...you take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes...

Obviously, because you are reading this, you have a modicum of intelligence. Obviously therefore, one knows that when one contemplates motivation, one must first consider Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs model. One must then consider, why is he talking posh, he's from East London!

OK, let's change the vernacular... Ok,ok, the posh is gone, just me again, innit?

Motivation. I only had a scrap to start with, and now it's gone, long gone.

My body into temple thing... Didn't really work. Well, it did for a month, I was looking and feeling better, and looking forward to my daily routines which included;

Burpees

Bodyweight Exercises

Then one day, mid session, got into position for 'the plank', thought "I can't be asked", got up, walked away and haven't done a thing since!

It's actually worse than that. Whilst I was exercising, my appetite increased, and I started eating more chocolate, and when I stopped exercising I carried on with the chocolate and therefore I've actually put on weight!

Anyway, you're probably wondering what that has to do with Morpheus? Well, I briefly looked into the reasons for my failure.

Now, there is a theory that if you 'announce your plans to others, you satisfy your self-identity just enough, that you're less motivated to actually do it'. Trouble is, not only does that not make for good blog writing (yes I'm aware of the irony), I wouldn't want that to become common knowledge and be single-handedly responsible for the collapse of goal orientated communication around the world (great responsibility, great power, blah blah).

But that's not the reason for my failure. Oh no, there is a deeper darker reason. To quote Morpheus in full;

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

So, are you ready to take the red pill?

Ok, here goes... The New World Order/Freemasons/Illuminati/Reptilian Shape-Shifters, call them what you will, they didn't want me to succeed!

There, I've said it.

Now I know you're wondering what earth shattering proof I possess?

Well firstly, see this video that demonstrates that President Obama is really a robot and therefore controlled by shadowy figures in the background!

Now follow this link to see that the recent MTV music awards really were an occult ritual 21st Century style (and tedious link to the Katie Perry in a West Ham basque picture at a different MTV shindig).

These conspirators are everywhere, Jay-Z, Susan Boyle, the ubiquitous dollar bill, controlling what you see, hear, read and think.

Wait, what's that noise? Who'se outside? Men in white coats? NOOOOOOO

Like Nobel prizewinner Milosz said "In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth rings out like a pistol shot"

THIS IS MY PISTOL SHOT I TELL YOU, THIS IS MY PISTOL SHO...

TRANSMISSION ENDED, THIS BLOGGER HAS NOW LEFT THE BUILDING

"Often people look like they are thinking, when in reality they are merely rearranging their prejudices"

That was one of some very profound things said by William James, not bad for an American - oops, I did it again, my prejudice is coming out.

Yep, that's right, I'm admitting to being prejudiced.

SHOCK GASP HORROR!!!

Well at least I'm honest! And you know what, I bet you are too.

BOO HISS OUTRAGE!!!

Easy now, calm down, I think I'd better explain!

I wasn't prejudiced yesterday, nor even this morning for that matter. I am now because I took an IAT test.

A what?

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is an experimental method within social psychology designed to measure the strength of automatic association between mental representations of objects/concepts in memory. The IAT requires the rapid categorisation of various stimulus objects , such that easier pairings (and faster repsonses) are interpreted as being more strongly associated in memory than more difficult pairings (slower responses).

That's right, bow down before your intellectual superior, can you construct a sentence like that?!

OK OK, you can get up off your knees now, I pinched that from Wikipedia!

This is the theory in English. You place a list of words and pictures in either the left or the right hand column as they appear on the screen. The words relate to either positive or negative emotions. The pictures are of either black or white people. Whether the words go with the black or the white people changes through the test, but how quickly you categorise, determines how (if at all) prejudiced you are!

Fiendishly clever and in my case, downright annoying!

In reality, this measures your subconscious thinking, but of course (well, hopefully), your consciousness keeps a tab on your actual behaviour... usually!

Take the test for yourself, it'd be great if you could comment what your result was...

PROJECT IMPLICIT - THE TEST and click on the 'demonstration' tab.

"When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it."

I currently have 'psychology' on the brain, as opposed to the other thing that Sigmund Freud talked a lot about.

I was taken to see Derren Brown the other week, and he was as always, pretty impressive. I know that a lot of his tricks, his 'Mentalism' is down to his knowledge and awareness of people's behaviour in certain situations, and as this sort of thing fascinates me, I thought that I would delve a little deeper.

This led me to Quirkology by Richard Wiseman, which I have started reading, and I'm finding it fascinating, it's full of oddball psychological experiments analysing human behaviour.

So there I was, watching Michael Jackson dancing with his head on fire whilst filming a commercial for Pepsi and I was reminded about the murder of Kitty Genovese because it took such a long time for people to rush to his aid, and the 3rd degree burns that he suffered triggered the drug addiction that ultimately claimed his life.

Kitty was stabbed to death outside her apartment block in New York in 1964. Nearly 40 people either saw the incident out of their window or heard her screams for help. The attacker even went away and came back ten minutes later. It was over half an hour before any of them called for help as (it is assumed), they thought that somebody else would do it.

This socio-psychological behaviour, is known as "Diffusion of Responsibility", or "The Bystander Effect" and has led to many studies which have successfully replicated it... If other people are around to help, you are less likely to respond first, or will wait until you have been given specific instructions.

Makes you wonder, if that accident hadn't happened to Jacko, or if people had reacted quicker and therefore he hadn't needed the pain killing drugs in the first place, what else he could have gone onto achieve...

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it, after all, in the immortal words of Freud, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar..."

No, wait, what does that mean?!

"...and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness"

"I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness."

Yeah, I'm with you on that one Kafka, normally I do my best to ensure that my English is written proper like, ya know?

My keyboard set up is slightly odd by the way. There is a sliding shelf under the desk where the keyboard sits, and for whatever reason (apathy probably), I don't pull the keyboard out usually. Luckily, I can touch type. In my own inimitable style, I am a three finger touch typist, but a touch typist all the same.

There are a few keys that I have to look for, which is annoying because all it does is slow me down, Goddammit! These keys are the ones to the right of P, L and M, you know, the @'s, :, /'s of this world.

On my last post, due to the effort involved in pulling out the keyboard, averting my eyes from the screen, readjusting their focus and employing the required neck muscles to look down at the offending keyboard, I chose to use speech marks (") in certain places as opposed to their billynomate equivalents (') which I think is wrong.

I'm not as anal as either Gareth or Fanno in this regard who seem to have an irresistable urge to correct even the slightest error in grammar, syntax, spelling or punctuation.

Their fastidiousness pales compares to certain people who have set up websites dedicated to highlighting these errors. I have to say, some of it is quite comical;

apostropheabuse

unnecessaryquotes

terriblywrite

Whilst we are on the subject, I thought that you might enjoy this site too...

passiveaggressivenotes

And of course, the snobbery of us English speakers knows no bounds...

engrishfunny

Thankfully, there is at least one person out there who loves their linguistics and wants to share as opposed to criticise - nerd!

"The greatest wealth is health"

Virgil was a dude, if he had a penny for everytime a couple of his phrases had been used, he'd be pretty well off. Still dead though, as my guess is that the science behind Cyronics wasn't around back in those days. "Fortune favours the brave". Yep, that was him. "Love conquers all" was him too.

Ok, I'm procrastinating. "Why" I hear you all ask, weirdly in unison.

Well, I'm going through a mid-life crisis.

No, not really, at least I don't think so.

I desperately need to prove my masculinity now that my wife is working full time.

No, that's not it either.

I'm not a shallow narcissist and it has nothing to do with me hitting 40 in a few years time. Maybe I'm just thinking if I don't do it now, I'll probably never shift it.

Ok, this is the plan, I'm giving myself 4 months to turn my body into a proper temple from the current Aztec ruin that it is!

Only trouble is, I have no money, no time and to be brutally honest, (to explain my indecision at the start), no real inclination either!

I know basically what I need to do. Get rid of some of the fat, change the rest to muscle, easy!

I'm thinking of a £50 budget which rules out gym memberships. Just as well, I calculated that I have been a member of various gyms over the years for a total of 7 years. In that time, I've used the swimming pools on offer 3 times and the actual gym itself? Well if we include the 3 induction sessions,and take away the one that I missed, it's been, let me just add up, ah yes, twice!

There are a couple of other obstacles.

I know nothing about diet, and am not going to learn. If anyone tries to tell me, I just switch off. It's just an automatic reaction, I have nooooo interest!

I can't jog. I can, in fact I can run forever if there's a ball in front of me, but jog for jogging sake? Purlease, how boring is that! I don't have suitable trainers anyway. I have a pair of footy boots, some astro-turf trainers, 1 pair of shoes and the only trainers I have, I lost the laces ages ago and they fall off if walk any faster than a tortoise.

So, in a nutshell, no money, no knowledge, no equipment and no motivation!

I do have a couple of things going for me though.

I'd like to think that I'm naturally quite fit and healthy.

I play footy once a week and I also go weekly to the golf driving range that I blogged about previously, but not sure how that helps at all!

I have a trampoline in the garden, but my back tends to hurt everytime I use it.

There's one of them exercise balls somewhere in the garage.

And lastly, I have the kids to run after.

I have a few ideas to help me. I've bought a skipping rope for £2, it did wonders for Rocky after all !

My good friend the internet has supplied with lots of videos and useful links

I just need to find the time to read/look at them now...

I wonder if it's the appearance of my 2nd, 3rd and 4th grey hairs, eight years after my first? No, it's not that either. I do fancy a couple more tattoo's, hmm, I wonder if that's it?

If anyone would like to join in with me, feel free!

The links that I am going to use;

Goal Tracker - I'm a visual person, and some would say simple, and this is both, simple and visual!

Push-Up's - I've been trying to follow this for the last couple of weeks.

Sit-Up's - Again, I've been doing this for the last couple of weeks too.

I've been doing the above to build up a bit of strength, I need to move it up a level now, and need to find some time to go through all these links!

http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/abs/abs.html

Skipping 1

Skipping 2

Skipping 3

Skipping 4

VideoJug

This http://www.nowloss.com/ looks useful

Health site

Summary of a BBC TV PROGRAMME that I caught the last 5 minutes of,,,

Positivity?

Another SKIPPING vid

More vids

'...livin' crazy that's the only way...'

- 'Off the Wall' from, Off the Wall, which I think I have rediscovered as the greatest summer driving tune of all time!

Wacko Jacko is no more... RIP fella.

The man may or may not have had a dark side, but he undoubtably had a weird side.

You can't blame him I guess. Sorry, you can, you can empathise to a degree with the factors that contributed, such as the ultimate 'pushy parent', the total lack of privacy, the demand to be his friend from every crazy in the street to the crazies known as 'Heads ofState' etc, but the choices were his.

Even his end has a tinge of bizarre to it, from the disappearing Dr to the final 911 call... how calm is the caller when The King of Pop lies dying within feet of him!

I will happily admit that he had more talent in his little finger at the age of FIVE than I do today in my whole body!

As a tribute, I think that I will learn to moonwalk like him.

Seeing as I can only find 4 cd cases and 3 cd's of his, I may use this little video blog in the background to play some of his tunes.

In case I get too carried away with the wave of emotion I may visit this site to remind me of his facial history!

To see some bizarre mixed with nerd you may want to check this out...

Lastly, I found this absolute gem of a site which has mug shots of famous celebrities (including Jacko) when they get arrested, brilliant!

Thanks for the memories Wacko...

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone"

That's not my favourite Picasso quote, but is the most appropriate for this post.

You see, I'm torn at the moment. I have discovered these things called generators, some of which I have blogged about before. In a nutshell, you take a picture - sorry, not physically take, well yes you do, but this is afterwards when the picture that you have taken is sitting somehwere on your desktop. So you take the taken picture, put it through this 'generator' and voila, you have a piece of art... or at least a picture with an effect of some kind.

Going back to being torn, I've done the hard work, I've trawled through the net, night after night, day after day, now I want the recognition and glory. I want to use these generated pictures and wow people. I want them to say 'that's brilliant' and and ask me how it's done. I WANT MY 15 MINUTES OF FAME GODDAMIT!

Trouble is, I don't have the time to deal with any increase in fan mail, and to be honest, it's been several months and I am still to use any of these generators.

That changed a few days ago. A friend of mine had an issue. To be honestly he regularly has issues, but he has his own blog which he uses as a release valve and I'm pretty sure he appears normal to the rest of society.

Finally came my opportunity to use some of my secret generators! I set up a Facebook group specifically for the purpose and posted several photo's on there. As an aside he later said that this was one of the nicest things that anyone had done for him. That made me feel a bit guilty as I didn't do it totally for altruistic reasons!

So, do I continue to piggyback on the angst of my fellow bloggers and Facebook friends or do I stay true to the vague point of this blog and give you something to do for yourselves? You got it, here are some non picture necessary generators;

The Bus

The Chinese Takeaway

Bart's Chalkboard

My favourite Picasso quote by the way could be one of the following

"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. "

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life "

"Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. "

But it's probably;

"When I was a child my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll be the pope.' Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso."

Good job he didn't use his full name... Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso!

"I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much."

Now quite obviously, I am no Mother Teresa.  I'm still alive for starters, and wearing anything on my head causes it to ache.

I do have compassion and I do care about you, my dear reader though.  

With that in mind, I thought that as well as trying to expand your mental faculties in my little corner of cyberspace, I would also do my utmost to keep you in tip top physical and spiritual condition!  

WAIT!  Don't go, don't navigate away, it's ok, I'm one of you, Mother Teresa without the wrinkles remember.  You don't have to stray far from your own particular portal to the world to do it!  That's right, when you hear that ping to announce an incoming email, you'll never be more than seconds away from viewing it!  See, it's ok.

Lesson one is Yoga!  According to the blurb on the site that I'm about to direct you to, 'these exercises will strengthen your abdomen, deepen your breath and reduce the possibility of blood-clot formation!' There's videos of how to do it, so there's no excuse for getting it wrong...

Want to tone that butt?  Of course you do!  Here are some 'deskercise' tips and a video to help you do just that...

Finally for now, these folks at Diylife.com have collated a similar list to give you even more resources...

Maybe I'll put up a before and after picture of me so that you can see the miraculous transformation, anyone interested?

So there you go, how good am I (although not as much as Mother T!).  Although in my defence, even Mother Teresa is not Mother Teresa anymore.  She is in fact Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, ie, 3/4 of the way to being a saint!

I'll leave you with one more Mother T (or BToC as she should now be known) quote:

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin." 

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

I spend too much time in  my car.

No, I'm not getting RSI due to constantly sticking various fingers up at other drivers as is fashionable in my little corner of the world.  No, play me a radio ad, any radio ad and I can recite it word for word.

Definitely not cool.  What's worse is that I get disappointed when companies change their jingles - some of them are really catchy!

Now, the new Ginsters ad is an accidental imitators dream.  About 30 seconds of non-stop one liners which I'm pretty sure they have pinched from Tommy Cooper.

Toomy Cooper of course was famous for his one liners and bad magic acts which kind of proved Abraham's Lincolns rule, but it worked for him!

Here are some of my favourite Tommy Cooper one-liners;

1. Went to the paper shop - it had blown away.
   
2. A woman told her doctor, 'I've got a bad back. 'The doctor said, 'It's old age. 'The woman said, 'I want a second opinion. 'The doctor says, 'OK. you're ugly as well. '
   
3. 'You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine. 'So that was nice.'
   
4. A man walked into the doctor's, The doctor said 'I haven't seen you in a long time' The man replied, 'I know I've been ill'
   
5. A man walked into the doctor's, he said 'I've hurt my arm in several places'  The doctor said 'well don't go there any more'
   
6. I'm on a whiskey diet. I've lost three days already.
   
7. 'So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said ' Is that the local swimming baths?' He said ' It depends where you're calling from.'
   
8. I went to the doctors the other day and I said, 'have you got anything for wind' , so he gave me a kite.
   
9. So I rang up a local building firm, I said 'I want a skip outside my house'. He said 'I'm not stopping you.'
   

10. I went into this ice cream parlour and said 'I'd like a vanilla cone'. 
    The assistant said 'Hundreds and thousands ?'. I said 'No - I'll just have
    the one'.

    He said 'knickerbocker glory?' I said 'I do get a certain amount of 
    freedom in these trousers, yes

There are more here, including some longer ones.

Incidentally, there is a bit of a debate raging within the comedy circuit as to whether or not these are really Tommy Cooper jokes or Tim Vines.

Very similar style, here is a Tim Vine video that is definitely worth checking out.

"I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions"

I'm reminded of Stephen Covey and his '7 Habits...' because of Derren Brown. I'm reminded of Derren Brown because a friend rang up this week and asked if I would like to go see him live. Which reminds me of the very first time that I saw Brown, which was this clip which blew me away. So there I was, remembering (there's a theme starting to develop here) Derren Brown, and I thought of his book, 'Tricks of the Mind' which I cannot recommend highly enough. I started reading it expecting an autobiography of sorts and finished it uplifted, mentally exhilarated and empowered with more brain improvement techniques than I did after reading '7 Habits...'!

Brown elaborate tricks are heavily reliant on memory and he discusses several techniques. The simplest is the 'Loci' method. I use this for lists such as shopping lists, it works a treat;

1) Create a mental map of your home, and move from room to room in a logical order, paying attention to things that stand out, fireplaces, sofas etc.

2) Form a visual image of the items that you need to remember in the different rooms, if you can make them larger than life and either moving or funny, so much the better.

3) Take a minute to impress the memory into your head, and then hey presto, you should remember those items for as long as you wish to by taking a 'mental stroll' through your house and asking yourself, 'what was on the sofa, or in the oven or on the creaky step' etc!

Here is a little game to reinforce the idea.

I've expanded my 'mental map' to go from the train station home, past several shops, houses and cars that stand out, right through to all the rooms in my house and various bits of the garden. I haven't counted, but I guess I could probably remember a list of 50 items if I ever had the inclination (which is highly unlikely!). There is no limit, and if you start making up locations, you will have the beginnings of a memory palace like Hannibal Lecter in the book Hannibal ( I believe that it was edited out of the film)!

They have memory championships, and those people have trained their minds to remember thousands of things.  Here is a recent champion Andi Bell demonstrating the Loci technique with a  slight twist. 

Finally, I thought I'd leave you with a couple of Derren Brown video's to amuse yourselves!

Richard and Judy

Card Trick

"Victorious warriors win first, then go to war..."

I wonder which bright spark thought to couple Major Nesbeths story with Sun Tzu's The Art of War and create the NLP phenomenon?  Sorry, I'm talking to myself again.

I am competitive.  Tonight I was due to play at TopGolf (a golf driving range with bowling type scoring) with a friend.  I always win, which is how I like it.  Trouble is, since we last went, he's bought his own set of fancy clubs and has been several times, and has started edging closer and closer to my highest ever score.

Starting to feel slightly anxious at the prospect of not winning, I remembered the story of Major James Nesbeth of the US Army who, probably unwittingly, utilised visualisation techniques.

He was a POW during the Vietnam war, and spent four years of his life in a cell about five foot square, routinely tortured by his captors.  To preserve his sanity, every single day, he would visualise his local golf course.   The sights, the sounds, the smells and he would spend about four hours a day, working his way around the eighteen holes, all in his head, in as much detail as possible.

Eventually he was freed, ended up back home and on his favourite golf course.  The story varies at this point, but what is generally agreed, is that he achieved an almost identical score to his best ever, thanks to the mental pictures that he had been creating during his captivity.  

So, I knew what I had to do, trouble is, I didn't have four years (or even hours) to do it!

That's when my trusty friend, the internet sailed to the rescue on the information super-highway!

In just ten minutes whilst having lunch, I perfected my swing thanks to videojug and how to hold the damn club correctly in the first place thanks to 5min.  

I haven't had enough time to go through videojug and 5min properly, but they seem fantastic concepts... short little instructional videos on how to do anything from juggling through to finding your seven chi spots... now that video I'm looking forward to!

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change"

Darwin would be proud of me.  My life (and my family's) is about to be turned upside down with the missus about to start work and me becoming a house husband!

The main fear that I have is to do with cooking.  Don't get me wrong, not only can I cook, I am brilliant too - as long as I'm cooking mac cheese or penne arrabiata!

Trouble is, that's where my creativity ends.  Fear not about the health and diet of my kids!  Thanks to the web that is world wide, I have found a perfect site!

http://www.studentrecipes.com/

Not only are the recipes for students so therefore easy, on the home page, you can put in the ingredients that you have got at home and it will suggest recipes for you - perfect for little ole disorganised me who won't remember to go shopping!

And before anyone thinks I'm going to have it easy with this house husband lark, I'd just like to point out that I still have my own business to run inbetween!

As a treat for all the hard work I'm putting in?  I think I'll have to wander over to anniebakes site dedicated to chocolate recipes and drool, mmm!

"If I Have Been Able To See Further, It Was Because I Stood On The Shoulders Of Giants"

Who would have thought that bestiality could lead to so much fun.  Wait, hold your horses (not like that!) Let me explain.

The story starts in the mists of times with those Ancient Greeks.  King Minos annoyed Poseidon, and vengeful git that Poseidon was, he arranged for Queen Parsiphae and a bull to have 'relations'.  Infamously, the resulting child was know as 'The Minotaur'.  King Minos did what any good husband would do - he ordered a clever chap called Daedalus to build a Labyrinth that was near enough impossible to escape from as a home for The Minotaur.   

As an aside, King Minos then locked up Daedalus and his son so nobody could ever discover the secrets of the Labyrinth.  Of course, Daedalus being rather clever, he fashioned some wings and escaped, but his dimwit son was Icarus who flew too close to the sun, lost all his feathers and subsequently drowned!

Anyway, we went to the world famous Hampton Court Palace Maze last week.  What a disappointment that place is!  Even my 2 year old managed to find his way in and out, without needing to stand on my shoulders, unlike Sir Isaac Newton (unless he was talking physics, and not mazes?)

So, I had a look on the net, hoping to find some 3D mazes that would be better.

Instead, I found this brilliant game called Theseus and the Minotaur.  So far, I've got stuck on level 4 which is dead annoying!  Did I mention that it was Theseus that finally killed The Minotaur?

There was also this site by Robert Abbott who's apparently a bit of an expert on mazes.  His games are also different, but challenging in a cerebral sense, give them a go.

"Real Stupidity Beats Artificial Intelligence Every Time"

... So said Terry Pratchett.  

And that witty quote in the picture has been paraphrased from Einstein, which sounds like another sensible thing that he's said (creationists care to disagree?).

Woody Allen said "The brain is only my second favourite organ".  So that's your two favourite things that can't be enlarged then!

Wrong, help is at hand!  We'll stick to the second organ, for the time being.  Here is some Brain Training to get that thing working.  Sign up's straightforward and so far I haven't been inundated with any junk emails.

Maybe in a few weeks you can become clever too, and the you can spout quotes such as;

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying." 

That was Oscar Wilde who also said "Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit".

Oh well, you can't have it all.

You. Yes You; I > U

                   No thicko, I don't LOVE you, I'm saying that I'm GREATER than you?

Be honest now, you thought 'ah' first and then when the realisation kicked it, it was like getting happy slapped.

The posters and other things that you can buy over at despair.com are brilliant... looking at the site is also another good way to spend that last half hour before you can go home! Click here to see all the demotivational posters.  The merchandise is worth checking out too...

"Time Is An Illusion, Lunchtime Doubly So"

Damn, this is cooler than quoting Douglas Adams!

Stare at the dot in the middle whilst the film plays.

Half way through, it'll turn into a black and white photo, but you'll be seeing it in colour!

Amazing, I thought.  If you doubt it, go back at any point and just play it from about 20 secs.

"Art Is What You Can Get Away With"

I wonder what Warhol would have done if he had GENERATORS?  No, not the things that are supposed to power buildings in horror films but have always run out of gas and cost at least one life to get going again...

Picture and word generators!  I've discovered some amazing effects that can be done, and most of them seem free!

You can have hours of fun mucking around with photo's and coming up with witty slogans etc... in fact, you could probably waste a whole evening doing this and avoid the washing up...  I just did!

Here are some of the links, I'll add more in the future;

Rubiks and Gooing; great fun, warp any of your pictures (looks similar to the editing that you can do on the new DSi - http://www.dumpr.net/

Warholiser - http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/warholizer.php

Wanted - http://www.glassgiant.com/wanted/

By the way, that's my boy's photo that I have been editing... The future captain of West Ham and England... You heard it here first!

"Light Travels Faster Than Sound, Isn't That Why People Appear Bright Before You Hear Them Speak?"

Wow, that is one big snake, and damn it's fast!

You'd need to be quicker than a Steven Wright one liner to get away from that thing!

"I don't have pet peeves like some people. I have whole kennels of irritation."

I think Whoopi nicked that from George Carlin who said "I don't have pet peeves, I have major psychotic f***ing hatreds".

Anyway, I can't use that as I don't swear.  Neither do I have major psychotic f***ing hatreds, although they sound like fun.

What I do have, is a pet spider, that I feed daily and care for, and look after.  

Feel free to see him here, and you're also welcome to double click here and there to leave him some food to eat.  Please don't pull him around by the legs, he gets dizzy and doesn't like it.

"Only Death Can Cure Stupidity"

This had me in bloody stitches!

No wonder the Japanese have that particular proverb!

"If You Gaze Long Enough Into The Abyss, The Abyss Will Gaze Back Into You"

I wonder if this was what Nietzsche had in mind?  Everyone has seen the Patterson film right? Kinda boring really. The Gable film though... That creature moves fast, it's damn aggressive, and those teeth at the end, ouch! In a nutshell, there's a heavily forested area of Michigan that has always had rumours of 'dogmen', bigfoot like creatures. This film was found at a car-boot sale, and nobody knows who shot it. The fella that found it and published it, got so much flak from people saying that it was a fake, that he actually turned round one day and admitted that it was a fake just to stop the abuse. A lot of people in the field of cryptozoology (yes they do exist!), are adamant about it's authenticity. Check out the way that creature moves. Can you think of a creature that moves like that? A human couldn't. 

Oh, The Patterson film for reference... I'm sure it's as fake as hell, even if the technology for those gorilla suits wasn't around for another 20 years and the experts say that no creatures or humans walk / move like that... then again....

"...About As Useful As A One Legged Man At An Arse Kicking Contest"

- Blackadder.

I've often been accused of not knowing my arse from my elbow... rather unfairly usually.  Just to prove it, I got 20 out of 20 on this test... 

http://www.zegelin.com/love_files/ArseorElbow.htm#

Goal of the DECADE

Absolutely SENSATIONAL goal by young Simon Cox of Swindon.  I can't think of any Prem striker that could have scored this goal.  

Anelka, Ronaldo, Rooney, Drogba, Adebayour, Van Persie, Torres, all would have made a beeline towards goal.  If any of them had actually scored it, it would be voted Goal of the Season hands down.

I think the lad (Simon Cox) will definitely get a move to a Championship side in the summer, or maybe even one of the newly promoted teams to the Prem will take a punt on him.  I bet Reading are currently rueing their decision to let him go!

Just to prove this is no fluke, check out his goal against Fenerbache, AMAZING.