Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body ?

I took my exams on Monday and Tuesday, by the time I had traveled home from Carlisle I was shivering uncontrollably, my joints were aching and I had a mouth full of ulcers. A trip to the doctors on Wednesday morning confirmed that I have a kidney infection. He’s ace my doctor, I told him what was wrong, well actually Tracy told him because I could barley talk, he then prodded my kidneys and waited to see my reaction. My reaction was a startled and rather muffled scream, which seemed to make him happy. I’m now four days into a two-week antibiotic course. No booze !

So, was I a little under the weather, and the stress of the exams tipped me over ? Or was it inevitable ?

I have a job interview next week, I need to do some research. Does anyone know the main points of Visio ? I’ve seen it being used, but I didn’t get an opportunity to have a go.

Closer comes the screaming knife.

Saturday kitchen ! What a bunch of twats.

“Take one filleted Monkfish, your fishmonger should do this for you.” Are they on this fucking planet ? There’s no fishmongers round here, and I live in a fucking fishing port. Supermarket chains have seen them all off, along with butchers and greengrocers. So, what do you think would happen if I walked into my local cheapo supermarket, sidled up to one of the spotty little fuckers stacking shelves, and asked to be pointed in the direction of the filleted Monkfish ? I’ll tell you what would happen, he would look at me like I was from fucking Mars, and say “Yeah mate, they’re in the corner next to the Caviar and Bollinger, you can’t miss them, Geri Halliwell and Kylie-fuckin-Minogue are over there doing their shopping !”

This ever changing world in which we live in.

James Bond shouldn’t be played by Colin Farrell. I’m very fussy about who plays Bond, Dalton was shite, Lazonby was boring and Niven was playing it for laughs. Roger Moore was behind Pierce Brosnan, who was second best To Sean Connery, and there’s only one actor who will come anywhere near the level of suave sophistication that the Scottish one was blessed with.

Rupert Everett.

Discuss.

Biting sugar coated bullets.

The day I signed on, which was the beginning of October by the way, I gave the dole office two forms that I needed completing. One was for my mortgage and the other was for my credit card, these forms ensure that I don’t pay any of my bills for the period of my unemployment. The first form came back last week; they gave it to a fourteen-year-old chimp with learning difficulties to fill in. The chimp, obviously having difficulties defining the meaning of several basic English terms, didn’t think to ask for help, they just ticked boxes willy nilly and posted it back to me. Apparently I have been unemployed since 1995. Fucking amazing ! I was labouring under the misapprehension that I was working for an international speciality chemical manufacturer. Just goes to show, reality is very strange. I took the form back to the dole office and enquired, ever so politely, why they had filled it in incorrectly. I was puzzled by the answer – “My colleague obviously didn’t have access to certain information” said the nice lady. “Then why didn’t your colleague phone me to check the information she did have ?” I said with rising anger. “I don’t know !” said the nice lady with an air of disbelief. Fifteen minutes later the nice lady had altered 90% of the form and added a nice little footnote to tell the insurance company that I wasn’t trying to gain funds by nefarious means. I left the office in a foul mood.

This morning I realized that the dole office hadn’t sent the completed second form. I telephoned the nice lady. “I’ll just speak to my colleague and phone you back,” she said. Ten minutes later she rang to tell me that they had never received a second form. “I gave you both of them the day I signed on,” I said, with a tone of indignation that was obviously recognised. “We haven’t got it,” said the nice lady. “So you’ve lost it ?” I said, “No, it isn’t lost,” said the nice lady, clutching at straws. “Out of the two forms I gave you, you have lost one, and rendered the other all but illegible ?” I said with a resigned sigh. “It isn’t lost, we didn’t receive it” said the nice lady. I bit my tongue. Instead of calling her a liar and an incompetent workshy fop, I told her that I would ring my insurance company and ask them to send me another form.

What these fuckers can’t seem to grasp is that when they finally get round to paying me, I’ll get £55 per week, and until I get the form filled in correctly and sent off, it costs me £400 per month. Now I have never been really good at maths, but there is a slight fucking discrepancy there, is there not ?

On Saturday night we watched Bridget Jones’ Diary, it was ok I suppose, I’ve seen better. Last night we watched Chicago and it was fucking ace, excellent music and some really good one-liners. Both me and Tracy noticed the difference in Rene Zellweger’s figure; she had far more curves in BJD, and was stick thin in Chicago. I have to say I prefer Bridget to Roxy. What do you think ?

… and he shows ‘em, pearly white.

If, like me, you hate microshaft, but also dislike the mac’, then you will probably be fed up with your mac’ using friend pontificating about how good they are. Email them this link after you have watched it, you’ll feel a lot better. Link via the Woodtree gnome.

You don’t have to put on the red light.

I’ve just seen Julie Walters whoring herself for Asda (Wallmart). Why do these rich celebs feel the need to do this ? Do they not have enough money ? The latest craze is getting a Hollywood mega-star to do your commercial. Sutherland and Oldman in a Barclays ad’, and I think Aniston is in one as well. Greedy bastards. What made the Walters ad’ even worse, it was a Christmas advert. It’s not even remembrance Sunday yet for fucks sake.

/old git

I remember when I was a kid, once remembrance Sunday had passed and the military tattoo thing had been on, can’t for the fucking life of me remember what it was called, but a load of army blokes would drag a cannon over a huge wall. Then the Cointreau and Martini adverts started, then and only then did you think it was nearly crimbo. Not at the end of fucking October.

/old git

I’ve binned Kazaa, it’s infected my puter with some kind of shitty virus. I’ve been fucking about most of the day trying to get rid of it. It’s still there. Hit ctrl+alt+delete and check performance on your task manager. Mine starts at 100% then drops to about 4% then goes back up to 100% for a bit. It repeats this indefinitely, even when there are no applications running. I’ve just read an article in the New Scientist about these new zombie viruses, I wonder if it could be one of those ? I can feel a re-install coming on. So, if you’ve got kazaa I would seriously consider getting rid. Taxdodger has told me about a different method of getting files. Bit torrent, I’ve checked it out and it seems ok. Check this site for a good selection. You need a small prog’ called abc. You can get that here.

Happy hunting.

You might get your happy ending.

I’m most of the way through updating all the lost stuff, all the pages and images that went west when the plug was pulled on simon-m. While I was arsing with background images on the 100 things and bio pages, I happened to have a look at the contact page. Fuck me I thought, that email address is wrong. I had better change it forthwith, so I did. If you have been emailing me, and then feeling bad because I didn’t reply, that’s why. Sorry !

I have applied for a couple of jobs that I fancy, and a couple that I don’t. I figure that I need some practice interviews; I wouldn’t want to fuck up the important ones.

Emlyn Hughes has died, I saw him play at Maine road a few times. He was never the quickest of players, which was evident in some of the tackles he put in. I’ve shouted some friendly advice from the terraces, and called him a few unsavoury names. I presume he never heard me. They always beat us, it was such an arse. Even when we managed to score an early goal in the league cup semi final second leg at Anfield, it was ruled offside. It was so onside, we would have won that match and got to two finals that year. Memories eh ? He was one of the game’s great characters, and will be sadly missed.

As part of the updating process mentioned above, I have resurrected Blogstrop, it’s down on your right, just below my counter. Have a look, and if you like it feel free to wack it on your site. If you do, please copy the images and pages over to your server, the taxdodger will shout at me if I start using his bandwidth willy nilly.

Isn’t willy nilly a great phrase ?

by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed.

Have you ever rigged a raffle ?

Twenty years ago I worked in a really shitty factory making rubber gloves, the best part of the job was the crack, that and the fact they let us drink alcohol while we worked. Health and safety wasn’t their strong point, just as well really because more than half the employees needed a wee dram just to get out of bed of a morning. As you can well imagine, the practical jokes were relentless and wicked, and if you didn’t have a sense of humour you didn’t survive. Needless to say the staff turnover was fucking huge, every September a fresh band of hopefuls would turn up for their two week training. They were then separated onto the three shifts, and this particular year we got a right cunt. He had been everywhere, done everything and seen more than all of us put together. If you were telling a story he would but in with his bigger and better one. We hated him, and would have our revenge.

Christmas drew near and a plan formed, we would have a raffle for a Turkey so large you would think its mother had been rogered by an omnibus. He fell for it, buying several tickets. Everyone else had mock tickets. A box was found in a skip, it was huge. It was filled with all manner of shite and it weighed a fucking ton. To make it a little more authentic someone scrawled “Turkey” on the side of the box in black marker. Looking back, I can’t believe that he thought it was a Turkey, the box must have been two and half foot square and weighed in at a good twenty kilos. Anyway, the day came, and his ticket was pulled from the hat. Not surprising really, there was only one fucking ticket in there. He was so chuffed, he had to get a taxi home 'cos he didn’t drive. So he took the enormous bird home to his mum (I bet that was a fucking first) waving at us from the back seat of his taxi.

We never saw him again.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Telling this story has reminded me of an old bloke that used to work on our shift, a proper old-timer, years of experience and the stories to go with it. His wife used to make him loads of food to take to work, thing is he didn’t have much of an appetite. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he didn’t want all the lovely food she made for him, he used to give it to the lads.

Can you tell I’m missing the crack, is it that obvious ? Fuck, I need a job.

… and she ran to him, then they started to fly….

I’ve just listened to a fantastic album:

Golddiggas, headnodders and pholk songs - The Beautiful South.

It’s a collection of covers, and what a strange collection they are, ranging from S Club 7 to The Stylistics via ELO and Grease. Strangely enough it works, they have made a couple of mediocre songs sound brilliant, and have made some brilliant songs absolutely unforgettable. Livin’ thing by ELO is amazing and Blitzkrieg bop, the old Ramones song, just makes you want to jump about.

Ten out of ten from me, do yourself a big favour and buy this as soon as you can.

Wish upon a wave that had a sound.

The difference between the City that turned up at the swamp today, and the one that struggled against a crap Norwich side was incredible. KK actually had a plan, and his team stuck to it resolutely. We were never going to win the game today; Anelka on his own even when he’s on form will give you very little. Today he was our weak link. I think united probably deserved at least one penalty, but those two challenges by Smith were a fucking disgrace, both meant for the player and not the ball. Not content with ending Alffie’s career, they are now going for Dunne (or Zinedine Ze Dunne as I saw him referred to on the city message board). Well done blues, it was a good point well earned.

A bloke climbed into a lion’s cage this week, and tried to convert the Lion to Christianity. The Lion tried to eat him, it doesn’t take a fucking genius does it ? In these instances the idiot in question should have been left there, we shouldn’t be patching these people back up so they can breed, we should have let the fucker die. If we adopt a policy of letting stupid people die as a result of their ill thought out actions then the human race will become more intelligent. Over a relatively short period of time all the fuck-wits will die. Considering recent events across the Atlantic, it probably wouldn’t bode well for 50 million Americans.

Last night I went to a (I hesitate to say this) a wine tasting ! I expected it to be full of boring arses, and for the most part I was right. It was a good laugh though, especially when we found the whiskey table. It was organised by a really nice wine shop in Whitehaven, so I got some lovely booze for Christmas.

Football rant.

When describing tonight’s display of “football” at the City of Manchester stadium, I could use expressions like inept or characterless, or maybe I could accuse them of having no heart or will to win. No, I think one word sums up the performance of my team tonight

Gash !

We’ll leave it at that, and hope that Salford have a serious off day on Sunday, or we are going to get a right good spanking.