Unfinished, Discoloured or Other Fault

War Wounds

2010-08-21T11:30:00.000+01:00

Greetings from a pretty cool land of the NoozeHound.

My age is becoming a minor concern. Not in a grim way, more an acknowledged, with passing regret, the passing of time and it's effects on my body.

A body that, in all fairness, could never be described as lovingly maintained, to continue the vehicular analogy, more regularly well thrashed.

For instance I recently discovered that my thighs are far less supple than I had taken them to be, when trying to have them fold vertically in the footwell of a fairly compact vehicle. The thigh strain that I think I received as a result of said maneouvre lasted several days and, over a week later, I stll notice the latent effects on my right knee and calf.

EMNH continues to yank control and manipulation points to tiring effect, similarly tiring are her demands for funds.

I was also experiencing a discomfort in my right ring finger. A dull ache around the bottom joint. I considered how I have generated an RSI type of injury. Being on vacation, I have not used my PC as much as I would normally. What else could I have done to cause such an injury?

I cast my mind back to last night and smile.

I can now hardly consider it any less than a campaign injury and wear my aching finger with a sense of quiet pleasure, a badge of honour.

Not what one would think to post on FML.

Sadly, I have come to the sad point in my life where I am taking Multi-Vitamins. Worse still I found myself thinking about searching for joint supplements; Cod Liver Oil doesn't appeal and I find my self thinking Garlic Capsules for some reason and the dreadful reek that exuded from the pores of former in-laws.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Angels & Demons

2010-07-25T16:51:00.000+01:00

Greetings from a decidedly stinky NoozeHound.

I have just completed a little exercise that I now try to include in my day. Less than a few miles but a tiring, hilly lane that someone thoughtfully placed a hostelry at the mid-point. Today, in admittedly short bursts, I jogged. I shit ye not.

An interesting observation was made to me today. Mine enemies enemy is my friend. I was more than a little surprised.

My life is running strange. I have moments of such peace, such exclusivity, it is as if I am taken to a protected oasis of calm where no harm can touch me. Other moments, I have genuine terror and dread of the horrendous dealings that lay ahead of me. My heart falls.

EMNH screamed at me for asking NoozeHoundette if she had met Mummy's new boyfriend yet. Questioning our daughter - guilt?

It later emerged she has already met The Married Man. Don't waste any time EMNH.

I notice that I am 'peacocking'. The process started immediately before I extracted myself from the house of horrors. I have adorned myself. I must say, I considered a tattoo or dying my hair, but my wooden beads are the limit of my 'radical' image change. It is typical divorce behaviour.

I think it may have something to do with trying to show the world you are someone new. Someone different.

I was told, in total sincerity, that I should fear for my safety around EMNH. I foolishly offered to babysit so she could attend her married man's beck and call to a hotel. It was a hellish mistake. I unfortunately broke a vase by accident and made something of a mess. I cleared it up but the damage was done. She twisted the knife several times. She seems to take pleasure in hurting me.

It was explained back to me that she was demonstrating to me she did not care for me. I have in recent times told EMNH I still love her. Perhaps this was my answer.

I got very drunk. It didn't hurt any more. Why does she have such hatred for me? She has what she apparently wanted. Why deliver more pain because she can.

I was also warned not to drink anything other than tea, coffee or water in that house again, for the real fear she may take him back to the house just because she can and it would hurt me. I must be capable of getting out hastily if required. This seems wise counsel.

I speak with friends and even feel happy.

Then the texts start from EMNH. Souring my mood and bringing a darkness over my being.

There is such a huge, destructive war to come. I am not ashamed to admit I fear the future.

Nearly fifteen years of accumulated vitriol and hatred seems destined for my path.

This is how you make me feel now...

Welcome to the disappointment.

Lost Afternoon

2010-07-20T15:55:00.000+01:00

I was just about to take a picture of the mountains on my BlackBerry, I slid it from its pouch, I unlocked it, I went into the phone and turned to see an embankment now blocked the mountains form view.

You find NoozeHound today on a train to Edinburgh. This is more than a little unexpected. The train ride is in fact one small part of a rather largely unexpected afternoon. Not that I didn’t expect an afternoon at all, but I certainly hadn’t imagined it would have unfolded quite like this one.

Sent here on a secret squirrel mission (which makes it sound much grander than I assure you it is) I was up before the sun this morning and by 8:30 was sleeping my way up the country.

Late, I arrived in Edinburgh. Sleazy jet – rush you to get on the plane then when they close the doors and the captain tells us we’re ready just waiting to taxi out, we wait twenty minutes doing nothing for his opportunity to taxi out.
I was not greatly pleased after getting up at 4:30 that the dick driving the plane couldn’t pull out into traffic.

I call my host and he arranges to collect me. Meeting him, he seems a warm, cordial gentleman. He drives me from the airport in his Land Rover . Forty minutes later we arrive at the destination. He gets me tea and introduces me to the key personnel. I get settled in and the second of my hosts arrive. She shows ample cleavage, much to my male pleasure. I look and notice the blouse to be designed such - she does not have an extra button undone.
Not really for my benefit but maybe she thought a bit of cleavage might help. Who knows?
The fact is she had done her job really rather well, which made my job a great deal easier. Not only easier but also much, much quicker. So quick in fact that when I came to a natural break, I soon realised that with the dotting of a few I’s and the crossing of the odd T, I had completed the assigned task.

Our primary host took us for lunch at a farm barn, where I enjoyed a fruit salad and an espresso, which to my amusement was written “expresso”.

The sun was glorious, shining down from a blue cloudy sky. I felt like I had brought it with me – Scotland had not seen sunlight for several days. After I suggested that I had brought the sun with me, assorted suggestions of taking me to the Wallace Monument arose occasionally.

It’s getting over-cast now and cooling a little. As my day is opening out into a wander – with laptop, suited and booted – around Princes Street, that may be a good thing so long as it doesn’t rain.

Now I have had many things suggested to me that I could do in Edinburgh, shopping, museums, castles, art galleries and such and of course the pleasure of a hostelry.

I have to keep my wits about me – laptop, wallet, phone . I can’t get so inebriated that they question letting me on the plane. I have to get to the airport.

Only a few moments ago was the first time I even thought about EMNH. She emailed me yesterday making a request on behalf of NoozeHoundette. I went out of my way to comply.
I’m trying to be good.

The exercise is not getting done though.

Welcome to the disappointment.

SOMETIME LATER….

Greetings from the Unesco City of Literature (apparently). A very sunny Edinburgh, where the streets are paved with solar-powered ladies (and tourists) and hot and bothered NoozeHound.

I attended my first requirement at a Sainsbury’s local. I quickly strolled to No. 37 for a my first pint of the black stuff. On my egress I stopped and asked what I thought was perhaps a local about a bar with wi-fi access. He was Scottish but not from Edinburgh – may as well have been a tourist. He told me I would have to wait to get home to see her. If only he knew.

So I consulted the oracle. I tried Poynt first. Waste of bloody time that was.
Then I opted for Google on my phone browser – brilliant. Only because of our bizarre routing and off-shore proxy whenever I approach Google on a new or unset device – on this case my BB – it decides to return the result in Belgian or Dutch. Yeah, go figure?

So after I managed to change the language to Engels, I was quids in. Bars, Wifi Edinburgh.
It kep trying to tell me I was in Hanover Street New York and couldn’t give me a route from there to 103 George Street. Eventually, eventually, eventually, I managed to persuade G that I was in Hanover St, Lothian and it gave me directions to a cocktail bar with wi-fi and 43 ratings.

Ambling my way there, initially cautious as west is not natural parlance to a NoozeHound without compass, I fortuitously stumbled upon a Witherspoons. RESULT.

Free WI-fi and cheap beer. It is now 15:40. I am half-way down my second Guiness.
Life isn’t really so bad, or so one presently considers.

At the back of my mind a million monkeys are waiting to clamber all over my back. I am full of fears at the moment. Scared this might happen or scared that might happen.

I’m doing one of the sad ex things. I read her stars religiously – well at some time during the day. I try to imagine what affect they have on her. If the choices and decisions relate to her old life or her new life.

Mine are pretty great today, hers, not so much. I don’t want her to have a bad day. Not really. My star sign is supposed to love travel. Plane, taxi, train and possibly bus. It's in the stars.

I owed you a picture. This bloke is sort of infront of me. Why have they got a model of Terry Tibbs in a pub in Edinburgh (I don't think he's supposed to be Terry Tibbs - but he's a shorter but very passable version!)

Talk to me!

Welcome to the disappointment.

A Quiet Sadness

2010-07-19T17:52:00.000+01:00

Changing times in NoozeHound land.

I am experiencing something of an emotional malaise.

Well,it was a definite weekend. I got blown out Friday night - for the second successive attempt with this individual friend.

When I bumped into an old acquaintance on Thursday, out of the blue, for the second time in a year, in a very odd fashion, I got the idea that fate may be lending a hand.

Taking that into consideration, I took the long view that perhaps fate (or whatever unseen set of circumstances or coincidence work for you) was sending me a gentle message that the failure to hook-up for a second time was, perhaps, for a reason.

So my Friday was spent in alone with my anaesthetics.

Saturday I had the NoozeHoundette for the day. We bowled and played air hockey. We went to the pictures (AstroBoy - which we both enjoyed) and had an impromptu picnic in the park. A trip to the barbers - me - and a trip to the market to buy a super-soaker - NoozeHoundette.

EMNH phoned demanding I do her washing as I had left her without a machine. I complied I want to at least try to do right.

Then I cooked her dinner, we had a bit of a cuddle and watched some Toy Story 2.

I took her home and I think mostly she had a good day. It's all very, very sad.

I went for dinner at a friend's house.

It hit me that she had been seeing this man while I was at work - in my house. Sleeping with him there.

She had given me her sheets and dirty knickers to was. How much hatred does this was have for me? How could she humiliate so completely. Such stuff is the kinky world of cuckolds and their like.

I told her this was not to happen again by email. I have not heard from her since.

After anaesthnetizing at my friend's - drinking until I could no longer stand up, SUnday was a subdued afair.

I spent much time thinking. A whisper from a quiet corner suggested that perhaps Karma was at work- NoozeHound had left his first wife for another woman.

The more I thought, EMNH had told me; not quite as she portrays herself, but told me it was over and never answered my pleas to put it right. She ahd tried to keep her affair away from me and private. She had tried to tell me it was over.

It was my delusional inability to see what was before me.

I'm glad for my sanity that I got out - 'What a fool believes' was a very approriate song wasn't it.

Sunday was very restrained and a little odd because I knew I would be deinking later I couldn't kick back and relax inthe sun with a few cold ones.

I went to see the old friend from Thursday. We walked to the local and enjoyed a few glasses together. It was nice to smile and laugh for a change. It felt good being out on a school night - there must be some benefits.

I have accepted EMNH is just that; an ex. She can't hurt me anymore. She tore my heart from my chest, spat on it and kicked it laughing all the while up and down the street.

I still love her though. My world is a sadder, quieter more lonely place without her in it.

Of course I know I shall hear from her again - demanding money or requiring care for the NoozeHoundette so she can meet her married man. It will be demanding, or screaming or a courteous text/email asking me to babysit.

It won't be to clean her soiled sheets - that I guarantee.

I robbed this from Postsecret -I hope the author doesn't mind but I find myself asking the same questions:

Welcome to the disappointment

...That Scene in 'Fight Club'

2010-07-16T12:35:00.000+01:00

Greetings from a decidedly punch-drunk NoozeHound.

It is a cruel irony of 'married' life that a woman dresses and makes herself up at her most sexily dresssed to spend all day with other people. As soon as she is out of work, it's slip into somehting more comfortable.

The woman looks ravishing for her prospective 'new man' in the office, but then dresses down at home. The male partner never gets to enjoy the woman looking 'office hot' unless they work together - fuck it. Yes, they work together.

She looked 'office-hot' this morning. I commented on her getting a wear from her shoes (a pair she had bought for a party and thought she'd never wear again), she went silent. The inferrence was definitely "I've had good use of these shoes now."

I would imagine the satisfaction of additional useage of footwear was probably not celebrated.

See, this is what I mean. I'm re-enacting that scene when we get to watch the CCTV footgae of the fight towards the end of the film - the one where we watch Norton punch himself in the face.

God! I am so FUCKING STUPID! - Smack!

"No, I don't think it's that ' - referrign back to a conversation about a man spending money on a sports car. I made the small penis connection. THUNK!

How stupid - how would she knew the size of the man's cock who is buying the sports car.

TWACK! SPLATT!!

We had a neutral but infromative communication by email. I told her off after a rather demanding phone call.

She didn't respond to any of the emails. I feel more lost than ever.
Close to tears. Again.

I showed a friend her picture - she said "Ahh, she's beautiful. I can't hate her now."

"I can't live, with or without you."

I just went to the loo. I try to keep myself occupied.

I was suddenly thrust back several weeks, to a clothes store, where 'Then Mrs NoozeHound' asked me to go shopping with her - I was trying to make us work, so was unusually happy to comply.

I was just washing my hands after the toilet when that image smashed into my face.

"I need a new overnight bag, come and help me get one."

- She was buying it so she could turn up at his hotel carrying a fancy bag.

What a fool I was. Isn't that just perverse and spiteful? She could have made me pay for it I suppose. That's the only way it could be worse though.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Sanity, Long Walks, A Bad Case of the Blues

2010-07-13T13:15:00.000+01:00

Summer is quickly turn to the chill of Autumn inthe land of NoozeHound.

The weather hasn't helped. It feels like we will never see the sun again.

This morning she was rushed, slightly off-hand. She looked beautiful, if showing a tiny bit too much boob. (She wears the dress for church, we're not talking slut here.)

She pours scorn on my flattering comments. I tell her legs look lovely.
"...From all the working out I've been doing. Oh Yeah." she sneers.

She kept me aroud to pay the bills and cheated on me with a married man.

That is to what I must reconcile myself. She made no attempt to save our relationship or warn me of what may happen. She told me we are not together, but never answered me about putting us together - I can only believe this was to keep me paying the billls.

She just wanted a semi-blameless, somehow honourable affair with a marrried man from work.

When I knew for certain that she no longer loved me and had gone to the arms of another I could not stay in that house. Who in truth, with any compassion could blame me?

I have not emailed her today. I miss contact from her. By not contacting her do I open the doors for contact with her lover - though I know my emails would have been sitting beside his (and his wife's by some accounts) in her mail box. She may even forward mine to him, laughing at me.

I have written an email I have yet to send. It makes the position clear.

I am not sure if my timing needs closer scrutiny.

My heart hurts. I want to go and hide somewhere. I feel close to tears if I were that way inclined.

Fake it 'til you feel it.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Strange Sunday, Morose Monday

2010-07-12T16:45:00.000+01:00

Poor lamentable NoozeHound here.

Sunday EMNH proposed an impromptu Birthday drink. Teenage EMNH came to give her Mother her present and EMNH and NoozeHoundette came up after the gutter cleanign had been sorted.

EMNH was a tad drunk and aftera walk around the cricket green to blag the NoozeHoundette onto the cricket clubs bouncy castle, we walked back to the pub and I drove her home.

It was nice.

"I still love you, you know?"
"NoozeHound, ...don't."

I went home to drown my sorrows (violently and rapidly) and watch the football.

* * *

Today I was at the house to look after NoozeHoundette - EMNH has to go to work.

While I was in the house I looked at EMNH's cards.
Today I sought an excuse to email her, so I updated her on NoozeHounzdette's attire and what she had taken to school.

Not only was there one from the married lover, she had even put it next to and in front of mine.
The cheek of it.
A snoop gets what he deserves I suppose.
I wanted to rip it to pieces.

I then had to email her again about a business trip.

"Either really, doesn't matter, I have to take her to and from Brownies on my own anyway, so don't get a break in between doing dinner Thurdays anyway and oin Tuesdays we are foten completing homework, but I am starting at 9am and finishing at 5.30pm, so I have time to sit in traffic to collect her from school by 6pm anyway, don't know if I'll be able to get to work by 9am tho.

(Just remembered, you drop her at 8.30am, so any day will be cool)"

followed by

"You obviously won't need to come round that week as I can manage childcare!

(Like when I'm on lates, all you'll have to do then is collect her and hold onto her until 7.10pm)"

The depressing finality of our separation, so clear in her words - she's trying to be nice, helpful, - I feel so desperately sad.

Welcome to the disappointment.

2010-07-11T13:57:00.000+01:00

NoozeHound here.

I have been summoned to the house to be in on EMNH birthday. I am totally wrong for agreeing to a friend performing a favour on hr birthday weekend.

"I'm not staying in. You are. It's not ideal but it will have to do."

There then occurs a frank, mostly one-sided, exchange of views with regard the things I have done wrong.

"What about what you've done to me?"
"Me? I've done nothing."

She shuts the door firmly behind her.

Really, EMNH, Nothing?

* * *

It dawned on me last night, away from my more fanciful phases, that all that lay ahead with regard my relationship with EMNH:

Arguments about money.
Arguments about anything that needs doing with the house.
Arguments about childcare.
Arguments about the quality of the child care - today's topic.

She patently does not love me.
She continues to deny her other lover.

It is impossible to speculate, but I think it rational that the next ten years will be steeped in toxic bitterness dealt to me almost daily by the women I love.

I try not to feel it.

People say, "...you need to make a clean break of it."

There's no clean breaks with kids.

I feeel Despair's heavy breath down my back, engulfing my body.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Pain comes in so many flavours

2010-07-10T21:59:00.016+01:00

NoozeHound bids you welcome from what once was his castle.

EMNH has gone out with her adulteress friends to one of my locals.

I am sans medication - have been all day for NoozeHoundette visit.

I don't want to feel the things I am feeling. I am sitting for EMNH, looking after our daughter - incluidng cooking tea for her. I read several bed time stories.

The mask now slips. I have nothing to occupy me. Like a diseased animal I pick at the sores. Lifting the scabs of the afffair. The humililation. The Lies. How beautiful she looked tonight. How hurtfully she treated me. With such a dispassionate air.

She has terminated her relaitonship with me and is sleeping with a married man who will not commit to her. She treats me like domestic help and an unnecessary financial evil.

She calls me childish for my daytime flit. How else could I have left? She told one frined she had told me all about it, that our relationship was over and I would move into the spare rooom and share the bills. The only offer of a room I got was when I complained of back-pain and that I could see no point in maintainng a household on which I only get a sofa.

I asked her repeatedly, "Do you Love me?" On the last occasion, she told me, "You know I never use that word."

But she did. Post-coitally she would cling, spent to me and whisper it over and over.

She not only no longer loved me, she no longer considered we had a relationship and had consequently gone and started another with a man with a sports car at work.

And I sit and wait for her return. Punished for turning up late becuase doing her washing took longer than I had planned.

Oh! How I long for my medication. Unlike Robbie, right now, I don't wanna feel.

Publish and be damned - they should be home soon, allowing for the retributional threat.

Heart-break I know your name, it is written on your birthday card.

Welcome to the disappoinment.

Today I Learned

2010-07-10T12:34:00.000+01:00

Greetings from the land of the NoozeHound. A land geographically located across most of the circles of dante's inferno.

Today I learned that Reddit is not the place to discuss a prospective suicide.

While I did read some insightful advice, the number of 'buck-up' or 'go for a walk'. 'it ain't so bad' outnumbered it vastly.

The questioner, had a far simpler life than my own and one that faces far fewer demands.

I am immensely fortunate that I have a place to sleep. However it is so far from ideal it is unbearable. The prospect of living in a hovel of my own looms menacingly. I was remeinded a few weeks ago of a bathroom with no window. It reminded me of living in my flat. It filled me with dread.

I wonder if one part of the reasoning applies to my own situatiion. My limitations and requirements are not easily accessible, less so than his own. Is this a decision to stop me being able to reach it?

Alcohol helps me to feel nothing, desensitizing me. I am trying, in my dealings and waking hours to be as nice to everyone as I can - including the object of my suffering. Great waves of sadness and almost debilitating depression wash over me when my mind stops it's focus for an instant.

In retrospect I suspect the desensitizing power of alcohol had been my solice for some months.

A Six Sentence that I posted received as simple comment - "She doesn't love you. Move on."

Whilst apparently true, the soul-destroying pain I have experienced in recognizing that truth and performing the prescribed action has been gargantuan and debilitizing.

I must find my happy face soon.

I am seeing the NoozeHoundette later, we are going shopping for EMH birthday present. Maybe to a park or a bike ride. Something to eat at a restaurant and then I am sitting her for the evening so Sing Star or Wii and a bedtime story.

Absentee Father Days. Divorced Nights. Desporate Desolation.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Turns

2010-07-07T13:19:00.000+01:00

Greetings from the frozen wastes of the realm of the NoozeHound.

A land where warmth is noticeable by it's absence. Here be Dragons.

I am missing my Windows 7/Ubuntu dual-boot Workstation. I am missing my little XP Worskstation too. I'm a little closer to my server, but it sits, unoperational and forlorn.

All but the last, stored in a tiny, dark, powerless cupboard so I could not remote onto them should I even have wanted.

A combination of factors have culminated in a chill wind that now howls through my existence.

I can't recall if I told you about the guy I met at a party who had split with his wife and told me he was living in his friend's box room. We met and it was as if the Grim Reaper himself or some Dickension spirit sought to provide a glimpse of my future. One that filled me with dread and despair.

Today, the sword of damacles fell, slicing my financial safety-net and decimating my earning potential. Health care and life asssurance be damned. A terrifying and impoverished future looms large and imposing.

My mood turned further down when I calculated the cost of housing and the savage cut in earnings I now faced would see me struggle to afford more than a shoe-box and whatever remained to pay EMNH for the NoozeHoundette child support heading my way.

Soon after I recalled an old friend. I contacted him and another string of the Rockstar falls into place.

Later that evening it emerged the EMH was having this affair for months.

My suspicions were correct.

I am destroyed once more.

Welcome to the disapointment

Little Signs

2010-07-05T10:25:00.000+01:00

Those versed in things NoozeHound may recall the Rockstar Exit (TM).

It was always so terribly impractical due to the lack of access to the 'killer' ingredients, if you will pardon the pun.

The main theme was to party with two attractive female sex workers, indulge in Cocaine and Champagne and conclude overdosing on Herion.

Having necked every pill I could lay my hands on recently to no ill-effect, I'd put the exit route aside for the time being, filed under failed projects.

NoozeHound did a flit and moved out of the house this weekend. The ex whas been positively hostile. I don't understand. I thought it was what she wanted.

It seems she wanted me to stay on as her live-in housekeeper while she sought out pastures new, just not rocking her world.

She seems neither to realize or accept that being around her not wanting me is destroying me. I have been called selfish and childish, dramatic and stupid.

Every expression of my feelings was charged with being dramatic or feeling sorry for myself. When you are hurt isn't it usual to be feeling sorry yourself?

Returning to my theme, it emerges that my escape-pod is in a neigbourhood where there is a rumoured heroin dealer.

Funnny how Dream's sister, whichever of them it was, can point the way so subtly.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Amazing Accommodation Available

2010-07-03T21:47:00.002+01:00

Room in shared 3-bed house, very popular location, close to M1/M25, good local schools.

Please note - this is a house-share. No emotional support is available and there is no possibility of a relationship of a romantic nature.

No actual bed available - but (quite) large sofa (cushions can be placed on floor if required)

You will be liable for all Gas, Electricity, Telephone, Broadband and Buildings & Contents Insurance.

You will not pay (directly) Council Tax and TV License.

All cooking shared dependant on shift-work

Three weeks out of four you will be expected to take another member of the house-hold to school

Two weeks out of four you will be expected to collect her from after-school club - You will be expected to pay for this exclusively and will not receive offers of assistance due to a perceived immense wealth gap.

Free use of vehicle - you to tax, fuel and maintain.

All washing-up will be done by you - unless the self-appointed primary tenant feels particularly inclined or aggrieved.

In the event that the self-appointed primary tenant does 'wash-up as the self-appointed primary tenant goes' when cooking - you will still be expected to do all of the after-dinner washing-up and any heavy frying pans or other items the self-appointed primary tenant just doesn't fancy doing.

Occasionally the self-appointed primary tenant will prepare packed lunch for the child - you will be expected to prepare the rest approximately 15/20 pro-rata.

If you rise before or around the self-appointed primary tenant and make tea, the self-appointed primary tenant will expect one and will expect it brought to her bedside.

As the self-appointed primary tenant will avoid leaving her room unless essential the self-appointed primary tenant will feel disposed to request you provide drinks or sundries from the kitchen - it is presupposed you will provide and deliver these

You will be expected to mow the lawn as required - the self-appointed primary tenant does not use the lawn mower.

You will be expected to vacuum as required - the self-appointed primary tenant does not use the vacuum cleaner.

Alcohol : If you bring alcohol into the house expect to be criticized for it's purchase. It is presumed this alcohol will be shared with the self-appointed primary tenant and expected that it is served to her in her room - the self-appointed primary tenant will not collect. If unavoidable the self-appointed primary tenant will send a child to collect it from me.

I do not like beer - if this is purchased the self-appointed primary tenant will expect a suitable alternative to be provided - this will still incur the aforementioned criticism.

If the self-appointed primary tenant purchases alcohol it is for her sole consumption.

Religious observance:the self-appointed primary tenant will attend church periodically. On these occasions it is expected you will attend to cleaning the house in her absence. Cleanliness is next to godliness they say.

Laundry - the self-appointed primary tenant will leave her dirty laundry on the landing or on the floor of her room. The self-appointed primary tenant does not think it unfair to expect you to pick it up after her and deposit it in the washing bin. The self-appointed primary tenant will encourage other house-hold members to do likewise.

Since we have no working washing machine the laundry will be be exclusively your responsibility -the self-appointed primary tenant will not go to the launderette. The self-appointed primary tenant will never take a load to your Mothers'.

Finally with regard ironing,the self-appointed primary tenant doesn't have much ironing so the self-appointed primary tenant will expect you to do your ironing and the junior member of the household's ironing too (weekly).

Despite an agreement that you pay the bills and the self-appointed primary tenant will do the food shopping, the self-appointed primary tenant will call on you to do food shopping on an ad hoc basis. Repayment for this shopping may or may not be inferred but ultimately will never be repaid. The self-appointed primary tenant may pray upon you to make emergency errands for her, for things like prescriptions. The self-appointed primary tenant will not refund you for these items either - the self-appointed primary tenant will usually thank you though.

Not especially appealing is it?

Welcome to the disappointment.

Unbreak My Heart

2010-07-02T23:12:00.000+01:00

Greetings from the land of the NoozeHound.

How quaint that sounds in the light of my very real and mostly under-stated suicide bid.

I have dabbled with blip but discovered it is supranationally a horrible channel for youtube cover videos.

My Babies: I come from an era that was subjected to Mrs Mill, MfP and TotTP albums.

A cover version, far from being a tribute is a filthy dirty pass-off. I went on Bli[ today. determined to do a soulful, upbeat show - broadcast to the the dozens and fed to twitter - approx 12 people realistically.

Nothing but cover after cover, crossed out track after crossed out track.

I've tried pretty hard lately - it's not good enough, she's in love with imaginary man . I'm wrong for waiting, You see my reasoning was " I got off - who should I call? My top squeeze!"

Mr sleeze called before and after.

Man she'll fucking miss me when I scoot my arse out of here - hope 'Mr Loverly' makes good tea cos I'll sue her arse quicker than a wink if she gets baby NoozeHound to be her tea maker.

2010-06-19T21:12:00.000+01:00

Well grizzly murder fans, here we are back for more FML pain.

STBEMNH returned Thursday evening. I had steeled myself for I'm not sure what, but she was easy-enough going and interacted by phone a few times about arrangements for the NoozeHoundette.

Because of a misunderstanding we missed NoozeHoundettes Brownie Sports Day. STBEMNH said she didn't feel like cooking, so we could have Fish & Chips. When it came around it emerged she had rushed out without her purse so could I get it? I didn't really mind and was even trying to dismiss my fears as paranoia.

After I got in, immediately after dinner I tried a few questions about her previous evening.

* Readers of a sensitive or naive disposition should stop reading here; the following tale of woe include details of what real people living together experience and discuss.

She complained that she had come-on again, after only having been on a few weeks previously. I expressed that I hoped she hadn't come-on in her friends bed. She said she hadn't.

As this previously mentioned friend's partner was reportedly very jealous, I curiously asked how come he was away each Wednesday? The answer was a fluff-off "Oh, he goes out with his friends."

Later I asked about the friend's child. What she was like compared to the NoozeHoundette?

- "A really good little girl who does as she's told. Why are you asking all this?" she positively rankled, annoyed at the questioning. A little too irked to be anything other than tell-tale. Or at least sniffing strongly of guilt and awkwardness.

But nonetheless, I had nothing conclusive so left it there. She complained of me coming in and out (she now lives exclusively in the bedroom, not even having her meals downstairs - we sleep separately - me on the couch) and wanted to be left in peace.

I did exactly that. Went downstairs, did some clearing up and left her in peace.

Fussing after the cat she came down, naked. I hadn't seen her naked and upright in sometime; she had lost a bit of weight and looked fantastic. Still trying, I sent her a text telling her how good she looked, disarming it with the additional clause 'in a girly way'.

Sometime later I went to the loo and after popped in to ask her something while I was upstairs.

To borrow a phrase from Cher "...well I lost everything Darlin' then and there..."

It's funny, the total and irrefutable universality of some non-verbal communication and body-language. How the minute you lay your eyes on it you know, unflinchingly, what is before your eyes.

STBEMNH was naked in bed, pulling herself up onto her raised pillows, edging up with her elbows. Her Android was tucked under her left ear, a girlish, cooed 'mmm' spoken into the phone and a smile on her face. She looked ever so slightly shocked, but then not enough to put her off of her stride. She flashed me a momentary enquiring look.

I palmed up, felt flustered and apologised for disturbing her.

I was so overwhelmed with heart-ache I could not speak. Confirmation. Finally.

I paced around the kitchen. I paced around the lounge. I paced from the kitchen to the lounge to the kithcen. I sat down. I stood up. I went to the foot of the stairs. I turned and paced the downstairs once again. I returned to the stairs and ascended them, I burst (gently but briskly) into the room.

"I need to talk to you. Call me when your are off of the phone please."

There was a long delay, I assume the new paramour was told I was being difficult - there was no rush that was for sure.

"Well? What's so important?"

"I love you." I opened "If you are seeing someone else, I can't take it. I can't stay and watch it."

She went into detail how she was not seeing someone. Not defensively, but concluded with,
'yet.'

"We will never be together again NoozeHound. You have done too much; you were right we do not like each other and we have nothing in common."

I will paraphrase her, but her gist was to the effect that I must secure a permanent position, get a loan and get the kitchen fixed up so we can sell the house. Until such time it is best for NoozeHoundette that we stay living separately together for financial reasons.

No one wants my love.

Before leaving the room, I asked had she spent the night with him.

She said 'No' in a weak fashion. Her eyes looked down and left.

She is not mine.

Welcome to the disappointment.

What A Fool Believes

2010-06-18T09:29:00.000+01:00

Yesterday morning STBEMNH walked out of the house with her overnight bag. She barely said a word beyond 'Bye'.

She had arranged to stay at a friend's as she got a date wrong about me travelling on business. Despite me repeatedly saying I was away and back in the sameday she 'got it wrong' and thought NoozeHoundette would stay at her Grand-Mother's.

STBEMH went to some length and added stress to get a sun-bed and her hair cut this week along with two additional mad-dash to shops to get self-tannig liquid. It does seem like an awful lot of trouble to go to stay at a friends.

A brief word on this 'friend'. She is a serial adulteress, who recently wed her long-time partner after being caught out and feared losing him. When she was cheating she had said was staying with STEBMH as cover.

Now firstly it must be made clear that STEBMH could not be cheating on me as we are not what you could call together. I have made, as detailed elsewhere, requests and approaches. Her only response that I have done too much and we will never be together.

But her behaviour and requests, while it would be unfair to consider them overly friendly, would indicate something of an on-going relationship - requesting expensive early birthday presents? Planning days out together as a family?

Confused.com

The coolness of the depature irked me - I don't know what I expected, but she had not seen our daughter to kiss her good-bye nor see me or her for 36 hours. We're not hugging or anything but a little more, I don't know what, observance that there was a parting.

I was overcome with crippling sadness - or so I thought. I was stricken with a very uncomfortable bug that upset my stomache and gave me a soul-shaking chill. The feelings were very similar to the heart-ache I had experienced previously.

The realization that things really were over. I had completely lost her - it hurt. A lot.

She contacted me by phone and email through the day - only domestic, rational stuff.

All day I was wracked with stomach-lurching pain and shivers, my existence shadowed in melancholy. It sounds dramatic, but what else do you call that feeling of wanting to curl up into a ball and cry?

Devil's Advocate - Things are over. By being civil but withdrawn around the house she is demonstrating the separation. By going away to see her lover without rubbing your nose in it or splashing it all over Facebook she is sparing your feelings.

Or you could be paranoid, making all of this conjecture and normal events into a conspiracy.

NoozeHound, not being one to let it lie, suffering a torrid tummy and excess of moribund reasoned further; STBEMNH was an ealy shift - 07:15 - 16:15. Would she wait at work for her friend to finish sticking around at work? Unlikely that her friend would be working a similar shift, she has different role. Or would the early finish provide enough time to perhaps go further afield? She was checking locations surrepticiously on Google maps, so was clearly going somewhere she had not been before.

Again, so what if she was?

You are not together. She hasn't humiliated you with it, flaunting her tryst before you.

After dinner, I asked NoozeHoundette to phone her Mother and say goodnight. Despite my feelings she had not seen her Mother all day and I just wanted her to touch base with her before bed. The phone was not answered. I gave NoozeHoundette my Blackberry and said send Mummy a nice email.

STBEMNH is never without her phone. The first call was from the house-phone, a witheld number - it would have been obvious it was home as there are no other restricted numbers known to us.

The email was sent but not replied to.

There was a phonecall from her this morning. She called to speak to NoozeHoundette. She said her phone was on silent and she also said she was in the shower when it rang and NoozehOundette rang-off before she could answer it. So was it on silent or did you not get there in time? Or were you ignoring calls from home and my phone - becauase...? What...? Didn't really fit the mood? Didn't want to hear from me while with him? Irrespective, she should have phoned the NoozeHoundette. As I said she had not seen her that morning and a call to say 'goodnight' would have been the decent thing to do.

She didn't ask to speak to me, not even 'does Daddy want to speak with me?' to make sure everything was alright with the NoozeHoundette, as any Mother would do.

Perhaps she was avoiding me? Guiltiness? Awkwardness? There was no obvious acrominy between us.

I text her this morning to remind her to take NoozeHoundette to Brownies. No response.

This was all written during Thursday day time; far too long for a FML, more like a...

...welcome to the disappointment.

I'm a little drunk and I need you now

2010-06-15T00:00:00.000+01:00

The way things are between STBEMH and I, I heard a song that is spookily appropriate.

At first (and subsequently 'til I tracked it down) hearing, I guessed at it being the Dixie Chicks. Not really being a C&W fan that was pretty good for me, I thought.

I had to grab this version, not the "official video" - embed is disabled by request - so I could place a video...

(Edit - I'm a little confused, because whilst I did pass-out over the keyboard again last night, I had written much more than this...)

Anyway, in case you may think me mad (and who would blame you) I present here my musical reasoning for the above belief that the song may have been some kind of collaboration of some cowboy-type and the afore mentioned Dixie Chicks ...

Or is that just me?

I had read the new-to-me name 'Lady Antebellum' in play-lists and charts and not made the association to this hauntingly beautiful song. That was before even knowing what Antebellum meant: -

Antebellum or ante-bellum (Literally, Latin for "before the war") may refer to:

Generally, Pre-war; the time period preceding a war.
In the United States of America, the term refers to pre-Civil War America, especially the pre-Civil War culture in the southern states. Specifically, the era in the history of the United States after the American Revolution and the establishment of the U.S. as a sovereign nation, yet before the U.S. Civil War. Example: Slavery was an accepted part of antebellum plantation life.
Antebellum architecture, the neoclassical architectural style of the American South during the Antebellum era.
Lady Antebellum, an American country music group.

Hmmm..............? So what does that say about them? Does it leave me with 'Sun City' issues of conscience. Oh Dear.

I just thought it sounded a bit "Indie". An arena where other than cross-over chart success hits, I find little in the way of aural satisfaction. I was going to use Vampire Weekend as a sort of illustration, with regard the naming conventions and musical difficulties that present themselves.

I went off to find an illustrative video, only to find that I actually rather liked what I was going to present as something contrary to my musical tastes. This is something of an anthem I believe, particularly with the welly and wet fields brigade...

So I was rather hoping to do one thing and ended up doing something quite the opposite.

* * *

I have Electric Sheep. I had rather hoped I might benefit from some Electric Lamb Chops (English Lamb being so dear and all) - no such luck. I was slightly surprised by the small variety - it being on limitless Linux and all. Winamp visualizations have far greater variety.

* * *

Having established I have a vast capacity for being wrong, I finish with, quite frankly more than a little amazement that many intellects which I have long considered superior to that of the NoozeHound falling somewhat short in consideration of the Gulf Oil Disaster.

As a Brit I feel admittedly a little protective in the face of BP bashing. Not that I have any vested interest, quite to the contrary in a round about way.

To me, away from the ill effects and dreadful US news coverage, it seems one party is getting a free ride in the affair. That party being the ones who granted the rights to drill (against the advice of interested parties); benefited from the granting of said licenses and overtly failed to correctly legislate and monitor safety (and by all accounts common-sense) on the rigs they were benefiting from, namely the Bush administration.

As I have said, I acknowledge my capacity for being wrong, but Obama beating-up BP seems an awfully nice way of not confronting the real issues.

I think that particular little crook, Dubya, might go down in history as the teflon-covered prez.

Welcome to the disappointment.

The Naughty Step

2010-06-12T02:06:00.000+01:00

Tonight, I want to be Somebody's Somebody. I do.

When you accidentally (and trust me I didn't mean to and rather wish I hadn't) discovered your former lover checking locations on Google maps it hurts.

When she is still up and on her computer quite some time after she has said she would be going to bed - you wonder what is keeping her up?"

I hate myself.

I was never jealous when we were together, but the torture I experience each and every day is far beyond anything I have previously felt.

There were times when younger men than I would crowd around her trying to dance with(what was then) my lady. These days I am scared of shadows let alone threatened by younger suitors.

"I close my eyes then I won't see - the love you don't feel when you look at me."

What romantic clap-trap that is.

Prince; trust me - the first thing to go is the physical relationship.

It cools quickly. Cools to such a degree that it feels awkward even considering touching each other in a sexual way.

That hurts too - where once the fires burned so brightly; so consistently. Now there are just the corporation signs prohibiting bonfires and the burning of rubbish.

Right now (and all of today - you see she sort of needed me last night - subsequently discovered she neither needs me nor wants me - merely used me as available labour - I'm riding the crest, as it were) I feel like I'm sort of 'sitting-on-the-naughty-step' of unwanted.

Of course, at time of writing the facts have proven this to be false; she needed me. For a brief moment. It passed so quickly.

For a moment. For that moment she didn't even mind being close to me.

I'm kind of meh about Bon Jovi - like the hits, leave the rest. 'Always' applies to all of the un-resolved emotions surging though me.

Another track, discovered in the midst of another break-up (funny how Dublin Airport is always a key-player in my most serious break-ups) is 'Bed of Roses'.

The lines

"...this morning I don't know.
Well a bottle of Vodka still lies in my hands
and some blonde gives me nightmares
to think that she's still in my bed;
As I dream about movies
they won't make of me when I'm dead."

No rock star I. Those events; whilst I (were I less of a gentleman) testify to their efficacy, did not happen all in one tale. - Leastways, not in my life.

However, I have always nestled comfortable in the knowledge that cinematic treasures will not issue forth from me shuffling off this mortal coil.

You get to a certain age and you realise you simply are not James Dean, Pele, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

Let's face it - if you enjoy the infamy of these guys, you are doing well.

This page is dedicated to you. Especially if you have come here still believing (despite not singing in a band nor playing an instrument, having any sort of acting role, being even considered for a photo-shoot) maybe, just maybe, you are the next big thing....

...YOU'RE NOT.

Alright?

But hey, at least your girlfriend isn't checking out the location of her next lover's farm.

But if your love life has hit that metaphorically savagely jagged reef. upon which mine has run aground? Well, what can I say?

Shuffle up!

Make some room over there!

Welcome to the disappointment.

- add to that I got so drunk I passed out before pressing PUBLISH POST.

I have edited for sense and language but not content - if you read a drunk old fool - welcome to the disappointment.

It's A Booty Call

2010-06-09T00:50:00.001+01:00

Greetings from the land of the NoozeHound.

Regular reader. Yes you, skulking in the corner. I have achieved "dog-licking-balls" status. That is to say the cash-poor geekly-affluent status of having a dual-boot Vista Business(+ Full Aero)/10.04 Lucid Lynx new (to me - but costing nought) PC is now a reality.

(Pretty low-level geekery really - fixing the wi-fi issue at work felt better, but hay-ho.)

I am on self-destruct again this evening. I would like added to the record, that. should I opt for a self-determined concluding chapter, I would like to opt for 'The Rock-St@r', with the full selection pack.

Hedonist, to the literal end, my justification for this; I am most likely damned anyway, so go out on a bang! More details on this if and when I feel necessary.

Yes, where was I? Oh yes, 'self-destruct...'

I left you, having announced that I had (roundabout) pre-proposed to (STBEMNH) by text. I didn't want to actually propose by text - too much lacking of class - but I hammered home (with a glass hammer) the implication that it was on the cards....

The esS -to-the-Tee, Bee-to-the EMN. aitcH-to the Hound of LURVE ...well, 'My Friend'. When approached head-on about my text, her response.......?

"That was really controlling. I only just arrive and I get all these textstes (sic). - You know I hate mushy stuff anyway."

In my defence; she has always said my text get to her, effectively, after the event. E.G - buy *stuff* - text arrives when @ home.

So, 15 minutes after she pulled out the drive, I am sending first txt-spk "hv a grt nt"; then 'literal' - "I have been a bad boyfriend perhaps I could be a better husband" (sub-context to the max).

So, guess what [stop] [stop] [stop] in your head put on one of the female impressionist Aussie drawl (as opposed to no Aussie non-drawl) accents....

So? guess what? No 'Ansa'? No fuck'n answer? Nuthin...!'

(Well, we've been here before...) "I don't like slushy texts."

So. I try to make nice. Mr Jolly (that's me).
(Not in a deadly clown kinda way)

Cups of Tea/ Nice dinners/Bathroom Cleaning\Early Birthday Present Buying

That last one really fucking confuses me:

"Ooh! if you want to buy me an early birthday present - I want this" (show picture of telly)

[NoozeHound surreptitiously compares deal to ensure optimum value then sneaks out buys it and sets it up and puts it it place while she's distracted.]

But wait, What is that about

"...we hate each other? We will never get on? You reject every penny I have paid to service this relationship and demand instead retribution for every penny you have contributed? "

"Hey! No fair! I cry."

"Oh well. I was trying to be nice...Now things will get nasty..."

* * *

Tonight, in my presence, she received her first booty call.

She went to a re-union at the weekend. She complained of her friend getting chatted-up and snoring - they shared a room.

Tuesday evening she takes a call on her mobile. I am in the room. She smiles, alluringly (at the phone) - I remember it, if no longer feel it any more. She tries desperately to fight past me to take the call.

I act awkwardly.

"What's your problem?" She shouts boldly. Too boldly.

Thinking quickly I respond - "Your weird behaviour. That's my problem."

She plays the privacy card - GUILTY.

"You're standing over me looking at my laptop, listening to my phone calls."

"No, I'm putting my clothes away."

*

It's obvious. She has met a young man at the party. Good luck with this.

But please...

I have asked you to divorce counselling.
I have asked you to marry me - pretty much.
I DO STILL LOVE YOU (this was before it was apparent she was on the prowl)

Now you take calls unscheduled, awkward calls from your new beau.

I was never jealous before; now my heart bleeds burning open wounds, bilging fire from their gaping wounds. Combusting steams from the merest inhalation of the classic machinery.

Rockstar my beloved. A fucking Rockstar.

Adjectives Beyond Bad

2010-06-06T09:54:00.000+01:00

... bad is an adjective to describe a condition or state.

abominable, amiss, atrocious, awful, bad news,beastly, blah*, bottom out, bummer, careless,cheap, cheesy*, crappy*, cruddy, crummy,defective, deficient, diddly, dissatisfactory,downer, dreadful, erroneous, fallacious, faulty,garbage, godawful, grody, gross*, grungy, icky,imperfect, inadequate, incorrect, inferior, junky,lousy*, not good, off, poor, raunchy*, rough,sad, slipshod, stinking, substandard, synthetic,the pits, unacceptable, unsatisfactory.

It's not good.

Having consumed what I believed to be every drop of alcohol in the house, I was incorrect. It was something of a downer to discover my poor efforts failed with the discovery of half a bottle of San Miguel and a few shots of brandy remaining in the bottle.

Now I feel approximating lousy.

All of the following tale of woe unfolded before I touched a drop.

Last night. Because she parks so inconveniently, rather than risk causing offence (people can be funny) I offered to move (STBEMH) car for her. I got in and promptly drove straight forward into a post pushing in the bumper and breaking the wheel arch - a result of pushing in the bumper I suspect. The 'girls' were on their way out for a big, long-planned night out. They were using STEBEMH's car and I parked the damaged vehicle with damage facing away. Nothing could be done last night and I decided that my evening was already ruined, there was no sense in ruining more people's evenings with knowledge of the unfortunate events.

I have yet to advise of the damage - that little joy faces me.

In addition I sent some texts last night. I had discussed with a friend the unfortunate state of my love life. She propositioned that STBEMH was perhaps feeling unloved. I had come to a similar consideration myself a few weeks previously.

STBEMH had been proclaiming with some regularity how she was not married. Last night I sent three texts.

The first, in text speak, to ask her if she arrived safely and hoping she had a great time.

The second and third a long message (in text terms, hence two) advising my regrets at the situation and my past behaviour and the mention of the consideration of marriage.

Late last night I texted her accompanying friend to ask if she STBEMH had received the texts.

Apparently the lack of response was the answer.

It reads more like a cross between FML and Texts from Last Night.

Prepare yourself, dear reader, make yourself comfortable... Welcome to the disappointment.

Liar! Liar! Pants on Fire!

2010-06-02T22:18:00.000+01:00

I was in two minds whether to post or not.

Despite the title, this is not intended to be my personal whinge forum. Nor is it, regardless of the diminutive (non-existent?) readership, intended to be a personal journal.

Life is pretty uncomfortable at the moment. Work seems to be going very well. Personally, not so well.

A regular reader, having overcome the total shock of yesterday, may well have tired of my emotional torture all ready.

But then any regular reader will also recall me showing my hand some months ago. If you are still wondering - because of course, the emotional state of the NoozeHound is sure to play on the mind of any blog-reader - I cried because I realised that I would never in my life have relationship like that.

I was sort of flirt-mailing with (STBEMH) today. It took me back to happier days. It was of course simply a projection on my part. A later phone call, fraught with all of the long-endured resentment that runs like a major tributary through the wreckage of our relationship put paid to any romantic notions I may have been nursing.

Later still, when she asked me about Skype for talking to an ex-lover who (she said) seems a bit depressed I was, if possible, even more aware that said notions were subject to the gravest ridicule.

I will stress here, that A) I am simply not the jealous type and have little to fear regarding a fairly unreliable married family-man many miles away; B) The techie in me would have helped her install Skype and lent her a head-set, or at the very minimum sent her an install link despite the prospect; and C) she says (on Facebook) she is single - so who the heck am I to have the remotest idea that I can tell her who she may or may not speak, text, video-chat with?

So this awkwardness continues - for me. STBEMH seems fairly oblivious, or at least better able to deal with the the bizarre and emotionally debilitating nature of the situation. Or perhaps her game is of the long variety - she has already connived an 'early birthday present' - "give it to me now, (you will be gone before my birthday?)"

Also a 'family' trip to the beach - "I drove; I will take your offer to treat (buy picnic lunch, 'bargain' clothing offers, ladies periodicals, teas, ice-creams and buckets and spades) and expect you to entertain NoozeHoundette for the whole time I sun-bathe - sucker!"

Oh the joy of those family days out!

Wow! This has grown in length and time to type/booze consumed.

The headline - in old money, was me getting turned over by e-harmony (f*ck-em, they'll get no link from me )

After seeing enough of their English or hyper-professionally filmed/dubbed international commercials; and following yesterdays post review (Google adds offering pre-sentient promotion of 'older women dating'. I feel dirty for both of us) I went to e-harmony - find your matches....blah blah blah.

OK, I was curious (famous last words if ever there were any). My (sort of) current lover (?), significant other, doesn't want me. So hypothetically, after hearing/seeing the e-hegmony (UK) adds - and sitting in front of, not one, but three live computers, I thought "OK. I'm buying it. What 'relationship matches' do you have for me?"

Well, here was the thing. One of the very first questions asked is your relationship status.

"OK, nothing gained from dressing up the facts..." (I answered: separated).

I proceeded to answer page after page of psychological questions - save and exit? or, save and continue? - save and continue...

...and on and on it went; 1-6 are you generous? - and so on and very demanding.

- Nothin' ventured, nothin' gained...

"What sort o' match? What sort o' match?

OUR terms and conditions state clearly our service is for singles - you have indicated you are separated - you fail FAIL FAIL FAIL (you scrotes! Wasting so much of my time like that for nought!) as such we cannot under our terms offer you a match but here is a bullshit report :

"YOU ARE AGREEABLE"

- Oh no, trust me; I am so not agreeable you bunch of turd biscuits...DEATH/BLOOD/PAIN/AGONY/DEATH/DIE/DIE/DIE!

Mucho time wasted on account of my honesty - fuck you e-match-dot-con.

So if you're looking for love and eastern European love-slaves ; e-harmony is pants.

After completing (In detail) my requirements I get not even a suggestion of fair maiden merely a poxy report.

EDIT - I passed out/fell asleep at that point and can't now pick up the thread. The crux, as you will probably have guessed is even 'the relationship sight' blew me out. - welcome to the disappointment.

Dillemma

2010-05-31T01:46:00.002+01:00

...not in the Nelly & Kelly sense either.

Fans of 'the Nooze'; I have not been completely open with you.

You see my relationship with Mrs NoozeHound ran aground some time ago and has been haemorrhaging rather badly ever since.

I have been labouring under false hope for sometime, but is has been made clear to me recently, exactly where I stand. Ideally for the future ex-Mrs NoozeHound, that will not within 50 yards of her.

I don't quite know how things got this bad, but I think it would be fair to say a large proportion of blame must lay at my door.

My play list (and therefore my tweets) should be an indicator as to my state of mind. Despite how bad things have been, it's a large chunk of shared life to lose - and it will always hurt to not be wanted.

Anyway, today, I took the NoozeHoundlette to a theme park.

In between draughts of immense sadness, I was looking around to see if there were any ready replacements available - a future ex-Mrs NoozeHound.

Now don't rush to judge me. I was not looking for a replacement per se. I was looking to see if there were ladies out there, purely on looks, that I would consider having as a partner.

You see, in many ways, the 'soon-to-be-ex-Mrs-NoozeHound' (STBEMH) is definitely an 8 if not a 9. She has many qualities I realise that I rate in a woman, namely, good breasts (C), slim figure (12-14), a preference for thongs and wearing a heeled shoe when suitable and being able to walk in them.

She has many other qualities, not least her looks, but I was evaluating purely on a visual basis.

As my sample pool was a theme park, the majority of candidates were young mothers. Said young mothers were with their equally young male partners.

NoozeHound is not equally young. When he first courted STBEMH, he was not only significantly younger but also significantly slimmer, well, quite a bit any way.

"Well NoozeHound, perhaps you should be more realistic and readjust your requirements based on your current, erm, situation?"

Maybe. But of the whole park there were less than a handful of women that I thought attractive enough that I would want on my arm. Which equates to 'were good looking enough for me to consider suitable candidates for a relationship'.

One looked a little like Emma Thompson (not Nanny McPhee), one was an oddly dressed dirty looking blonde. I didn't even evaluate their form in great detail. What it proved is I am immensely picky. Vain, picky and shallow.

I listened to some relationship advice last week, cautioning against repeat picking the same 'type'. Being more successful at moving on if one didn't pick the same type of new partner.

I thought about this. Is that 'I should not pick an especially attractive woman?'

It's true they are not without their share of difficulties, but I really couldn't imagine being with a drab, tardy, unkempt or asexual partner.

I am nearer fifty than forty and not a millionaire or a celebrity. In addition, I will be losing my home, hereby forcing me to pay exorbitant rent and having to pay (ludicrously high) child support, consequently being too poor to have any kind of supporting asset.

In a horribly vivid sense, welcome to the disappointment.

They Think's It's All Over....It Is Now!

2010-05-29T23:51:00.001+01:00

I sincerely doubt that Kenneth Wolstenhome, when uttering those ultimately immortal worlds, ever considered how they may be used to evaluate a failed relationship that not only lasted far longer than it had a duty to, but also attained the heightened status (in occasional parts) of also achieving far kinkier status than it's decidedly staid and conservative nature ever ever ever had the rights to obtain.

Now there is billing...

Despite the debonair approach, (Family Portrait is finishing and so is a half of Scotch) I'm pretty fucked-up really.

How can you know something is so wrong for so long; so totally poisonous to your mental health, but then feel lost without? So bereft at the idea of being denied?

How can one plan, in detail. the murder and decapitation of someone and on a change of tide be so utterly contrary and so pained to the soul at the very idea of losing her?

Perhaps Money never Mattered?
Perhaps I'm just bored as fuck with waiting - despite consuming half a bottle of Scotch (generic - you do not, to the best of my knowledge, get single malts (AAAAAArrrrrggggghhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!) in quantities other than bottle or dram. For myself, following my Father's predilection has seen me quite appreciate the Scottish spirit.

Sunday Express, Srif,

b

(this was a post that never quite reached the publish key - it seems a tad bizarre updating the situation whilst simultaneously depriving you of my opening gambit...)

NoozeHound 29 May 2010
Sorry if formatting is out of synch.

Dropped In, Sold Out, Half-Arsed

2010-05-11T00:17:00.004+01:00

Greetings from the land of the NoozeHound.

I started writing a pre-election post. That was all though. I just started it. It ended, much like the election, as unfinished business.

After a few Opera updates I was suddenly gripped by the urge to see if it was friends with Blogger again. I am as much in the dark as you at this point.

I view myself with more than a little disdain. I have published a dozen or so sentences but that has been the total of my creative productivity.

Were I to try to mount a defence, it would run along the lines of me being busy, working long hours, home-life difficult, etc, but it would really come down to the hours spent of Facebook.

Not, I hasten to add, communing electronically with friends old and new. Catching up on gossip and making plans - the very epitome of the modern social scene. No, not your beloved old NoozeHound.

No, I have been maintaining several small though apparently popular and successful cafés whilst fronting two crime families and their nefarious imaginary activities.

I read Ten Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account ( I think it's the original source) via popurls. I re-posted it too - in my Facebook profile! Beyond that, I did sweet FA . Other than carry on dishing out beatings to Thai drug-dealers and knocking up Veggie Lasagne of course.

Mrs NoozeHound (recent purchaser of an Android phone and a new Windows 7 laptop) is a frequent network socialite, chatting merrily to real-life friends frequently although rarely in depth.

So then, I am working again. It seems to be going well but I am currently contracting for a reasonable hourly rate - the clients have expressed a desire for me to take the permie shilling. We seem some distance apart on the remuneration package.

My toothache has finally been cured. Two extractions and a root canal. About $500 of treatment - yet to be completed but at least I am no longer in constant pain. There was a time there when every trip to the supermarket meant stocking up on ibuprofen and paracetemol because I knew it would only be a matter of time before I had taken everything in the house.

The NoozeHound political voice, I believe went unheard. I used my vote in the vain hope of preventing one Tory seat. I would very much like to vote in an election where my single vote went toward a total of votes for that party rather than be silenced as it currently is be deluded fools in the locale. I will never forgive those responsible if this opportunity for change is allowed to escape.

So, the moment of truth, will Opera 10.53 succeed where it's recent predecessors failed?

-Or will it be, another welcome to the disappointment ?

Won't Get Fooled Again

2010-02-20T20:21:00.001Z

Roger Daltrey doesn't like Twitter. I heard him say as much on BBC Radio 5 Live the other day.

Perhaps it was this that brought to mind him singing 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.

I was prompted to upgrade my copy of Opera by a slightly scornful message telling me my copy was over a year old. You may be aware of my previous difficulties with my favourite browser - forgive me summarizing if you have - but I am now unable to use the 'Edit HTML' facility of blogger in the browser. Used to work fine and dandy, then didn't when I came back.

Having done the upgrade, I was even more disappointed that on my arrival back here in new improved Opera 10.10 I get the same spinny ticker. Meet the new browser - same as the old browser. Harrumph.

Hotmail doesn't work with Opera. It freaks, then I've noticed it plays up in Chrome too. Zynga's Cafe World is even more buggy and error-prone (if that is physically possible) in Opera than any other browser that I use.

Has Google fallen out with Opera, or is it just me?

My PC has taken to suddenly powering-off recently. A worrying new turn considering I am pot-less and this is our main machine. More on this later, but I think it just an awful coincidence rather than a symptom of the Opera malaise.

It's fine in Firefox - though I haven't test 3.5.8 quite yet, this post will be edited in said browser prior to publication.

So, here I am, now in Firefox rather than Opera. I still don't like it as much, but at least it loads all the right pages. I'm sure I'll still use Opera for non-Facebook and non-blogger browsing. If the list continues to grow (Hotmail, StumbleUpon, to name two more) will I be able to justify using it?

With regard my mysterious powering off. When I began writing this piece it was about 11am. By that time I had experienced several power-offs.

The last time I got this sort of misbehaviour it turned out that the fan on the graphics card was clogged with dust. I found this after examining each component one at a time. It was too soon to be repeat but it was making a hell of a racket.

I recalled the BSOD reports since the most recent MS update.

I wasn't seeing blue, I was seeing red! What was causing the sudden death?

Despite the 'no serviceable parts warning' on the side of the PSU I had this apart and cleared out the wads of dust, repeating the same with the main fan and graphics card for good measure.

So far, so good. Touch-wood, no black-outs.

Who knows, I might even be able to write the post I came back to write in the first place!

My ten year old PC, replete with Xeon processor, Rambus Ram that I can't expand and a SCSI drive - both ludicrously expensive and only marginally more prevalent than the bowel movements of the proverbial nursery gelding, continues (fingers-crossed) to survive.

Sure as hell can't afford to replace it, that's for sure.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Bobo the Footballing Clown

2010-02-18T15:39:00.001Z

Where was I ?

In much the same state as before really, because even on a different PC with a different OS, 'Edit HTML' still refuses to work on Opera, making a sad NoozeHound.

Something else that makes a sad NoozeHound is comedy goalkeeping. Well, it didn't make NoozeHound sad when ManUre had comedy keeper Fabian Barthez (or Bobo the Footballing Clown as I renamed him) between the sticks...

Perhaps it's something to do with having 'F-A-B' in the name?

Excuse the awful 'point-at-the-telly' quality but it's better than the idiot screaming 'Portohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' in the commentary in the other available clip.

This lot would probably be pretty pants between the uprights as well, so maybe there is something to not being FAB-related for goalkeepers.

So, Monsieur Wenger, even if Pompey come offering a keeper with Reed Richard stretchy arms and Inspector Gadget springy legs at a fire sale knock-down price, if he is called Fabian Fabianski or anything remotely FAB-related, either run very quickly in the other direction or be fully aware of the bag of hurt you will be buying into.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Dark Stuff

2010-02-17T19:25:00.000Z

I am mightily pissed off.

I had written this post. Tinkered with it. Previewed it. Tested the links then lost it when the browser opened the link from the preview and left the page.

When I returned to Blogger it was all gone. I watched the saving button flash into action saving a now empty page.

Mightily pissed off.

Now I have to eat my tea and go out to watch the Arsenal game...

More later, maybe.

Huxley/Orwell Mash-Up in the World Wide Web

2010-02-13T14:59:00.023Z

Wotcha.

Look at me, back here again.

I think I'm starting to get bored *with Facebook. Too much time on my hands and the responsibility of keeping other people's games running may well be a contributor. Not exclusively I suspect...

The repeatedly frustrating performance of Zynga games in whichever browser (they can crash all of the non-fruit-based offerings - I don't use the the grey one) despite perpetual interface changes.

Facebook's cavalier approach to their users, both their privacy and their taste in interface. It's all rather getting beyond a joke.

StumbleUpon did the same thing. There was a very long discussion, widely condemning the new interface which they too, simply ignored.

Google blogs and their draconian deletion of some music blogs over what appear to be spurious legal issues.
My Tweets (the message is frequently in the music) were all very law, freedom, silence, Big Brother that day.
Now Buzz. I turned it on. I turned it off. I discovered something.

I am not a social animal. On Facebook, I have used chat twice in a year. I don not IM. I communicate with FB associates (I have very few RL friends I speak with) only about game activity.
I sometimes comment, it rarely expands into communication.
I have very few gmail contacts, fewer I would be likely to Buzz with. You can email me if you really want. The links around here somewhere.
I 'installed' Wave too. It seems I'm not alone in not having a compatibly life-style for this product.

I don't walk about with a camera. I have one on my phone but the pictures are, frankly, crap. I do not have a Flickr account or Picassa. I don't go on boat trips or go shopping with friends.

Shopping. Oh how I loathe shopping. Adding to that delight the prospect of accomodating the purchasing requirements of somone (even someone I like) else - anathema. The sentence I originally thought of ended in 'right off'.

If these things are 'coming from the future' I fear I am going to be awfully side-lined in the brave new world.

To compound my troubles, Blogger won't show me the HTML. I always have to edit the spacing in the HTML because otherwise there are huge ugly spaces. Google have opted for the ugly spaces by denying me the HTML editor.

Welcome to my disappointment.

(* I am firmly of the belief one can only be bored with something never bored of something. It grates on me immensely)

On the Twiddling of Thumbs in General

2009-10-30T02:27:00.000Z

On Gainful Employment

Hello again. It was all supposed to be going a little more right now. Sadly I must report that it is not a little more right.

For one thing I haven't been screaming, nay drolly droning, into empty cyberspace with any regularity.

In order to preserve identities and dignities and such, suffice to say that the contract I accepted, despite my concerns has proved far less reliable than I was concerned it might be.

This equates to a very poor contract, more easily identified as casual labour. I suggested to the agent through whom I obtained this role that I should be employed (and paid) on a consultancy basis.

The staff are like characters from a cross between a bad soap and The Office (with Ricky Gervais, I'm not au fait with the US version that starts screening here next week I think). I could deal with this, were it not for the fact that they could not (to use an English phrase which I am sure translates) organize a piss-up in a brewery.

I missed one day's work because the kit hadn't turned up. When I went to site I discover I could have worked on the existing kit.

Half-way through that installation, I discover, as a result of chasing down the office for information, that a server had not been ordered and no-one had the balls or the political will to pressure the supplier to bring the delivery forward.

Resulting in NoozeHound being without work for a week and a half.

There is also a severe irony: The management were disgruntled by my suggestion that my employers were not very professional. I kid you not.

On Sporting Endeavours
(of others of interest, not of NoozeHound)

When last referring to the sporting pursuits of my beloved Arsenal (and not indulging in online japery) I mentioned the AZ Alkmar game.

Between then and last night I have witnessed two frustrating draws. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for those with a more vested interest than myself.

The papers today and comment in general is of the new crop of wonderkids at Arsenal. Steve Sturridge and Lee Dixon shared the view that neither Arsenal or Liverpool had changed significantly from last season, Liverpool were a two-man team and Arsenal were still frail in defence.

I think Liverpool could quite easily have brought about another frustrating lost lead last night and were unlucky not to get a penalty. I thought the arm on Watt was good for a pen too though.

I don't want to sign up for the 'writing Arsenal off' camp by any means, but two teams in AZ and the Hammers, neither setting fire to tables, mugged us of what looked like comfortable victories.

I know damn well that higher-reaching teams will punish us much more severely should we take our collective feet of the pedal with such alarming regularity. Something the lot from down the road will gleefully take advantage of too I should imagine. That really would be full circle and proof that we haven't progressed.

On Cinematic Entertainment and Inconsistencies of Plot

Returning me to Up. In addition to marvelling at the handiwork that had gone into the visual representation of a corduroy (I think) jacket; beyond the tears I shed at the start (serioulsy) the immense indignation I felt during the climactic battle.

When we meet Carl Fredrickson, he goes to the movies as a small boy to see news-reel footage of his adventurer hero, Charles Muntz. When he finds him again 60-odd years later he is every bit as fit as Carl. Ignoring the fact that a septuagenarian might have trouble trevailing large airborne objects, it is harder to ignore that an octogenarian would be higly likely to experience far greater obstacles to performing dangerous stunts.

No-one batted an eye. Great movie nonetheless.

On Sacrilege and Inaporpriate Cover Versions

I'm sure she is a very nice lady and I really do have nothing against her.

I have analysed my dislike and come up emty-handed. I just couldn't quite like what she's released to date. I heard her latest release this week. Not happy.

This is one of my most super-dooper favourites:

I can see how some sycophant might flatter Florence and her machine that the vocal would lend itself to Florence's own particular vocal charms, producing this:

Not the version they play on Radio 1, no less wrong for all of that. No matter how many remixes, it will still be WRONG.

Welcome to the disappointment.

It's Been a Long Time Baby

2009-10-18T15:10:00.001+01:00

Hello, it's me.

I haven't checked the visitor stats yet, but I have strong suspicion I am talking to myself.

You are (probably not) reading quite possibly the most highfaluting, high-tech, energy-hungry personal journal in the world.

After months of daily updates, I've not dropped by in almost a week.

Arsenal won and have moved up to fourth - for the time being, MoneyCiteh play later and could change that. ECL in the week and a game against AZ Alkmar.

The spell-checker in the editor has stopped functioning - which shows my typing up as quite as inaccurate as it is.

Shamefully, when I have been on the PC after work it has been attenting the most trivial of matters, aside from a little work stuff and some admin.

No copy-writing, no pre-selling, no articles, no lenses and no study.

I think I can understand the motivation that fuelled the gold fever and habitual criminality.

I have spent most of my spare hours either playing bejewelled or Mafia Wars. Not especially well either.

I do miss my studies and the web stuff I was learning, albeit without reward. Still on zero all round for anyone who is interested.

If I could get a second stream of income up and running, not necessarily excessive, say something in the region of $2,000 a month, it would make my contracting life a great deal easier.

Mrs NoozeHound (who heaven help me is in the process of leaving full-time employment for the altrnative challenge of being a part-time teaching assistant) would probably be a lot more accepting of me contracting if there was steady alternative income. Still more pressure on poor old NoozeHound's earning capacity.

Well, there I have my motivation. It would be far more productive than gangster tripping or diamond-swapping. It would be more productive than writing a free unread blog too though, wouldn't it.

I've just checked and my lenses and article between them have nearly 80 views!

I think that's more than all of this blog combined.
Robert Bleasdale is a nom de plume by the way. There it's out the bag.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Hot Transfer News! Look Who Arsenal are Scouting

2009-10-12T23:48:00.001+01:00

I wasn't planning on another post quite so soon, but had to break my silence when I heard this, frankly amazing, news...

The gentleman pictured below, none other than Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger himself, coffers swelled by the sales to Moneybags City of Adebooyar and Kolo Toure, is on the look out for some prime Argentinian beef...

Arsenal insiders have said that the manager has his well-honed scouting system casting a venerable eye over a Barcelona player.

The player in question, the man Arsene Wenger is looking at to make a sparkling addition to the already immensely talented Arsenal team is none other than...

Yes! As a result of an inside source in the London footballing media and confirmed by an Arsenal insider, Messi is going to sign for Arsenal.

Go here for the full story.

Footballing world, consider yourselves rocked.

Joany...

...welcome to the disappointment.

Thank Goodness for 3-D Specs

2009-10-11T23:52:00.004+01:00

In a fit of generosity today, NoozeHound took NoozHoundette and Mrs NoozHound to see 'Up' in 3-D.

If you've been living in a cave or off-world for a while, try this...

First up (no pun intended), but immense kudos to the costume guy. If there even is such a thing, the small mail-man's drill shorts and Mr Fredrickson's jacket. Impressive work.

- This is the guy that thinks the best bit of Ratatouille is the writhing mass of rat bodies and the best bit of Monsters Inc. is the track race and door distribution scene.

Now I don't want to be giving any spoilers so I have to be careful.

I've seen several trailers but there were many surprises to me in the film and I would hate to deprive anyone from experiencing them for themselves. I don't think I'm giving too much away...

No. On second thought's I might be.

Just in case for some bizarre reason you have arrived here at 'Unfinished, Discoloured...' and you haven't seen 'Up' but intend to, I'll revist this topic in a week or so.

Be warned.

Suffice to say for the time being, that it was a good job it was dark and I had glasses on.

There's been no proper football.

I have been:

busy
knackered
distracted with Mafia Wars
short of content.

My Sennheiser Earphones have a broken connection - I am very sad.

I have been neglecting you haven't I?

I haven't been listening to much music either.

I have a toothache.

Welcome to the disappointment

Clever, Clever, NoozeHound

2009-10-06T23:25:00.000+01:00

You are in the presence of greatness.

NoozeHound, under another non-da-plume is rocking it as an expert author. I kid you not....

"Hello NoozeHound,

Your article, "That fing wot you wrote" - has been accepted and published on EzineArticles.com:
linkety.link.link

You've also earned Expert Author status: link=expert=NoozeHound

Your article will appear on our high-traffic home page within 48 hours:linkety-link.link

Your article has also been sent to our exclusive EzineArticles RSS
Feed and to our proprietary EzineArticles Email Alert Members."

How great is that? Zero to Hero in no time at all. Well, you may recall just how long it has taken to get said article into publication andin fact what a hiatous effect it had on my new revamped blogging career. It brought it to an abrupt halt.

Not making millions yet though:

Do you know..? It strikes me, this is the exact opposite of the 'generic' marketing system ads:
Black text on white background - check. Proof of earnings - check. Demonstration of wealth - to follow!

As you may recall I returned to the world of paid employment this week (rather than giving up my 'boring 9 to 5).

He (my marketing mentor) did warn me and it is the first few days since my feeder article finally went live.

Work seems to be going quite well, which is nice, thank you for asking.

Twitter is broken. I was checking my 'junk' account on the back of the breaches of security and noticed some interesting new followers. I was half-expecting to go along to Twitter and perform another cull of saucily-named little minxes all curiously wishing me well and suggesting a money-making site in exactly the same language.

Worse; some god-botherer and his chum were tweeting and re-tweeting all over my stream.

No call for that is there?

One DM intrigued me a little, or played to my ego and vanity, at least. They had responded to my autoresponder and adder.

It looked like 'a lady'. Her name was Stella, Stella Marconi. 'Could you mention us on your page?' 'she' asked.

Chivalrous to the last, sucker for a sob-story, weakness for the ladydeez, I took the time to check them out.

I don't think this is Stella herself...

Well you can at least hear the vocals in this one. I don't not like it, but it sounds very raw and not quite what I would call polished.

Being brutal, I think a change in vocalist may be required or a change in style at least. The teenager in the bedroom sound isn't really doing it for me.

I hope they make it mega and stick a small line on the back of a ridiculously over-prived commemorative program for the sell-out Wembley gig saying...

"YOU WAS WRONG NOOZEHOUND, YOU W*NK*R!"

In the meantime...

....welcome to the disappointment.

Suffering on a Sunday and The Joy of Six

2009-10-04T17:23:00.011+01:00

Suffering on a Sunday

NoozeHound currentl;y sports a three-inch burn across his right arm. A cooking injury, no less.

This may amaze those of you who know me even slightly.

Mrs NoozeHound is attending the church harvest lunch. It's a bring and share affair. This year she decided she would like to take a big pot of Chilli. Not being remotely churchy myself is the surprising bit.

Now it's dificult to be exactly certain, but Mrs NoozeHound says she loves my Chilli. It is damned fine, though I say so myself, but let's face it, it's not the most demanding of things to cook (burnt arm aside).

She asked for 'my recipe' as "...it's always so nice."

It was as she began cooking it, having had me assemble all of the spices and provide her with a shopping list after checking what we had in the house, that she dropped in the sentence that I have since suspected to be her real motive for 'loving my chilli'.

Mrs NoozeHound, part-way through chopping the onions, and asking what she should do next, drops the immortal line..."You can make it for me if you like....?"

Oh yes. I would have loved that.

As it is, I ended up stirring it more than she last night and this morning and t'was I that broke the chocolate into the bubbling cauldron this morning - after I had received my burn. Well, my suspicions are now firmly aroused.

Not that me cooking is especially unusual, particularly while I have been assessing my options and working on new strategies for employment - yeah, the out of work thing that I've been doing.

No doubt hearing how wonderful Mrs NoozeHound thinks my Chilli is you are dying to get the recipe.

Try this, the recipe gives a warm heat in the mouth but doesn’t punish your butt.

500g - Cheap beef steak - cut into small cubes

1 Green Pepper - chopped 1/2" squares

1 Red Pepper - chopped 1/2" squares

about an inch of Chipotle Chilli - finely chopped.

1 carton of Tomato Juice

1 carton of Pasata (sieved tomatoes)

2 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

2 large onions - finely chopped

2 cloves garlic - finely chopped

2 stalks of celery – chopped

1 400g tin red kidney beans

4 pack 330ml bottles Mexican/American beer

2 - Beef Oxo cubes

1 dessert spoon generic Hot Chilli powder

1 dessert spoon generic Mild chilli powder

1 dessert spoon Cayenne Pepper

1 heaped teaspoon Paprika

1 heaped teaspoon Coriander

1 heaped teaspoon Cumin powder

1 good grind of black pepper

1 teaspoon sea salt

4 squares of Lindt 72% or 85% Dark chocolate - don't sub with Bourneville it's poor.

- plus you can feed the rest to your lady.

Chilli is supposed to be a one pot dish.

Because I don’t have a pot wide enough and shallow enough I have to use a frying pan and a big pot. Like that I know that the key ingredients have had their fry-up before setting them to boil/simmer.

I prefer to use cheap steak because it will go proper soft after the amount of cooking time and you don’t get the fat you do with mince – if you substitute for mince, try and scoop of the fat – it will ruin the dish.

Chop up the steak into loosely 2cm cubes. Remove any fat/gristle.

Chop the onions, garlic , peppers and celery and chilli.

Now gently fry the meat so it’s brown all over, drain off any fat and spoon into the saucepan.

Now fry up the veggies for a few minutes to soften them up and bring out their flavours, schweet.

You’ll get the fragrance of that chilli come up now – cool huh?

Drain off with a perforated spoon and lob into the saucepan – make sure to get all of it.

Empty into the saucepan the two tins of tomatoes (you know to open the tins right?)

Give it a good stir.

Turn on the heat – high.

Drain the kidney beans and luzz em in – that brine is rank man.

Stirring the pot, empty in the carton of Pasata and the tomato juice.

Got to the fridge and get out two of the beers.

Open them, empty one into the saucepan.

Sip the other while putting in the Oxo and all of the seasoning, stirring constantly.

As it approaches the boil, watch out – the mutha will spit like a bitch and all that red stuff will proper stain your clothes guy.

Keep stirring, then reduce to the heat to really low.

Enjoy the beer – but leave the other two for enjoying with your meal – neat eh.

Go back every ten minutes or so and give it a good stir – you so don’t want it to stick and put a burnt flavour through the whole thing – that just sucks – trust me on that.

Do this for about 2 hours, stirring every so often.

The last stir, turn back up the heat to 3/4s.

Break the chocolate in and give it a good stir to it’s all proper moogled in.

Now taste it.

Don’t be doing no double-dipping – this is important – it’s gonna sit a while.

Does it need any minor adjustments?

Is it missing anything?

It should rise a sweat on your brow and be noticeably but not uncomfortably hot in your mouth.

Just right – Excellent.

Turn it off and cover it. – Depending on the time of year, leave it on the stove or if you think that it might be to warm, put it in the fridge.

Leave it to sup up the flavours for 24 hours, eg cook it Friday evening, eat it Saturday evening.

Worse cook it Saturday morning eat it Saturday night.

(You can eat it straight away, but it won’t be at it’s best and it seems a shame.)

When you're ready to eat, warm it up again. Slowly, stirring all the time.

Serve up in a bowl, sprinkle some mature cheddar on top and eat with a big chunk of fresh bread. I find Pain de Campaign goes really well, buttered or not.

Eat with a spoon and use the last bit of bread to wipe around the bowl.

Enjoy with a beer.

Afterwards, continue your Tex-Mex adventure with Margueritas or perhaps Tequila slammers.

Then some Acapulco Gold to Panama Red to round the evening off perfectly :)

The Joy of Six

This post was a game of two halves. I started it, hopped off to watch the football , then came back to finish. I was a little late leaving and when I found a working stream the mighty Arsenal were already one-nil down.

That was not my proposed script for this game and fortunately nor was it Arsenal's. When Tommy V's equaliser scorched in, I thought that was the sign that things were about to change in our favour.

Dunn must have been oblivious to this fact as he proceeded to score at the wrong end and we were a goal down again. It was a sucker-punch against the run of play.

My stream was slightly slow and it made it look like old Pathe footage but in glorious colour. What was even more apparent was Arsenal's slick passing and speed of movement. Robinson's goal was under a constant barrage and two minutes later Cesc played one of his killer defence-splitting passes and RVP drew us level again.

The onslaught continued and Arshavin gave us our first lead of the game ten minutes from half-time.

Second half saw Theo on for Rosicky who'd played well was unlucky not to get on the score sheet. Having seen Blackburn take the lead twice, while being dominant we still looked a bit shaky at the back and could have seen ourselves in the same position as them.

We needn't have worried. Captain Fantastic steps up and thumps one past Robinson. 4-2.
More sparkling movement and Theo gets his first goal bonus for many a moon.

Bendnter came on and was starting to really frustrate me. He kept running at the Blackburn defence only for them to relive him of the ball without too much trouble. Several times he set out on a beat everyone run, beating few or none. losing the ball and breaking up the attack.

I thought it would stay like this, then Bendtner ran across the edge of the box, got in front of goal and leathered it into the bottom-right corner, off the post and past Robinson once more.

The joy I reference above relates to the number of scorers rather than the number of goals. It was a hell of a performance today and I doubt for once second there was anything so scintillating to watch on the other side of town this afternoon.

Well, fat Sam,
- welcome to the disappointment.

Hot Stuff, Cold Comfort, Clever Ending

2009-10-01T23:57:00.000+01:00

It occurred to me, immediately prior to commiting to blog, that I could probably separate this into three posts.

My next thought was that I could write one post and save the rest in document or draft form. Draft form, there's an idea...

For my similarly boom-bust affected chums and any other readers who find their October home bar equally decimated, I take great pleasure in bringing you some Credit-Crunch Cocktails.

NoozeHound's Drinks of Desperation

Turn out the cupboards, look for anything alocoholic to drink. After establishing all the bottles of Grenadine are not alcoholic and therefore of zero use without Tequila, grab the Boozey Blackcurrant and Nut Juice.

(they look nothing like this)

Frankirstein's Monster

Bottle of 'Sisca - Creme de Cassis' bought on a crap trip to Calais with a demeted woman.
One bottle Frangelico, purchased because it was on a list of shooter requirements.

Try not to sniff the nut juice but pour about 50ml into a glass. Top off with the Creme de Cassis until it's tolerable. Don't breathe it in, the nut smell lingers.

Cox's Crunch

Seek out aforementioned bottle of Frangelico. Pour about 50ml into a big wine glass. Drown with Apple Juice and quaff until slightly giddy. Again, don't breathe in, that nut stuff is vile.

Unfair Comparison

Go back to the woefully under-stocked drinks cabinet. Seek out the remaining half bottle of Triple Sec (left over from the Margueritas when you drank all the Tequila) and pour about 50ml into a large wine glass. Top off with Apple Juice until safe to drink. Neck quite quiggerly.

So long as you have consumed the mandatory bottle of wine, I can more or less guarantee any of the drinks listed above to get you more pissed, threaten heart-burn and not make you violently sick.

In other news, the interview went pretty well and NoozeHound returns to the world of gainful employment first thing Monday morning.

Realistically, money will be really good. I wish I could have cracked that internet millionaire thing though. 'Working from home' sure helped make sense of the child care requirement.

Sadly, no matter how much analysis I did, all of my 'niches' seemed to lie in extremely competition-rich areas, like food and sex and drugs and rock and roll.

Remember my 'speciality' that I thought I could get an ebook and small offline business from. I'm still working on that as my 'topic' for copy-writing 101.

Shortly to be returning to the role of wage slave;

welcome to the disappointment.

Proper Job Stuff

2009-09-30T09:50:00.001+01:00

NoozeHound has an interview today. No update last night and I'm only popping in now.

After repeatedly trying to watch the game in jerkavision last night, I missed something on BBC 4.

The stream I managed to stay with, or more accurately that kept coming back despite the shutdowns, ended up so far behind the game had finished and the players had given their post-match interviews before Arshavin scored the second.

The BBC have gone all retro-tech nostalgic. Electric Dreamsseries of programmes started last night, inconveniently during the Arsenal game.

Due to my stop-start elongated stream presentation, I turned Sky Sports News off and onto the Charlie from The Guardian talking about gaming. All good but I missed most of it.

At the end the announcer did a 'if you like that, you love these' moment. It was for a top piece of nostalgia in NoozeHound's book; Tomorrow's World.

I skipped along to the BBc archive and found somethign for you. Because of theinteview I didn't want to pull a late one, so saved it for now.

This is exactly how NoozeHound currently goes about his day, interacting with his home computer terminal. In fact it is how I write this blog.

On a different tangent, On the nation's second most popular breaksfast show this morning, but certainly no tlimited to this morning, Moyle's parodies seemed to gain a lot of discussion.

At the risk of invoking the ire of the mountaineer, they're not very funny. They were to start with, a bit, but I think they're flogging a dead horse. The last one sold some units so I guess it must've turned profit for someone, hence number two.

I hope this proves the difficult second album and the whole concept quietly dies away.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Thoughts on the iPlayer

2009-09-28T22:27:00.005+01:00

The BBC I-Player, http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer , I find I use it more and more, primarily due to my dislike of commercials*.

To my surprise today I found the movie 'Point Break' on the i-player. Surprise, because you can't watch the football on the iplayer because of rights issues.

I stand slightly corrected, because you can watch Newcastle v Ipswich on there. (I'm sure Roy Keane is getting every penny of his license fee value watching that!)

For the sake of accuracy then; you can't watch Premiership Football on the iplayer.

(Note to self: Ctrl-Z brings about unwanted results in the Google editor)
Once again, from the top...

On ITVs online offering , the snappily titled, itvplayer, for instance I cannot watch the third season of Supernatural because of the rights issue. They have now chosen to show at 3am in the morning. I don't own a PVR, still providing house-space to a geriatric video recorder. We missed an opportunity to pick up a cheap PVR when they were clearing the Setanta-branded boxes and haven't really been motivated since.

I'm waffling. It's an insecurity born from not posessing cutting edge consumer electronics.

I don't 'tape' Supernatural at 3am from ITV3. If I could watch it on the itvplayer I surely would. Crap as I find ITV mostly these days, they're not alone.

A few years late, I discovered the end of an episode of The Wire on BBC2 (I think) late one evening. Trotted along to the iplayer - no joy.

Channel 5 have recently started a new series. FlashForward. Same rules. Big feature, no re-run on the web. I dare say that if I went lookign I could probably find a torrent though.

As you can't access the video download streaming sites from outside of the the hosting country (I've not even had success using proxies to get Hulu and ABC for instance) I don't see the problem here. To my mind the producers are losing out not sellign the online rights to the purchasing network at the same time as the TV broadcast rights. Seems like they are clinging to an old model.

I'm listening to Young Lion's Dance Hall M1X on the iplayer. The thing is I was in the mood for some reggae. I searched for 'reggae' on the iPlayer.

My BBC came up somewhat short. I was offered a coolection of shows, with a mention of The Upsetters on Don Letts' Radio 6 show as the only proper hit. Several Dance Hall shows, but no other reggae to be found.

Quickly back to Point Break. I watched it (again) last night. I wasn't about to watch it again (again) onthe iplayer, in addition ot me watching 'on air' until gone midnight last night, when I own the DVD. It struck me jus thow bad some of Keanu Reeve's acting really was. Most noticeably in his one-to-one scenes with Swayze. It was Ted Logan at his wooden best. Still love that movie though.

The government seems to keep hitting the BBC over the head about their commercial activities. I don't confess to know the real ins and outs of it, but if it saves the licesnse fee going up, it suits me. Conversely it doesn't justify paying Wossy £18m either. It's not as if he could defect anywhere else and get a better deal.

It strikes me though, that in the iPlayer (and their content naturally), the BBC have a killer app with killer content. Why not monetize it? They've done all of the hard development work. It would be easy to add a second strand with a subscription model for 'the rest of the world'.

I've tried internetradio365. I wasn't about to pay for a service that was awful for free.

I read an article in The Guardian bigging up Spotify for the iPhone. I thought to myself, 'maybe a tenner a month for somone prepared to fork out the best part of £40 a month for an iPhone might make sense to them' but to me, £50 for a phone that plays music - music you can't even keep - is certainly not my idea of value.

I read The Guardian, more than any other paper and it's the only newspaper site I read. That article made be think of it as a yuppy club. One that caters to people who spend in excess of £50 a month on their phones - even if they do share the Spottify subscription.

Away from capitallist excess, they are saying on the news that we could see a 4 degree rise in temperature by the middle of the century. On the basis of the oil running out (£1.04 per litre - remeber the complaints when it went above a pound - all quiet not though) I shouldn't think it will make much difference beyond hastening the demise of the species.

Perhaps Swine Flu is just the start.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Passing Fads

2009-09-26T23:14:00.000+01:00

It's been a difficult few days. I got pissed several times.

I posted pissed, wrote bollocks and came back and deleted it the next day.

Friday morning I found this...

Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Digital Media on Vimeo.

It's good isn't it? I thought so, and took it away wtih me to share with you.

I mentioned our legal dealings. Justice was done and Mrs NoozeHound won. By her own admission it was a hollow vistory and the case would never have come to court were it not for the total lack of human deceny of our county council, the bastards.

I also found an item about Starbucks suing a cartoonist. This warrant comment, I thought. Turns out the item was about eight years old,hardly qualifying it as news item. Here's a news item: NoozeHound has never set foot in a StarBucks. Ever. And has no intention of ever doing so.

NoozeHound loves coffee and is the proud owner of a Gaggia Espresso machine.

Dad duties saw me nipping out several times today. This meant I was listening to the radio; FiveLive and TalkSport specifically. Stan Collymore was proffering his theories and the stats required for relegation and winning the premiership. The talk was of Pompey being doomed and Chelsea cruising to the champions throne.

Then Chelsea went to Wigan, got sucker-punched and lost 3-1. Shame Spurs won and you've got to start worrying for Burnley.

Not that I have any love for Liverpool, but it was wonderful to see Phil Brown's team on the wrong end of a proper drubbing.

RVP was saying how we have to beat teams like Fulham if we want to win the title. Or words to that effect. We made hard work of it, but we did exactly that with RVP making good to get the only goal of the game. I was in the car again for most of the first half and most of the second half.

I'm just about to watch the highlights. It couldn't have been much of a game, it's that far down the order but it's another win when it was a loss last year. 3 points in the bag.

United won as well. They're top on goal difference.

Welcome to the disappointment.

The Learning Zone & The Nonsense Zone

2009-09-24T00:23:00.000+01:00

Mrs NoozeHound, displaying her characteristic belief in me might question which was which. I shall save you, dear reader, from any such confusion.

The Nonsense Zone

I created, mostly for my own amusement, but with you in mind a very interesting and entirely spurious fact this morning. Upon it's conception I vowed to share it with you...

Mini Viva cheeky little pop princesses they are, one a Geordie the other a Manc are said to be modern equivalents of Mel & Kim. I don't remember either of those carrying puppy fat, but I can sort of see the comparison. I did smile when the girls 'fessed to having never been to Tokyo - you would have thought the record company might have seen that question coming. Anyway, away from the malicious and unfounded bitching, I created an interesting fact about the name of the band.

Despite their disparate origins, the girls, Britt and Frankee, ended up living next door to each other. They went to different schools and didn't get on for a number of years. One evening, one of the duo heard the other singing through their bedroom wall. The listener began harmonising and the two hit upon the idea for a band. Sadly they couldn't think of a name that reflected the young, fresh 'n' funky, dynamic groove the two found they could generate. They thought and thought but nothing came. Were they doomed to be a good idea whose time never came?

Depressed, they slumped down against their fathers' cars in their respective driveways.

"I know!" shouted Frankee, "we turn around and the first thing we see is what we shall call the band. You go first. Madferrit"

"Wai aye" replied Britt, turning around and banging her head on the immaculate chrome trim.

Neither girl was especially bright. They were each leaning against the rear-bumper of a motor vehicle. As they turned, somewhat logically, one saw the word "Mini" and the other "Viva".

'Viva Mini' were born. They toured for several years until a record company executive saw them, signed them and put them through the R&D machine. A genius at Geffen looked long and hard at the bands' name, deciding it needed a complete remake. The rest is history.

The Learning Zone

The dedicated and fortunate amongst you will remember my early posts about the struggle I had over signing up for the Niche Profit Programme and parting with the initially hidden fees.

While undocumented, my studies have continued. Some I have documented, others I have chosen different topics to blog you with.

This week I chose a new set of manuals. They are significantly weightier than a great many of their counterparts and I have found them refreshingly well-written. My previous mentor manual was also well-written but he had cunningly blocked parts out and structured the book around accompanying work-books you had to join a pay scheme to access.

I was never likely to become a paid subscriber, but I followed the initial stages of the course. I think the prescription must have been a little out of date though. The first steps were:

Affiiliate account from Clickbank ===> Choose some content ====> Join Squidoo =====> Write article and publish =====> join Ezine ===> write a few articles and publish them ===>link-back to your squidoo lens ===> generate traffic.

I mentioned the article process here. The Ezine article is still yet to be published.

The new one really wants to sell me a hosting plan. The planning steps and the basic self-analysis are very good though and can be applied to any start-up. About a quarter of the way through, another manual on copy-writing is referenced. This is similarly well-written. Consequently I printed the first one and spent a large part of today, to the detriment of my usual loafing and side-tracking, studying, planning from and reading the copy writing manual.

I've kicked around a business idea I've had ticking on a back-burner (you have to use what you have) and will test (eventually) my copy-writing acumen on this new project. A postcard is not really a fair comparison for a sales-letter, but we've all gotta start somewhere.

I've had proper job interest too.

The stresses of the legal system await tomorrow.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Rubbish Radio, Magic Mixes and Funny Films

2009-09-23T01:12:00.006+01:00

NoozeHound does not like lady DJs. From the 'fluff' they stick on in the morning shows to the ones with their own day time shows. Of late I am alternating my listening to Radio 1 and Radio 1 Extra at home and 1 and 2 in the car.

The delights of the iplayer mean I can listen to Moyles in the morning then switch to Rampage's mix (roughly 2:15 in) just before they Moyles & Co annoy me with car park catchphrase and (as was) Jo Whiley, now Fearne Cotton.

I've listened to snatches of Jo Whiley and Edith Bowman in the past. They grated. Can't help it, they just did.

When 'kitchen time' coincided with the Chart Show I might listen. Fearne Cotton wasn't always on there and there was usually Reggie too when she was. The programme is obviously aimed at a young market, a far cry from Alan Freeman and as I recall DLT of my youth. I'm not a fan. I doubt that bothers 'my BBC' especially, I'm not in the demographic.

Anyway, after I have listened to the (roughly 45-minute) Rampage mix I can then switch to the live feed or not depending on my moods and wants. That was the listening pattern I had adopted.

Painfully aware of the change - there was much indulgence of Whiley's departure - I thought I would give it a chance. Avoiding the overly-long handover from Moyles, I 'tuned' back in for the start of the Fearne Cotton show.

I really did give it a try but didn't last very long I have to admit. I didn't time it, but I think it was only five minutes into my listening when she began going on about how she was too old to fancy the young ones so fancied the dad (shrugs shoulders) in Gossip Girl. Which is exactly why I can't abide female DJs. I clicked off the iplayer and whispered a silent hope that my clicks were recorded by 'my BBC' and it went into a report somewhere.

Fearne Cotton, not broadcasting to me. Because of her clothing range and 'other work', most of the pictures of Fearne Cotton seem to be zany or bizarre.

I went outside again today. Inadvisable but that's me; livin' on the edge. NoozeHoundette really wanted to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Her Mum was not in the least interested so yours truly was the chosen companion. We'd seen the trailer and it looked OK and made a note to watch it at the local 3D cinema, some 25 minutes and £10 more away. NoozeHoundette received a movie card for her birthday for the local multiplex from my sister. My recent lack of liquidity was brushed aside owing to this card and NoozeHoundette offered to treat me. I was expressly forbidden from letting the child pay for both of our tickets, but it was cheap Tuesday so the pain was lessened. Two good seats for a net cost to NoozeHound of under four quid.

I didn't really have particularly high hopes for the film, but I really quite enjoyed it. I've read subsequently that there were complaints it was not like the book. There's a book?

I laughed a lot. There were a lot of visual gags, some of which I found myself laughing at alone. It was a small audience and apparently not of the highest intellect.

Of one thing I am virtually certain. There is a scene on the dock, around when Flint meets Sam, I think. If I recall correctly there is a seagull. I am looking at the sea thinking "I bet that cost a lot."

The film is nicely coloured but the characters are very big-eye puppy/duckling, oversize head. The sea, I thought, was amazingly textured and detailed. Massive props to the guy that did 'the sea' in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I don't imagine for one second another soul inside that movie theatre had that thought go through their head.

When the film finished it struck me I had seen it all before. There was little point in bouncing it off of NoozeHoundette, much of the sources I was quoting were from before she was born.

Spoiler alert - there follows comparisons that will give the entire game way. You are warned...

A man-made device launched into space grows and takes on a life of it's own. The planet, because of man's disposable life-style, has become overrun with garbage and uninhabitable. The trash is taking over.

It's 'a Perfect Storm' we are told. They are going to feel the effects all over the world. This will be a global disaster. Our hero is forced into action using his intellect.Taking a small piece of code, the hero, a geek, skinny with bad hair, flies up to the enemy with a view of getting to the centre and installing the code to disable the machine.

Elsewhere, Arsenal went past West Brom to the next leg of the Carling Cup, winning 2-0 as they did. It wasn't on telly and there was no highlights I could find. I didn't check Sky sports though. Being an Arsenal game , not without it's controversy and the scumbags at ITV must be guttted they missed the chance to video-hound another Arsenal player.

Happy Birthday Kay - your card is sitting beside me.

Welcome to the disappointment.

10MB Super-Fast Always-On Fibre Optic Broadband...

2009-09-20T21:42:00.008+01:00

Almost, but not quite Mr Branson.

I have the titular 10MB Super-Fast Fibre Optic Broadband. Despite my hunting for it, I could not find a reference to the always on tag. I'm sure they used to use it but I couldn't track he actual quote down. I guess they dropped it.

NoozeHound turned on his PC this morning, well it was this afternoon to be precise. I was seized by the urge to indulge in some electronic martial arts and feline torturing, Tekken 5 and SingStar by their other names.

Once logged in, somewhat shamefully, I 'popped' onto FaceBook - just to bank any profit and check on mafia. No really. I don't contact anyone. Just bank, do jobs, whack some lesser mafias, juggle collections and add some crew if I can. That's it. Mafia Wars has effectively killed the friendship contact aspect of FaceBook entirely. I suspect everypne will have to hit 501 members fairly quickly to avoid being the obvious small food fish of the member-limit big fish.

My destination was irrelevant. DNS errors all round. Usual round of resetting the modem. Repeated, endless Synching attempts. The line is down.

Dig out the bill, phone the 0845 support line. Listen to the options. This is the billing line. Check the bill again. Call the service line.

'There is a problem with cyberguard,we hope to have it resolved soon.'

No mention of there being an outage.

I call the 0845 customer service line. Eventually I speak to Paul. I suspect Paul was in Mombai and Paul's name wasn't Paul.

We do account validation and I tell him the problem. I pre-empt him by telling him I have done all of the reboots. He asks if he can put me on hold and consult with a colleague.

Cheesy hold music, not sympathetic to a mildly irritated customer - you used to own a record company you say Mr Branson? And a Radio Station? Hmmm.

"Hello this Ahmed. Can I have your account number please...?"

If you recall I had already given my account number to 'Paul'. I indulge him. Noting how unrewarding this customer service experience is becoming. I inform Ahmed of this. He does, what I can only translate as a telephonic shrug of the shoulders. It's fairly apparent that he doesn't care.

It is at this point Mrs NoozeHound starts to remind me that she told me not to go to Virgin. 'They're always on WatchDog for crap service.'

I repeat my patter to Ahmed. He listens to me and puts me on hold 'to check'. He returns to inform me the line is down. In the words of Conan-Doyle; 'No Shit Sherlock!'

I launch into a good-natured tirade, petitioning Ahmed for an explanation as to why, if the line was down, it was not reported on the 'free' service line.

Worsening the situation he tells me it's been down since this morning, but it takes a long time to update the service line. I go to lengths to point put how unacceptable it is that Virgin Media are unable to put a message on a service line and how any network service has a duty to inform it's user-base of an outage at the earliest opportunity. I heard him smile, the smile of disinterested tolerance. followed by another telephone shrug. 'It will be resolved by 8:30 at the latest.' He tells me, I suspect in a bid to shut me up.

I resist, telling him Virgin are crap. That I had used BT copper for years and not experienced an outage - it's true. My phone never went dead and my ISP dropped once in five years. I have had Virgin for three months and this is my third outage.

A recent WatchDog item claimed I should sing my complaint, Virgin were being taken to task for billing dead people and not switching the person on the bill in the event of one partner dying.

Perhaps I should add this to my Amazon Wishlist...

I picked up The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes (The Sandman) to re-read this morning; reminding me of one of the unfinished collections I am hopelessly lost in the middle of due to lack of funds.

I will do that graphic novel discussion, I will...

Welcome to the disappointment.

Is There A Special Entry Under 'Wigan' in the Asscoation Football Rules Book?

2009-09-19T23:05:00.000+01:00

So, does Mike Jones have something against booking Wigan players?

Defying belief, he has refereed them for just short of 152 minutes of football without showing a single card to a Wigan player. Does the Chester-born official have a special soft-spot for The Latics (I don't know what that is either) ? Is, as asked in the title some special rule in the Association Football Rule Book, listed under 'W':

Wigan - If at all possible, overlook their clumsy displays of tackling; ignore them leaving the foot in, play non-existent advantages and wherever possible - despite physical evidence to the contrary - infer the opponents are somehow simulating their injuries whilst avoiding the dismissive 'get up' gesture that gives the game away.

What a shame then, that Tommy, Tommy, Tommy V, Tommy V, Tommy V, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy V, Thomas Vermaelen, spoiled Mr Red-headed Pillock Jones day by opening the scoring with a leaping and perfectly legitimate header to make it One-Nil to the Arsenal. We like that score.

Not that I was counting, but it certainly appeared that every challenge that a Wigan player made was excessively physical. Screaming like a madmen at Mr Jones (via the computer screen) that he was unaware of his specific duties, seemed to have little or no effect on the ginger tossers attitude toward those cheeky scamp Latics' studs-up sliding challenges, body-checks or plain old-fashioned kicking. Until of course Alex Song commits (an agreeably) bookable offence and Hey Presto! There is a yellow card, previously particularly well-hidden in the pocket of the ginger twat, AKA Mike Jones.

Wigan players continued up-ending Arsenal players all over the pitch until half-time, unfettered by the rules of the game or the referee's authority, or lack of it.

The second-half gets under way. More of the same in both senses of the word. The Belgian defender makes it number two. Possession and pressure is almost exclusively one-way and culminates in our Tom spanking one into the top left corner past a beaten Kirkland. About five minutes later Wigan receive their first yellow card and not before time, if my opinion counts for anything. Gomez is the unlucky one as it could have been any of half a dozen to pick up the first booking.

It's almost exclusively Arsenal possession and attacks on the Wigan goal. If they look to break out, almost all attempts to get out of their half end in one of the midfielders or occasionally defenders, taking the ball off of them and redistributing it.

Much to my surprise Wigan have a shot. On target. I'm not certain I remember them having any more.

Martinez subs a couple and they run about a bit.

Eduardo pokes one in, off Eboue's calf and Melchiot's (I think) shin to beat Kirkland again. Three nil. They seem to have given the goal to Eduardo, so Emanuel is, despite appearances, not thanking God, enough.

The commentary, the bit in English, I had trouble following the Arabic, suggested one of the subs was eager to prove himself to Martinez. This was evident by him bringing renewed vigour into the 'Wigan can't out-play so we must out-kick Arsenal' agenda. Scharner, after 'showing his commitment', uncharacteristically gets booked.

Later he slides in in on RVP, just inside the area, delivering another ankle injury for the oft-wounded striker. Scharner stays down, rolling around a little, only natural after kicking someone's ankles, presumably under the 'I'm injured too, so you can't book me' rule.

He needn't have worried. Mike Jones was refereeing.

At the death Cesc makes it four nil with a nice finish. He doesn't look happy though, Commentary says he's carrying an injury. I hope that's it.

Mike Jones has gone on record saying his favourite game of all time was the one he refereed when Wigan played Hull. Wigan won 5-0. Go figure.

On a final-ish note, the Wigan fans started boo-ing Eduardo, or more, I noticed it, toward the end of the game. Like their team, they lack both a clue and class. Why were they not booing when Wigan's approach to the game was stopping Arsenal play by 'letting them know they were there'?

To condemn 'diving' as cheating and tolerate repeated foul-play is rank hypocrisy.

3 points. Four goals.Three Scorers.

Those stats gloss over the performance of the ref and foul-play of the opposition. Suppose it had not all been Arsenal. What then. It might be a game of two halves, but there seems to be a real shortage of fairness.

Welcome to the disappointment.

I Just Called to Say...

2009-09-18T20:55:00.002+01:00

I'm tied up. Not in a kinky, exciting way, more in a 'demands of other people' kind of way.

I was all set to expand on the graphic novel theme of yesterday. However, other people have other plans.

All there's time for is this amazing, separated at birth scandal...

(They were supposed to be side -by-side, but that doesn't seem to be happening this week)

Aussie funny singy man (and he is bloody funny - my neighbours will testify to my laughing like a drain to his recent Channel 4 show) Tim Minchin and Scots Radio 1 DJ lady who's off to a new time slot after ages, Edith Bowman.

I blame child traffickers, myself. Oh well...

...welcome to the disappointment.

Best Laid Plans - NoozeHound You're a Bum!

2009-09-17T23:18:00.000+01:00

Way back in the day, soon after I started this blog, I ummed and ahhd about The Niche Profit Marketing program. Should I/shouldn't I sign-up.

That epic saga can be read here. The things is, I got that (what I now know as an affiliate hop-link) from the initial sign-up that I joined to find out about this blogging malarkey. Before I got bogged down with the idea of throwing up web-sites and producing e-books, the initial idea was a blog that I could generate some of this 'promised land' revenue from. Blogging for Profit'.

That was when the 'analysis paralysis' first started to set in. There are other suggested routes, but the conventional wisdom seems to be blog about something you love. The thinking being that it will be easier to deliver fresh articles and sparkling content if you love your subject.

Therein lay the problem.

I 'do' IT for a living, but wouldn't claim expert status; there are many cleverer than I in the field. Worse , my career path has seen me turn my hand to many things but I can truly claim mastery of few. In all honesty, I could probably write a passable ebook for anti-virus and home IT security topics. I'm probably saving that as a port of last resort.

With my day job ruled out (for now), what else was I interested in or knowledgeable about?

You see NoozeHound has never really had a hobby. He likes computers but not enough to get totally nerdy over them. There have been various things along the way; football programs, motor memorabilia, comics, all were half-hearted and short-lived.

Analysing my likes lead to a small field:

Music - I have wide and varied tastes and a large collection of mostly purchased or converted from original CDs.

Football - My memory is too screwed for facts and figures. I've never really had the wherewithal to regularly attend Highbury or of late, The Grove. I have no anorak and I'm no stato.

Graphic Novels - I was totally bitten by the consumptive bug until the money ran out. I will return to this in more detail.

Sex - Sex as a subject fascinates me. I don't think I could be an expert in clear conscience though.

Booze - NoozeHound loves a drink. Master of Wine? Nope. Home-brewer? Nope. Just drink it.

Drugs - I love drugs. We haven't been in each others' company for many moons, but my love has never faded. Not actually playing the game, I feel precludes me from commenting on it.

Smoking - I'm a non-smoking nicotine addict. I've not smoked in nearly two years. I miss it every day but know it to be a mugs game. Not much in the way of blogging material.

Movies - I like films. I have, considering I rarely watch them after the initial viewing, a vast DVD collection. No movie geek in me though. I can critique a recent viewing, but not with authority.

Console Games - I loved GTA San Andreas. To this day, if I see a pedestrian wearing blue jeans and a grey hoodie it takes an immense feat of will to stop me veering onto the pavement, mowing him down and collecting the $2,000 he drops. We still have a PS/2 and a selection of games. Hardly cutting edge though. Nor blog-worthy.

There you have it. I like writing my blog. Doing blogging as it were. Perhaps I could get a job like Peter Griffin on his stint of 'What Grinds My Gears...

In essence that is a large part of what this blog is.

'Lunch Monkeys' is just starting - it's crap.

I've waffled long enough for tonight, without an actual clear topic in sight.

Bringing you up to date, my Brazilian visitors didn't return. Despite me hanging out the flags and rolling out the welcome mat, they seem to have been little more than blips on the radar. Ho-hum.

On a musical note, I was mulling a topic for today's blog, namely Florence and The Machine. I've tried, really tried but I just don't like them. Really, all summer long, on and off she's come along and I've pricked my ears up and nothing more than irritation. I've listened again, right at this instant to 'Drumming Song'. It sorts of starts to grow on me, then I drop back to not liking it again. 'Rabbit Heart' is playing now.I recognise it, there' s a familiarity. Like it? Not really. Maybe one day. I can still see myself ending up buying it though.

Another band I just couldn't get to liking are Biffy Clyro. They went and buggered that up with their really rather excellent cover of Love, Sex and Magic. Go here to hear it but I can't link it directly - BBC cleverness eh?

Can't imagine the band will release it, so I'll probably carry on not liking them much.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Eduardo - Head, Shoulder Knees and Toes & An Unexpected Surprise

2009-09-16T22:47:00.002+01:00

As noted here different football associations, but when Wenger kicked a plastic water bottle in frustration, rather ludicrously he was sent to the stand. Rooney throws a boot in temper at being subbed last night and it gets an almost jokey comment on the radio. I have no problem with Rooney throwing a boot down in disgust. Little bit of a show of petulance but understandable and it hurt nobody. However, the contrast in the treatment of the events once more holds up to scrutiny the underlying bias in media.

Exciting and surprising news! Unfinished has had visitors. They came last night from Brazil. If they got here by accident because of Eduardo, I'm sorry if they were disappointed. It wasn't intentional, luring you here under false pretences. There was no intent to deceive - just to keep it on topic :)

Visitante da boa vinda, prezado e honrado de Brasil. Eu não sei o que o trouxe aqui, mas, à excepção de mim mesmo, você é meus muito primeiros visitantes e como tais que eu desejei o concordar muito estes special e cumprimento muito pessoal. Triste, maravilhoso como Google Analytics é, não podem recomendar-me de seus nomes somente sua posição geográfica. Era diferente, mesmo que você permanecesse para apenas um segundo, mim seria somente a satisfeito para granizá-lo pelo nome. Eu desejo-lhe a boa fortuna e visito-a por favor outra vez logo. Obrigado. NoozeHound

Justin is not what he used to be. So many of the feeds advertise one thing, namely tonight's game in Liege, only to show some old game. At one point I was so confused I switched on a stream only to see Theo come on! Somewhat ludicrously as I knew he'd been left at home. It was Arsenal v Man Utd from last year.

Even when I did find a stream I was sweating to say the least. One nil down after two minutes, two nil down after ten. I really hadn't expected that. The second was a penalty, but I'm not sure who gave it away. Vito Manone was mentioned as a worry and so it seemed. The start of the stream was so choppy and interrupted it was hard to follow.

That reminds me, why have ITV gone even more rubbish on football than lasts season. The commentary and coverage might have been below par but at least they covered both the English teams that played on their match-day. There I was checking on ITV4, a previews show then... Nothing. Nada. Zilch. They seem to have done away with the second game in favour of a poxy high-lights show. Well ITV and your sponsors - it cost you at least one viewer tonight and I doubt I'll be tuning into your highlights show.

Putting Supernatural on in the middle of the night hasn't gone down very well with me either.

Back to the game and Nick the Dane laid his claim (hee-hee!) by scoring just before half-time. That was all I needed to calm my nerves and I found the belief that we could do it. The stream dies in half-time but came back and stayed bar the odd slip.

The game was clear enough for me to see that Arsenal were struggling. They weren't playing with their usual swagger and style. It was at this point I identified (I hadn't seen the squad prior) Sagna was missing and that seemed quite apparent. Rosicky was doing well until he was subbed - it's hard to do well after - with Ramsey taking his place.

Liege were defending their goal quite well at this stage and we were limited to Cesc amongst other tryign some shots from around the edge of the box.

The there was some confusion about another substitution. I saw Sagna and Wilshire on the touch-line, then the stream slipped, next I see Song, apparently ten foot off-side, by the Liege back post chesting the ball down and Tommy V sticking it in the back of the net. Lots of complaints from the Liege players, understandably, but the goal stood.

Two all and in slightly more comfortable territory. Sagna was already making a difference! Jack Wilshire was supposed to be coming on as well but didn't make it before the equaliser. He was supposed to be coming for the player that nearly didn't get to play. One Eduardo da Silva. Don't know if it jollied him up, from my far from perfect view he seemed to have had a quiet game, but next thing he's popping up with a deadly patella and nicking the third - fox in the box style.

Going back to the missed substitution and Jack Wilshire got on but didn't quite make it into the picture above! Three points, three goals. Coming from a truly worrying two goal deficit to end the night top of the group. Still don't like Arsenal playing in white shirts, but dead chuffed for Eduardo to get the winner after the time he must have had of late.

Arse about face, but Eduardo used his heel to let Liege in for their first. Perhaps we should call him Achilles! Just seen the penalty and it looked anything but stone clad, looks like the Liege player went to ground very easily.

Adepoohbah set to get a three game ban for violent conduct - serves the 'orrible **** right at the very least. I sincerely hope he gets another three for whatever they want to call the incendiary charge to celebrate his goal at (not in front) at the Arsenal fans. Harry has pissed me off defending Adbaypoobar and blaming the fans for wanting to riot. That's the trouble with professionals, no emotional involvement. Perhaps Harry should keep quiet about Arsenal fans considering his job. Just a thought.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Very Delayed Delayed Gratification

2009-09-16T09:28:00.000+01:00

Just read the post from last night. The delayed gratification was (after all the long and winding build-up, the failed attempt at writing it -notepad crashing out, the repeated failed submission attempts) whence finally it was accepted into the esteemed company of Ezine articles, I received the acknowledgement (I can't remember the exact wording) 'Thank you for your submission.It will be vetted and you should see it in a few days depending on our workload'. Crestfallen is the word that comes to mind.

This is similar to one of those recurring pictures of a picture holding a picture of the picture. Me blogging about blogging about blogging about making mistakes on a blog while making mistakes on a blog and commenting about blogging your mistakes.

Now, if you will excuse me, there is a vast spectrum of new mistakes The NoozeHound could be making.

I thank you. I'm here all week madam.

Welcome to the disappointment.

UEFA U-Turn & Delayed Gratification

2009-09-15T23:33:00.000+01:00

Justice, of sorts, has been done with regard Eduardo and his charge of attempting to 'deceive the referee'. There will now be no ban so he's free to play tomorrow night. Michelle Platini (pictured below) after giving us the news.

I read elsewhere that Arsenal were on the receiving end when Rooney dived against them - used in 'taste of their own medicine' sense. Couple of things on that really. Firstly, it was a different ruling body. UEFA for one, the FA the other. Secondly, after playing Liverpool and Manchester United year in year out, having been rightly ridiculed for Super Robert Pires famously theatrical fall against Portsmouth and Franny Jeffers penalty-gaining flop against the aforementioned Liverpool, Arsenal can hardly be considered unfamiliar with diving. No worse, no better than the rest of the league. Revisionists, Pah!

We will see whether the opposition fans adjust their attitude to the Croatian/Brazilian starting with the Wigan fans but not properly tested 'til a week later at the Craven Cottage. We'll see.

Remember my affiliate plan. Well, I finally knuckled down and finished the first article. The fact that it took the best part of two days to knock up a 350 word article (and I really don't think I'm that thick!) has daunted me a little. Plus no traffic here. No traffic to my squidoo lens. Did I mention when I went to submit it the first time, Ezine was down? Eventually, after checking for plagiarism, proof-reading and re-proof-reading I completed the profile part of Ezine and uploaded the article. I then struggled to make the signature line work right and stumbled over the link submission.

Initially I submitted the ClickBank hoplink. Ezine complained about it being too long. So off I went to bit.ly and got it shortened. Reposted. Still too long. Then I remembered the video and thought it shouldn't be the hoplink - don't try to sell them anything. So I then went off to get my squidoo lens page. Link too long. Back to bit.ly, returning with my shortened squidoo link. Nope. Still too long. Then I read what the message actually was and accordingly shortened my 'click here to find out more' too many words in the link detail.

One of my mentors sent through an article, from his blog I think, that in the header asked the question 'Is it Wrong to Blog about Your Mistakes?' I confess I didn't read the article - yet.

However, one thing I know for sure. If I didn't blog about my mistakes, this would be an alarmingly short blog.

Welcome to the disappointment.

It Was the Weekend - Lack of Commitment Will Kill You Every Time

2009-09-13T14:56:00.008+01:00

Emmanuel Adebayor, is exactly how Brick Top refers to himself in the film 'Snatch'. Being exactly and totally specific, the last part of the first Brick Top quote on that page. Starting with "orrible"... 'Nuff said.

Same game, thankfully different subject. Citeh fans booing Eduardo. Why? I questioned it after the England game and I question it again here. It is just puerile and churlish to suggest that Eduardo is the only player ever to have gone to ground under less than knock-out contact. Keep in mind this is a club that not only stood by, not just tolerated but celebrated the notorious diving of Franny Lee.

Were football still played in the spirit of the original Corinthians then the boos, as disapproval of ungentlemanly conduct would be noble and valid. However, the world of professional football is no bastion of sporting ideal. As such I think people should either shut up or adopt this new desire for a purer sporting ethos.

I look forward to players being booed for talking back to the referee or committing any breach of the rules of association football or playing in any way as to give an unfair advantage!

The odious individual I referred to above, after insulting the Arsenal fans, lauded the Citeh fans as 'real'. I so look forward to his appreciation of their 'reality' when the day comes (and it surely will) when he strolls around Eastlands, looking like a poor Kevin & Perry impression; too much trouble to track back and too frustrating to get forward. Just wait until this purple patch passes. We are. Oh yes.

Away from the beautiful game, I was continuing on my Affiliate Marketing path. I even joined a Facebook group! As I mentioned my next task was to throw up a few 350-word pieces onto E-zine Articles. I did the ground work and obtained my research material. Mindful of something else I read, I was doing my writing in Notepad.

As a part of my commitment to 10-10 I didn't have the file server running. I had been working on this piece for about an hour, to-ing and fro-ing around the web for research and writing in between. Being sensible, I decided it prudent to save my masterpiece (though I did wonder how these so-called gurus can do all this in a few hours a day) and set about doing that.

I told you the server was off, right? Windows had told me that my mapped drives weren't accessible when I logged in. It's just a shame that it doesn't trust itself. So (and I'm certain you've already guessed, but...) I wait a disproportionately long time to be given the file name box I am expecting.

Ignoring it's earlier advice of their unavailability, Windows sets off searching for the absent drives I had saved text files to on the preceding days. "Bugger this! Don't bother."

Click. Click. Click. Whimper. Shriek. Click. Click?

Why didn't I use Word! At least It would have had something recoverable. Well. It was the weekend. I had a football game to find and I was right royally pissed-off with my marketing challenge.

ESPN were out doing their level best to spoil the party as stream after stream was being pulled. While searching I found District 9 - it was being run on a loop - so I had no idea where in the movie I was watching.

I bookmarked it for later. When I went back, the lights were on but no-one was home. No stream. I like a challenge.

I set of trying to find another stream. It struck me logically, that if one person had it to watch, others would.

We are now into the very wee small hours of the morning. I have done endless market research surveys about all manner of shit without so much as a sniff of anything but more surveys. I'm never going to find a stream at this rate!

The small hours or even more wee than before. At last! No surveys. Just install the codecs to watch the film.

I've been in IT a long time now. I'm not really the piratey type and I don't bit torrent unless it's really necessary and legitimate. I pay for my music, but I get it at a good price but in good conscience.

I so know that the baddies distribute viruses in codecs. I'm tired. I'm fed up and I just want to see the film - or by now, just see if it's any good. I download the codecs - an executable for fox sake - with a vow to scan it first.

Somehow I start the install. AVG flies in to tell me that it carries a trojan. I agree and allow it to kill off the unhealed infection. I find a page full of District 9 streams. I go through them trying to find one remotely as good as the one I saw earlier. It was in English for start.

I recall from earlier that the inter-Prawn dialogue is subtitled. I don't read Russian. Ho-hum.

Eventually one stream has it in English with the Cyrillic text sort of super-imposed. It was painfully slow to drag the slider up to the position I had watched the other feed to. The one that had cut off and yet another I gave up on due to the lack of English.

Finally, making it to the end of the movie I check for, detect and have to neutralise the (thankfully) minor trojan I infected my self with before finding my pay dirt. I finished that process off this morning. This morning's this morning - not last night's this morning.

Did I like the film? I doubt many critics will have stayed up twenty hours to watch it and exposed themselves to the risk of on-line fraud and loss of data to watch it. I've read complaint elsewhere that it was a rip-off of Alien Nation. I liked the TV series and remember it better than the film, but that thought never really occurred to me. If I found myself making any comparison, it was with Enemy Mine.

Rest assured I will buy the DVD in a nice plastic box. Come to think of it, I will put on my Christmas list.

Don't forget to use your Nectar Cards!

Welcome to the disappointment.

Shabby Rank

2009-09-11T23:38:00.001+01:00

See what I did there? Self-deprecating statement on my performance contrasted with a a popular pop/reggae cross-over figure. Clever eh?

Today, I have mostly been following an Affiliate Marketing Plan.

I started it yesterday, which is why I didn't show up here. I found a plan. One of the many e-books I have downloaded 'spoke' to me. I say spoke to me, I could identify with its' simplicity would be a more honest assessment.

Under it's direction, I opened an account at ClickBank (of which I am really quite proud) read through 5 (YES, F-I-V-E!) pages of Affiliate offerings and selected one. Again, following my new leader, (being totally honest, it's a program that doesn't speak to me in a Californian accent - if you can understand that) I then went along to E-zines and opened an account. Following orders, I read another five or so articles on 'Affiliate Marketing' (from E-zines) again as directed.

I'm following the plan. Under direction I found an affiliate - not under direction it wasn't about Affiliate Marketing.

My chosen affiliation was, let's just say, relationship-centric. Because I like to put in a good piece of work, I then spent several hours researching. My 'guide' said look at the promoters' site and get what you need from there.

I Googled the life out of it and produced a research document to boot. From said document (and under direction) I went along to Squidoo and created my first lens. Oh how they demand photographs. Trying to comply with copyright I used acceptable photos - add another 45 minutes to my attempt to 'lens'.

Establishing how to ping the RSS - plus 40 minutes.

After several, several hours I have a finished product. My chosen guide directs that I got to Ezine and write several articles to generate back-links. E-zine is down and I can't write anything!

Between times, the hateful wench that answers to Mrs NoozeHound returns. Complains about everything, not the least the noise of my keyboard. She then tells me to get a proper job. Adding that I am hiding from the real world.

Fuck you Mrs NoozeHound. Fuck you.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Decorating Blues

2009-09-10T00:19:00.002+01:00

My apologies, dear reader (yeah right) but I can't seem to get the font right. It looks OK in yesterday's post, I try to replicate that for today's and get what you see, The spacing is all wrong, I have no idea what is happening with the paragraph breaks - there's only one in place. The font sizing is the same above and below but they look nothing like each other. I'm bemused to say the least.

Any ideas? Comments down there. Assuming they are still there of course.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Winds of Change

2009-09-09T23:48:00.012+01:00

Because of yesterday's shocking revelations (well,they were shocking to me, you probably suspected as much from way back) I've had the feeling, on and off, a little bit like I'm a mad old man shouting at the sea. Or some character from a monologue Russian play sitting alone on stage with a single chair, shouting into the darkness in angst and anger.

I spent some of today working on the refit. I shall call it that because it sounds 'manual' and 'techie'. To a degree it was more like shopping for clothes.

I spent half the day wandering around grand, impressive stores, staring blankly through large collections. Only to go back to where I first started to make a purchase. (I don't really shop like that. My ideal shopping trip is zhum, into store, zhum, jeans, trousers, shirt, tee-shirts. Pay. Out. Nearest pub for beer and 12:30 kick off game. Sorted)

What do you think of it? Likey? Yes? Again, I find I am feeling like a child acting out with collected teddies, dolls, elephants. You're not real. You weren't here yesterday to see the old design. How could you compare? Even if you could you wouldn't give a damn! Well, if you do you can tell me now because I can see the comments. Yay!

Revisiting some earlier threads, I ran 'The Normalizer' on a small portion of my mp3 collection. I have a folder called 'World Music'. Best fit for stuff that didn't naturally slot in anywhere else. Cuban, African, Salsa, Latin beats, that sort of stuff. Only around 100 tracks, so it was a representative sample. I can only imagine with humour what the testing has done to my Last.FM profile. I was Norman No-Mates as it was on Last.FM. Any time I looked at an interesting profile and compared I would always get 'Your compatability is LOW.'

Just to test it, I scouted round Last.FM users - after five lows I found a 22 year old guy from Chile that was HIGH - the compatibility was HIGH. It was from a group called Gay Indie, so I don't know what that says about me or my music taste, but I'm secure enough in my sexuality for it not to worry me.

Beatles Rockband is getting a lot of attention. Clever Abbey Road ad.

I digress. Normalization seems to have worked OK. I kept listening to processed and unprocessed tracks. I guess the test is to duplicate the same file and listen to it processed and unprocessed. It is something of a Holy Grail to have all of my collection at a similar volume as opposed to the wild fluctuations in levels they are presently. I did think I noticed a lack of dynamism in processed to unprocessed. I may be duping myself though.

Despite UEFAs denials, I continue to suspect the SFA had a hand in Eduardo's right royal shafting and public humiliation. Consequently, when they failed to qualify for next years World Cup Finals I felt no sympathy whatsoever for them, their lost revenue or Darren Fletcher.

And while I'm at it, the England fans booing Eduardo. Hypocritical bastards one and all. As if they give a toss about the purity of the game (yes I'm looking at you Gerard, Owen, et al), Celtic and the faintest idea that he is the only player to have ever gone down under less than demolishing contact. Stupid.

I continue to study internet marketing, ebook writing and affiliate plans. Which reminds me, as predicted yesterday (oh no, you weren't here, were you) the first task of the day saw me dismantling my newly erected WordPress installation after receiving a 'low on disk space' warning in my morning mail.

I am toying with writing an ebook . I receive a fair share of calls for help with PCs. None of my friends and family seem anxious to cross my palm but maybe a stranger would consider parting with dollar for my knowledge. I'm damned sure I could write it better than a lot of the pigeon English efforts I have read so far.

Mind you, when I started this blog I assumed I was going to achieve traffic stats in figures higher than ZERO!

I think about some of the other options and well, you can imagine what I'm thinking.

Welcome to the disappointment!

What's the Total Opposite of a Marketing Mogul?

2009-09-08T21:41:00.013+01:00

I've been soldiering on, collecting knowledge throughout the web. I now have a figurative trunk-full of free web content; digital books and useful software that I can give away for free or sell, often for $27. I have PLR content. I have MRR content. I have email courses and articles.

I have been reading various sure-fire strategies for internet wealth. Considering questions like 'how to get better traffic'.

I have content coming out of my ears. I've evaluated Twitter strategies.

Earlier I set up WordPress on my vanity website. That was quite exciting - little things pleasing little minds. Of course because it's a free host and having my CV and my email hosted, there won't actually be any room to put up any content, but it was useful experience.

I mooched about Digg, Stumble, popurls and Twitter, looking for inspiration and trends to include in my blogging.

Later on in the day I checked out Google Analystics.

Have you ever been slapped around the face with a wet fish?

I haven't. I can honestly say, of the small variety of inanimate objects I have had the misfortune to be assaulted with, a wet, or even moist fish has not been one of them.

If I were to be assaulted with a wet fish, I have a strong suspicion I know the feeling one would experience following the actual blow.

You see, I had checked on my Adsense earnings a few times. Meagre as they were, they did register. When I plugged Unfinished into Google Analytics and got it all set up I left it. I went off around the web accumulating tips and tricks, bonuses and additional benefits.

Then, fatigued by my study I tabbed back to newly set up Google Analytics account. I had a bit of a poke around and thought I'd check out the reports.

I found out where in the world my visitors come from. I found out how many of them were unique and new. What language they spoke and what browser they viewed the site with.

Or I would have done.

What the report stated, was something of a shock. Now, were it not for one special circumstance, it would probably be rather embarrassing. Here, see for yourself...

The irrefutable, undeniable truth. No-one has ever visited Unfinished. Despite my adult content, well cheeky bum shot. My shameless name-dropping Steve Jobs, Apple and Snow Leopard. Bloody cheek that was as well. I did it yesterday, Wired do it today, get front page Digg. Bastards.

This dire, woeful performance is worse than even I expected. All the hours I have put in to lay down King Content to the immense cash-cow the blog of my dreams was to be.

I haven't submitted it to the blog listings and I have yet to master SEO optimization.

I have been harbouring thoughts of changing the design, particularly because when I view it in Opera the comments box doesn't show up properly. That and the links don't underline. Bloody good job no-one came really. You'd all be terribly confused!

I was worried, as I have mentioned previously, that I was suffering Analysis Paralysis. I freely admit that I don't have a specific theme for Unfinished. Current Affairs? News? I dunno.

This is the problem for any commercial project for me too. I don't know what niche to blog about.

In answer to the question at the top. I think that would be me.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Compare, Contrast and Con

2009-09-07T20:17:00.016+01:00

Sorry Mr Jobs, but for all the disproportionate buzz surrounding your new baby; how exactly should it be defined? New OS? Update? Upgrade?

The Pools Panel (ultimate authority on all matters) have decreed it to be an excellently priced Upgrade.

So, for all the internet buzz (search Digg, look at Twitter) surrounding your new OS X Snow Leopard upgrade, (disproportionate - Apple market share is actually dropping, being overtaken by Toshiba in Q2/09) and excitement of how wonderful it is, I think Mother Nature has the edge on you...

Carrying on my Malus Culture considerations; why are Brit fruit fans still getting screwed? OS X Snow Leopard costs $29 - so why charge fruity computerers this side of the pond £25 not £18?

Many headlines claim Apple has pole position in the high-end market. I think this is lazy journalism too because I doubt it includes high-end PC rigs built from components. Just my two-penn'th though.

Stepping put of the orchard and away from the forbidden fruit, perhaps it's time to grasp a poisoned chalice?

I must briefly interject that I had a very strange experience, having put in an early update, late last night. I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I had left something undone. Not that this is a chore. It was more like a feeling of playing hookie, a duty avoided. That's the level of work I put in for you guys.

The poisoned chalice I speak of is immigration. I heard a little while ago that Panorama is looking at it next week.

Skimming through the (electronic) Guardian, I alighted on a District 9 (trailer) reference and so clicked along to read it.

Being a Sci-Fi fan I was interested. This is the article.

Reading through that article - knowing my bent for post-apocalyptic end-of-the-world views - I clicked on to a reference in it, which I link to here in case you can't be arsed to read through the Guardian article.

I neither wish a jihad waged upon me, nor be applauded by the right or ultra-right. I haven't quite got my thinking into a form I can commit to type, so I will flesh it out at a later date. However, I think this little island has an immigration problem.

I think that the government has got to get a really urgent, really inclusive handle on it. In a world where food, water and raw resources are going to get increasingly scarce, this island simply will not support the amount of human beings here today, let alone the hundreds arriving daily looking to escape wars, avoid persecution, get away with economic migration or just screw the benefit system.

Reading the two articles linked above, I couldn't help thinking back to the world of Children of Men.

It's funny (in a black humour kinda way) but I hadn't noticed the film was set in 2027. They have cars in the film - as in the oil hasn't run out - but the picture is, to me, suggestive of a post-collapse Dover that Cal McCrystal described nearly a decade ago. I hadn't realised that article was from 2000.

Fuck! That makes it scarier. I wonder what the people of Dover think today. I wonder how many of the shops in the English town are still English. Or how overrun the Port guys and the Customs guys described nearly ten years ago are faring today.

I can't help thinking how I read that France and Germany are now pulling clear of economic recession, while the UK continues to falter. Cleverer minds than my mine attribute to the sizeable bail-out HM Govt provided contrasted to the fore-mentioned European partners.

So, bluntly, we're still fucked, but we are still the No. 1 target for migration.

Just for good measure British Muslims are convicted of wanting to mass murder their countrymen. This is no more relevant than BBC 1 News has just come one.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Laughing to Myself

2009-09-06T11:48:00.006+01:00

Oh omniscient Google, I doff my hat to you.

By the time I had finished writing and editing the post you see below and pulled it up to view it, the garish ESPN NFL Fantasy Football adds were gone, joyously replaced with Arsenal and (proper) football ads.

I can't help thinking ESPN missed a trick there. Having picked-up the defunct Setanta's games and entering the televised EPL arena, it wouldn't have hurt their brand-recognition to have had a real fantasy football offering in place.

This is the second time I have had to write this and it may not have read quite the same way on account of newly upgraded Opera 10 inexplicably closing mod-type.

Welcome (back) to the disappointment.

Not the End of the World

2009-09-06T09:29:00.017+01:00

I shocked myself at just how long it takes to deliver this lunacy on Saturday morning. Much longer than yo would have thought it would take to create a stream of babbling nonsense.

I fired up 'Unfinished' this morning and to my horror saw the gaudy, NFL fantasy football ad right and bottom. If anyone, ever, ever, ever, for one second considered any theme or loose direction to this Blog - and Yes, I'm looking at you here Google - they would never, for one nanosecond, consider it an American Football Blog.

I can barely maintain a flickering of interest in Chase the Egg, fake blood and calling the ref Sir, sin bins and all that. NFL! Chase the Egg in Shoulder Pads?

No. No. No. Click on it, fifteen to the dozen. Tell you friends to come and click on it. Now and many fold. I don't care if you sign-up, there's no affiliate action, but it would be nice if my adwords account exceeded $1.20. :)

Dear Google

It is Association Football. What you colonial types refer to as soccer. The Gridiron variety has no place here. Please do not do this again.

On a proper football note. England won. Friendly. Couldn't muster a great deal of enthusiasm to be honest. More on that another day.

Now, continuing my Autumn theme from yesterday, I have a slightly red-faced update.

Quite untrue to type, I went for a bike ride around the local lanes that criss-cross the county under and around major motorways.

It's a bizarre contradiction. One of the busiest stretches of highway in the country and a long stretch of quiet empty lane. Obviously, it was a relatively warm September Saturday afternoon, so the motorway was not it's usual nose-to-tail self. The lane was pleasantly empty, though I know it gets used as rat-run Monday to Friday. Yesterday it was all mine though.

Neeeeyyyhaaaaa haaaarrrr!

The Joy of the Open Road

I had not taken this route before and didn't realise just how hilly my little corner of England is. Not strictly true, as I well aware of how hilly this little corner is to the North and to the West, but had not previously explored to the South East.

motorway gantry distant centre

The city to the South East, was settled in Roman times. How clever of them to site it between three major motorway sections. NoozeHound makes no claim to be an ancient historian, a historian of ancient times either for that matter. In fact no claims to be a historian at all.

I do recall, scratching back to my schooling and more recently TV documentaries, that Roman Civil Engineering plc built long straight roads.

I was cursing said Roman road builders yesterday for not building long straight FLAT roads!

I learned that council designated footpaths are not suitable for cycling and brambles still harbour a 30-odd year vendetta for me, as my shins bare testament.

It was, quite probably, the last nice weekend of the year. Autumn will be under full sway by next week. There were a few other cyclists, some grey warriors picking blackberries, blokes shooting pigeons (which scared the bloody life out of me - shotguns going off as I wandered across a field) and the odd dogger I suspect judging by their furtive glances.

Approaching the end of my 23Km afternoon tour and the point of this tortured diatribe (my posterior still sore from all that time in the saddle - though one cheek in particular rather oddly) I saw it. Sitting there, blatantly deriding me.

Screaming loud, for anyone who cared to listen:

"NoozeHound is wrong everybody! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! NoozeHound is wrong!"

What, o esteemed loyal and regular reader you may ask, would be so extremely rude to poor NoozeHound? Well, as my title suggests, it was a damning refutation that my assessment of the 'children of Aragog', their psychology or plans to take my castle.

(Exhibit 1 - The Fallen Conker - Spiders Beware!)

So, there you have it. NoozeHound, distraught as I am to admit it, is not infallible and above, the proof.

Sorry about the poor quality of the photos, but the best camera is the one you have with you, this time it was my phone. Justifying the 23km. As someone who rarely gets off his expanding back-side, I thought 23km was something of an achievement, not intending it to be any kind of claim to fame.

Enjoy your Sunday - weekend nearly over.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Lacking Inspiration

2009-09-04T23:40:00.011+01:00

Wotcha.

I Stumbled and I popped, to no avail. Sign of the times, but I didn't Digg.

Today (aside from the daily hunt/apply cycle) has been a mixture of goofing off, electronic tidying and study.

According to my study, I am in 'Analysis Paralysis'. I would say more 'clueless', but then I'm not trying to sell myself anything or convince myself with 'Words that Sell'. I am now the proud owner of a goodly number of ebooks and reports that I have resale rights and in some cases master resale rights. I'm ready to be a millionaire.

It's funny, on one website I visited today, after the formulaic 'look at how much I make with this system' I was told that I won't get rich quick or make money overnight. That was a shocker, I can tell you.

More of that when I have something to actually report, but for now I am proving (aside from the odd slip) that I can keep a blog going, which was my goal. Some readers would be nice - please leave a comment if you are actually here - but nonetheless I have proven, to myself at least, that I have the dedication and the temerity to bring something, no matter how meager, to the table each day.

I don't think I have mentioned it amongst my doom-laden hand-wringing posts, but I have seen a number of large (by our standards) spiders inside the house over the last week and a bit. If you are not in the know, a conker, placed in the corner of a room is anathema to spiders. They don't like it and it is said will keep your house spider-free.

Now if you follow this reasoning, the use of one to ward off the other would generally suggest that they are expected to be present at the same time.

Chez NoozeHound does not, in it's rambling grounds contain any Horse Chestnuts, but to the very best of my recollection they are not falling, ripe for pickling into legendary twenty-niners (not that kids are allowed to play conkers anymore for Health & Safety reasons) on boot laces, from said Horse Chestnuts just yet.

Therein lies my consideration. I doubt the spiders are making an earlier assault than usual on the nooks and recesses of the family pile in order to beat the conker deterrent, meaning that for some reason they are opting to seek out whatever they seek out in my domain. The webs outside seem much the same as I remember going back to school (yes, OK, back in the dark ages) but the interlopers seem early. I always thought they were escaping the cold, but crap as the end of August/beginning of September was, it was neither horribly wet or especially chilly. So why the arachnid advance eh?

More typically seasonal, the first Daddy Long-Legs of the season flew in the french doors this evening (I'd opened them because a well meaning NoozeHoundette had put the heating on to please her mother and was melting me) and has continued to bounce around, periodically flying at my face.

This is what I mean when I say 'Daddy Long Legs', not the spider variety. Though saying it was flying probably made that pretty obvious to all and sundry. I obtained the rather wonderful photograph from here by a gentleman named Dave Rogers. Naturally I acknowledge all copyright and hope he doesn't mind me using it for my readership of one.

So on a micro-blogging micro-scale of potentially ominous portents, we stand at one a piece.

They have been reporting increased new car sales all day and quickly attributing it to the government's scrapage scheme. In the same week sticking 2p extra on a litre of fuel - well someone has to pay for the grand of your new motor. I didn't hear any reports facing the very real possibility that after the scheme runs dry the dealers are unlikely to sell another vehicle until Spring. The American media were expressing that very point almost as soon as the last 'clunker' rolled on to the lot. I doubt the new reg will bring any relief either.

Meanwhile Aberdeen is drowning. Little dramatic but 65-75mm of rain in 24 hours and an overflowing river with August barely off the horizon doesn't bode well. The BBC have more pictures with the full story but in my book that swings it 2-1 in global-warming's favour.

Of course, the terrible flooding that took months and months to clear up was in June 2007 in the English Midlands, Lincs and Yorks so on this weather-wacky little island. nothing is really a seasonal norm. Even so I doubt that 70mm of rain in a day is a norm anywhere that doesn't have a rainy season. The article sttes it is the most since records began. This get you thinking, what, say 1824 or something? No, 1943. What the bloody hell were they doing every time it rained before 1943?

The English floods caused millions upon millions of pounds of damage. Insurance companies mostly dealt with it quite well. Would that be the same insurance companies that were under immense financial pressure? The very same.

As I say, Aberdeen got 67mm, one month's rain in just one day. The floods in central England were estimated at 50mm over a few days. Scary numbers eh?

Welcome to the disappointment.

Following on...

2009-09-03T23:46:00.010+01:00

Blimey I've been trying to avoid you lot!

My surfing today has not really given me anything much in the way of inspiration; my Stumbles were such that it reminded me of Digg, insomuch as there were repeated items, promoted items and ever-present favourite items.

Additionally, I have spent far too long on Mafia Wars, to the extent of going there instead of here, under the premise of 'checking progress'.

I did try to do some niche researching, as I do still harbour intentions of trying something along that line. I checked the mail account created for such things, read some of the mini-course emails and visited a blog. Consequently, I then roamed wildly collecting more free memberships and ebooks. I then spent another hour tidying the downloads, unzipping them and creating folders for the content.

I started nagging myself that I should be doing this and not that, particularly as I was starting to feel tired. The odd thing is that I had already decided what the topic was. I may have been concerned that it was a little flimsy on the content front, but a short piece is just that.

I've been carrying this sentiment around with me (when Stumbling was much better) for about a week now...

"Getting on the internet is the most important thing that you will ever do. I cannot overstate this point. Get on the internet - now. Your livelihood, your happiness and your future is at stake. Staying away from the internet is the social equivalent of committing suicide."

It's from this website. It's very good and everything.

It made me think. The Internet is really good. Probably the greatest (not including lovers and babies and stuff) most wonderful single thing in my life.

At the same time I Stumbled that I Stumbled this too. For something listed as six years old it is eerily prescient of the disastrous situation we currently face with US (and probably other) telcos wrestling to gain financial control of the web. Them and the American government wanting to take over the licensing control. That's depressing.

Following on from my twin discoveries yesterday, I got to thinking. There it is, the greatest thing for the individual, irrespective of it's daft uses, the sheer power of the medium remains and if the power goes, for the occupants of post 2030 world, the internet will just be a legend.

Times online seems to take away any useful article. Despite Google referencing the articles, The Times 404s them. I tricked it, by going through an internal link to get to the content, but it 404d again today. No point in posting it. In fact, the web was unusually quiet on how much electricity was required to run the World Wide Web. There was stuff on the green footprint of a Google search and an interesting piece on why we'd be mugs to individually put anything in the cloud. But I didn't have much luck in finding a figure.

A figure that I could use to say '...it takes x much electricity to run the tubes.' Using a 'peak energy' type equation, roughly estimating when, rather than zealous censorious Pakistanis or idiotic cable-cutters, insufficient power will start making portions of the webbed world inaccessible.

That makes me really sad.

We better all get on this before it's too late.

I'm going to turn everything off and go to bed. I might just check on Mafia Wars first though.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Catch-Up Mash Up

2009-09-02T21:42:00.004+01:00

Hello playmates.

BBQ

We have attended a BBQ a day late. We have visited a British Wildlife themed park that was particularly light on British Wildlife. We visited an ancient castle that was decidedly modern.

BANS

Eduardo has been banned for two games - which is a crock of shit. Expect me to rant about any act of 'deception' I perceive between now and the end of the season.

While milling around the news stand of the supermarket, waiting for Mrs NoozeHound and NoozeHoundette to pick their sandwiches I was reading the top inches of the papers, mostly the broadsheets but not exclusively. I read enough to make me wish I was on here with you rather than on a jolly outing.

BLACK-OUTS

I've webbed-up and read what there was on the (frankly disturbing) articles I read. Those deluded souls amongst you that have been here before may remember my alarm at discovering the concept of Peak Oil. One of the theorized repercussions of this were power cuts as a result of lack of expenditure on the maintenance and renewal of the energy infrastructure.

The article I read that rang the alarm bells first was in the Torygraph. On the web version it is little more than a warning from the government that the UK could see power cuts within a decade and a list of the power stations that are approaching their end of life. Yeah, stuff has a finite life expectancy. But this was explicitly one of the scenarios mentioned and this is less than a month later. Read it here.

BLUE DIAMONDS

The other news item I read was from The Grauniad and was equally chilling. Governments, as proved by the recent financial disasters among other things, are not really all that great at working with figures. Their predictions for sea-level rise are based on data from between two and four years ago. This would be fine were it not for the fact that the dynamic acceleration of glacial decline is increasing almost exponentially. So much so that some predictions put a 1 metre seal-level rise within 20 years. 2030.

If you read my shrieking at Peak Oil theory you may recall that 2030 is loosely the predicted time we collectively begin to career down the energy cliff.

So, from the article, 600 million people live in low-lying (read totally screwed by) sea-level flood risk areas. If these incidents start to occur, they will simply wipe out those populations. How will administrations with insufficient resources to feed, clothe, warm and illuminate themselves be able to mount co-ordinated rescue and relief operations for their own or even less likely their former friends homeless, tsunami, flood, famine, typhoid or any other disaster-hit peoples. I don't think they will.

Read this article, but click on the links to other supporting articles. The blue icebergs are beautiful, but I can't help thinking of them as harbingers of doom.

GREEN MACS

I read that Mac Dee's will never truly be able to claim green credentials. Having read in a real book the effects of Maconomics, I think it would probably be best if Ronald MacDonald stayed well away from organic farmers. If they source all their fruit and veg organically it will just screw it up for everyone else and squeeze the farmers 'til they go bust.

BEST OF APOCALYPSE

I Stumbled this.

The plot synopses are probably sufficient to give you nightmares. It is an excellent list, I intend to read them all. Then possibly top myself. I can't help thinking that I know where the unnamed world changing events are going to come from.

Welcome to the disappointment.

Hiatus

2009-09-02T08:37:00.003+01:00

Mrs NoozeHound is being tres demanding. He has a week off and insists we 'do' something. WHen not doing something we should 'spend time together'. I shall return.

Scripted? Possibly. Good Week/Bad Week

2009-08-29T20:18:00.006+01:00

Penalties not given by Mike Dean at Old Trafford. Continental Arsenal player denied a perfectly good penalty. United fans singing that despicable, odious song. How they bleat when people sing about '58.

RVP terrorises woodwork up and down the country. Abou Diaby must have had a cat cross his path while walking under a ladder breaking mirrors.

Rooney's penalty was genuine, no argument there.

On a good note, I think the loss was harsh. They never looked ahead (apart from the score obviously) in any part of the pitch. Of the two teams Arsenal edged both halves I thought. We certainly didn't deserve to lose it. Not happy at seeing Eboue diving again. I hoped he'd lost that aspect - he won't win total redemption until he loses it once and for all.

I long to see a footballer, not kissing the sky, crossing themselves or thanking God. Just once I'd like to see an FSM vest.

It was funny seeing 5 minutes of OT being awarded against United. It was less funny seeing RVP score and having it discounted for off-side. So unfunny AW kicked a bottle and got sent to the stand. That's how it appeared to me anyway. He had some balls to go up and stand where he did, right in front of the Utd fans. It was daft to send him off after 94 minutes or whatever it was though.

Despite the loss they never really threatened us. It was a damned good display by the Arsenal. Even after succumbing to a horrible OG the teams heads never went down and they continued right up to the end of the game. United, to their credit didn't try to run the clock out time-wasting - though the crowd shat their collective pants when that five showed up on the board.

Of the two, only one team scored in open play - Arshavin's coolness, being denied an iron-clad penalty then coming back and scoring a sweet goal demonstrated the class of the man.

I just hope the six cards - there will be disciplinary repercussions anyway - don't come back to haunt us in other ways with players missing. Particularly Sagna and Eboue that could have been avoided. Thanks again Mike Dean. Bunker-mentality shaping again at the Arsenal.

Good display and we never deserved to lose. We'll be back, but for now...

...welcome to the disappointment.

It's all about the discipline

2009-08-29T00:38:00.003+01:00

A small row waged on a site where I left a comment- it has one of those systems where you get copied eternally with every subsequent comment - about Capitalized Headers. I don't know if they meant all CAPS or Title Caps, either way, anxious to please, I opted for the understated.

You can give me your considered opinion in the comments. Or tell me to go f*ck myself. To be honest I'd just bask in the attention. Go on! Indulge ME!

Several of my twitterers (sort of a new project - I have e-books don't ya know!) - on a bit of a mental crack whore bitch vibe were complaining they had ordered the ~~Windows Update~~, sorry, $29 Snow Leopard new OS from Amazon and not received it. I'm too inebriated to do the time conversion but it was late teatime GMT so prolly mid-morning California. You gotta love dem FAN BOYS!

I received an additional Windows update this week - cost me nothing, delivered on the QT. Resented it as it was a mandatory reboot.

Bitching aside, one guy (yes you JB) said Photoshop now loaded in 2 seconds. Yes you heard that right. Just from a Digg feed, Adobe users bitching. Not JB though. On a non-fanboy take, it does sound a bit like a reboot rather than a simple update. On the subject of pomaceous cyphers, I read Apple staff were underwhelmed to have Mr Jobbs back at the helm. Search out the links for yourself. Start with popurls.

On the subject of unpopular figure-heads, Michel Berkley-Hunt Platini has got himself extra headlines giving his two-penneth on Eduardo. Frankly I am livid. When did the post-game, retropective, video evidence, referee enter the rules of the game. If they did, I apologise. I missed that rule change. Obviously when Chelski players assault referees they will suffer an international ban at the very least, or be ignored. Or not, or nothing else said. But then Drogba doesn't have a cannon on his shirt. Or how did fally-over Ronaldo manage to go a whole season without the slightest suggestion of UEFA condemnation, let alone match bans.

Staying with Champions League, when Dirk Kuyt went down with the haste of a binge-drinking teen on a Saturday night, where was Platini, the Scottish FA et al then? Nowhere, that's where. Where did the cries to ban him from Europe come form? Nowhere.

If you have anything to do with the piss-poor losers of the Scottish FA; if you are Michel Platini or any of his gravy-train riding cohorts, if you aer the talentless hacks that pass themselves off as the national press. Grow some. Dare to stand up and point this out as the jingoistic, xenophobic witch-hunt it so patently is. Frankly, that this has been brought in retrospectively disgusts me.

Where were you when Owen went to ground? Or Rooney? Pires? Where were you when every Italian defence ever has wrapped their arms around the attacking team on a corner? You should be ashamed of yourselves, not giving interviews, but hiding you faces. Shame on you.

You may have heard it sung from time to time; but we won the league, in Manchester; at Old Trafford to be precise. I really don't have a clue where I would lay a Florence on this game. Cesc is out and Eduardo has this hanging over his head - and every ref will listen to the bleating of the telly and take every assault as an attempt to con them - thanks Matt Smith you See Nut.

The PFA should defend Eduardo. Because of this bile, he is now subject to the likes of Taylor (notice the attempts to sanitize the aggressor by calling him 'Tiny'.

Tiny Taylor footballing thug - Yep, it has a certain ring to it. That strike was pre meditated. I don't think there is anything to suggest Eduardo took to the field looking to cheat anyone. I honestly don't believe Taylor to have been on the pitch without 'instructions' to 'knobble' Eduardo.

Welcome to the disappointment.