8th Feb 2010 21:44pm
I decided to have a look around on the internet to find the worst (and some funny) TV Licence excuses when people who haven't got an up-to-date TV Licence get caught.
• My dog watches it while I'm at work to keep him company - not me.
• The subtitles on my TV are set to French so I'm not paying a UK tax for something I can't read.
• My wife has her hair done twice a week, so we find it difficult to pay.
• I haven't renewed my licence because my wife flushed it down the toilet, along with my wallet.
• My husband has just spent 3,000 pounds on this massive flatscreen digital TV so we can't possibly afford a licence.
• I couldn't make my last payment as my baby was sick on my shoulder and I didn't want to go to the shop smelling of sick because the guy I fancy works there.
• I have not been making payments because a baby magpie flew in to my house and I have had to stay in to feed it.
• I [he] forgot to pay as my [his] girlfriend had hit me [him] over the head with a hammer.
• I'm not paying for a politically partisan media controller when I don't watch anything it produces.
• I want the license abolished cos I really think a media completely controlled by right-wing plutocrats will provide me with better programming and accurate news.
• I was stuck to the sofa thanks to Derren Brown's show on Friday night.
• Because my [her] cat had got sick down the back of the set and blew it up.
» TV Licensing
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Tags: tv licence, tv licensing, uk tax, excuses
8th Feb 2010 12:09pm
Always annoyed by your drink going flat when you buy a can of pop? Well you don't need to worry anymore as there's now a new resealable can with a twist-shut lid that can supposedly keep your drink fizzy for upto 24 hours after first being opened.
The price of the can is £1.19 though as it's likely to be more expensive to manufacture, though the can isn't the regular 330ml size - it's a bit bigger, being sold in 485ml cans.
The can is due to be released in April 2010.
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Tags: resealable can, drink, fizzy, april 2010
8th Feb 2010 10:37am
I've just been checking out the latest news on the BBC News website and came across the "video premiere" for the Haiti earthquake charity single and to be honest, I found it quite good and have been suprised at how quick it's became available - considering the earthquake (measuring 7.0rs) happened only a few weeks ago (16th January 2010).
image taken from screenshot of music video, © BBC
The song is a cover of REM's 1992 single, Everybody Hurts and features Susan Boyle, Leona Lewis, Mika, Rod Stewart, Alexandra Burke, James Blunt, Robbie Williams, Cheryl Cole, James Morrison, Aston (JLS) and a couple more...
One thing I have noticed though, which I thought was good - well especially of our Tax-robbing Government, is that they're not wanting the VAT from the single - so every penny goes to the Haiti earthquake fund.
» BBC News: Video premiere for Haiti charity single
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Tags: haiti earthquake, charity, bbc news, everybody hurts, rem, susan boyle, rod stewart, james blunt, cheryl cole
7th Feb 2010 19:22pm
The feeling of crapping myself that I mentioned in the previous post ended up taking over and a week and a halfs notice was a tad bit too soon for me, so I have re-arranged the operation and stuff for the middle of March 2010, so that gives me a month and a half to sit and chill myself out about it all.
I'd like to personally thank everyone that has been supportive along the way - family, friends and blog readers - for your excellent pieces of feedback, suggestions, questions and comments about the up coming operation.
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Tags: pectus excavatum, operation, nuss procedure, birmingham heartlands hospital
1st Feb 2010 09:02am
On Saturday afternoon, my Mom called to say I had some posted and one was marked "Private & Confidential" and it looked more like it was from the hospital. So I tottered off to my Moms house and opened it... I saw the NHS sign and four pages stapled together ... my arse went 10-pence-5-pence. Reading it over it says that a bed is available for me on Wednesday 10th February 2010. Then it goes on to mention about not having anything to eat or drink from 3am that day (other than clear water till 7am), then it just goes on to say about the "No Smoking" policy that the hospital operates, yadda, yadda, yadda...
Before I do go for this operation, I do have to be tested for MRSA (quick and simple nose swab) and also have my Pre-Op Assessment (including an ECG), which they all take place on Thursday 4th February 2010. Luckily they're in the afternoon so I don't have to worry about waking up early in the morning. :D Then the other two pages just jabble on about visiting times, no under 12s allowed to visit and the stuff I need to take with me.
All in all, it's a bit scary that I've only been given a week-and-a-half notice, but hey-ho... that's life. I'm kinda really crapping it, but will be fine. Also a huge thanks to all those that have been supportive about it all, Thank You! :)
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Tags: pectus excavatum, birmingham heartlands hospital, operation, nhs, preop, mrsa
2nd Jan 2010 04:35am
Well now as we're in the "10's" now, I'd like to do a round-up on a decade that I can throughly remember. This past decade (The Noughties) has been a mainly technological age for us all, plus also has had some very disasterous outcomes too. So lets start with the beginning of the decade and the celebrations of the new Millenium.
Technology
With the roll-out of broadband to pretty much anyone and everyone during the turn of the Millenium, the internet started to become the main hub for different types of media (i.e; music, movies, tv programs), mainly this was an illegal activity in many countries, however was easily achieved via free Peer-to-Peer programs such as KaZaA and Limewire. To stop activities like this and causing many companies to lose millions, if not billions of revenue, services such as iTunes, Napster and Spotify were created, along with online MP3 downloading websites such as 7Digital. Social networking was also one of the main things that became a huge hit during the mid-millenium when the sudden - yet popular - rise of MySpace came along - with everyone allowed to have their own customisable profiles and ability to add people as friends and leave comments on each others pages. MySpace mainly sparked it off with the whole social networking thing and as its popularity grew and grew, more sites began to pop-up like Bebo, Facebook and Twitter - all of which follow similar roles and are also accessible via a normal internet connection or through WAP supplied by your mobile phone operator. MySpace has proven a hit with many singers, as if it wasn't for MySpace then we wouldn't have Lily Allen or Arctic Monkeys.
Along with the trend of everything evolving, in the noughties we said goodbye to our 3 and a half inch floppys *cough* ... floppy discs!! And said hello to the USB pen, so instead of only having 1.44MB of space available (plus also the huge risk of data loss on them) we were now allowed to have something a lot smaller offering a lot more space (64MB, 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, etc...) for a nice low price... plus they're roughly the same size as a lighter and reliable. Computers and laptops are starting to equal out as laptops are coming down in price and going up in specifications meaning more people are opting for the more portable option. Not only was computer based products evolving in this technological age, but so was our televisions with the introduction of play-pause-record TV and onDemand services where we could catch up with programs that we'd missed and we even had interactive services that had upgraded our original Teletext service - damn I remember those old days of having to wait ages for the page to search.
Stereo appliances have also changed too so it was a goodbye to the old casette players and most Stereo Hi-Fi's were made with just a CD player and radio built in, then came the ability to play MP3 files from a CD on them, then along came DAB Radio as the analog signals start getting cut off for TV and Radio and now some systems even have harddrives in them so you can use them a multimedia centres. Talking of multimedia centres, we cannot forget that we had the Playstation 2 released just at the turn of the millenium with its brilliant (at the time) graphics and powerful (also at the time) specifications and also the XBox, Playstation 3, XBox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS/DS Lite and a million and one new gaming franchises.
Certain websites were also gaining huge popularity in the noughties clocking up millions of views each day, including Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live, eBay, WikiPedia, YouTube, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, GenesReunited and Twitter. Along with internet technology updating all the time, many people found it easier to also make things online to share with the world - so became a generation of homebrew cartoons (flash based), games, tutorials, guides. The internet during the past 9 years has turned into a huge information tank - which thankfully is easy to filter through thanks to the help of Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.
As the decade plodded on, we had also seen the introduction of cost-efficient solar panels, ultra-flat screen televisions and monitors, touch-screen displays, digital cameras, mobile phones gaining cameras and other features all crammed in, digital switchover, blu-ray DVDs, high-definition TV, hybrid vehicles, GPS based instruments (i.e; TomTom), VOIP and affordable corrective eye surgery.
Who knows what technological advances we'll have in the next 10 years!
Disasters
Along with all the wonderful advances we've had this past decade, there has also been a lot of tragedy too.
9/11 (September 11th 2001) was a day that no-one worldwide will ever forget, I personally can still remember that day ... I remember sitting on my computer when my Uncle phoned my Dad and told him to put the news on, so we both went into the living room and stuck glued to the TV watching just one tower burning - then the second plane hit, right in-front of our eyes. It was a very sad day for America, with 2,991 lives gone in the space of just over an hour and a half. All this resulted in the War on Terrorism.
NASA's Columbia Space Shuttle disintergrated over Texas on February 1st, 2003 during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere killing all 7 crew members. The summer of 2003 witnessed the deadliest heatwave in human history causing 37,451 deaths over the summer months in Europe.
2004 - Madrid Train Bombings - claiming 191 lives. A quarter of a million people are killed after a Tsunami hit the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day 2004. 7th and 21st July 2005 saw London attacked by terrorists killing around 56 people and also claiming the life of Jean Charles de Menezes. 2008 - Mumbai attacks claiming 175 lives.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina almost wiped New Orleans off the map when it came ashore, broke the levees and caused $81.2 billion dollars worth of damage and killing an estimated 1,836 people and flooding pretty much the whole city.
2009 also saw the return of H1N1 Virus, commonly known as Swine Flu and so far it is still spreading around the world with a death-toll so far of 12,970 (of which 772 of them were in the past 8 days).
Events
The noughties has seen many events happen including the Euro becoming the main currency in 12 of the 15 European Union States, the outbreak of SARS, the capturing of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. NASA's Spirit Rover lands on Mars in 2004. The United States of America get their first black (well half-cast) President, Barack Obama in 2008/2009 creating mass-celebration around the nation.
Deaths
2001 - George Harrison
2005 - Pope John Paul II
2006 - Saddam Hussein (Executed)
2009 - Michael Jackson
Future
Hmmm... now thinking towards what the next 10 years has in-store might be slightly mind-bending but I think we're going to accomplish a lot more this next decade and I'm also going to say that by January 1st, 2020, we'll have found a cure to one of the big killers (i.e; Cancer, HIV/AIDS, etc...) *fingers crossed*
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Tags: 2000, 2009, millenium, noughties, technology, kazaa, limewire, itunes, napster, spotify, 7digital, myspace, bebo, facebook, twitter, lily allen, arctic monkeys, usb pens, teletext, dab radio, playstation, xbox, wii, nintendo ds, september 11th, terrorism,
5th Dec 2009 17:15pm
Yesterday I spent about an hour and a half trying to write up the lyrics to Tim Minchin's excellent song that he wrote and performed on Friday Night with Jonathon Ross.
Obviously I don't want to infer that being invited onto Friday Night with Wossy isn't wonderfully affirming
And I know I 'orta,
appreciate the risk you took the bookers who agreed to book a chap
who tends to talk about the kind of things that get the BBC, in hot water
And I don't want to seem greedy, I'm just saying
I'd like to be here every week, if that's OK and if you hear me out
I think I've got a way in which we could do it pretty easily
You could leave all the boring details to me
It's a brilliant idea, a truly original concept
No one in Britain has ever done anything like it, yeah...
Picture this...
Imagine if we had...
5 poofs and 2 pianos
Yeah, it's a wicked idea
Why settle for a quartet of queers
When there's a possibility of a penta-poofter-piano-posse here
5 poofs and 2 pianos
Yeah, it'll be ace
A 100% more pianos
And 25% more gays
I know, I know
I've seen the problem too
There's a rumour, I am straight it's true
It hurts to admit it, but I'm about as bent as Wossy himself ... or 50 cent.
But I've already thought it through
D'you know there's preachers in America who reckon they can do
Sexuality conversions, I've heard them assert
They can cure a man of trouser love and turn him onto skirt
But I don't see why they couldn't pull the same trick in reverse
And we'd have...
5 poofs and 2 pianos
Yeah, it's a revolution
Probably the best solution
To the problem you're inevitably having with an even number of homosexuals
Yes I know
Your producers might suspect
That the license paying public will object
To the corporation having yet another homosexual to pay
The Daily Mail will bring the big guns out
Jan Moir will be frothing at the mouth
Writing further brilliant stuff about
The myth of being both happy and gay
But all that moral indignation
Will disappear when they see
Those 4 lovely guys and me
Singing in perfect harmony
And all those angry letter writers
Like disgusted from the Isle of Wight
And mad from Hull and outraged from Leeds
And slightly annoyed from Berwick-on-Tweed
Will instantly change their tune
They'll be bleeding heart liberals by Saturday noon
They'll be giving their grandchildren up for adoption
In the hope that gay married couple will adopt them
They'll be putting rainbow stickers on their cars
And cutting holes in the arse of their leather strays
Watching 2 pianos and 5 guys,
Watching 2 pianos and 5 guys
Watching 2 pianos and 5
1, 2, 3, 4 ...
5 poofs and 2 pianos
Yeah, it'll be grand
You can never have too many pianos
Or too much man
5 poofs and 2 pianos
And maybe would could out Jamie Cullum
Make it a trio of pianos
And a big gay half-dozen.
I'm not 100% sure, if they're exactly correct, but I've posted them over on the Sound Upload Lyrics section of Sound Upload too.
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Tags: tim minchin, 5 poofs and 2 pianos, lyrics, sound upload, jonathon ross
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