As well as Mineral Water France has also invented Farm Subsidies and Landmines. Newsflash; there is nothing you can do about it, unless you write a mocking letter to David Milliband MP the secretary of state for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and put it on the internet like this guy has here.
After you’ve had your laugh why not wear a stripy jumper and act all French, i.e. make money by doing nothing, by actually investing in your own Farm Subsidies (you don’t need a farm) learn how here.
P.S. I couldn't get this to embed with the code from the website, so I just used the code from youtube and altered it and it worked. I don't know anything about computer programming, but what I did was use code, so that makes me a computer programmer and significantly reduces my chances of ever having sex again.
Having spent some time living alone I have concluded there are some advantages, but on balance I'd say I'm better off in company. Humanity is safe as long as I'm not left alone. A summary of what I feel are the pros and cons of living alone:
Pros:
Unfettered masturbation
Unlimited access to UK TV History channel
You only have to clean in line with your personal standards (unless you have guests)
Cons:
Gradual decline in living standards
Steady degeneration of personal morality
Drinking on your own means you’re more of an alcoholic even if you drink less than before.
My female flatmate has been home only a few hours and already the toilet and bathroom have been cleaned! This is brilliant, the house has frankly been a shithole for weeks. The excuse I sticking with for this state of affairs is that I haven't had time to clean. This isn't an argument entirely without merit. For the majority of the time (other than that long weekend in which I was home alone and just sat around moping about it) I have been really busy. I've not been getting home until 10, 11 even past midnight on a normal work night and then I've been getting up at 6.30. Tonight I got home at 10.30 (I'd been doing charity work (yes I am that nice)) and there was no way I was doing any cleaning. She got home not long before me, but when I've plonked myself down huffing about how knackered I am she's gone and done all this cleaning without me even realising she was gone longer than it takes to have a shit. This is the crux of the problem while I'm thinking that to get any cleaning done I need to be scheduling at least a whole afternoon other people are getting on and actually doing something. Don't expect me to actually change though. Fricking glad she's back.
This blog has stepped up into the role of squirrel watchdog. The eyes in the crows nest scanning the horizon for the squirrel shaped iceberg that just might puncture the good ship humanity and send her to an early grave. It happened to the dinosaurs, it could happen to man and woman too.
"After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man's garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh," the spokesman said. "Then he killed it with his crutch."
I took the below from the blog Brownian Emotion. It's a good blog, too focused on US politics and conspiracy theories for me, but I don’t think I’m in the target audience (if he even has one). I love his take on US tactics in Iraq. Link.
Plan A was to be greeted as Liberators, fund the war with Iraqi oil and come home in six weeks.
Plan B was to forget the liberator stuff, but find the WMD, kill Saddam and remove combat forces asap.
Plan C was to forget the WMD, but disband the Iraqi military and bureaucracy and make a better one.
Plan D was to forget plan C, and help Iraq form a new "Democracy" after Plan B also failed.
Plan E was to quell the sectarian violence that resulted from Plans C and B, and the deep misunderstanding of the population for plan D.
Plan F was to root out the insurgents that resulted from the failure of plans D and E.
Plan G was to get al Qaeda bogged dwn in Iraq, because plan E and F were going so well.
Plan H was to blame Iran for interfering with Plans E and F, to the extent they worked at all.
Plan I was to use Iraq as a launch-point to attack Iran, in retribution for Plan H.
Hello, I had a pretty strange day today. I played football with our department, which was really good fun. I’m not good at football, but I could be worse. We won, I set up a goal. I had a really good shot from the edge of the area graze the top of the cross bar and a wildly errant shot of mine deflected of an opposition defender, got a touch of one of my team-mates and by some miracle ended up in the back of the net.
On a separate issue yesterday I bought myself a beard trimmer. I’ve been growing a beard for about a month and it had started to get a bit scruffy. I went for a top of the range one as the last beard trimmer I'd bought was a total pile of crap. When I got home from the pub last night, slightly worse for wear, I thought I'd try it out. It made short work of my stray hairs and neatened the beard up a treat, but that wasn’t enough, I was still hungry for trimming action, so I set to work on my pubes. My new tool cut through my pubes without any issue and before long I had a nice pile of curly hairs and an unnaturally tidy pant beard.
The next morning when I woke up and surveyed my new look genitals I had a terrible realisation. I would be playing football today and that meant communal showers, shit! In the June heat not showering wasn't an option. I manged to be first in the showers and took a towel in, I put the towel on the window sill and wrapped it round me on the way out. I think I ended up looking more shy than anything else. Thankfully examining another mans nether regions is considered perhaps stranger than having perfectly even 5mm long pubic hair. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
One thing I almost forgot to mention, during the game I made a number of tackles that were more enthusiastic than fair. One of these was on a commonwealth silver medallist. Great Britain had few true sporting heroes yesterday, but today, it's got one less. The tackle was described in the pub as falling into the despicable category! Apparently I hit him right in the spot of an existing injury. (He was in the top five in the country at fencing, whoops.)
Two differing reactions from the Net on the news that Paris Hilton is to return to jail:
1. Justice IS still alive.. Paris is going back to jail crying and screaming mommy not for the 23 day sentence my friends... but for the FULL 45 day sentence.... man I gotta admit i am really pleasantly shocked about how this turned out....
2. Not content with seeing her undressed and variously penetrated, it seems to be assumed that we need to watch her being punished and humiliated as well. The supposedly "broad-minded" culture turns out to be as prurient and salacious as the elders in The Scarlet Letter. Hilton is legally an adult but the treatment she is receiving stinks—indeed it reeks—of whatever horrible, buried, vicarious impulse underlies kiddie porn and child abuse.
The first is the view of the porn blog RobOnt Dot Net, this site is an unashamedly filthy web page that that not only broadcasts celebrity porn, but has a penchant for leaked pornography; by that I mean stuff that was never intended for broadcast, disgruntled ex-boyfriend stuff and they’ve gotten plenty of hits from broadcasting compromising footage of Miss Hilton before.
The second opinion is from the multi award winning online magazine Slate. Not a very popular view. Nor one, I admit, I would have given much weight too, but one that seems to gain ground when juxtaposed against the views of those that seek to exploit her.
This inspired piece of giving was a wedding present to my friends B and G from their best man and new brother in law respectively. To see it in the stuffed flesh is a real treat. It can induce spontaneous fits of giggles periodically for hours in the viewer, a true gem from t’bay.
Take a look at a couple of pics of my veggy patch.
22 March 2007, a very Sunny day!
76 days later, (not so sunny), 07 June 2007
Centre bottom of this pic are two small Courgette plants. That bit of ground isn't in the first pic. Up from the Courgettes is a row of radishes. They can faintly be seen at the very bottom of the first pic as a line of tiny seedlings. I've eaten most of them now. The life of a Radish is short and fruitful.
I thought after my earlier post that I should formulate a Rant Scale to show the levels of anger I can achieve on a given subject that annoys me. Mineral water rates a 5 to 6 on the ranter scale.
1. Mild amusement, some sarcasm
2. Disbelief, amazement, 'why' is repeated up to five times
3. Incredulous disbelief, theatrical sarcasm, and mild outrage
4. Outrage, posturing and historical comparisons
5. Blaming the French (c-word will be used)
6. Unbelievable claims of ‘I don’t give a shit, fuck it, I don’t’ give a fucking, cunting, shit’ (O.K. so why are you shouting at me)
7. Fantasys of armed revolution, (the only actual action to take place, is mumbled swearing, c-word may be used)
8. Indirect action – can include petty vandalism, writing stern letters, or obstructive behaviour, such as not paying for train fairs.
9. An embarrassing, shoutey, public scene.
10. Total silence - the brain is resetting itself, this is known as the intense anger safety override – thoughts can no longer be articulated, all words will be stammered and or repeated in an increasingly feeble way, emergency hair stroking and soothing-cooing should be applied until level 2 is achieved.
Every year thousands of people die in the developing world from diseases caused by dirty drinking water. In this country water flows from the tap that is so clean you can use it in a microbiology experiment without having to sterilize it and it won’t contaminate the experiment. This is because no bugs live in it. Trust me, when was the last time you heard of anyone dieing from botulism.
That’s really great isn’t it, so why when you’re in a restaurant do people insist on trying to sell you water bottled water; water that has been transported half way across the continent in a lorry; water that has been stored for 6 months in a warehouse. We drink it and then we send the plastic bottle to China. Possibly in the same container ship that it arrived in, so the Chinese can recycle it for us because we care about the environment. (In my house we produce allot of recycling. We used to call it waste, but we’ve renamed it so we can feel better about ourselves.)
I hate bottled water. I hate it because it's a French idea; I hate it because it's a rip off; I hate it because it's decadent; I hate it because it's bollocks (it is the same as normal water you tosser); I hate it because it demonstrates how powerless the human race is when it comes to marketing (They could sell you your own shit in a bag you twats.); I hate it because it's bad for the environment. The French have invented many terrible things like Anti Semitism and Cowardice, but this surely tops the bill.
Don't allow them to sell it to you in restaurants and don't buy it unless you have to, (i.e. you're lost in the desert high on drugs dancing to imaginary music, the only liquid that has passed your lips in the last 8 hours was tequila and that had the worm in it, then, please, drink whatever you can get.)
The backlash begins now; there are people with influence that will say no. In the mean time it looks we will have to put up with Tyrannosaurus Alan (who I like, which in turn makes me hate myself) and all the other schemes that the marketers can concoct to get inside our minds. Until one day a little boy in a restaurant will stand up and say, "Daddy why do you pay for water in a bottle when the water from the tap is the same, and Daddy why is that Emperor not wearing any clothes", at first everyone will mumble about how inconsiderate it is to bring children into a restaurant, and how rude of that boy to point at that naked African fellow, but the seed will have been sown, then Volvic will find out and they'll send Tyrannosaurus Alan to eat the boy, and if I haven't lost you by now. Just watch the advert you jelly minded fools!
The Atlantic hurricane season started last Thursday it runs until the 30th November (fact). Last year's wasn't particularly remarkable, but 2005, with 28 named storms and 15 hurricanes, was gale-force, i.e massive.
The general trend indicates a period of increased hurricane activity and the NOAA predicts an above normal 2007 season with 13 to 17 Named Storms (fact/prediciton). This is due to higher than normal surface sea temperatures in the Atlantic and an expected El Ninia event occurring in the Pacific.
Here are the names planned for this years hurricanes/tropical storms:
Andrea
Barry
Chantal
Dean
Erin
Felix
Gabrielle
Humberto
Ingrid
Jerry
Karen
Lorenzo
Melissa
Noel
Olga
Pablo
Rebekah
Sebastien
Tanya
Van
Wendy
Andrea has come and gone and Barry is on the go already and predictably seems to be amounting to very little. If I had to pick a name for this years most damaging storm I'd say a good bet would be Olga, she sounds stern and not afraid to knock afew heads together. Felix will probably be a playfull little squall that sucks up a cat food factory. Tanya and Chantel must be the slags of the bunch; they'll probably turn up with a couple of baby deppresions and finish with widespread looting of lip gloss and tracksuits. Noel may be the suprise package, I worry people won't take a storm named Noel seriously, next thing you know he's slapping your house about with a wet palm tree and leaving fish in your pot plants, that'll learn y'.
Your choice to play my selected soundtrack, but bear in mind it took me ages to figure out how to embed it! Hat-tip to Enamel slide.
I lost my phone on Thursday, we don’t have a land line and my homey housemates are all away for the weekend (so I can’t use theirs). I failed to make any firm plans for the weekend and I live at least a mile from my nearest mate. I’m officially isolated. I want someone from the church to come round and see how I’m getting on.
I’m sitting at the computer, I should be in a pub beer garden, I’ve got Gmail, hotmail, Bebo, facebook, mysinglefriend, blog.co.uk and msn messenger open and I’m not getting any action off any of them. This is probably because it’s frickin gorgeous outside.
I’m drawn between walking up to my mates in Blackheath on the off chance, or sitting in one of the 3 hammocks in the garden with a beer and a good book. The garden is the obvious option, but I‘m weird and freak out when I’m on my own. I’m not as bad as I used to be, but I have been on my own for about 30 odd hours!
Perhaps I should meditate. New phone arrives on Tuesday!
Of course had I had a phone there was no guarantees anyone would have rung me, but I know you can only ignore someone’s incessant calls for so long, thank fuck.
Update: I took everyones advice, including timekilling kid, and walked up to Blackheath and went for a pint with my mate and my brother. Which was nice.
I had a picture forwarded to me twice today, both times entitled 'New Aussie Pole Vault Champion 18yrs of age’. The picture wasn’t an Australian, it was of an 18 year old Californian teenage pole vault champion called Allison Stokke.
She is the latest in a long line of internet fads. What makes her more interesting than the rest is that, in the main, her fame seems to stem from the very fact that she is an internet fad – perhaps the original self fulfilling fad.
She was featured on the front page of The Washington Post on Tuesday. The Times ran a piece on her on Wednesday and she was interviewed on CBS on Thursday. All of these articles focused on the fact that she had received unwanted attention on the internet, but at the same time increased her exposure.
Then on Friday at the absolute zenith of her popularity she achieved her defining moment; she appeared on my blog. Allison Stokke welcome to the Zeitgeist.
I will use the picture that sparked her fame, (unlike the Hamilton Spectator, or the rather sanctimonious Chicago Tribune that refused to print a picture forcing you to do your own Google search).
She is indeed really hot and I do feel a little sorry for her if the attention is unwanted; however I’d ask her to spare a thought for the ‘Star Wars Kid’. Apparently this guy’s video has been viewed 900 million times and he appears, unlike Miss Stokke, to be neither attractive nor talented.
Update: Taken from the blog that originally publised the photo: Apparently, he [the photographer that took the original photo] thought that the Stokke family's spoken desires to stay out of the spotlight were at odds with their actions (speaking to the Washington Post, appearing on FOX News today), and he no longer finds them a sympathetic cause. I admit, their PR tactics seem counterintuitive.
Oh well check out this take on the Star Wars Kid which I feel brings something new to a worn fad (I just hope the kid has got over it):
