Diana dead guy song has a song called made in England. It includes the lines:

I was made in England like a blue Cortina
&
If you're made in England, you're built to last

Which has to be total and utter proof that he knows bugger all. When did you last see a blue cortina? I could give him 10 points if he'd chosen, say, a green land rover, but cortina? The mk5 having the dubious honour of being the most scrapped car ever. Millions made, naff all survived.

Er, where was I? Ah yes, made in England. You don't see that on products any more. People will tell you it's 'cos everything is made in the far east, because they can do it cheaper and better than England ever could. These people are wrong.

I will now reveal to you why we don't have a manufacturing industry any more:
Brass plaques.

We lost it because we kept putting beautiful brass plaques on our products, and those clever foreigner types started using stickers and undercut us (due to not having to pay for brass plaques, or men to fit them), and bang! we have no industry.

I'm surprised we even won the bloody war. Exhibit a:

Note the carefully riveted on plaque?

This be a generator for a merlin plane engine. You don't need the info the plaque tells you to enable you to fit a new one, 'cos if it stops working your plane drops out of the sky and goes splat. It also feels a colossal waste of resources, given the plaque and generator, and plane it's attached to is likely to be going splat in an occupied part of Europe within months at best.

If you visit one of the museums where they have the dug up remains of a ww2 spitfire on display, you will see 1 x mangled merlin engine, 5 x rusty bits of could be anything metal, and a 1m square display board full of recovered brass plaques.

While I'm going on, I'll give you my other theory on these things. It was a simple anti German tactic. Hans shoots down your plane, but cannot steal your secrets 'cos all the plaques on everything say made using patent number.... and it wouldn't be the gentlemanly thing to copy when we got it recorded as ours first.

Despite costing us our industry, I secretly love the things. In my shed I have a lathe, built in 1942. Despite the war, it has a beautiful how to use plaque. My shed also has a modern lathe made in China that is 1 year old. The instruction stickers are peeling off already.

Tubetastic Thursday - Most Haunted

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
The tape didn't get me, but Idiot Girl is having a very good try.

It works like this:
On any given day, state that you intend to move into new house tomorrow.
Sensible people then point out the 5 billion things that still need to be done.
Idiot Girl pooh pooh's simple things like there being no electricity, and if we just work at it, it will be done in time for tomorrow.
Work your little socks off while Idiot Girl pretends to lean on a shovel and supervise.
Rinse and repeat.

Anyways, it be Thursday which means... Tubetastic Thursday.

I bring to you:
haunted uk. (caution, contains sweary words).



This be a p*sstake of most haunted. Which for people lucky enough not to have access to uk tv is a lets go investigate the scary ghosts.. oooh scary... argh! Mind numbing pap tv for the masses.

I think my favourite bit be the Derek Acorah section from 5:42.

As a rational scientific mind owning person, I obviously think all this ghost stuff is a load of made up rubbish.

It will probably come as no surprise, but Idiot Girl is into this in a BIG way. Currently cannot do bugger all useful 'cos of the leg, but can somehow manage to go to "the spooky church" (her words not mine) twice a week.

Suspending disbelief for a minute, I'm going to pretend there are the spirits of all the dead around us like Idiot Girl claims. I'm still left with some problems with the whole gig.

You're a spirit right... and presumably you can thus go anywhere, and watch anything you would like happening in the world... so why would you decided you like to come to an asbestos clad shack in delightful Barno on sea, just so some git can charge two quid a pop to the gullible?

Why do we never get reports in the newspapers that go like: Gullible person dies after being told to dig up treasure which turned out to be world war 2 unexploded ordinance. Are you telling me there isn't a single spirit with a twisted sense of humour?
It's a right wheeze Gerald, you get the medium to tell them to go and find the family treasure, and the suckers go off and dig where you tell them. Boom!

N if these "medium" types can hear messages from spirits, and there's spirits everywhere, why don't they go insane in short order, what with the constant noises of all the spirits? 1 spirit per dead guy, there must be 1000's of them on every square meter of land.

Of course the ultimate proof that it's a load of honk : Idiot Girl buys it. I've never failed by following the rule of do the opposite of everything she does. I live my life by it. It works with films, books, people, everything!

The cassette of doom revisited

I have played the cassette of doom.

I'm not going to put the video on here, for it is obviously a genuine doom generator.

Not 48 hours after playing, I am told due to an unexpected hospitalisation I won't be meeting the lovely Debbie Mcgee, Manic Misty next weekend after all. Hugely disappointing after lots of yay! grade looking forwards to. So I don't want to inflict doom on you all, or people you know, or as in my case friends of people I know.

I will risk saying Squeakypony was half right, as one side was blank. The other contains some unknown Lancastrian comedian who is rather awful at the teh funny.

Message ends.

The cassette of doom

Whilst at Idiot Girl's future new gaff today I noticed yet another pile of previous person's (ie. dead guy) possessions has been dumped outside for disposal by Idiot Girl.

One item being an 80's cheap n nasty hi fi. With a cassette tape in it. Curiosity has got the better of me, and I have the tape here on my desk. I haven't played it yet, just in case it's like the video tape in the ring. Plus I've got to find a tape playing machine somewhere.

I don't know why, but if I had to guess what was on the tape, I'd go for it being a very heavy bagpipes version of The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen.

Anyone else want to have a guess?

Additional: Will play & video it, and post on Monday so you all get to die too...

Tubetastic Thursday - Smoke gets in your eyes

Another week nearly killed.

I bring you a double bill:
Smoke gets in your eyes



The platters of course. I suspect when most people think of this song they think of the platters as the original version. These people are wrong. It was written for the musical Roberta by Jerome Kern in 1933, 23 years before the platters came along.

Just about everyone has had a go at covering it. I have a bit of a soft spot for this song, which possibly explains why I have 25 different versions of it on my hard drive.
Why do I like it? Not sure. Perhaps it's a longing to experience lurve the way he describes it, so sure it's real. "I of course replied, something here inside cannot be denied", but I would like to prove the friends wrong and not suffer their derision. Yes, I know, V. Unlikely.

I also think it would make an excellent choice for the funeral. It's short, sweet, and would lighten the occasion beautifully.

Part the second:
Verity Thirkettle shows how it's done on harp.



Had to include this one, not only is it a really nice version, but with her name, could you see her doing anything other than playing harp? It would be the one time skool careers advice got it right, brickyard, down t'pit, brickyard, Verity? That's a nice name, you should play harp...

An experiment in perception

Or examining the mind of Idiot Girl. Yes, I know, a stupid thing to do.

I went to Asda for some shopping at 9:30 pm. Due to them digging up the bloody car park again the shop shuts early at 10pm. Which means... bargains! on stuff that must be sold today due to "sell before" date. Stuff that is perfectly fine, but computer says becomes deadly toxic at store closure.

Then I saw it... clearance flowers. Girlies like flowers I am told. So I bought Idiot Girl some. Took them straight round to her house.. I have brought you a present.

"Oh! they're lovely!" she exclaims.

Part one of the experiment is complete. All I need to do is wait for the results of part two. Which doesn't take long... Idiot Girl spots the reduced price ticket. The brow furrows. Idiot Girl spots they have cost 10p. Anger occurs. "You tight git!", and holds them away from her in revulsion.

The question is, how have the flowers changed? They're still the same flowers, if they cost 10p or the not reduced £4 they will have cost in the afternoon.

Exhibit A: Flowers. It was later stated that they do smell nice, and are "not that bad".



What other experiments could I try on her?

I did find a 3 CD box set in the rubbish bin whilst filling her car with diesel, but decided it would not make a good present. She only listens to whatever the radio tells her is hot at the minute.

I did have a moment of doubt if I should rescue the cd's from the bin, as technically it's stealing. Then I reasoned the original owner obviously doesn't want them, Asda won't even know they are there and will destroy them with the other rubbish, and if I don't like them I can give to someone else / charity. Reuse and save the earth.

The thing that prolly did swing it for "take" is I was filling up Idiot Girl's car... so it's her number plate on the CCTV.