With two weeks to go before the NFL Super Bowl I have to decide who to support. My teams didn’t get there, New Orleans Saints and the Miami Dolphins. I cheered on the 49ers in the AFC championship as they beat the Saints and so were suitable of my support.
Now the choice is either the New York Giants or the New England Patriots. Too many support the Patriots, they are ridiculously popular in the UK. The Giants have Eli Manning as a quarterback and any Manning is irritating.
So I’ve decided to make my relationships more fun. My sister and her husband like the Patriots and Ades (one of the Fulham Five) likes the Patriots. That settles it. My cheers will go to the New York Giants.
Altogether now: D-Fense!
Socks on Hands
A long time ago in a college not that far from London, pretty much in the middle actually, there were a bunch of students in their first year at University. “Let’s enter the Field Cup”, someone suggested. “OK”, was the response.
The Field Cup was essentially a pub crawl for teams with challenges and forfeits in each pub. We were rookies and unfortunately for the older entrants we were doing quite well. We had taken some loot and even a Hall Of Residence Warden to the final judgement but, because we were up against a group of girls from the CGCU, we were docked just enough points to ensure we came second. Good try for a bunch of Fresher’s though!
We were in one pub, possibly The Queen’s Arms, and our challenge was to sing on the karaoke machine. Chrissy was lead vocals on “Let It Be” by The Beatles and we were backing singers. However, for some reason we were wearing our socks on our hands! That must have been a forfeit somewhere but precise details elude me, 20 years later. The precise details probably eluded me the next day too. We shall all remember Karl’s backing vocal calls of “socks on hands” to the rest of the pub! Hilarious!
You had to be there, really.
On Demand
So, I’m sitting with #1 watching some episodes of Dipdap on BBC iPlayer using the PS3. Just thinking how lucky the youth of today are! No waiting for tv shows, films or fast forwarding video cassettes!
When I was a child in the 1970s and 80s there were only 3 channels on tv although that didn’t matter because tv started at 3 in the afternoon. Breakfast tv hadn’t begun and the day wasn’t filled with shows about buying and selling houses because daytime tv didn’t exist. We also had a black and white valve tv which you had to turn on 10 minutes before you wanted to watch it to allow it to warm up.
I remember watching the start of Channel 4 and seeing the first episode of Countdown. I also remember the start of breakfast tv which was pretty rubbish. Also, the start of channel 5, which I saw in Manchester, was pretty rubbish. Now I have Sky and about 500 channels that I don’t watch and about 8 channels that I do.
These days I can watch tv on my PS3 and see catch up tv streamed over the Internet. I can watch live tv on my iPhone and all the catch up services on that too.
All this means my sons will never have to wait for a tv show or worry that they’ve missed the latest episode of their favourite show. Quite stunning the changes that have occurred really. 3 channels on part time to hundreds of channels and on demand. Utter brilliance!
A Gift
A gift from a submariner uncle to his nephew. A set of Royal Navy Submariner Dolphins. I’m sure #1 will love it.
A Conversation
No, this is not my classic 1994 poem “A Conversation with Myself” this is a text conversation I had over a few days with a friend.
With you on that. Thinking of getting 2 or 3 classical CDs. For when I’m marking books. Any ideas?
Carmina Burana (omen). Planets suite (am I evil). Ride of the valkerys (apocalypse now). There is cd call heavy classics which is not bad.
There’s a particularly ominous jingle played on freethought radio that I’m humming to people to work out what it is. Got Planets already, how is it I am evil?
The opening of am I evil is Mars from the planets done on guitars. Other good ones: night on Bear Mountain and Danse Macabre.
What! How did I not know that? Over 20 years of listening to it and only now I find out it’s clever!
Haha! I read it somewhere and then it clicked!
Fuck me. Just done the same. Utter brilliance. Btw have you heard S&M by Metallica?
S&M? I’ve heard some: didn’t like it. I can see how the two could complement each other, but not how they had done it The strings seemed too high pitched and detracted from the deep guitars. Sounded like a gimmick and a throw back to 70s prog rock! Also a lot of was new stuff that is crap!
Agree. I heard snippets and thought it was shit. Also, not impressed with Metallica as possibly cancelling tour next summer because of currency worries! Wankers.
How far have they gone from being alternative? And Megadeth getting all religous? And Slayer apparently. Seems only Anthrax remain unchanged from the big 4.
You have to change to survive if you don’t have tons of money. We work to survive. It’s politicians who need to act on principles for the better of all. We are shall cogs! They have the chance to change things but won’t because of compromise.
Capitalism is dying?
Politicians are only there to look after their own and them selves. Look at them on Question Time! Full of shit and we vote for them. Don’t see a decent one there. Is capitalism dying? No, it’s evolving. I expect companies to take over from countries as the next step.
Interesting idea about companies. I hope not. Companies responsible to shareholders are essentially immoral. Maybe Jamie not voting is right? Should always be able to vote for “none of the above”. Mind you Belgium has coped without a government. Civil service just keeps grinding on. Perhaps I should invent moral economics. Governments as proper partnerships like John Lewis?
I agree with companies not being moral, but then through funding they control politics anyway. I think there should be a new politics, less weasel words. Or at least someone with vision. Your idea sounds good though.
Revolution time then? I’ll get my flag out. Perhaps the next wars will be over economics (or have they all been that recently anyway?). Quite like the aims of UK Uncut. Secrecy is a big factor in wealth. Perhaps we should have politicians who go after that. Going to need a beer in a bit! Blood pressure going up and my rant might last days! Can start influencing the next generation at work.
This economic crisis will change things. And I think for the worse. Companies and the rich will escape while the rest suffer. If only China really believed in socialism!
Agree with you there, and on pretty much everything else. Mind you we are establishment so how do we kick start the “evolving” process? Perhaps the youth will kick off as unemployment gets worse.
On a brighter side: are you going to see Dragon Tattoo?
Want to see Dragon Tattoo: David Fincher and Trent Reznor?! Of course. But don’t think I’ll get the chance.
Perfect Dessert
Today I come in praise of the humble Tunnock’s Tea Cake.
I have decided it is probably the perfect dessert. For me food must be chewy (soup is a no no) and have a range of textures. A dessert should be sweet, contain chocolate and satisfy the cravings after savoury food.
The Tunnock’s Tea Cake combines marshmallow, biscuit and chocolate. It is also mouth sized and so eatable whole. The textures are perfect. Just enough crunch and chew to make the whole experience uniquely fulfilling. The fact that it can be chomped whole makes it better and gets over the occasional problem of flakes of chocolate dropping from the tea cake as you bite into it. Of course, quite brilliantly it can be eaten as part of a calorie controlled diet and is low in radioactive particles and high in energy (food marketing is pure BS).
The world should give thanks (in a secular way just like Obama on Thanksgiving) for the Tunnock’s Tea Cake. It’s exactly what made Britain Great!
Blogtime
I’m so busy at the moment I just don’t have time to write anything for the blog. I am aware that this post is now a logical contradiction but I’ll keep writing.
Work is busy and having two kids means there’s no time for anything at home. Although I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In the mean time have a look at a web page with some Wackos. Only a few, mind. Given the billions of humans on the Earth the wacko total is probably quite high.
Gallery of Wackos
Cruel Advert
Clicked on a google news link to Telegraph website article about diets from the BMJ. Advert is brilliant.
Mobile Phones
I have owned a number of mobile phones and most of them were rubbish. Going to give you a rundown of them from the earliest.
Phone number 1 – sometime in 1999 or so:
The Ericsson A1018
The order of the next few phones is not remembered easily. But here goes:
The next was:
then:
And then the nifty fold-out keyboard:
Then we get to the first smart phone:
Then the brilliant and pretty usable N95, it was the last Nokia I owned that worked well:
Then the big memory but pretty useless N97:
Finally, a phone that works. The iPhone 4. Until then the iPhone specification was pretty rubbish. It took a lot of soul searching to convince myself that selling out to the walled garden of Apple was worth it. However, I have to say that the iPhone is brilliant. It works!
The holiday will be a failure
I had mentioned to WW that I really wanted some time playing GT5 this holiday with the steering wheel. I may have said:
If I don’t get to play GT5 this holiday it will have been a failure!
This means no kids or anyone for about 2 hours. The time was set. Monday afternoon. Number one son would be in nursery and WW and son #2 would be seeing friends so I had about 4 hours when I could play uninterrupted!
I needed to complete around 10 online races to get the money and just because they are there to complete. The four hours would be pushing it but I reckoned that without lunch I could have done it.
So I set up the PS3 with steering wheel and pressed play.
GT server down for routine maintenance 12 to 4pm
Arrgggghhh. The only races I could do offline was a World Championship and I didn’t want to spend the time and effort and have to save mid-championship.
I shut down GT5 and played Rock Band. The original save file is copy protected and so I had to start from scratch. Definitely didn’t do the easy or medium – straight to hard.
So far the holiday has been a failure. Going to try tonight.