7 sections including a nose picking Nazi miracle advertising war

This week’s BlackLOG contains a lot -  is more random than usual and has a misleading title, feel free to treat it like a hotel and pop in and out. I’ll leave the door open, help yourself to the honesty bar .....(OK who nicked the fridge....Now no one can have drink)

Index

• Blog of War - The spirit of competition
• Nose picking - The argument against
• Exercise Nazi’s - These are not reasonable people
• The miracle that is advertising  - I'm probably going to hell for this but Nokia started it....
• Follow through from last week - This is 4.1 otherwise the title is even more of a lie

And regular features:

• Show me the sunny – The sun is out, what can go wrong?
• Record of the week – Songs that might, in an insane world, compliment this week’s topics
• Photo finish – pictures (generally taken by The Beast) to end the blog with 

Blog of War

Inspired by an idea over at Average girls blog, Battle of the blogs, which unfortunately has come to a halt as Average girl is currently taking a blog sabbatical. (For fans of Average girl I have contacted her and got her agreement to be included as the inspiration behind the new competition. I was amused to be described as a loser and stealer of ideas by a couple of AG’s followers, it is a free country and you are entitled to your views.  I see it more as picking up the baton and taking a great initiative forward…..only adding a bit of BlackLOG competitive spirit. Average girl is far too nice a person to push the competitive element. I, on the other hand, am not).

The idea at the end of the day is to promote people's blogs, while having a bit of fun and at the end of it  I will be   one Blogger will be crowned as the inaugural "Blog of War" champion….Anyone interested? Closing date for entries 2^nd April 2011

If you are, send me your Blog address and a contact email to

niel.black@ntlworld.com with a subject title “Blog of War – I’m interested in giving it a tug….”

I would also be interested in subjects and ideas for competitors to blog about (I have a few ideas myself but I’m sure there are far more creative people than me out there) – any Ideas used will be credited to me to the supplier.  Send ideas to niel.black@ntlworld.com.  Title – “Blog of War – I want someone to blog the shit out of the following idea….”

If you like the plan, I would appreciate it if you would advertise the Blog of War on your own blog, whether you wish to enter yourself or just enjoy the competition as a voyeur….   

How it will work

Depending on the number of entries (If I get none, don’t worry I won’t be down about it.  I will just crown myself as the Blog of War champion and move on with my life) names will be drawn out of a hat and allocated a topic. 

It will be a  knockout competition where bloggers who enter the competition (after all you have to be in it to win it) are given a subject or task to create a blog about.

Each week two bloggers will go head to head.

Readers then vote for the blog which they think has done the best job that week and the winner moves onto the next round.

The blog post will be hosted on the blogger's own site and must have a link to their opponent's blog as well as a link to a central area for readers to have the opportunity to cast a vote for the blog that they feel won that week's battle as well as being able to see past results. 

Go on, you know you want to enter.....

Since my entry into Battle of the Blogs didn’t get to see the light of day I thought I would give it an airing here. 

The task set was "Nose picking"

My opponent was instructed to defend nose picking  

My task was to act as the prosecution

Nose picking - The argument against
Let’s start at the beginning, picking noses for your child
Should parents be allowed to select a nose for their unborn child?
Face it, many people’s lives have been blighted by their parents’ choice of name
If you don’t believe me try living your life as :-

• Richard Head (Dick Head)
• Penny Black (The name I was going to be if I had not been born a gonad scratching, toilet seat leaver upper, hairy Neanderthal, with curves in all the wrong places….Phew, that would certainly have left a stamp on my life)
• Emma Royd (Which frankly would be like living with a constant pain in your backside)
• Mike Rotch (out of common decency I decided not to go with Hunt)
• While you might feel sorry for Fred Art that is as nothing compared to his poor sister Fanny Fiona…..Please don’t make me spell it out – She was so desperate to lose her maiden name that she did not think things through when she accepted a proposal from Mr. Sack.

And don’t get me started on anyone called Randy
I can just imagine Randy’s first day at school

Randy - "Hi I’m Randy"

All the other Kids – “snigger,giggle phenarf phenarf”

Teacher – “Out of my sight you disgusting pervert ”

Resulting in instant expulsion for getting fresh with the teacher, being home schooled and not having any friends….. The only saving grace being that the nose he was born with was perfection personified and the only reason for him to live. This might not have been the case if Mr & Mrs Sod had been allowed to choose Randy’s nose as well … research has shown that 99% of parents who call their child Randy, when given the choice, would select this nose.

Then there would be that first day at work – actually, scrub that - at his job interviews

Randy - "Hi I’m Randy"

Prospective new boss -“Sorry we are not hiring at the moment”

Until

Randy - "Hi I’m Randy"

Porn director -“That’s good to hear. When can you start?”

In short, parents should not be allowed to pick anything for their children, let alone noses – otherwise they may well be turned into friendless porn stars

If you don’t believe me check out these almost-famous porn stars:

Randy Allnightlong (famed for being very pale as he never got any daytime work)
Randy Duracell (The red head with real staying power)
Randy Limpdick (To be honest they didn’t really make it big in the business)
Randy Newman (Allegedly reborn after every film, probably just as well if you check out some of his back catalogue- I don’t just make this stuff up….well not all of it)

• Bad Love (I’m guessing he got better with practice)
• Can't Keep a Good Man Down (seems to be heading in the right direction)
• Mama Told Me not to come (some useful parental advice if you are wanting to make it big in the Porn market)
• Pretty Boy (Can’t hurt your career)
• Naked Man (they obviously grow up fast in the business) 
• He gives us all his love (He’s not holding back is he) 
• I Love L.A (What all of L.a. , is there no stopping this man?)
• Mr Sheep (a bit specialized and certainly not for everyone)

That still leaves the question, should people be allowed to pick their own nose after a certain age?

Again the answer is no, based on extensive BlackLOG research, the arguments being :-

• Humans are so sheep-like that 90% of people will pick the same nose – how dull would that be? 
• What looks good on the dummy in the shop may not look quite so good when plastered all over your face
• Michael Jackson…… enough said 
• Of the 10% of people who don’t go for the same nose, some of them may well decide that they want two noses or even more, leading to nose shortages across the world. With demand high, nose thefts would become common place leading to people being mugged for their noses. Result - even more shortages. Nose riots break out, eventually leading to a catastrophic third world war.

This is nothing to be sniffed at and is why people must not, I repeat, must not be allowed to pick their own noses. It will result in the end of the world or worse still Michael Jackson Mark II

I rest my case

If you happen to be talking about bogies (why didn’t you say so earlier?) That’s a whole different story. Why would you want to waste all those nutrients…..???

Late breaking news Fanny Fiona has divorced Mr. Sack and is soon to marry Randy Steve, we wish Mr and
Mrs Ucker all the best in their future endeavours….

As I don’t have access to my opponent's blog in defence of nose picking, I count this as a no-show (harsh and very unfair, but life can be like that). I’m going off to celebrate my cheap victory.  Feel free to suffer the remainder of this week’s BlackLOG

Exercise Nazis

We have been going to Body Attack classes at our local Gym – I describe it as “a Glee Nightmare workout on steroids” (the sooner it is banned the better).  Way too much waving of arms and scampering about for my liking but hey it’s an exercise class that Mrs B can actually make and I thought she was enjoying it.  Turns out - not so much.  All these shrieking arm-waving women  are getting Mrs B’s Goat (not sure where they are getting her goat from, I’ve never seen it, or for that matter what they are doing with the poor thing?)

For some reason the Body Attack class seems to attract more than it’s fair share of Fitness Nazi’s, desperate to annex more than their allotted space. They are not averse to using elbows, feet and, if all else fails, teeth to get their own way. You can tell a Fitness Nazi: they are generally wearing brown or black and have acres of space around them, while the rest of the class are banded together, quivering like 1930’s Poland and Czechoslovakia. 

I normally act a bit like Neville Chamberlin and just ignore the Fitness Nazis but this week one of them pushed it too far. I had created my little empire in the back far-hand corner.  This woman goose-stepped in late and proceeded to stand where I was, as if I was Denmark. (Sixteen Danish soldiers died in the Nazi invasion in 1940 and after two hours the Danish government surrendered.)  Begrudgingly I gave her a bit of my space (she looked like she had sharp teeth) and carried on.  

About three tracks in she moved, muttering about not having enough Lebensraum.  This meant I could at least breathe (and gave a little bit of additional space in case Mrs B’s goat got returned). After another two tracks she was back and was puffed up (perhaps the bitch had been off eating the goat...........still no sign of the poor thing) and swinging around like a whirling dervish.   I stood my ground and watched her continually bounce off me, managing to survive my experience with minimal bruising.  Mrs B is so sick of being herded around the ghetto of Body Attack and no doubt in protest of the theft of her goat she has decided to give it up, which certainly suits me.  

The miracle that is advertising
I’ve always felt that being in a bad mood makes for excellent, if cruel humour, which is obviously what happened to Mrs B  after returning from the war zone that is Body Attack.   We were having breakfast (which is probably another reason why Mrs B was not in the best of moods - the Body Attack class is early on a Saturday morning) when an advert popped up on the TV.  It was for a Nokia phone which was being used as a camera by a blind person (I can’t wait for the next advert in the series which will no doubt show a deaf person making a phone call on his camera). This opens up a number of questions :-

• How does the blind person know he has a Camera phone in his hands and not a packet of biscuits?
• With so many sighted people in the world taking bad photos how does our blind friend (or rather the bozos behind the concept of the advert) think that he has anything to bring to the table….? 
• How do you tell a blind person that their photography is rubbish :-

 Me - "The colours are a bit off"

Blind Photographer – “I don’t see it that way”

Me – “It’s a bit blurry”

Blind Photographer – “No, can’t see that either”

The entire dialogue for the advert is as follows :-

“Being Blind and using photography opens the door to the rest of the world”

“One of the biggest satisfactions is the outcome”

“Say for instance the roller coaster shot, I was kind of confident that the shot was there because of the sound of the roller coaster straight over my head”

“That was like scoring a goal you know”

A picture then appears on the screen,  which was about 90% blue sky with the roller coaster creeping into the top right of the picture

Mrs B remarked – “He might at least have got the roller coaster centred ….”

I’m afraid at this point I sprayed my cranberry juice across the room,  through inappropriate laughter….

I get the process of going to a restaurant that is in total darkness, where you are served by blind waiters (it certainly makes it a level playing field and it means that if they spill anything down you they have a good chance of getting away with it). I guess the premise is that being in the dark heightens your other senses and since they are used to bumping into things the blind are ideally qualified for the role.  I’m not so keen on all those Golden Retrievers being in there with you though.  How would you know they haven’t sampled  half your meal on the way to being delivered  to you and that delicious light and frothy sauce isn’t in fact Retriever drool…..?

As far as I know the chef and kitchen staff can see – otherwise I suspect many diners might accidently become cannibals, as bits of fingers and other parts of the chef's body get diced into each course.

Is it just me or is photography for the blind a step too far…..? Although I have just thought of the perfect place for them to display their photographic endeavours........... A restaurant in total darkness……

 

So in summary, advertisers now have the power  to show us what blind people don’t actually see????

Follow through from last week
Following up last weeks "incident" - I’ve been told that I am certainly not alone in this experience.
You have to ask when car companies are going to start installing loo rolls as standard...???

Show me the sunny

Monitoring our way to a fortune (or not) with our Solar Panels

With the sun finally hitting the UK with a vengeance this week I raced home with excitement to see how much revenue we had generated…..The answer?  A gobsmacking zilch, zero, nada, nothing, nought, nil whatever way you look at it, from whatever angle our meter had not moved a millimetre….

We appear to have the world's only Vampire solar panel installation - a slight exposure to sunlight and it stops functioning altogether. (I wonder where I can get hold of those rings that the Salvatore boys wear in the Vampire Diaries, which allow them to play outside in the sunshine?  I probably also need to go and check if Buffy has been driving wooden stakes into the heart of each panel.   

The installers have promised to come over and try and resurrect our dark souled system, once hell freezes over (they are apparently waiting for parts, but since they have not inspected the system I’m not exactly sure what parts they think they need….new fangs or fresh supplies of virgin blood perhaps).  In the meantime they have told me to wrap its black satin cloak (with red lining) tightly around it, have the coffin lid screwed down tight at all times (except when topping up the Transylvanian soil) and keep Van Helsing, Buffy and other paranormal hunters at arm’s length.

In a reversal of normal life I am actually depressed at the moment whenever the sun comes out.  As I drive Ellegee with the roof down, I don’t get the normal feeling of elation to be speeding along in fresh air.   I have  a lump in my throat and the sick feeling of financial loss. The roof equivalent of 1929’s wall street crash - only it’s 2011’s solar panel burn out…

Record of the week

Tug of War - by Paul McCartney - I tried to get Paul to change the title  

Pick a part that's new - by the Stereophonics - just make sure it's not a bogie

Promised you a miracle - by Simple Minds - probably didn't see it through

Don’t let the sun catch you crying - by Paul Carrick - On no the sun has come out again I'm so depressed

Photo finish

In honour of the Nokia advert, this week’s photos are brought to you with a blindfold and just my enhanced senses. For best results you should also  wear a blindfold, which will give you the full-on blind photo experience and improve the pictures' viewing no end. For the record The Beast was not happy about taking part in this experiment and only agreed when I threatened to remove his batteries and CF card.





I could tell that I was going to get the car shot that

I wanted, I could smell the burning rubber and hear

the screech of brakes as if the car was on top of me ....

It was worth it though and I have been told that I should

be out of intensive care before Christmas and the

permanent limp will make me look distinguished

My window on the world

The way the moonlight plays across the picture –
contrasting the dark and light just makes my
heart skip a  beat.

Still not sure what it is....???

The Beast tries using the blindfold as well

So that's it for another week, although those of you who stuck with all of it may have taken the week to get here.

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