Category: Uncategorised

Car trouble

I’ve got the weirdest little fault with the Golf at the moment. In front of the handbrake is a little square button that you press to get the petrol talk cover to pop open. Recently, this button’s decided it doesn’t like being there and randomly shoots off with a *ptwang*. It started happening when I was pressing it, and has now progressed to happening utterly randomly. I was heading home last night when I heard a *ptwang* *ptoo* and just saw it out the corner of my eye ricochetting off the gearstick and under the passenger seat.

The thing is, there’s no way top open the petrol lid without this button. I’ve tried bending the legs that hold it in so they grip better, but over a few days they “relax” again and it’s like waiting for a shaken bottle of pop to shoot it’s cork out. Only while driving. Which is not a good idea, that’s why I have been learning more about cars lately from sites as autonews.center  online.

The button currently resides in the ashtray and is taken out for when the car needs fed. I darent try and glue it in place in case I render it unpressable.

Responsible football fans – whatever next

From the Northern Echo 06/07/05:

Three men who intervened to stop football fans who were fighting on a packed train have been praised by a crown court judge.

The passengers formed a barrier between rival supporters as they clashed following a North East game last season.

Trouble flared on a Virgin service to Birmingham in September when WBA fans attacked three NUFC supporters as the train approached Darlington…..the (judge) accepted that the travelling WBA fans had been the aggressors.

Judge Briggs ordered that passengers Stephen Haveron, Ian Maxted and Tom Harbord should be awarded £100 from public funds for their intervention in the fighting.

He said ” I do not think I should leave this case without making some public acknowledgement of the three people on the train who, unlike many these days, were prepared to get involved and stop matters escalating.

“They acted in a responsible, indeed courageous , fashion in intervening, and acted as some form of barrier between the potentially warring parties”.

I know these guys (ish) – they’re part of the Yorkshire Mags. Well done, lads. Apparently this press release was the first they heard about the “award” as they didn’t make it into the courtroom! The nob in the dock pleaded guilty so they weren’t required as witnesses.

This gym lark is working

(Written on Monday, posted today)

About a month ago I tried to cycle to work. I think I managed about a mile (uphill, mind) with two stops to gasp for breathe and vomit before giving it up as a bad idea and heading home.

On Sunday I made it about half way there and could have gone on. And that was the uphill bit. Blimey. Not bad for 4 weeks’ work in the gym.

I also went for a nice bike ride with Sharon on Saturday, which she worked out afterwards was a shade under 10 miles, though it was pretty flat compared to my work run. The bike needs looked at, though. Quite often when you change gears it rattles afterwards unless you shift again, sometimes several times. It’s due for a service shortly so I’ll get them to look at it then.

One concern I have, though, are my nads. I swear bike seats aren’t as comfy as I remember them being as a kid but maybe that’s because my balls hadn’t dropped then. If I’m sat on a bike seat for too long, I start to get a painful ache along the entire underside of my groin, and I noticed this morning that I have a “numb” patch on my bollocks. I’m sure they weren’t like that on Friday. Eek.

I think this is why Lance Armstrong’s doing so well with the cycling thing. Minus one nut, he’s less likely to crush the remaining one on his bike seat or suffer discomfort. However, I don’t think I’m quite prepared to go that far to get to work and back under my own steam.

Besides, with my hunky new buff gym body, I’m having to beat the ladies off with a shitty stick. Just the other day, Kate Winslet paused from gobbling my cock to say how great I was looking.

Actually, that’s not true. I only put that in to make Soapy jealous. In fact, the whole bit about beating them off with a shitty stick is a lie. I think women are trying to come to terms with my Herculean demi-godliness and stepping back in awe. Yes, that’s it. Awe. Not revulsion.

Good grief. I only went and did it

(Written today)

As I write this I’m in the office. And my bike is outside. And I didn’t cheat and lug it here on the back of the car. And my legs hurt. And the right hand side of my scrotum is numb. No, Dawn, I don’t want you to stick needles in it to try and get it “working” again.

The bollock thing is explained on this rather humorous page so I think I’ll be looking for an alternative bike seat shortly, and perhaps some padded lycra cycling shorts. It seems it’s a very common complain in cyclists, but I’m not prepared to give up a fully functioning willy just to lose some weight! I do not like the idea of any future wife of mine getting pregnant via a turkey baster. Or one of the neighbours.

The best bit of the ride is getting to the top of the last peak just after the T-junction, seeing your breath in the air (despite it being 18 degrees…) and then being able to go “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” downhill the rest of the way into Halifax. Only the homeward bound journey to worry about now.

*whimper*

(Later)

Made it home in about ten minutes less than the workbound journey, but I didn’t have to stop twice to adjust my handlebars. I also managed to get home literally seconds before lightning rent the sky, thunder clapped mightily and it pissed down. This will be the rain that BBC weather didn’t know about. In fact as I write this, they still reckon Bradford’s enjoying blazing sunshine. Tossers.

Solidarity? My arse. Sorry – “ass”

Well, a ******* big thanks to the US armed forces as they stood by us in our “we are not afraid, you cock-sucking terrorist, coward *****” display. Yes, the same US armed forces who only today were allowed by their commanding officers to wander back within the M25 circle.

Apparently, “we [the US forces] cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated by the acts of terrorists”. Well, not now that you’ve given them a few days to bugger off and yourselves time ro come back out of your little bunkers you chickenshit *******. Pretty much sums up Bush’s presidency. Go in all guns blazing… as long as you have all the guns and are doing all the blazing.

Is it far too obvious to point out that by running scared from London for 4 days, they did allow themselves to be intimidated? ****, look at the citizens of New York. Civilians. People. They didn’t run away and hide immediately after 11/9. Neither did the people of Madrid.

Learn a lesson, Yanks (or at least those “high up”) – take a lesson from your citizens, and in fairness a huge number of your actual troops. Get some bollocks. You may need to look that word up – it’s English. Oh, and learn to drink tea without ice in it. That might help, too.

******* bloody terrorists

Four years ago I missed the last chance I had to see Pantera live because some raghead ****** got some of his brainwashed monkeys to fly planes into some buildings. The gig was a couple of days afterwards and the band couldn’t leave the US to get to Birmingham. I also lost £8 in booking fees. *******.

This time round, tonight’s double-length Tarantino-directed CSI special has been postponed till next week because of the subject matter (something happens underground – what massive similarities).

Hey, call me insensitive, selfish or whatever – but what happened to sticking two fingers up at these arseholes and carrying on as before?

Here’s the update that didn’t make it’s way here on Friday! And some other stuff. I’ve been a busy bunny.

Best of British… and one of the worst

Anakalia lives very close to one of the blasts and was doing her bestest to help out. By lunchtime she was official tea supply person to all the press and emergency services outside, and was holding umbrellas, pens, cameras etc for them all.

Andy was evacuated from his London-bound train at Swindon as police blew up someone’s Marks & Sparks bag they’d left on the platform.

Reynolds worked overtime to relieve the strain on the main ambulance service.

And those are just the people I know and who’s blogs I check regularly.

On a more sour note, I just got a spam from some **** selling pirated software with the subject line “LONDON BOOMINGS!!!”. Forwarded to FAST forthwith. I’d normally just delete it, but this tasteless moron needs dealt with.

More bloody ringtones

There’s another one in the office. This one “sings” that it’s ringing and needs attention. I assume that by “attention” it means crushing.

Reminds me that I met a friend for a drink the other night and she was showing off all her ringtones. “Listen! Rage Against The Machine! And Raining Blood. Now… Red Dwarf!”

Sorry, but every one sounded like an epileptic fitting on a xylophone.

Harsh email fitering

I noticed that a few emails I’d sent myself from home hadn’t arrived in my work inbox. I use email as a kind of “to do” list, so they’re generally short and plain text with no attachments.

I dropped a quick mail to one of our guys in network services to ask if there was a problem. His reply: “Two words. Content filtering.”

Now, fair do’s had I been emailing myself 100Mb porn videos, or instructions to “do that ******* server update”, but I hadn’t. One of the mails was a list of computer components and I’m sure I’d listed a motherboard, not a motherfuckingboard. So it looks like I work for an IT company that can’t receive IT-related emails.

Smart.

No meaty post this evening, folks. Again with the coursework (though this should be the end of it for a few weeks), and the update I scrawled at work doesn’t seem to have made it into my personal mailbox. Which is ironic as part of it was a rant about mails not making it from my personal mail to my work mail.

Fiddlesticks.

A quick “thank you” to David C. for the quotes he sent, though. I’ll pop them in the Javascript later tonight or over the weekend. Cheers, fella!

Sorry for the gaps, folks. I have a coursework due in this week (actually yesterday but I’ve got an extension to the 10th) so I’m slightly busy. Forgot to post anything yesterday!

Open letter to Jacques Chirac

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

You prick.

The Sun in factual cockup shocker (tits on page 3)

The Sun are quoted as printing “If you’re not proud to be British… you’re probably French” in today’s “we won the Olympic bid, ya boo sucks snail-eaters” edition.

Now, excuse my pickiness but mathematically and statistically speaking you’re actually more likely to probably be Chinese. Or American. Or Canadian. Or African… as there are more of them than the French.

Wow. Surprise. Another factual inaccuracy in a British tabloid.

Probably going to get some flack for this, but…

We all know about the shocking events in London this morning. I don’t even need to re-emphasise what I think of terrorists but I’d like to sidetrack slightly and comment on some related statements.

Number one was Bush-monkey jumping on the bandwagon and saying that this proved that his precious “fight against tererorerorizzzmmm” had to continue until it was won. Problem is that it’s not a “fight” I can ever see having a victor. It’ll never end. Add to that the fact that if we weren’t involved in his little personal crusade, there’d likely be 30+ people still alive this afternoon.

Secondly, a stamenent I heard as part of Ken Livingstone’s otherwise fairly uplifting speech (even if the guy has the oral charisma of a wet sponge). He emphasised the cowardly nature of the attacks on people going about their daily lives, heading to work and so on. Innocent, harmless citizens.

I draw the jury’s attention to the number of innocent Iraqis killed by stray bullets, bombs and missiles. Those slaughtered deliberately as a result of bad intelligence, or pure weapon-related overkill. While I cannot and never will condone terrorism – or what the US (and sadly also us) are doing in Iraq – it just smacks of hypocrisy to more or less say that Iraqi civilians don’t count while ours do. You can argue that our citizens were deliberately targetted, but I recall one wedding party being wiped out by a US missile because someone thought they might be Al Quaeda. Dead innocents are dead innocents, regardless of how they end up like that.

Having said that, I just wish I believed in a hell so that I could satisfy myself with the knowledge that the ***** who committed those foul acts this morning would spend eternity burning there. Instead, I just hope we can capture them and lose our copy of the Geneva Convention down the back of the sofa, the same way Bush has.