Pocket Wolves

I has them.



Sorry about the crappy picture but this was the best I could do with my phone at the time.

Please say hello to Loki and Freyja, little furry bundles of 11 week old Alaskan Malamute cuteness. Into everything, piddling on the floor and crapping something that appears to be a combination of toxic waste and velcro.

More pics to follow (of the dogs, not the crap)

Please to be speaking up as you are the dyings

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8163930.stm

The National Flu Service is expected to go live later, giving thousands of swine flu sufferers access to drugs without needing to consult a GP.

The phone and website service, which will only cover England, is the first of its kind in the world.

...

Dr Richard Vautrey, of the British Medical Association, which has helped to design the checklist being used by the flu service, said: "What we have to remember is that this is a unique situation.

"So as long as the call handlers get the correct training we can be confident in this service."

Yeah, right. Something like this then...

Good Morning. My name is Gupta, how can I be of helping you?

You are having the sneezings and ache of the head and sore of throat yes? And you are the saying you are keeping the random motherfuckers on fire setting? And you are saying all you can smell is the truffle?

I am the thinking perhaps you have the piggy flu. Please give me your name so I can the medicine be getting for you.

I am sorry I am not understanding. Please can you be spelling name.

D for Dupiaza yes?

Is that A as in Aloo?

No is R as in Raita?

Now is A for Aloo?

Now is G for something in indian food that start with G

I am the sorry line is not good here in Delhi, please to be roaring more loudly Mr Draggle

Atishoink

Oh wonderful. Yesterday we had an email round saying that someone has gone off with "self diagnosed suspected swine flu" - which probably means he has a sniffle and fancied a few days off. However as it seems he was over in our office on Monday and had a lengthy meeting with someone on my team who sits on the next bank of desks the whole of that desk row has been quarantined - which means sent home and told not to come in for 4 days in case they suddenly start oinking and developing a really good nose for truffles.

Of course this now means that everyone on my team is now at home putting their feet up and watching Richard and Judy and left holding the fort is one very, very pissed off small green dragon.

Also the person that our latter day Typhoid Mary happened to be meeting was someone I subsequently spent the rest of the Monday afternoon with plus a good portion of Tuesday sharing a keyboard as we did some pair programming and fixed a couple of problems. So if this is genuine I'm fully expecting to start turning pink and squealing come the end of the week.

If you cross a dragon and a pig do you get a pigeon?

Kicking kids whilst they're down

Snapped this on the train the other day.



Bloody hell, can you imagine anything worse that this. You're a kid, you're probably in pain, you're probably scared and then some numpty with greasepaint all over it's fizzog starts leaping around the ward making a racket, getting in the way of the nursing staff and waving shit in your face, oh sorry that would be "turning the ward into a magical playspace".

Just look at the kid - the little fucker is petrified!

Look clowns are not funny, never have been, never will be. They are also definitely the wrong side of the cute - creepy axis so if you're a kid in hospital do all your fellow patients a favour and if a "clown doctor" comes into your ward in a stupid car with the doors falling off beat it to death with your drip stand.

It's allowed, killing clowns is justifiable homicide. I looked it up on Wikipedia so it must be true.

Blame it on the buggy

All your dead child molester pop star jokes all in one place for your convenience!

What’s the difference between Alex Ferguson and Michael Jackson… fergie will be playing giggs this summer.

It’s a shame he’s died. He touched so many young people in so many ways.

Jackson has cancelled all his upcoming dates… They were James (aged 11) and Thomas (aged 9)

undertakers have announced that when Michael Jackson dies he will be melted down to make plastic toys so kids can play with him for a change.

Michael Jackson whispered a brief message to the paramedics before reaching the hospital…”put me on the children’s ward”.

reports he died of a cardiac arrest are incorrect… he was actually found in the children’s ward having a stroke

Just heard he died of food poisoning… Got it from eating 12 year old nuts

out of respect McDonalds have released the mc Jackson burger, 50 year old meat between 10 year old buns

They now think he died by falling over a child’s pram…..but Doctors say it’s too early to “Blame it on the buggy”

Michael's dying wish was to be melted down and made into plastic carrier bags; that way he could stay white, live forever and remain a danger to children.

The oxygen of publicity

Oh look, we seem to have managed to return a couple of everyone's favourite cuddly fascists to the huge trough that it the EU Parliament (whose troughing by MEPs makes our MPs look like they are daintily nibbling on a lettuce leaf). They even managed to win a county council seat in Burnley West - well they were never going to win Burnley East as that's where all the folk from Pakistan live. Seig t' Heil as they say up there.

Accordingly all the lefties, media luvvies and especially mainstream politicos are doing lots of hand wringing and navel gazing and wondering what happened to Britain to make it turn into such an evil racist nation. Er guys, the BNP's share of the vote actually fell in real terms and people vote for them because they are addressing some legitimate concerns that some of the electorate have.

Look I grew up in Burnley and the people there are not on the whole racists and certainly not fascists but they see large numbers of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent settling in specific areas, turning then into de-facto ghettos, said immigrants generally not integrating and they genuinely feel their culture is being swamped and that it is these ghettos (which are naturally in the poorer parts of town) getting the lions' share of the funding (whether that's true or not - and if not then it's a failure on the point of the mainstream politicians to get this message across). The mainstream politicians, especially Labour in which should be a piss-easy seat for them to win, are ignoring these concerns leaving an open goal for the BNP to shoot at.

But are the left going to address these concerns from what should be their natural supporters? Are they fuck. No what is obviously needed is to, oh I dunno, let's throw some eggs at Nick Griffin, that'll work.

No, all that does is give him the oxygen of publicity, show you cuntrumpets up as the idiots you are and allow Nicky-boy to claim the moral high ground and further keep his gurning fizzog leering out at me from every sodding newspaper's front page in the pissing land.

Look, leave him to rant and rave, the press will get bored in a week and move on to Jordan's latest tit-job. But you need to reach out to your core vote or they'll just be back voting for "the wrong party" next time.

Broken Doors

On the train to work this morning one of the doors is broken. If you push the button to open the door it just clicks and hisses at you like an irritated snake and refuses to budge.

How do I know this? Because at absolutely every bastard stop from King's Lynn to Cambridge some numpty, often several numpties, have pushed the door open button despite there being not one but two signs on the door with a pictogram depicting a train door with a big red line through it which even Slime Beasts of the Planet Zod could work out means "These doors are broken". Presumably it's this international wordless sign so we don't upset any uppity immigrants who would then sue for "distress and anxiety" because the train company didn't write "Out of Order" in their fucking language

OK so the brain dead trolls employed by National Distress East Anglia have stuck the signs on upside down but the meaning is still, I would posit, pretty clear.

Ah, another station, Whittlesford Parkway... Proper commuter belt now, maybe it was just the webbed fingered bog dwellers of the fens who are too dense to work out that when the sign says "Broken door" there is a fighting chance that said door won't open.

Click... Hisssssss... Click... Hisssssss....

Audley End maybe?

Click... Hisssssss... Click... Hisssssss....

Fucking hell I despair.

Do I have to get interested in football now?

It would appear that the town where I was fledged¹ appears to have won some sort of football competition and, apparently, gets to play with the big boys next year before presumably crashing ignominiously back into the Coca-Cola-Everest-Double-Glazing Conference League where I assume they have been since I upped sticks and buggered off to somewhere where I could (a) get an education and (b) a job. So congratulations I suppose to Burnley footy club but please don't for a microsecond think that anything on this earth could induce me to stand on the terraces (do they still have those) of Turf Moor again or, to be honest, express any interest in your success or failure at kicking a pigs' bladder around.

Look it's like this. I really could not give a flying fuck about football. The game bores me rigid. I was utterly crap at it at school and always ended up just arseing about in "defence" which meant you got to stand at the back and only had to run about when the other lot ran towards you as far as I could tell. On the rare occasions when some misguided sense of loyalty to my mates in the band I was in lead me to actually attend a match at the aforementioned Turf Moor I never really understood what was going on, didn't know the words to the songs and usually had gone to the bogs or in search of a Bovril when anyone actually scored a goal. So I'm not going to be going out and buying a claret and blue scarf and actually learning the names of the overpaid dicks who actually do the ball kicking stuff if that's OK with you.

Speaking of refreshments I happened to notice that the club sponsor was Hollands Pies who may be the makers of the finest steak puddings on the planet but I doubt lack the financial wherewithal to fund a premier league side.

Mind you finance being what it is you're lucky to have a sponsor and next year we might see you sponsored by the man who sells the pies at the ground.

Mine's a meat and potato, thanks. I'll pass on the Bovril.










¹ Do dragons fledge, not having any feathers and all that?

On y va... on y va... on y va...

Live(ish) blogging Eurovision


Lithuania:
You are not Freddy fucking Mercury. Go away.

Israel:
"There must be another way" goes the song sung by the palestinian and jewish woman. Well as your people have been trying to annailate each other for the past four thousand years maybe you should have fucking found it by now.

France:
Zzzzzz... oh have you finished? Christ that was crap. Fucking hell people in the hall liked that one.

Sweden:
Well I think her dress is stuck to the floor and she is moving around behing it. She looks for all the world like Ulrika Johnson's mum and alternates between spitting her lyrics and screeching in a semi-operatic manner. I think someone from a concrete fabrication company did her teeth. That's one that will sink without trace.

Croatia:
Are not sure if they want to be Greece or Turkey and instead have settled on the little island of Mediocre which sits in the Med between the two countries. A costume change is not going to save this song guys.


Portugal:
First accodion of the evening. She's a big girl, wonder if she has Madelene hidden under her dress. Pleasant enough in a folky sort of way.

Iceland:
Guess Bjork was busy. The staging is great with a big ship floating past in the background but the song is, well, it's just noise. Sure she's cute but so what?


Side note... Graham "Does this cock up my arse make me look gay" Norton who is hosting this year as Terry Wogan has gone home to sulk because we got all those nul points sounds like he is pissed. Word is he fell of a horse and bust a couple of ribs and is on the same painkillers I was on a couple of years ago whick would account for that. Will be interesting if he has a couple of drinks later

Greece: Performed a techno tune on a big stapler. Dull, predictable, will probably win.

Armenia: Just seem to have sent a mess. At least they remembered to put in a key change

Russia: Home field advantage so they get the best graphics with the singer aging on the monster LEDs as she does the song. Shame the singer decided to start sceaming at the end of the song.

Azerbaijan: Aha, we are finally into doubek territory. And like any doubek based song, it's cack.

Bosnia and the other place: Have decided to go for a Napoleonic theme or have heard Andrew Lloyd Uglysod has written our tune and gone for a rip-off Les Misrables. Either way it was pants.

Moldova: First serious folky tune of the night. Bit whacky, silly trumpets, guys in crazy trousers... this is why we watch this competition! There also appears to be a man with a pole.

Malta: Lardarse

Estona: Now this is a good song. The title means "Pikey" but what the hell. The fiddle player can (a) sing and (b) is cute and the song is cleverly structured around what sounds to me like a decending major seventh pattern (proper musicians please feel free to correct me). As my mrs just said "At last, a song". Nice, deserves to win. Won't.

Denmark: Have sent Ronan Keating, kind of. Well at least he wrote the tune and the singer is doing his best to sound Irish. Guys the paddies have failed to fucking qualify for the last two years so maybe you might be better getting someone from somewere ending on "oldova" to write your tune as this is instantly unforgettable radio pap.

Germany: Good job you got a bye to the final song as a D-class Ricky Martin in Bacofoil pants really does not pass muster. Even up-market stripper Dita Von Teese cracking a horsewhip is not going to save you. Quite the opposite in fact.

Turkey: You know how this song is going to sound before they even hit the first note don't you. And Turkey, true to form do not dissapoint with the same doubek and ney flute heavy belly dance tune they have sent to this competition since the fall of the Ottoman empire.

Albania: Hang on didn't Turkey just play this song? Accompanied by a thing that looks like a lump of green putty for some reason known only to the Albanians, presumably.

Norway: Yelly pseudo-folk tune performed by a squirrel on crack playing a fiddle. Why the fuck is this the favourite to win? Did I fall into a parallel universe of shite or something? Oh and fraying a bit of your bow does not make you look more homely, it makes you look like someone who can't maintain his instrument you knob end.


Ukraine: Trojans in bacofoil. Nuff said.

Romania: This one isn't too awful. Gone for a wood nymph theme but if you cast your eyes stage right there is the woman in the six piece (you can only have six people on stage according to the rules) who is just stood there not being filmed. She's the one actually doing the fucking singing. That said by the end of this one there was a little bit of claw tapping happening.

UK: Well here we go. You know I have heard this a few times now and given the standard of entries we might just do well. Just so long as uglysod stays out of shot. Well she impacted the fiddle player, that was sloppy but her voice is holding up. For fucks sake sing the rest don't scream it... Hell she did it! Slight flat note as she wandered away from mr uglysod, and she... cacked up the ending. Oh well. Maybe a top 5.

Finland: Booo... bring back Lordi.

Spain: Appears to have moved a thousand or so miles east and done about the ninth Turkish sounding song of the night. Go away.



Well that has got to be the weakest like up for ages. I think I can say there was not a single song that made my tail wobble tonight. Estonia was to be honest the only one I would give room on the Ipod to and then it wouldn't get onto a playlist. We might just win by default. Mrs D says that as this cost the russkies umpty odd million maybe everyone is trying to lose by default.



Now that is cool... they have got two Cosmonauts on the ISS to start the voting. Nice touch.

So, are we going to try and upstage Riverdance or are we just going to stuff a folk band on?


...no, just some people in paddling pools suspended from the celing.


And the chipmunk on crack won. Why?

Maybe a vodka or two will help me understand...

... no, that didn't work. Night all.

It's that time again

I know I'm not blogging as much as I used to but even I can't let Eurovision pass without a bit of comment.

As you probably know if you're remotely interested in the pan-continental warble-fest that is the ESC this year the UK has decided to, well, try and not come last to be fair. So we have Mr Ugly himself Lloyd Webber knock together a tune and some yank who penned the words to and Aerosmith tune do the lyrics and we ended up with something that sounded like it's a filler song from Les Miserables. Of course we had to have a sort of mini talent contest to pick a singer and ideally this time someone who could (a) sing and (b) wasn't black (as the Eastern Europeans are rumoured to be just a teensy little bit racist). Regrettably (b) excluded the best act in the contest who were a soul vocal outfit who were easily the best so we've ended up with someone who's a bit coffee coloured and can yell but yells in tune.

To be honest the moment I heard the song I thought "Well there's a null pointer and no mistake" but I've managed to catch most of the semis and you know it might just not be. All the "silly" songs have gone apart from one that features some dancers in bacofoil trojan helmets and most folk have gone for ballads or the occasional folk song / predictable belly dance tune (guess what Turkey have sent). Tunewise I'm going for Estonia, a string quintet with a song sung entirely in Estonian.

Apparently the favourite is Norway though fuck knows why as it sounds crap and the singer looks like a gerbil on crack.

I'll be liveblogging it, probably. Depends how drunk I get.