As part of my public service, I have collaborated with the BBC to bring you the last 16 Champions league fixtures to be played on the 21st and 22nd of February and then on the 6th and 7th of March.

Porto v CHELSEA

CELTIC v AC Milan

PSV Eindhoven v ARSENAL

Lille v MANCHESTER UNITED

Roma v Lyon

Barcelona v LIVERPOOL

Real Madrid v Bayern Munich

Inter Milan v Valencia

Once again with minimum effort I have produced a post. Thanks to the internet.

Tony Blair on Multiculturalism and Tolerance (highly paraphrased)

Tolerance is a part of what makes Britain. So conform to it or stay out!!

It reminded me of the Rush song Resist

“I can learn to resist, Anything but temptation
I can learn to co-exist, With anything but pain
I can learn to compromise, Anything but my desires
I can learn to get along, With all the things I can’t explain “

I saw Annie Hall the other day, Woody Allen’s semi-biographical movie about his relationship with Diane Keaton. He summed up relationships thus.

I thought of that old joke, y’know, the, this… this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs.

Of course, we all know what he means by “eggs”, eh?? Wink wink, nudge nudge.

And thank heavens for the internet or I’d have to type that all out.

…in my readership. So all I say is, no more posts from now on. Go read Dilbert’s Blog; it’s funnier and more people comment on his blog than I could ever wish for.

(sniff)

I tried making you laugh, I tried giving you sound financial advice, I even pretended to be interested in your dull jobs and your opinions on life…

(sniff)

But I’m through with this malarky. Don’t comment, see if I care!

(sniff) 

Bernard Bailey said “When they find the center of the universe, a lot of people are going to be disappointed that they are not it”. And it’s true, you guys are NOT the center of the universe. It’s MY blog after all!!

Quote for today, and especially relevant considering my ongoing quest for gainful employment.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

– James Baldwin

This means that

1. There is an ugly side to every profession.

2. Knowledge of this ugly side is not immediately gained nor is it always immediately obvious.

3. No-one escapes this ugly side once they are familiar with the job.

Any wonder then, why such a pure and blushing rose like me shies away from work?? But who can tell me about the ugly side of their profession. Remember, Ugly Side must confirm to rules 2 and 3 above. Otherwise we have disproved the statement.

I write a serious post about finance and nobody reads it/comments on it. I write about “Ze Weekend”, “Party”, “Touching Boys” and they come flocking. Flocking idiots!!

No wonder we (present company excluded) are becoming a nation of idiots! We (present company excluded) have the attention span of a goldfish on acid. We (present company excluded) deserve the crap that ITV is throwing at us in our drooling, comatose faces.

Well if you want garbage, I’ll give you garbage. You think this is garbage?? Wait till I give you real garbage!

Oh, Merry Birthday Ioannis!!

Tomorrow is Orange Wednesday at Ioannis’ house; we shall watch ‘Touching the Void’ over bowls of Spag Bog*. Touching the void reminds me of two things:

a) The first time I met Simon at Rayk’s birthday party, when I told him about “Touching the void” and he thought I was talking about “touching the boys”.

After clarifying his mistake, we went on to bond over “Shaving Ryan’s Privates”, “Batman in Robin”, “Diddle-her on the roof”, “Forrest Hump”, “The Loin King”, “Glad-he-ate-her”, “Inspect-her Gadget”, “Saturday Night Beaver” and of course “The Empire Strikes from the Back”.

b) Boney M. Specifically their song “Brown Girl in the Ring”. This comes about because as anyone who’s seen the film knows, when the protagonist of the film is lying broken at the foot of the glacier expecting to die at any moment, he tells us of how this song kept running through his head and how he though “Oh no! I’m gonna die to the sound of Boney M”. I have previously mentioned this in my award-winning blog post, Pulitzer Prize and Best Blog on the Internet not winner on the Dalai Lama.

And finally I think blogging can be summed up by today’s quote “If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.” – Arthur Schopenhauer.

 

*Spag Bog = Spaghetti Bolognaise

I was reading the comments on Dilbert’s blog when I came across a youtube video showing American soldiers teasing thirsty Iraqi kids, making them run behind a truck for a bottle of water.

You can see it on this link

It just made me angry and then sad.

I’m amazed how few blogs I actually have about music. Especially blogs from Naz The Recommender, who just has to let you imbeciles know what real music is.

I also wonder how it is everybody knows that when you’re told the electrician will visit between 8-12 in the morning, he’ll turn up at approximately 11:45. If at all.

By the way, bacon tea is Lapsung Chowsung or whatever its fancy name is. It smells of smoked bacon. But you knew that didn’t you Ioannis?

I’ve been sitting all morning clearing up my Hotmail account. It’s a funny feeling having your inbox entirely empty!! as I have now. Now I guess I’m sitting waiting to catch internet flies.

My account has been boosted up to 1000MB, most probably because I’m the only lazy sucker left who puts up with their less-than-crap service and user-friendly-NOT design.

It’s quite astonishing when you think about it, how easily I (well, not just I) have access to communications from the past, and how similar in feeling it is to flipping through an old diary. By that I mean one of your own old diaries, and not peeking at someone else’s by the way. Suddenly old friends are brought to mind, old jokes are re-laughed (thanks to Jill and Sky mainly), old hobbies now abandoned that seemed so engaging at the time. I found an oh-so-important .ppt file from MBS that was flavour of the week that er.. week and now lies catching virtual rust. (Do you remember the presentation for I.T. Trends on Nordea, Tinks? The largest Swedish bank? No?? And why would you, I did all the bleeding research!!!!)

And I’m listening to a bizzare collection of songs, thanks to Ioannis.

Air Supply (All out of love), and then Allanah Myles (Black Velvet)

All 4 One (I swear), and then Andre Segovia (Malaguena)

Angel Dust (Black Rain), and then err… Angel Dust again (Bleed)

Bloodhound Gang (Do it like they do on the Discovery channel), and then Blue Oyster Cult (Burnin’ for you)