Blog of War round 2 & UK scandal

Blog of War – Round 2

The second round of the Blog of War and our 3 remaining contestants have been set the task of finding a small blog (less than 20 followers) and championing the hell out of it. The two contestants who manage to grow their chosen blog  (A blog’s growth is measured by the number of new followers it receives) go through to the final.

Please remember not to follow any of the featured blogs until all three entries have been posted and you have read all the entries. It was disappointing in the 1st round that a number of votes were cast before all the entries had even been loaded..... Either there are a number of clairvoyant readers out there or a bit of over-enthusiastic supporting is going on…..

The entries in alphabetical order: -

1).  Lost.in.Idaho - Starts with 6* followers
2). Penwasser Place Starts with 14* followers
3). Suniverse I have no idea, as fitting with the whole messed up concept of this competition** “the Follow” section on the blog that Suniverse has chosen to champion appears to be corrupt – I will try and find out the starting figure ASAP …. We have to face the prospect that Suniverse may have disenfranchised herself and selected a blog that you can’t actually vote for….. or is this just a much more polite way of bowing out of a competition than not actually showing up….Less to follow*** shortly

* Looks like some peole started following before the competition had opened....again....

** I believe the key to my failure is glorious consistency. One day the entire debacle behind the Blog of War will be turned into a one of those really bad made for TV film, based on an unreadable long forgotten blog….

*** Sorry given the circumstances that may have been a rather insensitive word to use…

Back to the BlackLOG - latest UK scandal

The UK news is currently full of horror stories about how millions of the Great British public are about to have thousands of pounds unfairly charged to their Visa cards with no warning and no right of reply.   This sounds like an absolute disgrace - more examples of rip-off Britain.  We should be up in arms about this, writing to our MP’s and getting them to ask questions in the House of Commons.  Letters of righteous indignation to anyone who will publish…..  

It’s only when you delve a little further into the story that you find out that these poor innocent people, who are about to be charged thousands of pounds that they can’t afford, are actually not so innocent after all.  They went onto the 2012 Olympics web site and decided that in order to maximise their chances of getting tickets (tickets being allocated on a ballot basis for oversubscried events) they would over order. The site clearly states that if you put in for tickets you must have the funds to pay for them.

They are now starting to panic of course and have realised that the chickens might be coming home to roost.  Instead of taking responsibility for their own actions they are now moaning about the system, suddenly claiming that a ballot is not a fair way to decide the destination of the tickets….Oh yes, so having to ring a number, early one morning, along with millions of other people and not being able to get through because Hilda on the switchboard has gone for her  tea break, is a much better idea….      

What these whingers have done is lessened the chance of sensible people getting tickets….Mrs B (the official sensible half of the BlackLOG family) and I (putting on a temporary sensible hat for this occasion – it’s very nice but McG keeps attempting to eat the feathers) set ourselves a maximum limit for what tickets we wanted and have left it in the hands of the disorganisers (it's Britain, there is bound to be a cock-up of monumental proportions.  Useful if making a blue movie but not so good when you are a fairly prudish nation with aspirations of actually being great on the world stage….It is hard when you were once a headline act but are now lucky to make the 2pm slot on stage 7, out beyond the toilets….. ) .  If only moaning was an official Olympic sport the UK would be guaranteed a hatful of medals :-

100 metre moan

Short and explosive - the blue ribbon event of the vocal antagonistic games or is it just that the air is blue with unprintable expletives…

3 day ranting  

Not just hard on the contestants but the spectators as well, 72 hours of non-stop ranting. If you are unfortunate enough to get tickets  bring earplugs and a good book….

Whinge wrestling

The object of the event is to pin your opponent down with intensive whingeing.

Beach grumble

Contestants stand on either side of a net, wearing as little as possible.  Serving mild insults with dark mumblings being returned…   

Marathon whinge

This event can last for what seems like ever. The current world record stands at 4 years 3 months, 12 days, 2 hours, 13 minute, 12 seconds,13 seconds, 14 seconds  and is ongoing by Mrs Edith Baxter 24 seconds, 25 seconds, who really knows how to get a whinge on…. 37 second, 38, seconds

Snivel vaulting

Taking snivelling to new heights

Modern griping

No old fashioned event this one but full on contemporary griping

Protest walking

Similar to marching but higher pitched and faster, can include pitch forks and burning torches for a more old fashioned feel….

Table whimpering

Contestants stand either side of the table and take it in turns to whimper back and forth until one of the competitors breaks down and gets dragged off by big burly men in white and provided with a free straight jacket.   A really good result is where both competitors get dragged off….

The triple grouse

Tripled distilled grousing …..taking grousing to whole new levels ….or should that be depths…

Rowing

No not on a lake but in a pub, your living room, in the car, with your partner, your friends or neighbours.  The hardest one is solo rowing, where you have to argue with yourself…     

Now before you write this idea off as a BlackLOG whimsy, the Modern Olympics has in its time included such epeic events as:

Poetry

Town Planning - I’m guessing that Bishops Stortford never won any medals for this….Not unless there was a special category for “When did you last see your designer…?”

Poodle Clipping (1908 Olympics)

and  

Pottery…..They could rebrand it as “Harry Pottery” and put some much needed magic back into the Olympics ...

I’m not even kidding otherwise I would have included :-

"Formation Knitting"

and

"Dry Cracker Eating"

Although sadly those of you who followed the above "Poodle Clipping" link and read the article will have noted that Poodle Clipping was actually an April Fool’s Day article from the Daily Telegraph – I’m gutted…..On a brighter note the makers of QI (a BBC TV programme) fell for it hook line and sinker.  The other events were included up to the 1948 London Olympics –

So would Olympic verbal sparring really be so farfetched……?  Obviously in order to stop the French from having a huge advantage the nonchalant shoulder shrug would be declared an illegal move….

Icicle Works 30^th anniversary

It was off to see the Icicle Works 30^th anniversary tour last week and a good opportunity to catch up with my Best Man, Robert, who I‘ve not seen for a few years.  Great concert from one of my favourite bands (well, Ian McNabb’s non-solo vehicle) who had not lost any of their stagecraft…although they did play around with one of my favourite songs Birds Fly (Whisper to a scream)…. As Mrs B likes to say, “You should never mess with a good thing” (apparently this doesn’t apply to me).

I had a deja vu feeling, which I discovered was the Icicle Works drummer, for the evening, was none other than Mathew Priest – The very same drummer who played with Dodgy at last week’s Stortfest.   


Show me the sunny
Monitoring our way to a fortune (or not) with our Solar Panels

KW Produced so far – 1155

KW generated in the week – 117

This has earned us approximately – £563
Of which £175 has been paid out so far…

Record of the week

Birds Fly (whsiper to a scream) - by the Icicle works

Hollow Horse - By The Icicle works - A good representation of the Blog of War competition

Shout - by Lulu - As close as I could get to representing a verbal argument with out getting truly offensive and wheeling out The Proclaimers….Believe me I was tempted

Photo Finish

Birds are finally making there way into the garden – enough that McG and Mischief are getting some exercise (well their eyes at least and occasionally they even manage to move their heads….) so managed to get some shots with The Beast.


Unfortunately I could not get The Beast into the Icicle Works and his low light ability was sorely missed. So the Mega Mini Beast struggled and ultimately didn’t achieve much worthwhile.....


Collared Dove, not sure if it attempting a fan dance

or it has just over balanced reaching for food…



Roy Corkhill - Icicle  works bass (1988 - 2011)

Ian McNabb, lead singer and founder member

"Love is a Wonderful Colour" - Purple I guess..

 Hollow horse....

Do pop in next week for another slice of irrelevant rubbish…..