Yep that’s right, it’s time for another barrage of weeping, wailing, begging and sob stories, collectively known as the X-Factor, Britain’s equivalent of American Idol for those that don’t know.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the X-Factor has 4 judges and 4 categories, over 25′s groups, under 25 boys and and under 25 girls.  After they narrow it down at boot camp, each judge gets a category to mentor.

They’re currently showing the final episode before the live shows were we get to see who gets through, and I’ve just figured out what’s missing.

They need a fifth judge

Every year I sit and watch the show… Well I say watch loosely, I have never been able to sit and watch it, I record it then I can watch the whole thing at high speed without having to listen to the sob stories, stupid judge comments and, during the auditions, all the idiots who shouldn’t even be given air time as all they’re after is getting their faces on the television…

But I digress…

They need a fifth judge, a plain, ordinary member of the public, to give a voice to the viewing (and buying) public.  Then they could take a wild card category, where they select some acts that the other judges turned down.

If nothing else, it would be fascinating to see what happens when someone mentors them without any agenda.  It always amazes me some of the song and clothing choices that the mentors make, and invariably many of the contestants are criticized for the song or their wardrobe, both of which they don’t appear to have any choice in.

Oh well, I think it’s a good idea, but unless it’s going to generate extra revenue from the telephone voting I doubt it’ll ever go further than being just a good idea.

Hmm… Am I too young for this level of cinicism?  I never can tell

For the last month or so every time you turned on the television there was something about them on, first the torch run, then the athletes being flown over, then the event themselves.  It’s been finished three days, yet still they’re bleating on about them like something stupendous has just happened.

Maybe I’m just getting old, crabby and cynical, but I truly don’t get it.

Today it was the return of the athletes in the news, or as they said on the news “The triumphant return of our heroes”. But I’ll get to that in a moment…

Then you had all the parades, pomp and ceremony over them returning.  I might be missing something, but don’t they already have the achievement of being the best in their chosen field of sport, a choice they made, and for the most part have been paid to perform in, plus they have the joy of now owning a gold coated chocolate medallion (could they look any less real?).  Do they really need to be wheeled out and paraded around like freaks whilst being given keys to the city and probably recommended for a knighthood?

OK, so they are fast at running, swimming, rowing or really good at whatever it happens to be, but it’s not like they’ve suddenly solved poverty or created world peace…

So…

A Knighthood?

For being good at something?

Like I said, maybe I’m just crabby, jaded and cynical.

There were even people being interviewed, saying how they just “had to come out to see them return after the games had gone so well.”

Now don’t get me wrong, there are several “celebrity” type people I would love to meet… But for all the same reasons I like to meet “normal” people, they’re funny, they’re interesting, there’s something in particular I’d like to talk with them about, or, in some cases, just because I have the feeling we’d get on like a house on fire.

But these people were rushing out in their droves to watch people ride by… On a bus!?!?!?

Erm… They’re on a bus, you’re seeing them at a distance…

Why?

Am I missing something?

Oh and then there’s the whole “return of our great heroes” approach.

Soldiers go off to war and come home broken, damaged or dead… They’re practically smuggled into the country, yet here’s athletes being paraded around like they’ve just sorted out the problems in the Middle East in the space of a week.

There is clearly something wrong with that somewhere.

I like to think of myself as a Conciencious Objector, I don’t agree with warfare, but I’m still able to realise that those who do feel they have to do their part should be welcomed home with a whole lot more than a “here’s your discharge papers, you’re no use to us broken…”

It’s just all wrong.

We’ve been told for years that we’re now living in a throw-away society, yet at the same time we’re told to cut down on packaging, cut down on purchases, recycle more…

How?

You buy an expensive piece of equipment, it breaks 2 days after the warranty runs out, but you can’t get it replaced because (according to the manufacturer) it isn’t cost effective, it would cost more to repair than it does to buy a new one.

Although you have to love how they don’t give you the option of repair to judge the cost for yourself.

And then we have food and services, doesn’t anyone take pride in their work any more?

When I used to work at the restaurant a few years ago, they were fairly expensive if you went in for a meal, although apparently they’re no more expensive than anywhere else in the city centre.

Yet the difference in the quality of the food was incredible.

Most places buy the cheapest ingredients possible, simply to maximise their profit margins. Yet the place I worked at bought nothing but the best ingredients they could find, and when you ate anything there, you sure could tell!

I don’t really drink anything other than plain water, but I do have a weakness for hot chocolate.

The place I worked at used to make them the old fashioned way…

Thick, frothy…

I’m talking made with full milk, enough chocolate powder to make it so think you could almost stand a spoon up in it. Then topped with thick double cream, and a handful of marshmallows… *drools*

Hardly anywhere seems to do them that way any more.

I was at a cafe last week (yes it’s true, I actually left the house!) that always used to do really nice hot chocolates.

But now they’ve gone the way of everyone else…

Everyone wants to maximise their profits, which is fair enough, it’s a business after all, but they don’t seem to have any interest in the quality of their stuff. No interest in whether their product is good enough to have people coming back for repeat business, just so long as it’s cheap…

And by cheap I mean cheap to make, not cheap to buy.

I had a hot chocolate at this cafe on Friday, it was made with water instead of milk, so was very thin and far too hot, had hardly any chocolate powder so was pretty tasteless, and was topped with squirty cream.

I should mention here that I would like to find the person who invented squirty cream, tie them down and squirt cream down their throats until they implode… Ok so I guess technically it would be explode…

I loath that stuff with a passion, I’m convinced that the nearest it’s come to a cow is if it happened to pass one on the road on the way to the store.

It tastes nothing like cream, or any other dairy product, is full of sugar and turns to water the second it comes into contact with anything warm.

I bought this hot chocolate, which was described as “Luxury thick, creamy hot chocolate” and even went for the slightly more expensive version that was served “with cream”.

Hell they can’t even get the descriptions right, because the description given was the furthest thing from the runny, tasteless slop they served me with!

But then we have cakes too, you buy a cake of any kind and they’re so artificial they all taste pretty much the same…

And don’t even get me started on the use of those “cake topping” rubbish…

I find it quite frightening this trend to go for cheaper and cheaper materials and ingredients in all products, especially since it doesn’t mean they reduce their prices any!

I find it equally frightening in this day and age that there is a whole generation brought up on this artificial junk who don’t know what real food actually tastes like. They don’t even know what a real cake or desert tastes like, just this bland pre-packaged rubbish you buy in the shops.

Blah… I need to go stab someone now…

I was tootling about the internet, as you do, when I came across a blog. It was quite interesting, but after every entry was a couple of paragraphs about seeing the author on some cam site.

Now call me naive, but I was thinking it was going to be a facebook or myspace but with webcams.

Silly fraggle!

Needless to say it wasn’t.

It was one of those webcam for pay sites. You get to talk to the “models” in chat rooms, and then take them into a private session where they will do your every bidding, which appears to require total nudity and sex toys…

Nice to see humanity is progressing isn’t it?

But I digress.

First thing that hits me about the place was the number of people trolling (and I do mean trolling!) about the place. Never in my life have I had the misfortune to see such a bunch of degenerate misfits!

How nobody has ever snapped, gone off-line and hunted them down is beyond me. I’d have thought it was a pretty simple idea, you flirt with the model of your choosing, then you have to cough up the cash to go any further… It’s not exactly rocket science, now is it?

And I checked out both the guys and girls on this site, and both got the same calibre of clientèle, the girls got:

• Show me your boobs
• Take of your bra
• Touch yourself
• take of your knickers

And every variation of the above, but in more colourful and graphic terms, while the guys got:

• Show me your penis
• Make yourself hard
• Pop your pecs (not entirely sure but I think they meant bounce em up and down)
• Pop your nipples (I don’t even want to know what that one’s supposed to mean)

And both sexes got the “are you shaved”, “gay, straight, bi” and “Do you want to have sex with me” questions.

It’s no wonder most of them look so bored having to listen to that for hours at a time, not to mention how none of the idiots are able to take a hint, they ask, they ask in CAPS LOCK, after about 10 seconds they’re furiously barking out orders like some kind of Drill Sergeant and then they throw a hissy fit because the model isn’t obeying, so obviously doesn’t appreciate the viewer so it’s no wonder they’re not getting any private sessions…

Either that or they sprout something along the lines of “I love you, you’re so hot, you’re so kind, I want to have sex with you here and now…

Now can I see your…”

Umm, they’re trying to earn money, they’re not a performing monkey!

And I have to laugh at the number of people who try it on with the “If you show me your penis/breast, and start touching yourself I’ll take you into private for 30 minutes…” Umm, yeah, right… Like they haven’t heard that one at least 12 times in the 5 minutes I’ve been sat there.

I’m a bit bemused by the whole thing actually (no shock there then). There were one or two good looking guys and girls on the site, but so many of them looked like they fell out of the ugly tree, and didn’t so much hit every branch on the way down as were clubbed repeatedly with said branches at every opportunity!

Don’t get me wrong, looks aren’t everything, but in that kind of industry, it’s all about looks I’d have thought.

Maybe it’s me but the boys mostly looked like they were about 12, and the girls… Well they fell into two categories, there were the ones that looked like slightly past their best cross dressers, and the others who looked like 40 year old cheap hookers, and they’ve all had some pretty hard paper rounds, as they say.

People are expected to actually want to pay to watch people looking like that perform obscene acts alone in a room with a webcam and waterproof keyboard?

Then there’s the price… $6 per minute! Who can even afford it, even if they are that sad, desperate or perverted? I worked it out, that means for my entire weeks money, I’d be able to afford 29 minutes of viewing… That’s just silly!

The “models” (don’t you just love how they call them that, not that I’m quite sure what you actually should call them to be fair) also get bonuses depending how long people spend in payed shows. They get $10for each person who spends 3 hours in a paid session.

Now by my maths, that means the person has spent $1078.20, and the model receives an extra $10. Not the best of bonus plans, not to mention how often is anyone going to spend that on a webcam show? Heck, that’s $359 an hour, they could hire a high class escort for that, and there’d be a lot more “interaction”…

There’s also the models to consider… Several of them appear to be students, who are presumably trying to earn money to put themselves through college or university. Yet you do have to wonder what impact this particular carer move is going to have on their long term goals. I saw a couple of people studying to become journalists or work in media. Am I alone in thinking a background in the sex industry immortalised on the internet for all to find is going to be quite the problem if they want to be taken seriously?

Mind you, after gawping at the site off and on for the past 3 days, I’m not feeling any strange urges, but I am feeling more than a little evil

I have a sudden desire to be wealthy, just so I could torment one of their models! Some of them take it all so seriously.

Would it be so wrong?

It would probably have to be one of the guys, the girls seem to take it all with a pinch of salt, but the guys appear to get very worked up over it all, making them so much more fun to torment.

Now I’m sure most of you know what I’m like when I’m feeling evil (surely you remember the tampon conversation with the poor girl at the checkout a couple of years ago )

So I’d imagine it would go something along the lines of waiting until they were getting more than a little frustrated and then taking them into private. Then, naturally I’d have to do everything in my power to put them off completely…

Naturally there would be lots of random questions to put them off the task at hand.

All those strange things people to to get their babies to eat could probably be nicely adapted, should be nice and disturbing…

Aeroplane noises and the train in the tunnel… Yep I’d imagine that would throw off their game just a bit

And just to finish off, as they’re about to… well, you know…

“So, how’s you’re mother/grandmother doing these days…?”

Or if I were going to be truly vicious… A question about a parent/grandparent in their negligée/underwear… that should nicely ruin it for them

Clearly a little more thought would be required, but I’m sure I could ruin their day, and probably their whole week without too much more required

I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it’s true.

This time it’s the cellphone that proved his weirdness.

We have a phone each in our house. I’m not sure quite how, but somewhere along the way I ended up buying them, setting them up than having to buy the pre-pay or contract SIM to go in each of them.

The handsets have all been mine at one time or another, and then as I upgraded, the old one was freed for Mummsie and Daddy Dearest.

I’m still a little hazy on how I ended up having to pay for all the calls on them too though…

However, sticking to the point (for a change)

Most people take the phone with them when they go out and about.

My father seems to work differently to most.

He takes the phone with him, but won’t turn it on unless he needs to make a call, which is incredibly annoying when you’re trying to get him to pick something up while he’s out and he’s got it turned off…

…And he wonders why he comes home to one or both of us stood in the front door demanding he go straight back out again!

Now here’s where it gets even more odd…

He’ll only take the phone when he’s in his car.

If he’s getting a lift from somebody else occasionally he won’t take the phone, since if they break down it’s not his problem, so they’ll have to sort something out.

Umm… OK….

And the best one was about an hour ago, I took the phone to charge it up for him for tomorrow night.

It’s his works Christmas do, and they’re going for a pizza (very festive I know).

Now if you live around here, you know going into town on a Friday night is pretty hectic at the best of times, but come the end of November it’s pandemonium.

Add to that the fact that the buses only run here once an hour after 3pm, and they stop completely at 10pm.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’d have thought most people would make sure they had their phone with them for that, there’s not a lot of phone boxes in town any more, and even less that work most of the time, and when you’re this far away with such a lousy bus service, I’d have thought you’d want a phone for emergencies.

Not him.

Nope, he says he wasn’t planing on taking the phone since he’s not going to be in the car, and he didn’t want it in his pocket as it would spoil the line of his trousers.

Given he horrendous posture, the fact that most of his clothes are too small for him since he still thinks he’s the same size he was when he was twenty, I’m not sure it’s even possible to spoil the line of his clothes.

Some days I really do worry that I might actually share some similar genetic code to that man, truly I do.

Lets face it, in day to day life you don’t have more than a 5 minute gap between them grasping at themselves, like their genitals are likely to fall off and they need to be sure it’s still attached… (Velcro dahrling… it’s the only way )

Now send them to the bathroom…

Never mind hoping they put the seat back down, I’d settle for them just hitting the bowl.

Usually they manage to hit the wall, the floor, the seat, the cover… I sometimes wonder if any of it actually goes into the bowl.

So how come, they’re clothed and working and grabbing their genitals every few minutes, put them in the bathroom, the one place you really hope they’d have hold of themselves.

I mean, come on… They have a directional hose attachment, so how can they manage to miss the bowl so much?

Am I missing something?

The first area of the UK last their terrestrial television service today and are now a digital only zone. This is the start of a 4 year scheme to go from standard to digital television services across the whole country…

For anyone that didn’t already know that :-p

The only thing I don’t get, is why it’s such a good thing.

They’ve been trying to persuade us for the past few years, just how wonderful this digital revolution will be…

Yes the picture is DVD quality, but it breaks up far easier than terrestrial television, and when that got distortion the picture just became a little less clear, when digital gets distorted, the entire thing becomes completely unwatchable… Every channel!

At least terrestrial television would only have slight distortion, and only one two channels at most, when digital goes the entire service goes down…

Although to be fair, that’s hardly surprising, since it turns out it’s one of those “Butterflies in the Amazon” kind of things.

A leaf falls from a tree 20 miles away and you lose your television reception… A butterfly flaps it’s wings in the Amazon, and 3 counties are plunged into a televisionless depression.

My signal was fine for about a year, and then the past 6 months I can only watch during daytime hours because something breaks the signal every night from around 7pm, and even then it’s not unusual for the signal to go down during the day either…

Which again begs the question… Why is this such a good thing?

I did. I reduced my carbon footprint by turning it off!

The problem is, these concerts are great to raise money for charities, but they aren’t really much cop for awareness of global issues. People go, they have a great time, and then they go back about their lives like it never happened.

And having a concert for global warming and carbon emissions? Umm… Am I the only one to notice the number of lights, the number of trucks required to move all the equipment and the number of air flights that will have been used to transport all the acts to tech various locations. It’s a safe bet that lot probably tripled the carbon emissions for the month, if not more.

Seems a bit counter productive to me…

The thing is, it’s just never going to work.

They’d have done more for the environment not having all those concerts than any benefit to come from them.

Call me pessimistic, but I just don’t have that much faith in mankind.

People will do what they want to do, if it goes along with being green, then great, and if it doesn’t then tough.

People have known for a few years now how much pollution and carbon is churned out by all those flights for holidays abroad.

Have they stopped flying?

Hell no!

They join a scheme to plant a tree to offset their carbon emissions… Like a single tree is going to do anything. The rain forest is the lungs of the planet. We’ve known that for over a decade, yet it’s still being cut down at a happy little place so they can introduce the Amazon to the essential food that is McDonald’s.

And that’s the real crux of the issue. Until people change their priorities and change how they think, all the awareness in the world really doesn’t do jack.

If these groups really want to help the planet, then maybe they should be getting the recording artists to cut back on the carbon burning world tours, maybe they should be forcing manufacturers to go back to the old ways where things were built to last, and designed to be repaired, and leave the new idea of make things as cheap and fragile as possible so they don’t last, and have to be replaced because you either can’t get spare parts, somebody to fix them, or more frequently the parts and the labour to repair it is more than it costs to replace it.

They need to hit people where they’ll think the most, their pockets.

If it costs less to buy a replacement than a repair, people will sling their goods out faster than they can run to the nearest trash point.

If they can get them repaired cheaper, they’ll get them fixed, reducing waste and reducing manufacturing carbon and pollution emissions.

You want people to stop buying the gas guzzling cars, then put a cap on gas purchase. If they can’t buy enough gas, they’ll soon get a more economical car.

Better yet, get the car companies to put more effort into alternative power methods in cars, reduced consumption, and increasing mileage. Get them to make cars that don’t rust. I remember reading years ago that they could make non-rusting cars way back in the 90′s if not earlier, but naturally they don’t because they want people to buy cars more often to keep them in vast amounts of money.

You want people to stop using their cars and start using public transport.

That’s fine, but when public transport runs once an hour or less, when it’s cheaper to run a car than it is to buy a bus ticket, then you might as well save your breath. People think with their wallets, and even those who do care have to go with what they can afford and what is practical.

Short of being a fanatic, you’re not going to spend 2 hours on public transport and anything up to an hour in the wind and rain waiting for your connection on your commute to and from work when you can get a car and drive yourself there in a quarter of the time for about the same cost and without getting cold and wet. It’s just not going to happen.

You want people to use public transport, then put some money into it, stop dishing these services out to the private sector who are only interested in profit margins, take them back under governmental control, put some money into them and give the world a transport system that’s cheap, efficient, economical and practical… Then and only then will people start using it and start leaving their car at home.

When these people start putting their money where their mouths are, start looking at the practicalities and giving people options (or ultimatums) then I’ll give them some time, and a whole hearted support.

Until then they can shove their “awareness concerts” they can shove their droning musical acts, stuff their bland and inane celebrity introducees (who lets face it aren’t so much there to show their support as to get their face seen), I’ve seen it, I’ve thought about it and it changes nothing. It’s all been done before, it meant as little to people and policies then as it did yesterday. When something doesn’t work, how about you stop flogging the dead equine and come up with something that’s actually going to make some kind of difference?

Edit

I should maybe mention, the contents of said elephant packet looks identical to duct tape

Oh the poor dear…

Three days into her sentence she has a sudden (and a tad convenient) medical problem, which apparently caused the sheriff’s department to decide she should be sent home.

I guess state correction has gone slightly down hill… Heck people have more bother trying to get sent home from school early!

Still, I’m sure that having to wear an ugly, non-designer ankle bracelet, with a range too small to cover her entire mansion, and no shopping spree’s will really get the point of the punishment home to the poor girl…

After all, she’s going to have to do her shopping by internet and telephone, and any parties will have to be held at her own house, and only in certain rooms…

*rolls eyes*

Admittedly it appears that the city attorney isn’t overly happy with the situation and is looking to get her back in prison to server her sentence.

I think the most frightening part is that enough people agreed to sending her home that she got out and back home in the first place.

Makes you wonder what things are coming to, and it does tend to back up the theory that if you have enough fame and enough money, you can get out of most things… One way or another.