Snakebite

I’ve just seen a story about a guy who was out in the desert in America shooting various innocent animals. He shot a rattlesnake, and then decided to cut the snakes head off. Once he’d done this he then went to pick up the snakes head and noticed it was still trying to bite him. Pretty cool huh?

It gets better though. The bloke managed to get himself bitten by the snakes head, and ended up losing a finger because of it. I say fair play to the snake. There he was, minding his own business out in the sunshine; some bloke shoots him and then chops his head off, so the snake gets its revenge by biting the bastard.

The ironic bit? The bloke lost his trigger finger.

Inspiration, or lack thereof

I’m struggling to find some inspiration at the moment. Writing a blog may look like a very simple thing to do, but finding a topic that other people are likely to want to read about can be more tricky than the Times “Fiendish” Su Doku (I WILL finish yesterdays one at some point).

After all, the different types of sediment found in Britain’s canals may be something you feel very passionately about, but the chances of anyone else caring in the slightest are slim. The chances that the two other people on the planet who do care actually find and read your blog are slightly less than the odds of Eminem becoming the next U.S. President.

Actually, Eminem may be a better option than George W. Bush, who, let’s face it, is a moron. I’m not sure how someone who is such good evidence that humans are related to baboons actually became president of the world’s largest superpower, but if memory serves it had something to do with chads and vote rigging. Allegedly (I can’t afford lawyers as expensive as George can).

So anyway, where was I before I disappeared along that rather obscure train of thought? Ah, yes, inspiration. I still haven’t had any, so I’m going to give up and watch Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure. Strange things are afoot at the circle K.

Christmas shopping

I make it about six and a half weeks until Christmas, which is scary because I’ve only just realised that and I haven’t even thought about Christmas shopping. I love Christmas, what with the family gatherings, parties and that sort of thing, but I hate Christmas shopping. Actually, hate isn’t strong enough a word, maybe loathe would be better.

I find shopping a stressful experience at the best of times, and the extra crowds in the run up to Christmas fill me with a sense of dread. Over the years I’ve managed to make the experience slightly less stressful by limiting my shopping to one shop for all the presents – Boots 3 for 2 has been a lifesaver for me – but I still seem to spend hours walking around the same few aisles trying to find suitable gifts.

This year things are going to be different. This year, I’m doing all my Christmas shopping online. This seems to me to be a cunning way of avoiding all the things I hate, nay, loathe, about the Christmas shopping experience, whilst still allowing me to purchase suitable gifts for my friends and family.

I hope everyone wants stuff from eBay...

The worst advert in the world...ever!

I’ve just been subjected to possibly the worst advertisement I’ve ever seen – two animated sheep (I think they were sheep anyway) singing a bastardised version of “Push it” by Salt ‘n’ Peppa. This already sounds pretty bad, but when you consider that they were singing about not putting salt or fat in food you can maybe start to appreciate just how terrible this advert was.

What gets me is that some advertising company thinks that people are going to see this sort of bilge and think it’s funny, cool, ironic maybe? The only thing people are going to think when they see adverts like these is “that was shit”, or possibly “I now refuse to shop at the Co-op as a matter of principle”. I for one thought both.

What's on TV?

People talk of Britain becoming a nanny state, and although this may be true to some extent, I never realised how bad it was until I saw that Channel 5 had given ‘Flubber’ a G for guidance rating. I mean, this is a film aimed at primary school kids – surely it can’t be that bad, can it?

Something I’ve noticed recently is the huge number of “Top 100 greatest ever…” type TV shows that seem to be appearing at the moment. I’ve noticed at least three different ones over the last two days, and I don’t even have satellite. Be it the greatest ever adverts, documentaries, music videos, whatever, they all follow the exact same format – a few D-List celebs get wheeled in to talk about the clips, whilst Graham Norton or Jimmy Carr make the odd quip before and after the ad breaks. Surely we’ve had enough of these now, haven’t we, or do we have to wait until we see the Top 100 greatest ever Top 100 greatest ever shows?

So, back to ‘Flubber’ – so far I’ve not noticed anything particularly worthy of a guidance rating. I’m only watching it to see whether the rating is justified of course.

Jamie Oliver, the fat-tongued mockney, is currently cropping up in virtually every advert break, peddling Sainsbury’s products for Christmas. Somebody please shoot me, and quickly.

I’ve decided – ‘Flubber’ gets a C rating, for crap.

Gunpowder, treason and plot

As I write this the sky is alive with fireworks, which is fine, except they’re making it difficult to hear the Eddie Izzard DVD I’m trying to watch. It’s funny though, that we celebrate what was basically an attempted act of terrorism, albeit 400 years ago. In case you don’t know, Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators were trying to blow up the then parliament in order to remove the protestant ruling class and stop the persecution of Catholics in England at the time. Unfortunately for them though somebody grassed them up, and the plan was thwarted at the 11th hour.

It seems strange, as after all, should somebody try to blow up parliament today they’d be locked up in an MI5 interrogation room for a few months before being sentenced to several hundred years of making sure they didn’t drop the soap. We certainly wouldn’t decide to name a day of the year after them and celebrate their antics.

Pointless advertising

I've realised my last entry was a bit diary-like, something I'd been hoping to avoid in all honesty, so for that I apologise. Normal service will now be resumed....

So anyway, I'm watching TV the other night and during one of the ad breaks there was a Phillips advert for one of their MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanners. In case you don't know, MRI scanners are huge machines used in hospitals to scan people for leprechauns (or something along those lines). Anyway, the point is they're huge machines costing many thousands of pounds. So, what's the point of advertising them in the middle of Brainiac? How many people are honestly sitting at home, see an advert for one of these things and think "You know, I must rush out and buy a new MRI scanner"? What demographic are Phillips aiming for here? To me it just seems like a huge waste of time and money. Ok, so maybe it increases peoples awareness of the brand but to be totally honest, showing off a 60" plasma TV would probably work just as well...

Here's a thought - why don't Phillips donate the money they have spent on these totally pointless adverts to a hospital, or just give them a scanner?

The trip

The trip to France had to be cancelled due to my friend injuring himself and rendering himself incapable of riding the bike, so instead we decided to travel the UK and have a few drinks instead.

On day one we left London around lunch time and headed for Doncaster, and after dropping our stuff at the hotel and having a quick bite to eat we headed in to Doncaster. We started of in Yates’ but although it was cheap it was also empty, so after a quick pint we headed off in search of a livelier venue.

We stumbled across a wetherspoons and decided on a couple of pints in there, but, being a wetherspoons there was no atmosphere so we again headed off in search of fun. We wandered in to a club called Berlins, and discovered it was 99p a pint night, so we decided to stay there for the duration. Many many drinks later we apparently took a cab back to the hotel….

On day 2 we managed to crawl out of bed in time for breakfast, and after a quick trip to Asda to buy some essentials (crisps and coke) we headed off for our next destination, Blackpool.


After arriving in Blackpool and locating a suitably cheap B&B we headed out on the town for the second night of drinking (actually, if you take in to account the nights we were drinking at home it was about the fifth night drinking) and started off the night in the Walkabout, which was home to some very good looking ladies. After a few pints, a little letching and a lot of mullet spotting, we decided to head down the sea front, where we stumbled upon Manchesters, somewhere we’d been before on a stag do. Unfortunately the Manchester was worse than it sounds, with dodgy covers of bad songs and a lot of chavs. Queue a very quick pint and a quick exit.

Next stop was another Yates’, where we stayed until closing time due to the fact we couldn’t be bothered to walk any further. After that, it was a quick cab ride back to the B&B, where we sat drinking with the owner until 2.30 in the morning.

After another early rise for breakfast on day three, we again jumped in the car and headed towards Manchester (the place, not the pub). We were staying at a friends’ girlfriends flat, but we arrived in time for a quick mosey around the Trafford centre. After an altercation over seats between my friend and a group of ten year old girls, we headed out for a rather posh dinner in Wilmslow, and of course a few more drinks.

The following morning, after returning to the Trafford centre due to having return a DVD box set that had been supplied without DVDs, we headed home, and of course, once we’d dropped our stuff off we headed for the pub.

All in all, it was a heavy but fun week and certainly made a change from being at work. Roll on next time!